[simonh]

> It would cost less than 2.5% of their profits to pay US minimum wage to review every video

So you think employing those hundreds of thousands of workers would incur no office space costs, no IT system costs, no management, no service staff, no HR, no payroll, no recruitment, no training. Wow. And your talking about Google profits, but YouTube is a business itself that needs to make money. Why does the rest of Google need to subsidise it?

[HWR_14]

> employing those hundreds of thousands of workers would incur no...

Well, my numbers do allow for a $50MM/year in the various IT/management/training. I would think you could have people working from home, so office/etc. costs would be minimal. But I also made them US based and reviewing every random cat video's full length that is only seen by 1 person. Some savings could be achieved.

> your talking about Google profits, but YouTube is a business itself that needs to make money. Why does the rest of Google need to subsidise it?

Okay, fine. YouTube could internally have added the costs of reviewing every video's full length with US based people in 2021 it would have only cut in half their increase in profit over 2020.

[simonh]

> my numbers do allow for a $50MM/year

That’s hilarious. The $50m was a rounding error you forgot to account for. Given a work force of several hundred thousand, that would just about pay for an office chair each, let alone any other equipment or infrastructure, or office space to put the chair in.

[HWR_14]

Less "forgot" and more "didn't care to". But, yes, specifically the rounding error.

I have no idea why minimum wage workers would get an office chair worth a grand, or whatever you're assuming. You can have people do the work from their own couches and phones.

For $50MM/year I could set up the infrastructure to manage the process.