And yeah, any site that's going to put in moderation rules needs to have some effective way of actually enforcing those rules. I do use some YouTube competitors, and I pay a monthly fee for the privilege, and they have none of these issues. Floatplane doesn't have this problem; Nebula doesn't have this problem...largely because they've designed a business model from the ground up to avoid those costs.
I never said it was easy. You act like I said they should just hire ten thousand people by noon today. Of course it's going to take a long time. The point is that they make these massive profits by refusing to hire enough staff to actually get the job done properly. It's not that they can't afford to do it, it's not that it's "impossible", they just don't want to make the investment. And of course they don't, because they're ALREADY essentially in a monopoly position for streaming user content, so they have no real incentive to make their service fair or effective.
Yeah, it's easy to make things sound ridiculous when you cut out all of the evidence to show that it can actually be done.
Sure, they've been spending many years refusing the hire sufficient staff to get the job done. They have a lot of catching up to do. But they do have enough profits to do it, if they actually tried.
Who says the only goal of moderation is to "satisfy everyone"? The goal of moderation is to enforce some set of rules. YouTube can set whatever rules they want, it's a private website, the only point that matters is whether or not they are actually capable of enforcing the rules that they implement, or if they're going to be shutting people down basically at random because they don't actually bother to verify "violations".
You COULD hire those 27,000 moderators and pay them $30k/year (exactly average for a US wage, although most of these moderators are in third-world countries anyway) for around $2.2 million per day. YouTube doesn't release much about their finances, but the only estimate I can currently find* puts their profits at $1.9 million per day back in 2013. Presumably their profits are higher now, just as the amount of video uploaded certainly is.
I don't think that's so clearly impossible. It would certainly consume the majority of their absurdly massive profit margin, but it might still be feasible. They could certainly do significantly more than they do right now. You say they need 27k moderators to actually moderate effectively; they currently seem to have about 2k total employees and PLENTY of money to hire more if they actually wanted to.
I'm also not sure I'm buying that 10% of the content is getting flagged and disputed. According to Google's transparency report, over three months they removed 8.7M videos. The average YouTube video appears to be just under 12 minutes long. So at 300 minutes per minute, you get ~39 million minutes of video uploaded over three months, and 1.7 million minutes of video removed. That's 4%, not 10%, and human moderators would only have to review the subset of these videos that later get disputed. So hire 15k moderators and pay them $50k/year, YouTube can probably afford that and that probably would be enough to verify absolutely everything that gets flagged and disputed.
Of course, there's probably ways to MASSIVELY reduce that requirement too. I wouldn't really care if they refused human moderation until you reached a certain threshold of views/videos/subscribers for example...gotta wonder how many of the current removals are trolls/bots/etc who create an account just to upload that one video...could also have trusted channels who can skip the review or stop allowing human reviews if your channel has reached a certain threshold of failed disputes...
Finally, consider that right now YouTube has very little incentive to reduce false-positives, because it doesn't really cost them anything as long as the rates aren't high enough to drive off the users. If they had to actually pay someone to review all those false-positives, they might start looking for ways to improve that particular aspect of their algorithms...
I think there's a pretty significant difference between headlines of paywalled articles and the cover of a novel. Typically, if you have access to the novel to read the cover, then you have access to read the rest of it too. Most book stores won't kick you out for flipping through the book before buying it. The only way you'd only have access to the cover is if you're seeing it in a catalog or something -- and that is certainly a separate work.
Also, I think it really must be viewed separately. Otherwise, what's to stop me from publishing absolutely any blatant fraud that I want, and claiming that it's not fraud because it's only the headline and the full article which explains the truth is available for the low price of $10,000,000 per view?
Re: Re: Re: A chilling reminder that no one is infallible
That brings up an interesting question -- where do we draw the line between "reputation laundering" and doing good to make up for your mistakes? I do think it's a fair point that you shouldn't get a clean slate just by throwing some money around, but I also agree that we need to provide everyone an opportunity to clear their reputation. But they've gotta put some actual work and commitment into it. Then again, I don't really think anybody should get a reputation just for throwing around some cash. "Philanthropist" isn't a purpose or a mission, it's a sink.
Seems to me that if this many people know who donated the money, then it wasn't really anonymous, was it? Then again, exactly how "anonymous" can you get before you're getting charged with money laundering or some other financial crimes? Is it even legal to accept a million dollar donation in unmarked cash stuffed in an envelope with no return address?
I think the paywall argument has a lot of merit here though. If they publish the article one place, but only the headline somewhere else, then those are two different publications, and ought to be actionable separately.
In this case I do think the headline still appears to be sufficiently accurate that this is certainly a frivolous lawsuit...but in theory if you only make the headline available, then you don't get to say that the article that people can't read is an inseparable part of it. You're the one who intentionally separated them, you don't get to then claim that you didn't. It's one thing if the viewer doesn't bother to click through, or if their internet connection dies before the page loads; it's completely different when you actively take steps to prevent them from accessing it.
"John Roddy makes an interesting point that perhaps one could argue that the fact that the article itself (but not the headline and lede) are behind a (fairly porous) paywall could somehow change the calculus, but that seems unlikely to fly in any court."
That seems...not just possible, but obviously true IMO. The free version may be a derivative work of the paid article, but it is clearly a different publication, being provided through different means to a different user base. Much like Sparknotes is not the same publication as the novel it's based on. The original is the original. The summary is not the original, the truncated version is not the original, the translation is not the original...nothing is the original except the original.
I can't sue over something I can't access...if I can't view it, I can't be sure it exists. But now you say I also can't sue over the part that I CAN access? That seems very, very wrong.
Is it really that different though? Is it really that bad?
It's not the biggest problem in the world, but there are certainly many cases where what is essentially the same study is done multiple times simply because the first results were published a while back, not heavily cited, and weren't found by the authors of the new study. By re-publishing these studies, you might prevent that kind of duplicated effort. If it's still being cited, then it's still useful to somebody. As long as one study doesn't cite another multiple times (by citing those duplicate publications), that seems perfectly fine to me. Not the best way of handling the problem, but not the worst either.
"The "company" at the center of the discussion is a larger business with all the freelancers as employees who are then hired out to other businesses. There is a large number of this type of business, too. The contract employees take a smaller salary in exchange for (usually) pathetic health and personal benefits partly due to the costs of running these agencies. Not an awesome trade-off."
In my experience, you'll have better pay and better benefits working for such a company than you'd get as a full-time employee for the client directly. Of course, you'll also be expected to be on-call 24/7, including holidays and during vacation time, with zero compensation...so going the FTE route is still generally much better.
The issue is bigger than that, I think. We have a whole mentality of wealth as a religion. So unions being bad for business becomes a core tenant of the national collective consciousness as unions being bad in general. When organizations DO unionize, the benefits collapse quite quickly. The workers get fed up with the abuse from management, they fight like hell to unionize, they (hopefully) win and make dramatic improvements to the workplace...and then the new hires come in already indoctrinated with a belief that unions are bad and seeing all the improvements as pre-existing conditions. So they figure there's no point in engaging with the union in the first place since everything seems alright. And slowly the protections get rolled back, because nobody is fighting, and that's seen as more evidence that the union is useless, and pretty soon it all comes tumbling down.
I have yet to see a union that manages to keep the membership engaged and involved. That's the biggest problem with them IMO. The unions too don't care about much other than the dues once they're established -- again, church of the dollar mentality, if it's not money then it doesn't count. So they don't maintain the networks and knowledge, because that costs money, and it doesn't create money, so it's worthless!
You RTFM, you look things up online if you don't understand them, and you don't buy something if you don't understand what the hell it is. Simple enough...
a post-it note with the password stuck right to the door would not make you any less secure against the kinds of abuses detailed in this article. Not sure if it would make you less secure against a criminal who breaks in though, as I'm not sure what all can be done with that password. Still, that's no worse than a generic default password, which seems to be what they do right now. And it seems better in general to protect against the networked threats -- where you may be under attack by any number of adversaries at any time -- than the lone burglar, which isn't going to happen very often.
Security is neither binary nor monolithic. It's not just how well you protect it, it's also what you protect against. There's a lot of security that would be entirely transparent to the end-user (like making sure their employees don't generally have access to users' recordings. How the F- did anyone think THAT was a good idea??)
Re: Re: Re: Re: For a technologically savvy company
This is true until Google gets that Fuscia thing rammed through. Right now there's still competition. You've got some fairly major companies releasing phones with fairly open variants of Android. But when there's two dominant platforms and neither one has any open source variants? If we don't keep LineageOS, Cyanogenmod, and the other Android variants alive, it will be all too easy for the only two companies in the market to lock out modified software versions, and they'll have good reason to do so in order to protect their market. I would actually bet on Google doing it first though rather than Apple -- Apple is already so locked down that there would be less fear of people jumping to the alternative, then once Google does it Apple would have no reason not to.
"...the Corellium Apple Product is an exact copy of Apple’s copyrighted work, designed specifically to allow researchers and hackers to research and test their vulnerabilities, by 'run[ing] real iOS – with real bugs that have real exploits.'"
So if the product that they're distributing is or contains a copy of iOS as claimed, then they are required to comply with the license agreement under which iOS is distributed...right? What part of this am I missing?
Possibly added a second count, since they've now proven his second statement was also false. Also prevents him from claiming that he thought he was attacked, because he couldn't know for sure because he was "unconscious".
"I also have no idea what lashon hara means, and it doesn’t sound like the name for a legal principle or concept in the West, so I’m not sure how it relates to US laws. And there is no such thing as a “class action worthy consensus”."
OP's point is that these people are being targeted for mere speech, and truthful speech even, which is not traditionally considered a crime or even evidence of a crime in the west. And therefore stalking/harassing them (by "law enforcement", not by the notification) because of that truthful speech is ALSO a criminal action. If the investigatory actions are kept secret, the targets can't really fight back. But if suddenly a bunch of people are alerted to this kind of unlawful, covert surveillance, they would perhaps have a case for some kind of class action lawsuit.
I don't know if it's true, but the assertions being made seemed quite clear to me. Try harder next time.
(I'm assuming the "ADLification"/"Israelification" of culture stuff is about how people are frequently called anti-semetic merely for criticizing the foreign policy of a distant nation's government, and may be an allegation about the intelligence services targeting such people solely due to their speech. I'd like some evidence, but based on my own experience it seems vaguely plausible in a way -- not as some giant conspiracy, but as a natural continuation of general societal trends in terms of whom it is considered acceptable to criticize.)
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: This makes no sense for Disn
Really? The dollar stores near me mostly carry the same stock year-round. And there are seasonal products that I've only ever seen at that particular chain, but they're been at multiple locations at least four years in a row. So are you telling me the same companies are making the same mistakes and selling the same overstock at a loss month after month, year after year? You'd think they'd eventually lower their production a bit if that was the case.
On the post: Content Moderation At Scale Is Impossible: YouTube Says That Frank Capra's US Government WWII Propaganda Violates Community Guidelines
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
My citation is the math in my previous comment.
And yeah, any site that's going to put in moderation rules needs to have some effective way of actually enforcing those rules. I do use some YouTube competitors, and I pay a monthly fee for the privilege, and they have none of these issues. Floatplane doesn't have this problem; Nebula doesn't have this problem...largely because they've designed a business model from the ground up to avoid those costs.
On the post: Content Moderation At Scale Is Impossible: YouTube Says That Frank Capra's US Government WWII Propaganda Violates Community Guidelines
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
I never said it was easy. You act like I said they should just hire ten thousand people by noon today. Of course it's going to take a long time. The point is that they make these massive profits by refusing to hire enough staff to actually get the job done properly. It's not that they can't afford to do it, it's not that it's "impossible", they just don't want to make the investment. And of course they don't, because they're ALREADY essentially in a monopoly position for streaming user content, so they have no real incentive to make their service fair or effective.
On the post: Content Moderation At Scale Is Impossible: YouTube Says That Frank Capra's US Government WWII Propaganda Violates Community Guidelines
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Yeah, it's easy to make things sound ridiculous when you cut out all of the evidence to show that it can actually be done.
Sure, they've been spending many years refusing the hire sufficient staff to get the job done. They have a lot of catching up to do. But they do have enough profits to do it, if they actually tried.
On the post: Content Moderation At Scale Is Impossible: YouTube Says That Frank Capra's US Government WWII Propaganda Violates Community Guidelines
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Who says the only goal of moderation is to "satisfy everyone"? The goal of moderation is to enforce some set of rules. YouTube can set whatever rules they want, it's a private website, the only point that matters is whether or not they are actually capable of enforcing the rules that they implement, or if they're going to be shutting people down basically at random because they don't actually bother to verify "violations".
On the post: Content Moderation At Scale Is Impossible: YouTube Says That Frank Capra's US Government WWII Propaganda Violates Community Guidelines
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
You COULD hire those 27,000 moderators and pay them $30k/year (exactly average for a US wage, although most of these moderators are in third-world countries anyway) for around $2.2 million per day. YouTube doesn't release much about their finances, but the only estimate I can currently find* puts their profits at $1.9 million per day back in 2013. Presumably their profits are higher now, just as the amount of video uploaded certainly is.
I don't think that's so clearly impossible. It would certainly consume the majority of their absurdly massive profit margin, but it might still be feasible. They could certainly do significantly more than they do right now. You say they need 27k moderators to actually moderate effectively; they currently seem to have about 2k total employees and PLENTY of money to hire more if they actually wanted to.
I'm also not sure I'm buying that 10% of the content is getting flagged and disputed. According to Google's transparency report, over three months they removed 8.7M videos. The average YouTube video appears to be just under 12 minutes long. So at 300 minutes per minute, you get ~39 million minutes of video uploaded over three months, and 1.7 million minutes of video removed. That's 4%, not 10%, and human moderators would only have to review the subset of these videos that later get disputed. So hire 15k moderators and pay them $50k/year, YouTube can probably afford that and that probably would be enough to verify absolutely everything that gets flagged and disputed.
Of course, there's probably ways to MASSIVELY reduce that requirement too. I wouldn't really care if they refused human moderation until you reached a certain threshold of views/videos/subscribers for example...gotta wonder how many of the current removals are trolls/bots/etc who create an account just to upload that one video...could also have trusted channels who can skip the review or stop allowing human reviews if your channel has reached a certain threshold of failed disputes...
Finally, consider that right now YouTube has very little incentive to reduce false-positives, because it doesn't really cost them anything as long as the rates aren't high enough to drive off the users. If they had to actually pay someone to review all those false-positives, they might start looking for ways to improve that particular aspect of their algorithms...
On the post: Dear Larry Lessig: Please Don't File SLAPP Suits
Re: Re: Paywall IS important
I think there's a pretty significant difference between headlines of paywalled articles and the cover of a novel. Typically, if you have access to the novel to read the cover, then you have access to read the rest of it too. Most book stores won't kick you out for flipping through the book before buying it. The only way you'd only have access to the cover is if you're seeing it in a catalog or something -- and that is certainly a separate work.
Also, I think it really must be viewed separately. Otherwise, what's to stop me from publishing absolutely any blatant fraud that I want, and claiming that it's not fraud because it's only the headline and the full article which explains the truth is available for the low price of $10,000,000 per view?
On the post: Dear Larry Lessig: Please Don't File SLAPP Suits
Re: Re: Re: A chilling reminder that no one is infallible
That brings up an interesting question -- where do we draw the line between "reputation laundering" and doing good to make up for your mistakes? I do think it's a fair point that you shouldn't get a clean slate just by throwing some money around, but I also agree that we need to provide everyone an opportunity to clear their reputation. But they've gotta put some actual work and commitment into it. Then again, I don't really think anybody should get a reputation just for throwing around some cash. "Philanthropist" isn't a purpose or a mission, it's a sink.
On the post: Dear Larry Lessig: Please Don't File SLAPP Suits
Re: Re: Re:
Seems to me that if this many people know who donated the money, then it wasn't really anonymous, was it? Then again, exactly how "anonymous" can you get before you're getting charged with money laundering or some other financial crimes? Is it even legal to accept a million dollar donation in unmarked cash stuffed in an envelope with no return address?
On the post: Dear Larry Lessig: Please Don't File SLAPP Suits
Re:
I think the paywall argument has a lot of merit here though. If they publish the article one place, but only the headline somewhere else, then those are two different publications, and ought to be actionable separately.
In this case I do think the headline still appears to be sufficiently accurate that this is certainly a frivolous lawsuit...but in theory if you only make the headline available, then you don't get to say that the article that people can't read is an inseparable part of it. You're the one who intentionally separated them, you don't get to then claim that you didn't. It's one thing if the viewer doesn't bother to click through, or if their internet connection dies before the page loads; it's completely different when you actively take steps to prevent them from accessing it.
On the post: Dear Larry Lessig: Please Don't File SLAPP Suits
Paywall IS important
"John Roddy makes an interesting point that perhaps one could argue that the fact that the article itself (but not the headline and lede) are behind a (fairly porous) paywall could somehow change the calculus, but that seems unlikely to fly in any court."
That seems...not just possible, but obviously true IMO. The free version may be a derivative work of the paid article, but it is clearly a different publication, being provided through different means to a different user base. Much like Sparknotes is not the same publication as the novel it's based on. The original is the original. The summary is not the original, the truncated version is not the original, the translation is not the original...nothing is the original except the original.
I can't sue over something I can't access...if I can't view it, I can't be sure it exists. But now you say I also can't sue over the part that I CAN access? That seems very, very wrong.
On the post: Academic Journals In Russia Retract Over 800 Papers Because Of Plagiarism, Self-Plagiarism And 'Gift Authorship'
Re: Re:
Is it really that different though? Is it really that bad?
It's not the biggest problem in the world, but there are certainly many cases where what is essentially the same study is done multiple times simply because the first results were published a while back, not heavily cited, and weren't found by the authors of the new study. By re-publishing these studies, you might prevent that kind of duplicated effort. If it's still being cited, then it's still useful to somebody. As long as one study doesn't cite another multiple times (by citing those duplicate publications), that seems perfectly fine to me. Not the best way of handling the problem, but not the worst either.
On the post: California Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez Says She Simply Doesn't Believe All Of Those Who Have Been Harmed By Her AB5 Bill
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
"The "company" at the center of the discussion is a larger business with all the freelancers as employees who are then hired out to other businesses. There is a large number of this type of business, too. The contract employees take a smaller salary in exchange for (usually) pathetic health and personal benefits partly due to the costs of running these agencies. Not an awesome trade-off."
In my experience, you'll have better pay and better benefits working for such a company than you'd get as a full-time employee for the client directly. Of course, you'll also be expected to be on-call 24/7, including holidays and during vacation time, with zero compensation...so going the FTE route is still generally much better.
On the post: California Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez Says She Simply Doesn't Believe All Of Those Who Have Been Harmed By Her AB5 Bill
Re: Re: Re: Re:
The issue is bigger than that, I think. We have a whole mentality of wealth as a religion. So unions being bad for business becomes a core tenant of the national collective consciousness as unions being bad in general. When organizations DO unionize, the benefits collapse quite quickly. The workers get fed up with the abuse from management, they fight like hell to unionize, they (hopefully) win and make dramatic improvements to the workplace...and then the new hires come in already indoctrinated with a belief that unions are bad and seeing all the improvements as pre-existing conditions. So they figure there's no point in engaging with the union in the first place since everything seems alright. And slowly the protections get rolled back, because nobody is fighting, and that's seen as more evidence that the union is useless, and pretty soon it all comes tumbling down.
I have yet to see a union that manages to keep the membership engaged and involved. That's the biggest problem with them IMO. The unions too don't care about much other than the dues once they're established -- again, church of the dollar mentality, if it's not money then it doesn't count. So they don't maintain the networks and knowledge, because that costs money, and it doesn't create money, so it's worthless!
On the post: Shocking Absolutely No One, Ring Admits Employees Improperly Accessed Customers' Data
Re: Re: Re: Re: Caveat emptor
You RTFM, you look things up online if you don't understand them, and you don't buy something if you don't understand what the hell it is. Simple enough...
On the post: Shocking Absolutely No One, Ring Admits Employees Improperly Accessed Customers' Data
Re:
a post-it note with the password stuck right to the door would not make you any less secure against the kinds of abuses detailed in this article. Not sure if it would make you less secure against a criminal who breaks in though, as I'm not sure what all can be done with that password. Still, that's no worse than a generic default password, which seems to be what they do right now. And it seems better in general to protect against the networked threats -- where you may be under attack by any number of adversaries at any time -- than the lone burglar, which isn't going to happen very often.
Security is neither binary nor monolithic. It's not just how well you protect it, it's also what you protect against. There's a lot of security that would be entirely transparent to the end-user (like making sure their employees don't generally have access to users' recordings. How the F- did anyone think THAT was a good idea??)
On the post: Disappointing: Apple The Latest To Abuse DMCA 1201 To Try To Stifle Competition, Security Research, Jailbreaking And More
Re: Re: Re: Re: For a technologically savvy company
This is true until Google gets that Fuscia thing rammed through. Right now there's still competition. You've got some fairly major companies releasing phones with fairly open variants of Android. But when there's two dominant platforms and neither one has any open source variants? If we don't keep LineageOS, Cyanogenmod, and the other Android variants alive, it will be all too easy for the only two companies in the market to lock out modified software versions, and they'll have good reason to do so in order to protect their market. I would actually bet on Google doing it first though rather than Apple -- Apple is already so locked down that there would be less fear of people jumping to the alternative, then once Google does it Apple would have no reason not to.
On the post: Disappointing: Apple The Latest To Abuse DMCA 1201 To Try To Stifle Competition, Security Research, Jailbreaking And More
Re: Re:
From TFA (emphasis added):
"...the Corellium Apple Product is an exact copy of Apple’s copyrighted work, designed specifically to allow researchers and hackers to research and test their vulnerabilities, by 'run[ing] real iOS – with real bugs that have real exploits.'"
So if the product that they're distributing is or contains a copy of iOS as claimed, then they are required to comply with the license agreement under which iOS is distributed...right? What part of this am I missing?
On the post: Data From Smartwatch Help Investigators Solve The Case Of The Stabbing That Never Happened
Re:
Possibly added a second count, since they've now proven his second statement was also false. Also prevents him from claiming that he thought he was attacked, because he couldn't know for sure because he was "unconscious".
On the post: European Law Enforcement Officials Upset Facebook Is Warning Users Their Devices May Have Been Hacked
Re: Re:
"I also have no idea what lashon hara means, and it doesn’t sound like the name for a legal principle or concept in the West, so I’m not sure how it relates to US laws. And there is no such thing as a “class action worthy consensus”."
OP's point is that these people are being targeted for mere speech, and truthful speech even, which is not traditionally considered a crime or even evidence of a crime in the west. And therefore stalking/harassing them (by "law enforcement", not by the notification) because of that truthful speech is ALSO a criminal action. If the investigatory actions are kept secret, the targets can't really fight back. But if suddenly a bunch of people are alerted to this kind of unlawful, covert surveillance, they would perhaps have a case for some kind of class action lawsuit.
I don't know if it's true, but the assertions being made seemed quite clear to me. Try harder next time.
(I'm assuming the "ADLification"/"Israelification" of culture stuff is about how people are frequently called anti-semetic merely for criticizing the foreign policy of a distant nation's government, and may be an allegation about the intelligence services targeting such people solely due to their speech. I'd like some evidence, but based on my own experience it seems vaguely plausible in a way -- not as some giant conspiracy, but as a natural continuation of general societal trends in terms of whom it is considered acceptable to criticize.)
On the post: Disney+ Titles Disappear Without Warning, Bringing Confusion To The Streaming Wars
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: This makes no sense for Disn
Really? The dollar stores near me mostly carry the same stock year-round. And there are seasonal products that I've only ever seen at that particular chain, but they're been at multiple locations at least four years in a row. So are you telling me the same companies are making the same mistakes and selling the same overstock at a loss month after month, year after year? You'd think they'd eventually lower their production a bit if that was the case.
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