YouTube Stars Panic as Site Pulls Ads over "Inappropriate Comments"

Megalith

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YouTube is going all out this week after the video giant was caught inadvertently perpetuating pedophilia. While countless channels and disgusting comments have already been purged, the company has shifted into overdrive by opting to de-monetize videos merely for having a vile comments section: “inappropriate comments could result in your video receiving limited or no ads.” This has sparked worry and outrage from those who make a living off the site, as they have little control over what is posted by viewers. YouTube has denied the allegations.

A YouTube spokesperson confirmed to The Daily Beast that the site is limiting ads on videos that could attract predatory comments. Demonetizing videos over comment sections, rather than the actual content of the videos, is a drastic move for YouTube. But the platform has been left scrambling to win back advertisers after a viral video posted on Sunday showed how pedophiles use comment sections on the site to communicate with one another.
 
I'm amazed people still bother to deal with ciaGoogle sheckels through all this recent rule bs. Funny how they didn't give a shit about all the pedo stuff a year or two ago when the imageboards catalogued and made others aware of this festering crap.
 
I'm amazed people still bother to deal with ciaGoogle sheckels through all this recent rule bs. Funny how they didn't give a shit about all the pedo stuff a year or two ago when the imageboards catalogued and made others aware of this festering crap.
The numbers have probably changed, but at one point, Youtube was 20 times larger than its nearest competitor. It's a de facto monopoly. If you want to make a video that gets seen by anyone, it's Youtube or nothing pretty much.
 
The numbers have probably changed, but at one point, Youtube was 20 times larger than its nearest competitor. It's a de facto monopoly. If you want to make a video that gets seen by anyone, it's Youtube or nothing pretty much.

This, very much this. Every "competitor" for Youtube dies because they simply can't compete long term and what they need to do to try and gain viewers means they lose money faster than they can gain it.
 
The numbers have probably changed, but at one point, Youtube was 20 times larger than its nearest competitor. It's a de facto monopoly. If you want to make a video that gets seen by anyone, it's Youtube or nothing pretty much.


Which is why we need to start calling for youtube to be given common carrier status, and remove the ability for them to pick and choose, jsut like we did to ATT.

The longer we wait, the more voices will be silenced in favor of corporations.
 
Which is why we need to start calling for youtube to be given common carrier status, and remove the ability for them to pick and choose, jsut like we did to ATT.

The longer we wait, the more voices will be silenced in favor of corporations.

Honestly, I would not be opposed to something like this. With how much social media controls the news we see and information we get these days letting them have an unchecked ability to control that could easily become a problem.
 
And there you have it. I said this whole fiasco had an ulterior motive and here it is. Because the comments section is just as damaging as the down votes on videos, YouTube now wants creators to police their own videos comments or lose money. All I have to do now is post idiotic comments like "pedo bear would look up that little girls skirt" and that person loses monetization. It could be a video on fixing cars or computers and that comment would still lose monetization. Most creators would have to shut down their comments section or go insane moderating the comments.

Clearly YouTube needs a competitor... here lets use https://d.tube/ . This shit wouldn't fly if YouTube had a real competitor.
 
People not taking their own channels seriously and failing to moderate the comments caused this. Pulling/disabling a service makes perfect sense if a write-accessible site is abandoned, which happens often in the online services world.

What I find weird is that Youtube isn't rolling with that as their narrative.

Instead they seem to be going full pants-on-head and taking responsibility for published works and censoring on a per instance basis. I suppose I would have to read their terms of use in depth to understand why they would want to go that route, but I'm guessing that individual video publishers are _not_ communicating with advertisers on any level? i.e. There is no bi-directional opt-in menu for advertisers and producers to select from?

Maybe I'm just oldschool, but I really don't understand why Youtube seems to be run so poorly.
 
And the money talks... if your job is YouTube then part of the job is to moderate comments. If you can scroll down 3 lines and read a comment that you couldn’t say on the stream then it is no different than if it were on the stream itself. It’s posted right there, so either moderate comments or disable them, it’s not like 99% of the comments section is constructive to begin with.
 
Problem is youtube got too big. So now they have to follow rules like network TV
 
YouTube is going to go full socialist
Whaaaat?

YT demonetizing channels for bad reasons doesn't mean they're going to be owned and operated in part or wholly by the govt. (that is what Socialism is BTW) from now on dude.

Its still a private company and so gets regulated as such and a key part of that is what they say goes when it comes to what gets put on their site. So its fair not to agree or like what they're doing right now but legally they're totally in the clear. All the other YT competitors legit suck as well, not just in quality or terms of service but also the restrictions and bans and other privacy issues as well, too so good luck just going elsewhere.

Hell for a site like this, which has a buuunch of Libertarians (big L and small l types) and Republicans types who almost always seem to be about boosting the rich and powerful companies' positions by default posting on it, I figured that was always the sort of thing most of you championed? The whole business-owner-as-Petty-Tyrant thing always seemed like a obviously pretty bad idea to me though so I guess its good to see at least some of you, belatedly, coming around on this sort of thing and now championing some sort of govt. intervention.
 
And the money talks... if your job is YouTube then part of the job is to moderate comments. If you can scroll down 3 lines and read a comment that you couldn’t say on the stream then it is no different than if it were on the stream itself. It’s posted right there, so either moderate comments or disable them, it’s not like 99% of the comments section is constructive to begin with.


Rrrright... If you are big enough channel with hundreds of videos then good luck moderating every single post that some douchenozzle posts, in both new and old videos made years ago. Youtube comments section is not a neatly organized forum, it cannot be moderated by hand in traditional fashion.
 
Rrrright... If you are big enough channel with hundreds of videos then good luck moderating every single post that some douchenozzle posts, in both new and old videos made years ago. Youtube comments section is not a neatly organized forum, it cannot be moderated by hand in traditional fashion.
If you can't moderate it then disable the comments, do it right or not at all.
 
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I've noticed some debate about moderating the comment section. The real bad guy is google. Google obviously has a method of discovering inappropriate comments therefore they should simply block the comment before it is ever posted. Now since google can find and block the comment at any point it seems VERY suspicious that they are using that as a reason to stop revenue to the content creator. I see this as simply a way for google to increase their profit by not paying creators while looking like they are taking action.
 
Not surprised at all, google just lost Disney ad revenue because of “comments” so why not take this opportunity to save more money.

On the idea of monitoring your comment section, I agree and I don’t. It’s not like YouTube provides modern tools to actually do that, if they did then it wouldn’t be so bad.

Also since other channels followers screw with other streamers from time to time... Can’t wait to see new results from that, or instead of copyright strikes just bomb their video with vile words!

Also really tired of the "its for the children" mentality, that smoking gun is always used to try and enact quick shitty fixes for problems that will be around for the time of humanity. If you really really want children to grow up safe in the world at all, don't have em.
 
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The writings on the wall, youtube is going main stream. It's over accept it, in a decade or so it will only be marginally better than broadcast/cable TV. Pornhub can take on youtube, there were mumblings about it awhile back. Patreon is censoring/de-platforming as well and not just folks like mr. jones.
 
And the money talks... if your job is YouTube then part of the job is to moderate comments. If you can scroll down 3 lines and read a comment that you couldn’t say on the stream then it is no different than if it were on the stream itself. It’s posted right there, so either moderate comments or disable them, it’s not like 99% of the comments section is constructive to begin with.

...nah.
 
Alternatively, Youtube could not be retarded and not abuse their monopoly to fuck over creators.
Youtube is not fucking over creators. Advertisers don't want their ads appearing above a creepy pedo discussion. It's up to creators to make their content palatable to advertisers. That's not Youtube's job, it's the creator's job.

Otherwise they can make money on patreon, or go be an IG star, or go get an endorsement directly from the brands.
 
Youtube is not fucking over creators. Advertisers don't want their ads appearing above a creepy pedo discussion. It's up to creators to make their content palatable to advertisers. That's not Youtube's job, it's the creator's job.

Otherwise they can make money on patreon, or go be an IG star, or go get an endorsement directly from the brands.

Except they are fucking over creators. Youtube always takes the "nuke it from orbit" approach to "fixing" a problem. This has been the case since their failure of a claim system was implemented. Youtube's "solutions" have always done more to hurt creators than help them. Moderating comments on thousands of videos is absolutely impossible. The amount of manpower involved would be impossible for a single creator to accomplish. They would need to hire a team of people to work full-time in order to even have a chance of keeping up. The bigger the channel the more people and more cost is needed. Even then they're not going to catch everything and all it would take is one troll to fuck over a creator with this new policy. You are quite literally asking the impossible.
 
Just prepping the site for the 2020 elections I imagine. Can't have commenters interfering with all the money Google is going to spend on trying to get their candidate elected like last time.

sounds like you've had too much to think.
 
The argument that policing comments is the creators job is disingenuous at best. It isn't even remotely reasonable to expect someone to police thousands of comments. Sure the mega channels might be able to hire enough people who only job is to moderate but even that is questionable. Disabling comments isn't an option either as viewers hate that and it massively hurts growth and retention. In reality this is a pretty gross overreach by YouTube. This is nothing more than them trying to shift blame for a problem they intentionally ignored despite being called ito for months by tons of channels. YouTube is 100% at fault for the child exploitation as they have straight up ignored it and actually attempted to silence the channels protecting it.
 
YouTube is going to go full socialist :) The community must now administer Code Reds :)
You're mixing up socialism with capitalism. YouTube doesn't want to tell advertisers to suck a lemon. They're a monopoly when it comes to sharing videos online so why not tell Disney, Pepsi, or whomever to deal with it? Because YouTube doesn't want to be a website where people share videos of cats but wants to be a serious network like some cable provider. To achieve this goal they have to suck the tit of the advertisers since they're paying the bills.

There are other advertisers who are willing to pay for advertisements without the need of YouTube or Google, as many videos now have sponsors which everyone and their grandma is now advertising a VPN or Skillshare. But YouTube wants that status upgrade to a serious video provider.

Youtube is not fucking over creators. Advertisers don't want their ads appearing above a creepy pedo discussion. It's up to creators to make their content palatable to advertisers. That's not Youtube's job, it's the creator's job.
It's an impossible task to do, period. Imagine someone like PewDiePie who has god knows how many people posting in his videos. He must have an already active staff of moderators who police it 24/7, but he can afford it. A channel like Gamers Nexus is too small to pay a large staff to make sure that some 12 year old doesn't post a comment talking about how a video card reminds him of loli porn. And as we know 90% of the people on YouTube are under under the age of 18. Now consider that these 12 year olds will soon find out that posting pedo like comments will demonetize a channel they hate, and now they can weaponize it against channels they hate. Much like how the broken copyright system right now is weaponized.

Meanwhile the real pedos aren't going to just make it easy like some 12 year old. They'll use secret words like Cheese Pizza where the moderators will miss this easily. The best thing YouTube can do is man up and tell advertisers they can go someplace else if they don't like it, cause they're asking for the impossible.
 
and yet, the greatest power remains with me, the casual viewer of YouTube videos and I can stop using YouTube anytime I want too ;)
 
Youtube is not fucking over creators. Advertisers don't want their ads appearing above a creepy pedo discussion. It's up to creators to make their content palatable to advertisers. That's not Youtube's job, it's the creator's job.
Yes, their CONTENT. Last time I checked, people who create videos don't create the comments on them.

The notion that the creator is responsible for what their fanbase says is comical. Despite being unrealistic for the majority of creators, it's not something desirable. I don't WANT creators policing comments. I want them making good videos. Some people seem to think they have so much free time it's nothing to add another job on top of that.
 
Except they are fucking over creators. Youtube always takes the "nuke it from orbit" approach to "fixing" a problem. This has been the case since their failure of a claim system was implemented. Youtube's "solutions" have always done more to hurt creators than help them. Moderating comments on thousands of videos is absolutely impossible. The amount of manpower involved would be impossible for a single creator to accomplish. They would need to hire a team of people to work full-time in order to even have a chance of keeping up. The bigger the channel the more people and more cost is needed. Even then they're not going to catch everything and all it would take is one troll to fuck over a creator with this new policy. You are quite literally asking the impossible.

Youtube is doing what their customers want. If the customers want the impossible, you either do it or find new customers (good luck with that.) But we already know it's not impossible, as there are plenty of videos that don't allow comments. And there is a system for approving comments, which will also result in basically zero comments. For the kinds of videos that provoked the nuclear response, I don't see what the problem is.

Meanwhile the real pedos aren't going to just make it easy like some 12 year old. They'll use secret words like Cheese Pizza where the moderators will miss this easily. The best thing YouTube can do is man up and tell advertisers they can go someplace else if they don't like it, cause they're asking for the impossible.

As far as I know they were posting timestamps, and it was obvious to any normal person that they were being creepy. It was so obvious that advertisers flipped their shit in less than a day.

I really don't think telling your customers to piss up a rope is the best thing to do in this situation, especially when appeasing them is as simple as encouraging the affected channels to disable comments. Sure there's a chance that abusing the system goes viral and kills the entire platform, but I don't see how unless the actual videos cause the kind of outrage that the ones in the pedo scandal do. And at this point, the risk of killing the platform is just something social media needs to live with.
 
Yes, their CONTENT. Last time I checked, people who create videos don't create the comments on them.

The notion that the creator is responsible for what their fanbase says is comical. Despite being unrealistic for the majority of creators, it's not something desirable. I don't WANT creators policing comments. I want them making good videos. Some people seem to think they have so much free time it's nothing to add another job on top of that.
Your channel is your content, and your responsibility. Yes, comments are part of your channel, and part of your job.
 
Youtube is doing what their customers want. If the customers want the impossible, you either do it or find new customers (good luck with that.) But we already know it's not impossible, as there are plenty of videos that don't allow comments. And there is a system for approving comments, which will also result in basically zero comments. For the kinds of videos that provoked the nuclear response, I don't see what the problem is.

Not allowing comments is a good way to hurt a channel, especially for smaller channels. Smaller channels have a hard enough time producing content on a regular basis to meed Youtube constantly changing engagement metrics, they do not have the time to police the thousands of comments they will get on a regular basis nor the money to hire someone to do it for them. What people want Youtube to do, is to fix their broken ass systems and be transparent about shit. Youtube won't even say exactly what kind of comments would constitute as a violation of this new policy. This it was ONLY targeted at the pedo stuff that'd be fine, but they demonetized videos for commenters simply swearing in the comments. That is fucking ridiculous. Youtube is entirely arbitrary with all of their policies and enforcing them as they see fit, without ever properly clarifying the exact terms in ways that would actually benefit creators.
 
Yeah its kinda harsh and a blunt instrument of control here but just disabling comments is easy and quick.

It'll make commenters mad but most YT comments are terrible in general and most of the YT content creators seem to feel its mostly pointless to even bother trying to read most of them.

I don't think it'll matter much in the long run if they go and just start killing off the comments section by default.
 
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