It would be difficult to structure this but simply allowing a video creator (or any fan of the channel!) to pay a Youtube analyst or a third-party auditor at cost ($10 seems reasonable for 15 minutes of even a decently-payed, English-speaking Western employee's time) to review the channel/video for 15 minutes for actual violations would be a huge boon to real content creators.
This would also allow Google to identify what takedown requests are blackmail botnets and block them from doing further harm.
If anyone at Google is reading this please consider it! So many viewers would be willing to pay that this need not even impact creators.
(Obviously this would have to be kept from getting out of hand and turning into Google racketeering with multiple takedowns of the same channel, but I trust them not to do that)
I don't really see how this is any different now. Google is already generating bad PR by not having an appeal process for these issues and plenty of people are already complaining that it's all a scam.
If a nominal fee gets you a written report that details exactly how you offended YT's policies and creates a possible scenario which you're given the opportunity to course-correct perhaps, then it's a win. What you're arguing would happen is already happening.
Right now, blocking a video will lead to Google being unable to earn money from it. Their incentives are aligned with those of the video creator.
> What you're arguing would happen is already happening
No, right now you are not pressured into giving Google money to review their automated decisions. With the suggested system implemented, you might fork over $10 individually for each of your 452 videos and get humans picking mostly the same useless text block in response, not really helping you to understand their decision. You will feel kind of like now, except you notice that YT actually made more money by banning your videos and start to wonder if that is by design...
Courts are great, but have to be independent. Even arbitration can be skewed in favor of bigger companies, since getting their recurring business is in the arbitrators interest.
I'd still be in favor of setting up something like that for lower level decisions, but understand this can only happen if Google finds a way to stay out of the line of fire. And still keeps a way for them to overrule those third party decisions...
I would say that's only true if the volume of video content was a bottleneck for their advertisers. They have more than enough content.
The given channel was estimated to make $4 per video. Just holding a small amount of revenue for review would pay for the human time.
Losing $10 is vastly better for the monetized creator than losing the channel completely.
When you issue a DMCA notice, you're certifying that the content is yours, under (theoretical) penalty of perjury. But big content studios erroneously issue them using automated systems all the time, and the only way to actually enforce this is for you, the individual getting targeted by one, to personally take legal action against a multinational corporation.
Meaning that, for all practical purposes, the people this affects have zero recourse.
Nearly 100% of people who receive a DMCA notice of alleged infringement (read: 'copyright strike') from YouTube have the option of filing a counter-notification.
In nearly all cases, YouTube responds to valid counter-notifications by informing the party that initiated the takedown. Counter-notification starts the clock on a 10-day window, within which the party alleging infringement must - if they want to keep the video down - sue you in federal court and prove to YouTube that they they have filed suit against you. Otherwise the video goes back up.
That procedure is almost always available. The downside, of course, is that you might get sued for an enormous amount of money that you may be held liable for. Statutory damages are scary. (But thy are a consequence of infringement, not notice-and-takedown.)
The only way to modify that behavior is to make it hurt.
Or the far more radical point of view that people who are economically dependent on Google are employees .. although that is probably impossible to define and unworkable.
On the other side, the content producer's "defending" karma should also increase each time the claim is rejected.
And then, the "content police" should somehow need more "work" to ban or remove something the weaker the claim is or the defendant is "stronger."
I am aware that the "platforms", however, simply don't care much now, simply prioritizing the "reaction."
For example, it is very hard to come up with a sort list of clear content rules. There are all sorts of ambiguities. For example, when is nudity ok? What about violence? Every line you draw in the sand will have false positives and false negatives. See any number of stories about Facebook moderators who despite having lots of content rules, will make subjective and contradictory judgement calls.
Furthermore, with a concrete list of rules, bad actors will act just to the left of rules violations. Clearly, having some feedback is required. In this case, however, we don't know what Jordan Pier knew, since this was initially a reaction to the channel's deletion without consulting with Jordan about what happened.
Finally, having a support deposit--no matter how small--will disadvantage many creators and increase the divide between haves and have-nots. I admit that it's frustrating that you literally can't purchase a human's attention, but every policy decision like this has profound ramifications when you have billions of users.
These aren't new questions, organizations like the BBFC and MPAA have been wrestling with them for years. And Google will have been wrestling with them internally .. in total secrecy. Yes, there are always going to be edge cases and people intentionally working up to the edge.
> having a support deposit--no matter how small--will disadvantage many creators and increase the divide between haves and have-nots.
I get that, but at the moment everyone's disadvantaged, and the larger creators potentially for tens of thousands of dollars.
Secondly, they work with (largely) mainstream content producers (e.g. movie studios), who rarely act with downright malicious intent because of reputation and money on the line.
I don't believe content moderation is a problem solved well anywhere.
Joke's on them: Google Maps will just give the angry mob directions to the Amazon HQ instead.
- a list of clear rules
- takedowns must provide a reference of which video caused the takedown, roughly where in the video it was, and which rule it was violating
Someone may reply that this is feeding information on the rule boundaries to spammers, at which point I make a second suggestion which could apply to more services:
- a "this platform is valuable to me" deposit, of say $10, which guarantees human review of administrative decisions.
It's people's livelihood. You can't just vaporise it. Well, you can, but eventually the angry mob you create will get large enough and come for your statue.