<i>Strictly speaking it isn't censorship when Youtube removes a channel for being politically too extreme.</i><p>Not to distract from the larger point, but this isn't true. The definition of censorship says nothing about the government being the one suppressing the content.
I think there still is a big opportunity for ad companies that try to actually show stuff the user might interested in. Let me explain.<p>Let's say you are an amateur astronomer, like me. You have subscribed to a paper magazine about astronomy, like me. If, again, you are like me, then you also read the magazine for the ads in it. Ads showing new telescopes, ads talking about astronomy expeditions, ads for the astronomy club. It is advertisement on the one hand, but still relevant information for my hobby. The companies that buy ads for a longer period burn their brand into my brain, in the "relevant" section of it.<p>Now let's talk about how this would be on the web. When I visit a site about astronomy, I can expect the ads to show: flight offers for the business trip I recently googled. SAS software because I recently did a certification with them and visited their website. Amazon ads showing me business books I recently searched there. But what they often do not show: relevant, juicy astronomy related ads. And when they do, the ad is gone the next time I refresh the page replaced by something else. The ads on the web are most often totally out of context. They might be shown to you because of your recorded behavior before, but still they are totally irrelevant.<p>Probably running an ad network with great ads would be much more manual work than running the next past-behavior based network that tries to mine user data for new ideas. But at least for special interest sites, it could be a gold mine.
It's a weird thing because this seems to be the culmination of YouTube, as a platform, becoming a worse place consistently for content creators. This ad-hysteria seems to have just accelerated the process to its (yet unknown) logical conclusion. I think a lot of content creators didn't look for alternatives to YT as a platform because they've been a pretty alright place for free speech (most of the time -- even during this debacle!), but it's been having some pretty severe issues over the years (a lot of which are caused by YouTube's absolute refusal to deal with people personally).<p>It's also a weird situation, because free video sharing on the Internet is not really a profitable line of business when it exists in a way as liberal as YouTube is (Vimeo, for example is limited for free users, etc.) so there are not as many long term, similarly equipped alternatives to it, at least as of now.
This is such a manufactured controversy. Most modern advertisements are based around audience rather than content. If brands are so uncomfortable with the content their customers are consuming perhaps they should consider either new customers or new products.
Much prefer decent native/immutable adversiting. I don't care for 'smart' ads. I don't want ads following me around the web, because they tend to advertise things that either I already know/have or decided that I don't care for. That's how 'smart' algorithmic advertising has been working. I never got influenced into clicking that Amazon product ad that followed me through dozens websites or that crowdufing product that's on Twitter/Facebook. If a brand wants to reach me, they better find a good narrative and publisher that gets me to manage the relationship. Not plant some cookie and try to guess my taste based on pages I've been to.
Here's an idea, advertisers directly pay the content creators they don't have a problem with to show ads natively in their content at a point they both agree is acceptable. And there could be a contract between the 2 parties that covers any concerns either might have.
> "Perhaps what we need is a browser plugin with a wallet that allows for microtransactions. It could charge a user a penny for every page load on a creator's blog"<p>this sounds like a terrible idea. i imagine being directed to pages that tick me a penny, or leaving a browser tab open for months (i do that) without looking at it but getting ticked for refreshes.<p>or even worse, viruses that try to log visits to pages trying to take pennies from you hopping you dont notice. and who is going to try and fight a 1 penny fraud?<p>even in the best circumstances, i wouldn't want to revisit someones page for fear that ill get charged but the content might not be that interesting or original
<i>> 1. A smarter advertising-based model.</i><p>That would be the wrong lesson to take away here. By and large, ads are a scam on many levels, and it's not at all clear how that could change. Individual deals between content producers and companies seem like the sanest alternative, but it's obvious how that's not an option for the internet at large.<p><i>> 2. A model that does not rely on advertising.</i><p>Ads are a <i>symptom</i> of what brought non-corporate Youtube content down, but it's not the root cause. Youtube and its parent company will always be susceptible to repeats and variations of the WSJ attack, and Youtube didn't exactly have a respectful relationship with their content creators to begin with. "Controversial" content such as LGBT-focused videos doesn't just get less ads, it gets suppressed by YT in other ways designed to prevent discoverability.<p><i>Siloization</i> is the disease.<p>Any crisis is an opportunity for startups. The larger point here is a wakeup call about the structure of the web. There are still opportunities to change this, but companies and governments are fast at work changing that. The time would be now.
eh, it's not a real problem to solve, the large new buyers in the digital video space just are avoiding the complexity of intentional targeting and placements. The measly 100k-250k I spend on video ads on YouTube can be monitored and controlled to appear exactly where necessary. The large media buyers just didn't feel like doing the work.
It mentions "removing a channel" and "banning unpopular opinions". But that's not necessary to appease advertisers. You just need to unmonetize those videos. And that's what Youtube's been doing as far as I know.
I've lost lots of money with Youtube ads sending me children trying to learn their abc's. Lot's and lots of children searching for cartoons landing on my channel against my geo/language/age/interest filters.<p>A few hours on the phone with their Indian tech support got me only false promises of call backs and refunds.<p>I'm unable to reach intelligent/useful person at google adwords tech support. Which is terrible, because I think that's where most of their revenue comes from?
I don't get why so many folks thought Google was going to give them a free pass forever when it comes to various touchy subjects. Google depends on advertisers to pay its bills and make profit for its shareholders. If that means Youtube becomes more vanilla than vanilla then that's what will happen. It's not an issue of left/right political spectrum as it is more to do with the fear of alienating their clients (the advertisers) who aren't the consumers or people who make videos on Youtube. So if content creators want to take this an opportunity to find a better distribution and payment scheme I think that would be wise rather than trying to change the beast that is Google because when it comes down to your content Google can easily replace it with the generic PBS channel videos or even hire their own content creators to replace you at a discount.
Problem with ads is that we don't want to buy from them, we want to search and evaluate products instead. I never buy anything online unless I test both the seller and the product for bad reviews. Ads are just too risky to buy from. I need to trust before I buy, and it's silly to keep watching ads when I know I am not going to buy anything from them.
It's more growing pains. Advertisers are starting to better understand the digital space so will hopefully concentrate their efforts and dollars on those creating premium video (like Kurzgesagt). Youtube could help the case by adjusting their recommendation algorithms ... watch one weird video and your recs are ruined.
This could just be a UI problem. When you see an ad on YouTube, it's right under the video's title, so there's some subconscious association from the video's content to the content in the ad.<p>What if YouTube ads worked more like TV commercials, where you're taking explicitly out of the content (maybe to another page to view the ad?), and then returned to the video? Would this ease advertiser's concerns about placement?
An AI trained to identify extremist video content for an automated ad to video pairing system? I've read enough sci-fi to know where this is going.
<i>Many channels are seeing their revenues plummet as big companies pull their ads out of fear they will be shown in more controversial videos ... Strictly speaking it isn't censorship when Youtube removes a channel for being politically too extreme.</i><p>Ugh. It's not <i>remotely</i> censorship to stop funding something. You don't have any <i>obligation</i> to <i>pay</i> me to jabber in front of a camera, and neither does anyone else. Putting the distinct ideas of "refusing to pay for X" and "censorship of X" in such proximity is either the result of confusion or a deliberate attempt at emotional Roveian conflation.<p>The linked Guardian article makes no mention of YouTube removing either videos or channels. If that's not happening, then whatever <i>is</i> happening isn't even <i>similar to</i> censorship. Just because the Guardian author throws the term around so casually doesn't make it <i>true</i>.<p><i>...we should ask ourselves how comfortable we are with large corporations essentially setting the terms of acceptable political discourse by pressuring media platforms into banning unpopular opinions.</i><p>Back in the 1970s, when video in America was dominated by three huge networks, an argument like this would have made a glimmer of sense: if advertisers pulled out of a program en masse, the network management would cancel the show in search of something more profitable, and the attitudes or opinions the program espoused might not be represented on television at all anymore.<p>But the internet isn't like that. YouTube isn't like that. You can keep making your show, your blog, your own personal website, etc., regardless of what the advertisers do. There is no panel of bean counters controlling access to limited, valuable airwaves, because the "airwaves" are unbounded in breadth and unmoored from time. One might argue that this is the principal, signature difference between broadcast television and internet video.<p>Even if YouTube was deleting videos outright, they're hardly the only way to share videos online. They simply aren't <i>capable</i> of "banning unpopular opinions" in any effective general way.<p>It's a little tough to take "righteous" "Wiseman's" internet-censorship-based startup ideas seriously when 1) he doesn't seem to understand what censorship is 2) he doesn't seem to understand important differences between the internet and older media systems.
OT: does blogspot look awful on iPhone for everyone else? I have to use the "request desktop site" feature in Safari. I see even official Google posts on blogspot so I would have thought they would make it work...
Steem is an interesting concept around rewarding content creators through blockchain and cryptocurrency technology: <a href="https://steem.io/" rel="nofollow">https://steem.io/</a>
Is it really censorship or are we seeing the effects of the end of net neutrality with 0 rated services. I'm wondering whether advertisers are using placement as an excuse to try to weasel out of long term ad contracts if youtube's numbers are taking a huge hit to 0 rated video services favored by the carriers? Would you want your ad dollars trapped in a service in decline with long term contracts or try to find some way to get out of it even if its some excuse about a couple ad placements to find a way to break the contract and free those ad dollars for 0 rated carrier favored services?