YouTube Official Blog

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.html
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/youtube-conspiracy-theories_n_5d320f69e4b004b6adafbb99

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.html

> 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-look-and.html).

> 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.

Here is the actual blog post: https://youtube.googleblog.com/2019/06/our-ongoing-work-to-tackle-hate.html?m=1

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.

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.html
[1] https://www.geek.com/news/google-realizes-youtube-star-ratings-dont-work-912531/

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.html