New Government recommendations have suggested that YouTube should take a proactive stance in censoring and vetting videos before they go online, to prevent kids having access to NSFW content, as well as to prevent the more nasty stuff from getting online at all.
But with ten hours worth of content being uploaded every minute (sorry, yeah, we're probably not helping there...) the people making these recommendations don't seem to have thought very hard about the logistics it would involve.
Or the maths.
*WARNING: My own interpretation of maths has been used here*
No one is suggesting that YouTube shouldn't be responsible for the content it hosts (they're the ones that have to pay out for breached copyright, for instance). But the only way of truly vetting all the content is to have each clip viewed, which means a significant delay between when you upload and when you can view, as you wait for the little YouTube monkeys to approve your 'Me and Carly Rolling Down Primrose Hill' clip.
Use the users to vet the content, and where appropriate, take off videos and freeze accounts. But asking YouTube to watch an estimated 144,000 hours worth of videos a day is unrealistic and unnecessary.
If my maths is correct (and I'm really not sure it is) YouTube would need to employ 6,000 people, who would each have to be watching videos constantly, 24/7. Let's give them each 8 hour shifts - now we need 18,000 people. And now let's assume that every hour, they lost ten minutes due to the cueing up of videos and streaming issues. At this point, my maths fails me, but I'm pretty sure we're talking a staff bill to support over 20,000 people. Ouch. And you still want YouTube to be free, making money (badly at this point) by Google Ads? Fat chance.
As it stands, there's a button on each video page which can be used to flag the clip. If this is activated, I'd expect YouTube to get to it within the hour. But more than that? Sadly, there are some twats out there who are going to upload some shady stuff. But that shouldn't mean that YouTube becomes crippled to a substandard service for the rest of us.
What do you reckon? A step too far or not far enough?
Susi Weaser is the editor of Shiny Shiny and suspects that the ministers who made the recommendations probably weren't that familiar with YouTube.
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Here's a thought, if the kids are young enough or immature enough that there is a worry about them viewing NSFW content then maybe they shouldn't have unsupervised access to the computer? Why should the rest of us "suffer" or be put out because lil Billy did something he should have known not to. There are programs to block websites, there are programs that only allow certain websites, there are passwords that can be put on the computer, and there is always dear old mom and dad who can watch to make sure jr. isn't doing what he should not. It should not take a village to complete this task.
I'm inclined to agree with you, Jax. I think there's still an argument to monitor the really illegal stuff none of us should see, but there certainly needs to be more responsibility taken by parents.