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YouTube Heroes program gives users the power to mass flag videos

Last posted Sep 30, 2016 at 11:48AM EDT. Added Sep 21, 2016 at 12:25PM EDT
79 posts from 39 users

Unless YouTube miraculously manages to competently moderate the program, it will most likely be easily and widely abused. They already have enough problems with the vulnerabilities of its current content policing and enforcement systems. As Kaiju already pointed out, this program will only make it easier for those who want to abuse the system.

Last edited Sep 21, 2016 at 01:15PM EDT

A-Train wrote:

Unless YouTube miraculously manages to competently moderate the program, it will most likely be easily and widely abused. They already have enough problems with the vulnerabilities of its current content policing and enforcement systems. As Kaiju already pointed out, this program will only make it easier for those who want to abuse the system.

Youtube makes things worse at every step they try to do otherwise.

Last edited Sep 21, 2016 at 01:31PM EDT

Just seriously?
We already have the Advertiser friendly content controversy, but this program is just going to make things much worse.
You could say Youtube Heroes is more like Youtube Villians. (lame joke)

Well I guess if Youtube dies from this then it won't be because of all the important content creators leaving, it'll be because all the important content creators will get banned off of Youtube due to mass flagging. You all know that a lot of people are just going to flag every popular Youtuber because they just like making people suffer.
I'm not kidding or exaggerating, this new ability might actually hurt Youtube itself.

Edit: Having actually read through how this system works, I realized that it doesn't seem as easily abused at first. No 12 year old fanboy can just sign up and mass flag a channel that dissed their favorite Youtuber. You seem to actually have to put effort into doing it, and we all know actual effort is the bane of many users on Youtube.
However, it is possible that someone's who's really dedicated could possibly get high enough to use the mass flag perk.
Also another thing to consider is every popular Youtuber could probably successfully sign up for this, and that can be for better or for worst.
For example, in the situation with Leafy and iDubbbz, Leafy could probably sign up for this and easily make a bunch of videos over the course of several days in order to rake up enough points. Then, he could mass-flag iDubbbz.
Yeah, I'm honestly not in favor of this, because even though it's difficult to get to, it's generally not a good idea to offer something as powerful as mass flagging to the users of Youtube. The power of such a thing is too great to be trusted with the average Youtube user.

Last edited Sep 21, 2016 at 05:07PM EDT

Tyranid Warrior #1024649049375 wrote:

Well I guess if Youtube dies from this then it won't be because of all the important content creators leaving, it'll be because all the important content creators will get banned off of Youtube due to mass flagging. You all know that a lot of people are just going to flag every popular Youtuber because they just like making people suffer.
I'm not kidding or exaggerating, this new ability might actually hurt Youtube itself.

Edit: Having actually read through how this system works, I realized that it doesn't seem as easily abused at first. No 12 year old fanboy can just sign up and mass flag a channel that dissed their favorite Youtuber. You seem to actually have to put effort into doing it, and we all know actual effort is the bane of many users on Youtube.
However, it is possible that someone's who's really dedicated could possibly get high enough to use the mass flag perk.
Also another thing to consider is every popular Youtuber could probably successfully sign up for this, and that can be for better or for worst.
For example, in the situation with Leafy and iDubbbz, Leafy could probably sign up for this and easily make a bunch of videos over the course of several days in order to rake up enough points. Then, he could mass-flag iDubbbz.
Yeah, I'm honestly not in favor of this, because even though it's difficult to get to, it's generally not a good idea to offer something as powerful as mass flagging to the users of Youtube. The power of such a thing is too great to be trusted with the average Youtube user.

They should change the name to "YouTube An Hero Program" while they're ahead.

I imagine this exchange taking place at Google headquarters:
"Hey guys, I have an awesome idea for Youtube!"
"Alright, let's hear it."
"Okay, so- you know those certain forum moderators on certain websites who are fucking assholes and insanely power-hungry? The ones who ban people and delete shit on a whim with very flimsy or completely nonexistent justifications for doing so, usually boiling down to "I don't agree (with)/like it/them"?
"Yep."
"Let's create a position that not only grants people those exact same powers, but by incentivizing reporting as much stuff as physically possible, will attract precisely that kind of person! And the best part is, because our website is so huge, there's basically no way to hold them accountable for their actions!"
"Well Jesus Christ, that sounds… GENIUS! Marketing guys, get with making the lame-as-hell Flash animated video to promote it."

Here, everyone I have an idea that might stop this before this goes completely apeshit.

My idea is what we need to do is sign up for the service ourselves, and then completely abuse the fuck out of it. But only do this to channels and people that are in on this too, that way it doesn't actually hurt anyone. If it works this should show Youtube how completely retarded this system is and if they have a modicum of dignity for this website, they'll get rid of it.
We need to show this to Youtube before it learns the hard way by having very popular channels deleted because of a few butthurt "heroes."

In order for this plan to work, however, it needs to be on a massive scale enough for Youtube to notice.

Ryumaru Borike wrote:

Ok, so long would it take for someone to reach level 3? I guess we'll find out once major Youtube channels start disappearing en masse. Countdown till the ban wave?

According to the YTH guidelines, however long it takes to transcribe 100 sentences, because you get 1 point per sentence added to subtitles and gain the mass flag ability at 100 points. You could sign up and gain the mass flag ability within an hour if you wanted.

Snickerway wrote:

According to the YTH guidelines, however long it takes to transcribe 100 sentences, because you get 1 point per sentence added to subtitles and gain the mass flag ability at 100 points. You could sign up and gain the mass flag ability within an hour if you wanted.

You also have to factor in how those sentences have to be approved first.
However, if you just go tour the Spanish side of Youtube for an hour, you'd probably get those 100 sentences. It's just a matter of how long it'd take for them to be approved. I'd say the overall time it'd take for this to happen will be less than 1 day.
The countdown has begun.

@Air Breather
One of the ways that someone can get enough points to reach this function is to add subtitles to non-translated videos. One basic way people could do this rather easily is go to the Spanish side of Youtube and just run the words into Google Translate.
As you can tell, this is rather easy and people don't have to prove shit.

Last edited Sep 21, 2016 at 06:16PM EDT

If the program was for things like helping with subtitles or helping get false claims removed, then I'd see this as a good thing, but as is… well yeah everyone's already pointed out how easily this can be abused. Like someone can now easily false flag any videos just for simply not liking someone.

Not helping is YouTube still has a "copyright troll" problem. Recently a Call of Duty YouTuber got hit with a bunch of false claims from people faking they were either Keemstar or Activision, and one YouTuber I follow, ProJared, got hit with a false music claim on one video from a company called "Compass" (and this company's being making false claims for months according to Twitter comments).

Last edited Sep 21, 2016 at 07:24PM EDT

ProJared's been hit with false copyright claim bullshit? But he's the perfect midwestern cinnamon roll!

I think the real question, though, is how far the shenanigans will go and how long before Youtube has to pull the plug (at least temporarily) on the program. I'm gonna guess a week. I know they haven't been the best about bad faith DMCA's, but since they just put this system in place, they can dismantle it without any effort.

(Copy pasta from last thread cuz it got locked so fuck u)

Im gonna have to take over this thread to announce that were launching the KYM tattle tales program. Yes thats right, you can now earn a new type of karma called tattle tale points or (TTP) for short.

Were trying to ensure that the community polices its self because were too fucking lazy to do it ourselves.

Heres how it works. You get to flag spam and content breaking our guidelines and flat out remove content. Don’t worry we only ensure members are people with no life’s and noting better to do are the ones with enough time to report and gain higher levels. That’s right our site will now be run by mostly early 20s neets with questionable morals and agendas

Are you a safe space liberal who can’t take other peoples opinions? Well grab your friends, and form a mini flag army on all the content you don’t find tasteful. Don’t worry alt right members, you too can form your own echo chamber of content!
See comments you don’t agree with? Well just flat out remove them! Are you tired of having free and open speech in the comments? Worry no more! Oh whats this? New rising member with content you don’t approve of?! Fucking flag the shit out of his videos.

AND THERE ARE NO NEGATIVE SIDE EFFECTS! That’s right fokes ZERO accountability on your part!!!

Who watches the watchmen? I don’t fucking know OOOOR care. Suck our dicks

Tyranid Warrior #1024649049375 wrote:


You know you've fucked up when Keemstar doesn't approve of what you're doing.

Is this gonna be like the comics where there's a really bad villain that everyone hates, but then the super-ultra-mega-death-Lovecraftian abomination shows up to obliterate the entire universe and the villain goes "aw HELL naw, even I'M not that evil!" and teams up with all the heroes to take it down?

0.9999...=1 wrote:

Is this gonna be like the comics where there's a really bad villain that everyone hates, but then the super-ultra-mega-death-Lovecraftian abomination shows up to obliterate the entire universe and the villain goes "aw HELL naw, even I'M not that evil!" and teams up with all the heroes to take it down?

Keemstar be like

This was actually pretty nice, still kind of dumb until the mass flagging part then it took a nosedive into a river full of shit. The flagging system is abused almost daily and rewarding someone for that is the stupidest thing ever, a lot of people flag videos that they just don't like, not because there's actually something wrong with them.

I legit thought that this was just some random fan thing at first, not a serious thing that youtube was trying to get through, it's that terrible.

Last edited Sep 22, 2016 at 12:19AM EDT

Mom Rivers wrote:

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 videos), 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.

Fraud, abuse or other violative behavior relating to the accrual of points or perks may result in forfeiture of accrued points and unlocked perks as well as cancellation of your program account, termination of your participation in the Program, and termination of any YouTube account or Google account.

To be fair, I have to point out that they are implying that they'll be paying attention. Hopefully it'll be human beings, and not robots, deciding if people are doing things right. If so, it might not be a bad idea.

Maybe. Maybe my hopes are too high for YouTube.

River, they have already relegated the current flagging system to a team of bots and it can take days to contact a human regarding a flagged video, if you can at all. Now they are planning on increasing the amount of flagging by an absurd amount, and if they were going to have people checking through flags for mass flagging, they wouldn't need mass flagging to begin with.

If Google has enough people to check through the mass flagging, why don't they have people checking the flags currently? The answer is they don't have people, they have bots and a lot of misplaced trust in their community.

They've said nothing about changing the system where your channel gets taken down before any human looks at the flagging, no one is going to check the flags, it's going to be bots, it's going to be as bad as people are predicting.

Mom Rivers wrote:

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 videos), 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.

Fraud, abuse or other violative behavior relating to the accrual of points or perks may result in forfeiture of accrued points and unlocked perks as well as cancellation of your program account, termination of your participation in the Program, and termination of any YouTube account or Google account.

To be fair, I have to point out that they are implying that they'll be paying attention. Hopefully it'll be human beings, and not robots, deciding if people are doing things right. If so, it might not be a bad idea.

Maybe. Maybe my hopes are too high for YouTube.

If Google was going to have their employees go through each and every one of those flags courtesy of the "heroes" and do their due diligence to determine whether or not they're justified, then just how many man-hours would they save in comparison if they just did this shit themselves?
I'm thinking… zero. Or, at least, pretty damn close to it.
And even if they WERE to do that, it only solves part of the problem with this. The other part being that the rules they want to have enforced are in many ways kinda shitty, and with a program like what we have here there's no longer the barrier of "well, they really don't implement them very well anyway".

The system could work, but it's missing a huge feature:
the power to restore videos. This should be a huge feature, and would require none of the other "heroes" to notice the wrongly flagged video. Without this, it's just shit.

Albert Einstein doesn't know what weapons we'll use, but I'm bloody damn sure it will be with poorly-written subtitles, mass flags and diss tracks all in video form.

This may be the worst controversy yet, having a media platform on the line like Gawker. as much as I like watching shitstorms, I'm geniunely scared of this.

Well, I was with them on the subtitles part, a lot of the adding subtitles to videos is not as harmful and definitely helps, not just with people who might be deaf but also people with different languages. For example, a lot of my friends who are not fluent in english will have trouble enjoying a person's video.

Other than that, I agree youtube fucked up big time and need to address this soon or it will be a real problem.

And here is chris ray gun on the matter:

Deleting videos?

A better solution would be to age restrict + SHOW 5 SECONDS THAT VALIDATES THE CLAIM.

EDIT:I do beleive level 2 will be a sort of "beef gate" in terms of getting to mass flag:
https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/7124238

LEVEL 2:

Learn at exclusive workshops
Take part in Hero hangouts

Now these may look like benefits, but this MIGHT be spun so that:

the "exclusive workshops" and "hero hangouts" mean moderator training and testing

Last edited Sep 22, 2016 at 09:45AM EDT

Accurate reports of videos that violate community guidelines = 1 point
Contributing a sentence that gets published as a subtitle = 1 point
Answering a user question on the YouTube Help forum with a comment selected as the Best Answer = 10 points

Level 3 (Mass flaging genocide) need 100

I dont knwo about you guys, but i already sign up.

cue the evil theme song

It still blows my dick that someone came up with this bat shit crazy dumb ass idea and it seriously got approved. Who the fuck is running youtube?

Great fucking idea youtube I can not see how any situation where having neets running your website can back fire, especially in >current year where a shit load of ego driven maniacs have political agendas and they will do anything to further it.

Holy fuck, I guess you don't need to give a shit about PR when you're the only viable options for free video streaming on the whole fucking internet

Last edited Sep 22, 2016 at 12:34PM EDT

Maybe we take a step back and not automatically hate something because its different?

Who the hell said youtube was just gonna let anybody get that power?
Nobody thats who.
You really think that youtube wouldn't be actively checking up on their heroes, making sure they're making valid contributions and not just spamming what they hate.
And if someone does abuse mass flagging, you don't think google will try and make sure what they flagged was valid and not shit?
But nah lets just always jump to how SJWs ruin everything and how everything youtube does is a bad thing.
Its not a perfect company by any means but people on this site really don't seem to think things though at all and just cherry pick things they don't like.

Last edited Sep 22, 2016 at 05:19PM EDT

Mom Rivers wrote:

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 videos), 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.

Fraud, abuse or other violative behavior relating to the accrual of points or perks may result in forfeiture of accrued points and unlocked perks as well as cancellation of your program account, termination of your participation in the Program, and termination of any YouTube account or Google account.

To be fair, I have to point out that they are implying that they'll be paying attention. Hopefully it'll be human beings, and not robots, deciding if people are doing things right. If so, it might not be a bad idea.

Maybe. Maybe my hopes are too high for YouTube.

"Hopefully it'll be human beings, and not robots, deciding if people are doing things right."

I say that all your hopes for Youtube handling this correctly are too high. Having them at 0 is still too high.
In every decision Youtube has made that's similar to this, they always used bots. For age-restriction, they used bots. For copyright infringement, they still use bots. For demonetization of videos that "violate the terms of service," they use bots. For reviewing already flagged videos, they still use bots.
Why is it that with this new system in place they'd out of nowhere go "hey guys let's use real people to validate the authenticity of these new mods," when they've shown a habit of just relegating these menial tasks to bots in the past?

The way I see it, the only hurdle people will legitimately have to pass is just signing up at first. Only people who haven't be banned or flagged in the past can sign up to become level one. From there, all they have to do is just google translate 100 spanish sentences and add them as subtitles and BOOM! A new, opinionated, cancerous Youtube mod is born.
Sure, Youtube says they'll have people watching over this, but they also said they have actual people validating the flagged videos that already happen.

In all honesty, user moderation just seems like a bad idea to me. I've seen multiple sites such as Reddit and Wikipedia be completely ruined by Stalin-level mods. I even imagine that there's been instances of some mods abusing their powers to censor people even on this site itself.
The only site I've seen that has user moderation and freedom of speech (besides this site) preserved is honestly 4chan, but that's a whole other barrel of monkeys.

TL;DR If you need to moderate your own users, then perhaps you shouldn't draw your moderators FROM said users you need to moderate. Or at least don't give them much power over everyone else.

Skeletor-sm

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