The steady downward spiral of Youtube continues

GasBandit

GasBandit

Staff member
Youtube's done some pretty dumb shit lately, but who in their right mind would have thought THIS to be a good idea?

https://techraptor.net/content/youtube-heroes-program-flag-videos

Youtube "Heroes" program.

FTA:

YouTube has added the ‘YouTube Heroes Program’, which allows users to mass flag videos when they reach the third of five total ‘Levels.’ Users enrolled in the program will gain points towards these levels by performing actions such as moderating inappropriate comments and flagging videos that are against YouTube’s terms of service.

Essentially, the five levels allow the ‘Hero’ to progressively become more involved with the inner workings of YouTube. YouTube Heroes’ first ‘Level’ begins by allowing the user to access the Heroes ‘dashboard’ and ‘community’, while the second level trains the ‘Hero’ for moderating YouTube while also allowing them to participate in a video chat with other ‘Heroes’.

The third level begins the Heroes’ moderation duties in earnest by allowing the Hero to mass flag YouTube videos and to “help moderate community content”. Levels above this will allow Heroes a ‘sneak peak’ of new products and give them direct contact with YouTube staffers. The most successful members of the program will be enrolled in future tests of YouTube’s features and picked to participate in a “YouTube Heroes Summit” of some description.

Quick Take:

This is an idea that seems straight out of The Onion. Any YouTuber that has attracted even the slightest amount of controversy should be incredibly wary of this new program. The average user cannot be fully trusted with the maintenance of a website, and from the outside looking in it seems YouTube is determined to destroy itself as quickly and efficiently as possible. I fully expect YouTube to backtrack from this once it becomes widely known, although I wouldn’t bet against them doubling down on this program either. Either way, this is an incredibly bad idea, and YouTube’s languishing competition would do well to take advantage of this.

And really, the couldn't have found a thumbnail that looks more imperious if they tried.



Really, Youtube? A white circle on a red background? All that's missing is the swastika. Report your friends and family to the party, youtubers.
 
Bubble181

Bubble181

Yikes.

I can kind of see it, though. Flagged by a Hero and taken down incorrectly? Well, not Youtubes fault! Can't sue us! Flagging by Heroes? Hey, we just convinced thousands of people to do our moderating for us for free! Cancel the contracts for our media watchers and moderators. Etc.


I don't think this'll work, but I can see some of the ways they thought it might.

I can't wait for the political side of this to come into full play. Boobs vs violence has always been a sore spot- YT, FB e.a. tend to stay safely on the American side of the issues, because guns are better than boobs - but now you, too, can silence your political opponent by having you goons flag all their videos!

Parties and organisations already have professional media participants; they'll have them in the Hero program faster than you can say "oh my what a bad idea this was".
 
ThatNickGuy

ThatNickGuy

Jesus, they're basically empowering trolls.

EDIT: I just noticed comments are disabled on this video. I can't imagine why.

Someone should flag the video for not allowing criticism.
 
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AshburnerX

AshburnerX

It's everything wrong with modern net-based buisness: have an element of your design that would be manpower intensive and costly to monitor? Gamify it and some randos will do it for free, just for the barest shred of recognition.
 
Dave

Dave

Staff member
Let's put all the power into the hands of the bullies, trolls, and special interests. Great idea.
 
Cheesy1

Cheesy1

That was the OFFICIAL Sega party for the anniversary of Sonic, which from other videos and reports was deemed to be a real bomb.
 
strawman

strawman

So youtube is hoping to emulate the Stack Exchange model of moderation? If so, they're missing a few key points. The people who have high reputation are contributors - they post actual content - and that's how they got their high reputation. In youtube's program it looks like you gain reputation by moderating content.

In other words, it's a critic model.

If anything it'll be more like rotten tomatoes, people who don't create or contribute, they merely sit back and critique. With one exception - they still aren't experts.

Youtube channels that 1) don't increase their quality and 2) don't pander to the masses with popularity contest content will eventually die.

Welcome to Highschool.
 
fade

fade

Staff member
stienman said:
So youtube is hoping to emulate the Stack Exchange model of moderation? If so, they're missing a few key points. The people who have high reputation are contributors - they post actual content - and that's how they got their high reputation. In youtube's program it looks like you gain reputation by moderating content.
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I don't really want that either. The SE system is clique-ish, and engenders fear in new posters. I've heard this from quite a few people who are afraid to ask questions on SE because of the downvote hammer.
 
strawman

strawman

fade said:
I don't really want that either. The SE system is clique-ish, and engenders fear in new posters. I've heard this from quite a few people who are afraid to ask questions on SE because of the downvote hammer.
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You get that in any community with voting. Reddit, imgur, etc.

The nice thing about youtube was that while likes and dislikes were available, the most important number is views, a real metric regarding actual consumption.

But I'm only a youtube consumer, and somewhat like the eBay feedback changes of yore, this doesn't affect the consumer so much. I can still subscribe to the channels I like, ignore those I don't, and most of the channels I pay attention to are not supporting their creators so they aren't likely to be dropped just because youtube changed.
 
Covar

Covar

fade said:
I don't really want that either. The SE system is clique-ish, and engenders fear in new posters. I've heard this from quite a few people who are afraid to ask questions on SE because of the downvote hammer.
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Forget the downvote, the real problem is the "closed as duplicate" (whether or not it actually is) and "not a real question" that make people not want to participate.

It's extremely difficult to ask a question these days without having it closed or so specific and obscure that no one can answer it. Answering questions has its own problems.
 
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