People tend to view youtube "de-monetization" act as something out of the blue. Story goes as "evil youtube cornered the market of online videos and now acting like a spoiled child, f--king with people who were making some small buck from their videos".
This is not the case. In fact, for last 2 years large advertisers were getting more and more unhappy and angry about digital advertising, citing the lack of transparency, fraud and lack of brand safety as their main concerns. It was brewing for a long time now.
P&G, the largest advertiser in the world, and trend-setter in general advertising, cut hundreds of millions from their digital budgets in 2017. [0]
Youtube, unlike google search engine, depends on large brands doing "brand advertising", as opposed to "performance advertising". You can't force 10000's of small businesses advertise on youtube, ROI is just not here. It's P&G, Ford, Unilever and others giants who keep the lights on in youtube offices, and giants were clearly revolting. And when they cut spend, they cut it not from youtube only, but from all digital, meaning that google mothership also hurt from their move.
So, youtube tried to save the situation, clumsily. Ads are now appearing in much smaller subset of videos, which are vettoed, and youtube jacked up the prices [1] of such inventory, to make up the lost revenue from long tail of videos.
Take into account the fact that youtube is rumored to be unprofitable or making very modest profit (due to enormous technical costs they have) and you see it more like move out of desperation than anything else.
[0] http://www.adweek.com/digital/procter-gamble-cut-140-million...
[1] https://marketingland.com/report-youtube-set-raise-ad-prices...
But I only see a loose connection between that and what happened. This was a woman driven by likes or money (hard to tell which was more important), and attempted to kill because of this.
This is more like a machine shop owner laying off people because some jobs were moving to Asia and an ex-employee shooting up the offices the next day.
Macro- and micro- economics surely played a part, but the root of the problem was in her head.
If a video is allowed on YT, why not make more money off of it?
Picking channels that are good for advertising is a service that YouTube does for advertisers.
[1] http://www.businessinsider.com/why-advertisers-are-pulling-s...
Because then advertisers have to do more work, and spend less money; doing the picking for the advertisers in a way which keeps them happy with the results is a key part of what advertisers are paying YouTube for.
> This babysitting attitude makes so many creators unhappy
The creators it makes happy are predominantly the ones that aren't supplying YouTube with content that is valuable in its main revenue-generating function.
> If a video is allowed on YT, why not make more money off of it?
So, YT should ban videos rather than demonetizing them?
However, watching online and TV coverage of the shooting where people were actually severely injured and someone died, there didn't seem to be a dearth of advertising. If advertisers don't mind being associated with death and destruction, I think that when push comes to shove advertisers care more about reaching people with ads than the content they are associated with.
Most advertisers won't mind being shown next to a major news channel, but they might mind being shown next to a gore channel, or a channel run by some more radical news organizations.
It isn't the content, it's the message. And that's a hard problem.
There's one episode of Mad Man that addresses the same problem. An employee of the ad agency ends up having to read the scripts of all TV shows in advance to select the ones that a certain advertiser wouldn't want to be associated with, for example, those referencing abortion.
Can’t blame them for not wanting to take the risk.
Maybe there's an analog to other tipping points, like price of internet service, but food seems pretty emotional and primal.
https://www.salon.com/2014/05/09/real_life_hunger_games_soar...
In the aftermath of the terrorist attack in Paris, follow up articles appeared on HN discussing the situation of poor communities on the outskirts of Paris. Although being sensitive is important and just plain human courtesy, and we should be civil, it is important for discourse to discuss the situations and circumstance surrounding such incidents.
Incidentally, today is MLK's death anniversary. After race riots in the 60's, he famously condemned them, but then said in his "The Other America" speech:
>But it is not enough for me to stand before you tonight and condemn riots. It would be morally irresponsible for me to do that without, at the same time, condemning the contingent, intolerable conditions that exist in our society. These conditions are the things that cause individuals to feel that they have no other alternative than to engage in violent rebellions to get attention. And I must say tonight that a riot is the language of the unheard.
We need to have the intellectual courage to tolerate this discussion about the situations surrounding it. While one shouldn't martyrize the shooter here, we need to be aware of the circumstances that precipitated it.
EDIT: thanks for the vital correction!
Death anniversary, not birthday. His (and my!) birthday is 1/15 which is why we celebrate MLK day on the most convenient Monday near that.
Probably not. Whenever there's a shooting, there seems to be a strong pressure to disregard the idea of addressing the shooter's motives. If anything, I expect Youtube's demonetization policies to attract more sympathy and support, since they were victimized on account of them.
Honestly I can’t figure out why anyone even cares what the motive was. Doesn’t undo the harm done. The attempt to “understand” is too close to “excusing”. Which then further motivates others to use the same methods.
Secondly, how negatively effected? They stopped paying her for her content. So what. If you buy a Google phone, does google have a right to expect you will buy the next model, and if you don’t you are ‘negatively affecting’ them?
The amount of first world entitlement in this and many other comments here is appalling.
Even were guns nationally banned, that she decided to proceed with mass murder - showing enough signs of danger far enough in advance that she was reported to & interviewed by police - there were a multitude of ways of carrying out the attack, including by buying contraband weapons. Other products are completely illegal in this country, with enormous suppression activity, yet are widely available; no reason to believe a ban would somehow render guns unobtainable via a few hundred dollars discretely exchanged in the wrong side of town.
What's pity is the victims were[0] specifically denied a right to armed self-defense, under threat of harm. She was the rare one who snapped, and in doing so violated a plethora of "reasonable restrictions" to cause grave harm; nobody seems to notice the enormous numbers likewise armed yet never harm anyone - a few happening to stop such attacks early.
[0] - summarizing, details beyond a mere comment.
Also, if you find shooting guns entertaining, you can keep doing that even in the countries with the strictest gun control laws. I lived in Australia post-1996 and still shot guns on a number of occasions.
In addition, if this truly was a mental health problem, Congress could increase funding for mental health treatment by the end of the week, Trump could sign it by the middle of next week, and we could see an increase in people getting treatment by the end of next month. The fact that we're not seeing that leads me to believe that most know this isn't as much of a mental health problem as people think.
The damage truly depends on the type of ammunition used (as well as caliber). FMJ (Full Metal Jacket) ammunition, what seems to be described in the article you referenced, is a non-expanding type of ammunition, typically causing less destruction than expanding types such as HP (Hallow Point), which flatten and expand on impact.
Muzzle velocities from a rifle are significantly higher than handguns, which does translate into more kinetic energy. The additional energies in a rifle cartridge will cause more shock damage to organs, as described in the article, however.
HP ammunition (not commonly used in rifles) is designed to be devastatingly lethal - specifically designed to leave very large wounds in the target, which have little hope of closing/repairing the wound.
In the spectrum from full rights to all weapons, to absolute gun control, allowing access to these handguns (where most wounds are survivable, there is less range, and lower magazine capacity) but restricting assault rifles (high muzzle velocities create injuries that are nearly impossible to survive, high magazine count, sometimes higher discharge rate) seems like a reasonable point to draw the line, and also complies with existing case law around the second amendment.
This would have been much, much worse with an AR15 type weapon, with likely far more deaths.
I was really shocked that she is not labeled terrorist yet! and here it is!
Not saying she should though obv, she was angry at YouTube for demonetizing her videos. That's regular YouTube drama taken to the extreme by a crazy person, not someone part of a group waging jihad on the infidels.
I should follow this up by saying I believe Youtube careers are pathetic, and shouldn't exist. Just as with Twitch, Youtube has become nothing more than a money making opportunity that is getting flooded with people who would rather deceive people than get a real job. Just people who want an easy ride begging for money. However, for those who do decide to take that route, the way Youtube flags videos absolutely impacts them. If I were making money, and my income were to be suddenly cut due to something that was entirely out of my hands yet fixable, I imagine I would be pretty jaded as well. Losing a few dollars is no reason to shoot people, this woman was just psycho. You can tell from one look at her on her site, she has the look of one.
I agree that these careers are very problematic - the point and the problem is that these are typical of many gig-economy schemes at this point and this is a problem of the whole economy, not individuals choose these activities.
"Shouldn't exist" implies others having undue power over the destiny of others. You may not like certain content, but none of your business deciding that others shouldn't see it (beyond the likes of child porn). If what one does is sufficiently valuable to others, enjoy the career.
And the murderer has enough going against her legitimately (starting with being a murderer) without disparaging her looks. Not everyone is blessed with something better than "resting bitch face".
Unless you’ve cured cancer or unlocked new physics, odds are you’re just peddling skills millions of others have and are not contributing anything terribly unique.
Just looking to get the right people on your side to scrape together a living in a different context
Would you say the same for anyone who works in video production? How about someone who was making TV shows?
