I do fall for the argument that oversight would be too costly given the sheer numbers. I don't like it though.
Companies that are providing such an amazingly affordable service because they're just skipping out on doing moderation don't get to use "Well, doing it the right way would be too expensive" as a defense - that's how you end up with Uber. Uber broke laws, Uber shouldn't exist at this point, something like Uber should exist, but Travis Kalanick should have been fined into near non-existence and not currently be sitting happy on 2.8 billion. We, as a society, need to have standards.
So you'd rather have the status quo of a few decades ago (ie. large media organizations acting as gatekeepers), rather than the democratized ecosystem we have now?
I'd prefer neither system, and I don't think it's a binary choice - but if forced to choose between the two I'd probably go with the monolithic status-quo machine (even though I'm extremely progressive and they hated us).
But we mandate it because that's the world we want to live in.
The real conversation here is about Alphabet and Facebook's margins. If they're not doing enough, they can spend more and do more.
I'm not sure, but I don't think the answer is that it obviously won't materially change YouTube's profitability.
If the profitability of Youtube is on the table, then so should be antitrust, and Google should not be allowed to own it.
Even more important from Google's point of view is it was the way to push Chrome to dominance. And a way to keep it there ahead of any potential competitors.
Which is valuable because of the data and ability to block ad blockers. That is, Google's ad ecosystem.
How did YT push Chrome?
It's similar to how "DOS ain't done until Lotus won't run", only with YouTube and other browsers.
Google optimizes YT for Chromium-based renderers. Or rather, Google pessimizes YT for other renderers.
They have a monopoly on search, that they use to censor any competing video hosting. If they go and start censoring their own service too, this is a very serious problem.
There are a plethora of much more conservatively sized video uploading sites that vet and have specific contracts with their content producers.
It would cost 2.5% of their profits if they had an entire US workforce and every video needed to be viewed in its entirety.
Clearly you wouldn't need to review all of it. You could use AI to identify things for review (as opposed to remove them), limit it to people with a number of downvotes or views. Hell, you could just pay people to handle the reviews/escalations/appeals.
Although, Google totally could afford it. 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?
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.
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.
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.
Share-holders don't have a natural right to profit off of societally destructive behavior.