SmarterEveryDay
1 HN recommender · recommended in 4 months, 2019–2020
21:05 · 1M views · Apr 24, 2019
Destin Sandlin of Smarter Every Day investigates manipulation on Facebook, interviewing the company's team about content moderation. It is the third video in his series on social media manipulation.
HN commenters cite it for numbers on Facebook's moderation scale and for Destin's ability to get platforms to speak openly about manipulation.
4 comments from Hacker News
> no wonder people don’t believe in global warming, these “experts” prioritize politics over everything I read this as a clear expression of your frustration. Completely reasonable given the situation. Are you familiar with the YouTube channel "Smarter Every Day"? There's this three-part series that might offer a new perspective on the distrust and disillusionment you seem to be feeling: [1]: [LINK] [2]: [LINK] [3]: this video In particular, the channel creator Destin Sandlin explores how YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook are being used as a sort of vanguard in a meta-game to undermine our trust in the social institutions we rely on. It's a pretty dystopian-sounding and bleak theme. However, Destin is really good at conveying a message of hope. Use your Critical Mind, of course, but also realize that there's a personal cost to adopting absolutist views like `"experts" prioritize politics over everything.'
> However, doing that really changes the economics of the platform Getting profit-loss data on Youtube is very difficult. If they are profitable, it can't be by a large amount. So, if the plan is to have a LOT of real people just trying to monitor YT all day long it will really gut YT's economics, not just change it. Destin of Smarter Every Day on YT went and talked to FB and their content mod team a few months back [0]. He talked with Rob Leathern of FB's Cyber Security Department. Rob mentiond that they now use ~30k real people to monitor FB. Soon thereafter, The Verge released a scoop on the horrific conditions these 30k people must endure [1] in that job. YT would likely have to have a proportinate number of people in similar conditions as well, or likely scale up to make things less worse and then have to pay more people. YT simply cannot possibly afford to have enough people moderate YT. Likely, this version of YT will become something of a blip in history. All this investment will likely not pan out as the economics of video platforms like YT cannot work as they are today. The real question is what is the subscription amount that does make YT work the way we want it to work? [0] this video Also, watch Destin's body language with Nate Gleischer (~14:30 mark). It's so strange. Something wierd happened in that interview with Nate. [1] [LINK]
Yea, that's well known. Not just from federal law enforcement with proof of it, but twitter, youtube and facebook know it and admit to it too. Smarter Everyday interviewed all 3 and their folks talk about this directly. this video [LINK] [LINK] The actual social media platforms saying it's happening. At the same time though, it's not all their fault. It takes two to tango and if you're gullible enough to wreck your own life on the words of someone you've never, and will never meet... that's a special kind of stupid. Here's my hope. All of this gets out of our systems. After whoever wins this election, folks are going to go, "Hold on, we're all acting like crazy people. Let's be sensible and stop going to the extremes and work together." This is the fantasy that fills my dreams. Not flying, being rich or anything like that. That, society being sensible and taking some personal responsibility. That's my crazy, wild fantasy...
I'd suggest thinking through the Usenet model. What it was, what worked, what did not. And the design and flaws of HTTP basic auth. Keep in mind that FB are now deleting ~1m accounts/dy, employing over 30k reviewers. this video (at about 10m50s).