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YouTube lets biggest stars off the hook for breaking rules, moderators say
If it feels like certain high-profile YouTubers get way more lenience when it comes to content moderation than everyone else does, that's apparently because they really do, according to a new report.
The Washington Post spoke with almost a dozen former and current YouTube content moderators, who told the paper that the gargantuan video platform "made exceptions" for popular creators who push content boundaries.
"Our responsibility was never to the creators or to the users," one former moderator told the Post. "It was to the advertisers."
The employees told the Post in interviews that YouTube's internal guidelines for how to rate videos are confusing and hard to follow. Workers are also "typically given unrealistic quotas by the outsourcing companies of reviewing 120 videos a day," the Post reports, which makes it difficult to scrutinize longer videos without skipping over content that may turn out to be problematic. (A YouTube spokesperson told the Post it does not give moderators quotas.)
[...] Many employees inside the company were just as unhappy with the situation as outside observers were. The decision not to ban Paul permanently from the platform "felt like a slap in the face," a moderator told the Post. "You're told you have specific policies for monetization that are extremely strict. And then Logan Paul broke one of their biggest policies and it became like it never happened."
YouTube told the Post it does indeed have two sets of content expectations, but the company said that meant higher standards for advertising partners than for the general public. That seems partly due to the fallout of the Paul incidents, which led YouTube to say it would impose stronger vetting on content in its Google Preferred program.
[...] One YouTube moderator told the Post that ultimately the bottom line is, well, the bottom line. "The picture we get from YouTube is that the company has to make money," they said. "So what we think should be crossing a line, to them isn't crossing one."
(Score: 3, Informative) by c0lo on Monday August 12 2019, @07:43AM (11 children)
It is called the "the rights given by ownership" coupled with the capitalism rules.
Has absolutely nothing to do with the "royalty", it's simply just "It's mine and it's not yours and it is for me to decide what best serves my interest. If you don't like it, fuck off, this... is... Sparta... [investopedia.com] because I made it so".
Go search their ToS and find the place where they promised to enforce it in all cases. I'm pretty sure all you will be able to find is: "we reserve the right to..." and never "we will always enforce those rules" promise.
And Google is not alone in the level of obligations they take in their ToS - I bet all the commercial entities with Internet presence do the same.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Touché) by qzm on Monday August 12 2019, @08:03AM
Well..I guess this is why their section 230 rights should be reconsidered.
Why should they have a legal get out of jail free card for their content and yet also be removing content selectively based on profit... It gives them special rights the rest of us don't get..
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 12 2019, @08:28AM (3 children)
> It is called the "the rights given by ownership" coupled with the capitalism rules.
> Has absolutely nothing to do with the "royalty", [...]
You realize you just contradicted yourself, right? They may have prettied the whole thing up with bullshit "divine right", but "royalty," ultimately, was just the class of landowners able to marshal the military force to make their ownership claim stick. (See, for example, CGP Grey's video on the royal succession and family in England: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUY6HGqYweQ [youtube.com] , https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNgP6d9HraI [youtube.com] ).
In our system the ownership class has outsourced the actual violence to the government and relies on expensive lawyers instead. Given how much lawsuits cost, it's still, fundamentally, a contest of power. The contest is just ritualized into an economic one instead of raw, brutal, violence.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday August 12 2019, @08:38AM (2 children)
Exercise of power as it may be, there are specific differences between 'the power of lawyerpult' vs royalty.
Words still have well defined meaning, especially if you don't pretend to write literature/poetry, but just some comments in a forum.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2, Disagree) by Runaway1956 on Monday August 12 2019, @08:46AM (1 child)
What are you saying exactly? That "royalty" is legitimate, and that legal tricks are somehow less legitimate? That's a special form of brainwashing indoctrination, isn't it?
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday August 12 2019, @09:13AM
Don't overexert your brain too much. What I said is exactly what I meant: 'royalty' and 'the dismissal of fairness considerations in the pursuit of profit' are two different concepts/concerns.
See also genus proximum et differentia specificam [wikipedia.org]. The resident magister may be able to explain better such antique concepts.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday August 12 2019, @08:42AM (3 children)
Yes, all of that. Like I said, "royalty".
How in hell do you think the old world royalty came to be, anyway? Surely, you don't think that God created them separately from the peasants, and gave them all of their royal rights? The first royals were just the toughest, sneakiest, and crookedest of the peasants, who took what they wanted, and subjected the rest of the peasants to their will.
Instead of just fucking off, I want to see the royalty fucked, thank you very much.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday August 12 2019, @09:00AM
While very likely true, it's irrelevant.
Words still have meaning, if you want to use 'poetical licences' maybe it's safer to warn so at the beginning of your comment, people don't usually expect to read literature in S/N comments.
I can't object to your deepest fantasies, but be warned this would not include Google even if it will happen.
(large grin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Touché) by c0lo on Monday August 12 2019, @10:13AM (1 child)
Aaaand... there you have it [soylentnews.org]
This is what you get when you combine 'The customer is king' with 'fuck royalty'. Are you pleased now?
(large grin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday August 12 2019, @10:19AM
Yes - and who is Google's customer? Neither of us is foolish enough to believe that WE are customers.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday August 12 2019, @02:36PM (1 child)
They have a ToS? Then it's implied that they will enforce the ToS per the terms of the ToS.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday August 12 2019, @03:01PM
Of course they'll do so, accordingly to the terms.
Which, conveniently enough, uses terms like "we may kick you out if..." not "we shall kick you out if..."
"At their discretion", as it happens.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford