[uluyol]

Google just wants to eliminate any remaining trust users have in them, don't they?

Every feature they remove, they do because it is a burden on feature velocity or maintenance. Fine, but why are they so bad at weighing it against long term trust? At this point, I expect the search box to search, Gmail to send emails, YouTube to host videos, maps to do navigation, and docs to edit docs. One core feature per platform, all other features will probably be dropped sooner or later.

It's a bad look, Google.

[dodobirdlord]

They’re getting hammered from the left for insufficient moderation of content, and from the right for overly aggressive moderation of content. It’s a lose-lose where the only real option is to remove extraneous features that enable users to upload content visible to others. Even if there was a standard of moderation that would satisfy everyone, there’s too much to moderate.

[reaperducer]

Even if there was a standard of moderation that would satisfy everyone, there’s too much to moderate.

If only Google had a half a trillion dollars to spend on something other that spying on people. And if only there were 35 million people out of work.

But, alas, poor sweet simple Google cannot possibly lie in the bed it made.

[at_a_remove]

Ah, so in this version you have thirty-five million people who could agree on what is offensive. That's a daunting task without the "million" involved to begin with.

[reaperducer]

in this version you have thirty-five million people who could agree on what is offensive

Yes, because that's literally what the parent posited in his scenario:

"Even if there was a standard of moderation that would satisfy everyone"

[VLM]

The point is not to censor to match current sensibilities but to censor to push society in a direction. It doesn't matter if almost everyone hates what they're selling as long as they eventually push hard enough to sell it. They are, after all, an advertising company at heart.

[eyelidlessness]

When you get hired as a regulation enforcer in any other scenario, it’s not your opinion but the actual regulations that determine your recourse. If it’s up to the opinions of the enforcement regime, that’s because the rules are unclear or opaque.

[creato]

The fact that you believe something like content moderation can be boiled down to some hard and fast regulations, let alone a set of regulations that people could agree on, is honestly kind of scary.

[at_a_remove]

I've been on various forums with "moderation standards." The different moderators still have different approaches and different reputations for being a soft touch or heavy-handed. Human moderators, despite having standards or guidelines in front of them, are not consistent. When confronted about it, they will cite interpretations, "reading the room," discretion, and so on.

We have seen this scenario play out in censorship standards, various authorities, and so on over the decades. It never works as intended.

[MattGaiser]

Google made the bed for free and others wanted to pee in it. The rest blamed Google for the bed having pee in it and demanded they do something, including post 24 hour guards around the bed.

I would take the bed away too.

[mdoms]

Ah yes, YouTube, that product that Google made and that doesn't bring them any revenue. Two things that are definitely true.

[rrdharan]

You realize that revenue and profit are distinct?

Uber has massive revenues as do many other capital intensive businesses. That doesn't make them profitable.

[fakedang]

Last time I checked, YouTube ads were a very profitable business.

The parent to your comment chose revenue likely to note that Google makes money from the bed ie. it's not a service given away for free.

[spc476]

Some math shows that can't work. Half a trillion to 35 million is US$15,000 per person.

For one year. And people will complain that US$15,000 is not enough to live on.

What happens in year two?

[TheOtherHobbes]

Google goes bust?

That's not likely, is it?

Does Google have no concept of how YouTube drives ad sales and other synergies? Or of how much goodwill is worth?

[spc476]

Does any company make $500,000,000 a year?

[footlose_3815]

That's a different argument. The justification for the removal was spam, no?

[dodobirdlord]

This seems in line with other recent actions like disabling comments on broad swaths of YouTube videos. The given reason may be spam but it looks like there’s a pattern of surface area reduction.

[raxxorrax]

I have the demand that they stop their abusive tracking. Would they ever do that? No. So I guess they want to become TV to pacify advertisers.

[specialist]

Core problem is coupling "virality" and moderation. They're incompatible goals.

Remove the gamification and few would care that moderation lags.

The platforms try to mitigate virality with automated moderation. Anything to preserve that ad revenue.

The only societal fix is to slow down or break the engagement feedback loops. Something the platforms won't do voluntarily.

[acituan]

> Fine, but why are they so bad at weighing it against long term trust?

I want to remind the loss aversion and status quo bias. We tend to evaluate losses more important than they are, which is why for example it is hard to throw seldom used things away.

That said, why should feature removal mean automatic loss of trust? Because this feature is not important to me personally, it actually increases my trust that they can reorient their focus instead of churning man-hours on a feature just because it existed. Now I get it, it was an important feature for some people, and next day they might remove a feature that I find important, but in aggregate they clearly weighed its usage/perceived importance against removal decision.

[uluyol]

Never heard the name "status quo bias" before, thanks for bringing that up.

I don't really care about this particular feature, but I do care about the trend. Why should a feature be sunset? It seems like this must be because of (a) bugs/maintenance burden or (b) a poor design or one that is mismatched with the current product direction. The fact that Google sunsets so many features and products suggests that both of these happen with high frequency. (b) is especially worrying, why can't they spend time before launching to figure out what they're going to do and commit to it? They aren't a small startup, they've got tons of resources. I'm sure they're trying, but whatever they're doing is not working, in my opinion.

For the record, I'm not a Google hater, but this is just so frustrating to watch as a user.

[acituan]

I totally sympathize with the frustration, and experience that as a user too. But I would like to suggest that digital product design is usually a moving target, based on constantly changing consumer engagement, competition and other market conditions, so they have to follow a dynamic, adaptive strategy. Now, could they commit on a feature despite these, yes of course, but that too many of such commitments will have a cost to us users in terms of lack of new innovation.

I imagine this picture; a “tech-smith” is building an elaborate, complicated machinery and we as the users are watching it, clapping to it, interacting with it. Some are asking “this machine should have bells”, some go “it should have whistles”, and the techsmith wants to add and remove those based on those parameters. In reality, no one knows what the final machine should look like and no one knows how exactly they will use it. So there is a sweet spot in which unexpected changes are budgeted for so that it can change to conform better to what we want and what we find useful as we gain experience with the machine. Which means sometimes the techsmith will need to go “you know what, I’m going to take this bell away because not many are using it and it is causing me problems, and instead I’ll use the materials and energy to add these extra wheels” even after having invested a lot to that bell initially (which is laudible, because they are also fighting against their own sunken cost fallacy).

This should be familiar to software engineers; “why the requirements were not perfect before I started writing the software” doesn’t work well in real life. In reality as the engineer and the user gain more experience with the system that is gradually emerging, they acquire new participatory knowledge of that system and that causes a change in requirements, in a dynamical, reciprocal fashion. (Which is one of the reasons why waterfall processes are not as popular today for most products). I think the same goes at a higher scale, if not complexity, for these comnplicated machinery big tech builds that is used by billions of people.

[MattGaiser]

Except for the majority of users, eliminating spam and unmoderated content is far higher on the priority list than maintaining relatively niche features.

Whether it be Reddit or Facebook to YouTube, people are demanding security and greater tech company control over features.

[dathinab]

But if you remove spam videos from yt is it still a niche feature?

I don't need captions that often but if I do not then half of them are community provided in my experience.

This is (unintentionally) again hitting against videos with useful content, compared to this endless slew of pointless (and often content wise incorrect) click bait videos.

[root_axis]

This is an HN bubble framing. The masses that enjoy YouTube don't "trust" google, YouTube is just another large entertainment platform among many, "trust" never enters the equation, its just an entertainment website.

[uluyol]

Google has a brand, just like other companies e.g. BMW and Costco. We associate these with things like "reliable", and "cheap", and "luxury".

I think "high feature churn" will become a part of Google's brand.

[smart_jackal]

They are indirectly helping the community by prodding them to look for decentralized alternatives like peertube, lbry, etc. every now and then. They can't say it outright as they have to care about shareholder and corporate interests, etc. but even they know where the future lies internally!