YouTube Official Blog

As far as I can find, they're not deleting flat earth videos. Closest thing I could find was them saying that they were deprioritizing them in recommendations: https://youtube.googleblog.com/2019/01/continuing-our-work-to-improve.…

Is that banner warning that Al Jazeera is funded by the Qatari government normal for YouTube? Seems odd. Edit: Apparently it is, hadn't seen this before: https://youtube.googleblog.com/2018/02/greater-transparency-for-users-…

Here is the actual blog post: https://youtube.googleblog.com/2019/06/our-ongoing-work-to-tackle-hate… Main points: >Removing more hateful and supremacist content from YouTube I think this is great, I see nothing of value being lost from channels whose whole schtick is to marginalize people's of a target group. >Reducing borderline content and raising up authoritative voices I do like attempts to curtail outright scams and misinformation, but don't like YouTube choosing "top channels" as voices of authority. >Continuing to reward trusted creators and enforce our monetization policies I think this shows what drives YouTube and many other platforms, what is and isn't advertiser friendly. Principles only go as far as the bottomline.

It sounds like previous subscribers are grandfathered in: “When YouTube Premium launches, YouTube Red members will automatically receive access at their current price. In countries where YouTube Red is currently available, a new member can also secure this price ($9.99 in the U.S.) by joining now at youtube.com/red.” I agree it’s very confusing. https://youtube.googleblog.com/2018/05/introducing-youtube-premium.htm…

YouTube used to have a tip jar feature but removed it citing low-usage [1]. The best alternative now is to support a creator for one month and then cancel. [1] https://youtube.googleblog.com/2017/01/can-we-chat-hello-super-chat.ht…

For what it's worth, not everyone can pick up all of those channels with a $20 antenna. I can pick up NBC, PBS, and a few odd local channels with no national affiliation. I'd imagine those in cities and metro areas would probably have more luck. But anyway, the blog post [1] has a full(er) list of channels. But even then it doesn't look price-competitive with Sling for some reason. [1] - https://youtube.googleblog.com/2017/02/finally-live-tv-made-for-you.ht…

From the blog post (for what it's worth, I think it's a good idea): >Six accounts, one price. Every YouTube TV membership comes with six accounts, each with its own unique recommendations and personal DVR with no storage limits. You can watch up to three concurrent streams at a time. https://youtube.googleblog.com/2017/02/finally-live-tv-made-for-you.ht…

As you mentioned: https://youtube.googleblog.com/2009/09/five-stars-dominate-ratings.htm… Seems like when it comes to ratings it's pretty much all or nothing. Great videos prompt action; anything less prompts indifference. > Why would the default rating be the very top of the scale?! Because most people don't care about an average meal, but they do care when it's bad or great.

The actual fact is that YouTube has publicly committed itself to doing exactly that (building levers to raise and lower the profile of individual videos and channels), and continues to face media pressure to keep doing so as corporate policy: https://youtube.googleblog.com/2019/01/continuing-our-work-to-improve.… https://www.huffpost.com/entry/youtube-conspiracy-theories_n_5d320f69e… To me the problem isn't that flat earth videos exist on Youtube, but the implied "legitimacy" of the recommendations, along with the typically addictive UI elements like autoplay. Flat earth / Nibiru / etc insanity has always been on the internet, but when you saw it, you knew that you were in some obscure corner of the internet that was not normal. If anything, YouTube's insistence on mixing brand-safe, front-page recommendations along with content-adjacent recs lends credibility to the (many fewer now) "rabbit hole" recs. If you're on "Tony Blair is a reptile.mp4" and all you see are things like "Tony Blair is ACTUALLY a hologram.mp4" with 2k views, it's like "whoa, this is weird". But if you get 3 reptilian recs and 5 TED talk recs that have millions of views, maybe it seems more normal? I'm not sure.

The actual rules is very impartial (btw, [1] should be the actual link): > Today, we're taking another step in our hate speech policy by specifically prohibiting videos alleging that a group is superior in order to justify discrimination, segregation or exclusion based on qualities like age, gender, race, caste, religion, sexual orientation or veteran status. If they apply this rule to every instance of allegation of superiority (regardless of age, gender, race, caste, religion, sexual orientation or veteran status) it is a very sensible rule and not censorship at all. The problem is when there is some "asymmetry" in what kind of (otherwise identical) behaviour is allowed and what is forbidden based on the exact characteristics they outlined above. Then it just becomes "picking favourites" and, yes, full blown censorship (which, to preempt the usual retort, can yes be practiced by private corporations, as opposed to "violations of first amendment rights" that, yes, can only be done by US jurisdictional governments) [1] https://youtube.googleblog.com/2019/06/our-ongoing-work-to-tackle-hate…

> And exactly what language do these fine folks do their frontend development in, Go, C++? For a very long time, GWT (Java compiled to JS) was the preferred approach. Then development moved to the Closure compiler (JS following very Java-like patterns), and only very recently is ES6 style code taking off. Much of the code you see still carries the legacy of GWT/Closure (and there is so much there that porting would be an insane task). It's a slow process. But, for example, YouTube is switching over to Polymer (https://youtube.googleblog.com/2017/05/a-sneak-peek-at-youtubes-new-lo… > Google sure spends a lot of resources on this lesser language for how few engineers want to work with it. Google is a massive company, with many different (often conflicting) initiatives. Chrome spends a lot of effort on JavaScript; but Chrome engineers are (for the most part) not the ones that are writing Google's frontend code.

> HIRE SOME PEOPLE See: https://youtube.googleblog.com/2017/12/expanding-our-work-against-abus… TL;Dr - YouTube announced they were going to have over 10,000 people to help. Disclosure: Work at Google, but views are my own.

That's not what they said at the time. https://youtube.googleblog.com/2018/05/youtube-music-starts-rolling-ou… > To the Google Play Music users out there, nothing will change - you’ll still be able to access and add to all of your purchased music, uploads and playlists in Google Play Music just like always. For additional information on what we announced last week, be sure to check out our blog.

This reminds me that Youtube used to have a star rating system, but as you say, it was effectively treated as thumbs up/thumbs down, so they eventually made that official. Interestingly though it wasn't quite a simple five stars/one star dichotomy: the original blog post[0] has a dead image, but this one[1] shows that while five stars was overwhelmingly the most common rating, one star and four stars were about equal in second place. [0] https://youtube.googleblog.com/2009/09/five-stars-dominate-ratings.htm… [1] https://www.geek.com/news/google-realizes-youtube-star-ratings-dont-wo…

They announced that they would stop showing targeted ads against this content "in 4 months" back in September [1]. [1] - https://youtube.googleblog.com/2019/09/an-update-on-kids.html

https://youtube.googleblog.com/2019/01/continuing-our-work-to-improve.… YouTube and Google have put out tons of comms lately indicating that it's at least something top of mind

Also they need to stop reccomending flat earth, anti-vax and other toxic nonsense without prompting. There are trying to at least that: https://youtube.googleblog.com/2019/01/continuing-our-work-to-improve.… also this post (and the related discussion) provide some additional context: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19128259

Youtube realized it once https://youtube.googleblog.com/2009/09/five-stars-dominate-ratings.htm…

The Wikipedia links are a new initiative Google is doing to combat fake news and misleading information [0]. 0: https://youtube.googleblog.com/2018/07/building-better-news-experience…

Here's the citation, from the Official YouTube Blog: "We will continue the significant growth of our teams into next year, with the goal of bringing the total number of people across Google working to address content that might violate our policies to over 10,000 in 2018." https://youtube.googleblog.com/2017/12/expanding-our-work-against-abus…

It's mentioned at the end of this blog post: https://youtube.googleblog.com/2009/11/1080p-hd-comes-to-youtube.html

you're right, they used Polymer and Material Design for the frontend in combination with the spfjs framework, which was introduced in 2014. https://youtube.googleblog.com/2017/05/a-sneak-peek-at-youtubes-new-lo… https://github.com/youtube/spfjs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yNe_HdayTtY

This is why YouTube went from a 5 star rating system to a thumbs up / thumbs down system back in 2009. See: https://youtube.googleblog.com/2009/09/five-stars-dominate-ratings.htm…

Well, YouTube abandoned its 5 star rating system citing that almost everyone votes either 1 or 5 stars [1]. It might be that that Netflix is seeing a similar usage of their voting system, so it would make sense to instead implement a like/dislike vote. It sucks for those of us who used the finer nuances of the old system. I for sure know that it'll give me quite some headaches when I have to rate a well thought out but flawed film. [1] https://youtube.googleblog.com/2009/09/five-stars-dominate-ratings.htm…

Blog post lists more: https://youtube.googleblog.com/2017/02/finally-live-tv-made-for-you.ht…

According to the blog [1], the DVR lasts 9 months. Which is much better than the competitors, but not "forever". 1. https://youtube.googleblog.com/2017/02/finally-live-tv-made-for-you.ht… "we’ll store each of your recordings for nine months."

Yes, they are including AMC, BTN, SYFY, ESPN etc. https://youtube.googleblog.com/2017/02/finally-live-tv-made-for-you.ht…

Yep, it has ESPN, ESPN2 and 3 too. Some posters referred to the channel list: https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/wZJuVdp0HaH4GQiB-XNVz76qkd1MShms8X0V… and the blog post https://youtube.googleblog.com/2017/02/finally-live-tv-made-for-you.ht…

The blog post contains more details: https://youtube.googleblog.com/2017/02/finally-live-tv-made-for-you.ht…

No reason to assume, they are listed at the bottom of the blog post: https://youtube.googleblog.com/2017/02/finally-live-tv-made-for-you.ht…