Youtube Unveils new Youtube Heroes Program - Gives "Superusers" priority flags and access to staff

A lot of people are arguing that whilst Google has fucked up a lot with Youtube in the past, this may be one of, if not the biggest fuck up yet, and that's saying a lot given prior history on the matter. What am I discussing here? The new Youtube Heroes Program:

Info on the new program is here:

Each YouTube Hero who is in compliance with these Rules will be able to earn points for every qualifying contribution to YouTube (such as accurately flagging inappropriate content), that is verifiable and organic, and not gamed, improperly received or otherwise in violation of these Rules, including the YouTube Community Guidelines (each a “Qualifying Contribution”). We will determine each qualifying Contribution.

Any abuse of the point system, the Program, or other violative behavior, may reduce the points accrued in your program account and/or restrict or prohibit any aspect of your participation in the Program.

TL;DR: This new program gives a much greater degree of power to users based on two factors:

1. How much time they spend browsing Youtube.

2. How much the user is willing to seek out shit that offends them in order to specifically flag it.

I wonder what ideology we've repeatedly covered due to lolcow involvement fills those exact requirements.

 

[Son of Big Boss]

Yeah, i have a hunch that this will be a major failure like Google+.
One week and they will pull the plug.

 

[GREEDY FIREMAN]

'We want to get the YouTube Community's help to run the site.'

Spoiler

 

[millais]

Sounds like a disaster in the making for censorship, but I do like the idea of Google incentivizing people to add captions/subtitles to videos. Sometimes I'm interested in watching a video, but the audio is in some language I don't understand, and the auto-generated/translated subtitles are complete gibberish.

 

[Jaimas]

Reading through the Youtube Heroes terms of service, one item in particular jumped out at me:

3. Harassment is not tolerated. Harassment includes, but is not limited to: verbal language that reinforces social structures of domination related to gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, disabilities, neurodiversity, physical appearance, body size, ethnicity, nationality, race, age, religion, or other protected category; sexual imagery in public spaces; deliberate intimidation; stalking; following; harassing photography or recording; sustained disruption of talks or other events; offensive verbal language; inappropriate physical contact; and unwelcome sexual attention. Participants asked to stop any harassing behavior are expected to comply immediately.

This got me thinking as to exactly how far this went, so I started digging a bit more into the Guidelines as listed on the site, and discovered this little entry on section D-3:

You must abide by Google's Anti-Harassment policy both as part of the Program and at Events. You will be held accountable for your own actions as well as the actions of any guests you invite to Events (if guests are permitted). You may be removed from any Event and the Program based on your actions or behavior as well as those of your guests.

Let's look up that policy a second.

Scroll down to the bottom, and....

This policy is licensed under the Creative Commons Zero license.

This policy is based on and influenced by several other community policies including: Ohio LinuxFest Anti-Harassment policy, Con Anti-Harassment Project, Geek Feminism Wiki (created by the Ada Initiative), CodeofConduct.com, JSconf, Rust, Diversity in Python, and Write/Speak/Code.

I'm not trying to sound alarmist here, but a lot of these groups are the biggest pushers of Codes of Conduct online industry - and have been widely criticized for attempts to circumvent meritocracy and establish CoCs that push Safe Space creation. Correlation is not causation, and what degree these groups may or may not be involved we may never fully know.

 

[Intelligent Calcium]

View attachment 137346 I FUCKING WARNED PEOPLE ABOUT THIS SHIT YEARS AGO.
CYBER APOCALYSE 2K16! READY YOUR ASSES AND ASSETS BECAUSE THIS RIDE WILL BE HELL.

Get your hockey masks and leather gimp suits before the cyber post-apocalypse starts.

 

[Brandobaris]

This policy is licensed under the Creative Commons Zero license.

This policy is based on and influenced by several other community policies including: Ohio LinuxFest Anti-Harassment policy, Con Anti-Harassment Project, Geek Feminism Wiki (created by the Ada Initiative), CodeofConduct.com, JSconf, Rust, Diversity in Python, and Write/Speak/Code.

Whew Toy unboxings, Homestuck playthroughs, and Cat videos are safe, had me worried there for a second.

 

[ToroidalBoat]

This reminds me of those vigilante groups on dA who hunt down "art theft."

verbal language that reinforces social structures of domination related to gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, disabilities, neurodiversity [...]

Oh yeah, that rule totally won't be abused against anything that happens to hurt someone's feelings.

 

[The Lawgiver]

Whew Toy unboxings, Homestuck playthroughs, and Cat videos are safe, had me worried there for a second.

Honestly, if this whole thing just completely stays it's course, and isn't pulled anytime soon, the toy unboxing videos are going to be the only things left. I mean, unless they get caught in the crossfire of the inevitable rise of mass flagging random shit solely for staff points.

I'm not sure if you've noticed this, but nowadays, cat videos frequently get stolen by large networks, and to add insult to injury the original uploads get flagged down by said network's bot. This has been happening for some time now due to the automated claim bot system being freakishly flawed.

The Homestuck game has been in development hell and shows no signs of ever coming out anytime soon. Minecraft, on the other hand, we might actually see some minecraft surviving, at least until Microsoft decides to crack down on "copyright infringing lets players"

 

[CatParty]

Youtube was originally created as a platform for anyone to share videos on, not as a platform to make money and have "professional" content exclusively.

unless they are sponsored by an actual corporation i do not count fine brothers as real content creators. if they are, then yes they are real content creators.
to talk actual industry instead of dumb reactionary theories like @Jaimas's breitbart source (lol) google is trying to remove youtube from the "social media" category. they want their own production company and over the top paid for streaming channel. it is all subtle forcing out of all unprofessional videos. youtube is a brand in their company they know will generate revenue. youtube red was just testing the waters. they want in five years to have youtube to be a netflix style service. this is why real social media sites like facebook have rolled out more perks to their video platforms.

cat videos frequently get stolen by large networks

this is why this issue is a corporate issue and not the sjw conspiracy agenda that jaimas is trying to push

 

[Pikimon]

It sounds like Youtube's shareholders are cleaning up the site so they can sell it

 

[Batman VS Tony Danza]

Let's make YouTube great again.

 

[AnOminous]

'We want to get the YouTube Community's help to run the site.'

Spoiler

View attachment 137515

So they're literally offering Good Boy Points?

 

[tehpope]

Welp.

Anybody know a good way to direct download videos into mp4 format? Might as well start making a time capsule of Brote's channel.

Jdownloader. It'll even archive the comments in a text file and the thumbnail!

 

[alex_theman]

And on the fourth day, Kiwi Farms will make its own youtube with hookers and blackjack

 

[Pickle Inspector]

This is gonna be much fun now.

I can imagine content creators are able to create even more drama out of this by mass flagging each other.

Given how YouTube is known for having the worst comment section/users on the Internet (Which is quite an accomplishment) and how drama channels are pretty popular I can't see this ending well, all it's going to take is for someone like that to start suggesting people flag the videos of people they don't like to start dumb report wars.

 

[Trans Fat 41g]

YouTube trying to escape the reality of the internet is like trying to live in a burning apartment while naked.

 

[niggers]

community

8 year olds, dude

 

[DumbDosh]

I hope the guys who came up with this said "and they'll do it for free" somewhere in their pitch.

They're probably shitting their pants waiting for their pink slips at this point though.

 

[Staffy]

I just realized that this is easy as hell to exploit. Create two accounts and just to make it sure both of them must use different IP addresses. One account should create spam, porn or copyright infringing videos and the other that you'll use will flag the said videos.

They just planned for something that will make them lose money in a stupidest way possible.

 

[Oh Long Johnson]

I just realized that this is easy as hell to exploit. Create two accounts and just to make it sure both of them must use different IP addresses. One account should create spam, porn or copyright infringing videos and the other that you'll use will flag the said videos.

They just planned for something that will make them lose money in a stupidest way possible.

Exactly. Throw 100 of them into a little script running through proxies before they start banning them and you have the top 50 Heroes.