Sure, Google's counsel is absolutely going to exaggerate here, but I think the rest of us need to be careful what we wish for. When even this biased and divided court is saying "uhh, guys, this is...
Sure, Google's counsel is absolutely going to exaggerate here, but I think the rest of us need to be careful what we wish for. When even this biased and divided court is saying "uhh, guys, this is really one that Congress and a team of experts should be tackling" it doesn't suggest that the outcome will be good for anyone.
Is the curated ordering and layout of items generated by YouTube's algorithms a distinct creative work by YouTube themselves, separate to the user-generated content within those items? I would argue yes, as the plaintiffs do. Should YouTube be liable for that work of curation, while simultaneously retaining existing protections around user uploads? Again, yeah, I think so. Do I trust this court case to be the method that untangles the issue in a considered way, accounting for as many unintended consequences as possible? Not in a million years.
Holding companies responsible for the presentation choices made by their systems seems sensible. Torpedoing a chunk of the law with Supreme Court precedent strikes me as a profoundly risky way to effect that change.
Google can simply stop “recommending” (pushing) videos. People can subscribe to channels or search for content they want. As it used to be. Now Google won’t show you videos from channels you are subscribed to, will serve you different search results than what your prompt was and will push Shorts on you whether you want it or not. They chose so-called “trending” videos. I hope they lose. If they are going to push content on people, yes, they are responsible. They are making a choice of what to push. Algorithms are programmed and fed. They are not random.
Arguably, the search content wouldn't be allowed either since Google designs the search algorithm and can give priority to specific content that increases engagement. (this could also extend to...
Arguably, the search content wouldn't be allowed either since Google designs the search algorithm and can give priority to specific content that increases engagement. (this could also extend to Google Search)
So we could end up with only a chronological feed of all of youtube and one of subscriptions.
New headlines today: What is the future of the internet? Don’t ask the Supreme Court Supreme Court admits they're not the best choice to decide the future of the internet
I'm pretty shocked at some of the quotes. It all seems like an extremely level headed response; it's complicated, and a hammer is maybe not the right tool.
I'm pretty shocked at some of the quotes. It all seems like an extremely level headed response; it's complicated, and a hammer is maybe not the right tool.
Most of the supreme court right now is more than happy to argue against government oversight and restrict how much the government gets to play in our day to day lives, but it just so happens the...
Most of the supreme court right now is more than happy to argue against government oversight and restrict how much the government gets to play in our day to day lives, but it just so happens the majority which does this will only use this line of reasoning when it's convenient to their political leaning.
That is to say, they'll use logic like this to explain away why this is an overreach of government oversight, such as with abortions. But when talking about the right to bear arms, they're more than happy to call this appropriate government oversight.
There's a veneer of a level headed response, because these individuals have been trained on how to give such a response, but the ultimate reasoning behind it is mostly one of 'less governmental oversight except on the things I care about'. I expect them to fall back on the same reasoning they used when discussing laws restricting gun ownership and when discussing case precedent restricting states from banning abortions when they discuss issues such as gay rights (Thomas has been gunning for Obergefell for a long time now), which is a direct contradiction of the logic being applied right now to section 230 because it helps protect right wing enclaves, hate speech, and disinformation on the internet.
I also noticed the massive decline in results quality on YouTube recently too, but I actually found a way to fix it!
As far as I can tell, the reason for the seeming randomness of the majority of results these days is that when you do a search on YouTube now, only the top few results are actually based on the search terms you used. And everything below those few relevant results are now a mix of "related", "people also watched", "channels new to you"/"videos for you" recommendations, and even "previous watched" videos, most of which are typically completely unrelated to your search terms. Why they chose to pollute the search results page like that, and to such an extreme, I have no fucking idea.
However, thankfully, if you click 'Filters' at the top of the results page, and then set the 'Type' to 'Videos' all the other bullshit goes away and you will only see properly relevant search results again. It's fucking annoying to have to do that every time you do a search now, but at least that trick works to clear out all the cruft. Give it a try for yourself.
And @bhrgunatha even figured out a method that will automatically do that for you:
After some experimentation I don't think it needs a script. I believe the video filter is a simple url search parameter - sp=EgIQAQ
I already have a Firefox keyword search 1 for youtube so I just extended that bookmark to add &sp=EgIQAQ.
I know it can be done with Chrome too; I just don't know how. Pull requests welcome :)
Footnote 1 The easiest way to make a keyword search in Firefox is to right click in the youtube search box and choose "Add a keyword for this search...".
Firefox will create a bookmark and prompt you for the keyword. In my case I already have one (using the keyword v - for video). The bookmark it creates includes a %s placeholder - https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=%s
Now edit the bookmark and add &sp=EgIQAQ to the end of its URL.
To use it, In the URL bar, type your keyword followed by your desired search criteria and firefox replaces the %s with whatever you typed in.
Sure, Google's counsel is absolutely going to exaggerate here, but I think the rest of us need to be careful what we wish for. When even this biased and divided court is saying "uhh, guys, this is really one that Congress and a team of experts should be tackling" it doesn't suggest that the outcome will be good for anyone.
Is the curated ordering and layout of items generated by YouTube's algorithms a distinct creative work by YouTube themselves, separate to the user-generated content within those items? I would argue yes, as the plaintiffs do. Should YouTube be liable for that work of curation, while simultaneously retaining existing protections around user uploads? Again, yeah, I think so. Do I trust this court case to be the method that untangles the issue in a considered way, accounting for as many unintended consequences as possible? Not in a million years.
Holding companies responsible for the presentation choices made by their systems seems sensible. Torpedoing a chunk of the law with Supreme Court precedent strikes me as a profoundly risky way to effect that change.
This commenter puts it well:
Arguably, the search content wouldn't be allowed either since Google designs the search algorithm and can give priority to specific content that increases engagement. (this could also extend to Google Search)
So we could end up with only a chronological feed of all of youtube and one of subscriptions.
Eh, I think trivial algorithms would be permissible. “Most views today”, etc.
New headlines today:
What is the future of the internet? Don’t ask the Supreme Court
Supreme Court admits they're not the best choice to decide the future of the internet
I'm pretty shocked at some of the quotes. It all seems like an extremely level headed response; it's complicated, and a hammer is maybe not the right tool.
Most of the supreme court right now is more than happy to argue against government oversight and restrict how much the government gets to play in our day to day lives, but it just so happens the majority which does this will only use this line of reasoning when it's convenient to their political leaning.
That is to say, they'll use logic like this to explain away why this is an overreach of government oversight, such as with abortions. But when talking about the right to bear arms, they're more than happy to call this appropriate government oversight.
There's a veneer of a level headed response, because these individuals have been trained on how to give such a response, but the ultimate reasoning behind it is mostly one of 'less governmental oversight except on the things I care about'. I expect them to fall back on the same reasoning they used when discussing laws restricting gun ownership and when discussing case precedent restricting states from banning abortions when they discuss issues such as gay rights (Thomas has been gunning for Obergefell for a long time now), which is a direct contradiction of the logic being applied right now to section 230 because it helps protect right wing enclaves, hate speech, and disinformation on the internet.
From a previous comment of mine:
And @bhrgunatha even figured out a method that will automatically do that for you:
Thank you for this - I will have a go :)