[themacguffinman]

You speak with such confidence that YouTube is printing enough money to sustain such a massive additional cost but that's unlikely. Don't just take my word for it, the WSJ has reported on this matter [1] because Google doesn't release financial details for YouTube on its own.

You've done nothing but rattle off assertions about how YouTube just so profitable and won't shut down, how there's so much money in ad-supported video hosting, how somebody else can do it. These are fantastic claims, by which I mean they are rooted in fantasy.

I have no trouble believing that this represents an existential threat to YouTube. If Google massively shrinks or shuts down YouTube as a free and global content platform, it's not just their loss, it's ours as well.

[1] http://www.wsj.com/articles/viewers-dont-add-up-to-profit-fo...

Relevant snippet from the WSJ article:

> The online-video unit posted revenue of about $4 billion in 2014, up from $3 billion a year earlier, according to two people familiar with its financials, as advertiser-friendly moves enticed some big brands to spend more. But while YouTube accounted for about 6% of Google’s overall sales last year, it didn’t contribute to earnings. After paying for content, and the equipment to deliver speedy videos, YouTube’s bottom line is “roughly break-even,” according to a person with knowledge of the figure.

[eropple]

I didn't say YouTube was "just so profitable." Google is so very profitable and Google won't shut YouTube down because Google derives incredible mindshare value and analytics insight from owning YouTube. YouTube and a similarly not-super-profitable-but-very-useful product--Gmail--get people into the Google ecosystem and facilitate greater understanding and deeper analytics into their userbase in ways that make the things that do make money make more money. To reduce it to a P&L for that single division is bonkers.

And from a brand perspective? To younger people, YouTube is the part of Google that they like. It's not going away if it becomes marginally more expensive to run (and we are talking marginally. Facebook pays $28,800 a head for content moderation, and that's American employees), because all doing so does is open the door for a competitor--and while 2009-me thinks this is crazy to say, I find myself eyeing Microsoft in 2019, though Facebook is also of course a likely contestant--to come take all those eyeballs and all that analytics data.

I promise: it's okay to dare even a megacorporation to blink. We live in a society, they operate under our rules.

[themacguffinman]

Google doesn't need YouTube to exist in its current form to have a large viewership. It can just as easily turn YouTube into a controlled TV-like platform where content is primarily created by incumbent professionals with little room for anything else. They'll still get incredible viewership. That's where the mainstream lives after all. Smaller content creators aren't particularly profitable or popular, so why bother if all they do is invite the press and people like you to slap them around for having them. I'd say it's already going in that direction.

And from a brand perspective? The linked article in this thread is a global, mainstream news publication burning Google & YouTube's brand by associating them with pedophiles.

Marginally more expensive? Try hundreds of millions a year to employ the thousands of workers to properly vet the 80k+ hours of video content uploaded every single day, with countless more comments. Then get slapped around by the press anyway because those workers aren't paid enough, and they aren't given quite enough mental care because they're still a bit screwed up after watching garbage 8 hours a day, and by the way they shouldn't be watching garbage 8 hours a day because that's awful for a human being to do that, they should do it at a nice 8 hours/week but they should still get paid a lot more because they're doing god's work and market rate wages aren't enough for them.

So what's your plan? Google realizes that hey, they don't need to operate a free global platform for content creators of all sizes at a P&L loss, they can do what everyone else does and make a lot of money, get a lot of mainstream viewership, avoid PR blows like this one...then you get to proclaim victory because youtube.com still exists?

Oh right, if Google stops operating a free global platform for content creators everywhere at a loss, someone else will do it. Like Facebook, which suffers from the exact same issues, is working towards the same AI approach as YouTube, and got slapped by the press after hiring human moderators anyway? Like Amazon, which acquired Twitch and almost immediately applied an AI-based automatic content moderator even more inaccurate and punishing than YouTube's? Like Microsoft, which...uhh what? I'll let you come up with reasons why Microsoft is somehow an appropriate competitor.

I can only describe your comments as wishful thinking. We live in a capitalist democracy, we operate under its rules. You're free to suggest that we as a society choose a different system, but good luck with that. Until that changes, I promise: megacorporations don't blink, they just look away. I think it would be a tremendous loss if one of the most competent members of our society looked away from the project of a free, global video platform for content creators of all sizes, stripes, and beliefs.

[eropple]

Cool. And when that algorithm decides that that thing you don't like is banned beyond appeal, what will you do?

[themacguffinman]

I would argue against banning those things, even if it's a thing I don't like, like I am now. I argue against the cultural idea that if I don't like it, YouTube needs to get rid of it. If you think something is so bad that it shouldn't be on YouTube, you should go through society's democratic process and get it enshrined into law.