Daily Archives: September 4, 2009

Introduction 1. An ontology of user-options for control on YouTube 2. Research hypothesis, framework and methodology 2.1 Hypothesis: “Adding a user-controlled meta-moderation system to the YouTube flagging system would make it more democratic.” 2.2 Theoretical Framework 2.3 Methodology 3. YouTube’s regulation model: flagging as part of the whole 3.1 International / legal level of regulation [...]

I. Blogposts on youtube.com/blog addressing or related to flagging; Nov 13, 2008 “Flagging at YouTube: The Basics” Oct 27, 2008 “Addressing Youth Violence on YouTube” April 17, 2008 “YouTube Policy Enforcement Changes” Nov 06, 2007 “Improvements to Video Flagging System” Aug 06, 2007 “Choose Your Own Thumbnail Image” Oct 19, 2006 “Greetings from the YouTube [...]

Benkler, Yochai. “The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom” Yale University Press, 2006. boyd, danah. “Why Youth (Heart) Social Network Sites: The Role of Networked Publics in Teenage Social Life.” MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Learning – Youth, Identity, and Digital Media Volume (ed. David Buckingham). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. 2007. [...]

With this thesis I’ve tried to democratize YouTube’s flagging system by suggesting a reputation logic amongst the user community. Thus providing a platform that not only embodies the voice of the community as a whole, but also emasculates the dissident viewpoints which are variously labelled as ‘biased’, ‘ideological’ or ‘extreme’. By analyzing flagging as part [...]

Increasing the community’s commitment The change of rules is inspired by the critical feedback from (part of) the community. Addressing their issues by changing the system could means that this could build up greater loyalty amongst the community through this responsiveness. Accountability It is one thing to tap into the power of the distributed flexible [...]

Disrupting the ecology of YouTube. Although this thesis has a high hypothetical degree to it, if it were to be applied to YouTube, one of the biggest pitfalls would be that it would force many user of the YouTube community out of their comfort zone by changing the rules of the game. “We are in [...]

The model that I am describing below is an extension on existing systems and form a starting point for discussion on what would work and why. Names, labels and number indications serve this purpose and are made up and not specific to YouTube. Setting up an open protocol/standard not unlike this one would increase transparency, [...]

Democratizing a complex area such as the moderation of any social network is a “thorny terrain in which spontaneous cultural participation intersects with complicated corporate and legal interests.” (David, 2007, p.115) For not only is it their interest, it is also the company’s responsibility to uphold any legal and corporate interest. That is why I [...]

Both Digg and Wikipedia’s software architecture tries to associate expertise with community authority; the latter defined as the ability to shape the participation of others within the online space. At Slashdot, expertise and authority are more granular, valid for a short time. In the book ‘Towards Participatory Culture’, Shay David makes the point that expertise [...]

On the website www.funnyordie.com, videos are rated on a scale of 0% to 100% funny by the user community. It’s a very simple system, which shows a close resemblance to Digg, and is based on whether the viewer thinks a video is funny or not. Every use can rate a video only once by clicking [...]

“Digg is democratizing digital media” At Digg.com logged-in users can give it thumbs up to an article he/she likes and ‘digg it’, contributing to the popularity of that item. “Once a submission has earned a critical mass of Diggs, it becomes ‘popular’ and jumps to the homepage in its category. If it becomes one of [...]

An article on Wikipedia is not only created collaboratively, but also maintained that way. By users of Wikipedia, which can be divided into different types of users; Regular user levels – Anonymous users – New users – Autoconfirmed users Special user levels – Administrators – Bureaucrats – Stewards The regular user levels are appointed automatically [...]

On YouTube there is not an official hierarchy amongst user accounts, with the exception of users that are part of the Partnership Program . But this only offers the possibility to monetize videos and does not offer any privileges in the sense of favoriting. In this chapter I will briefly address some existing systems of [...]

SafeSearch is a feature in every Google/Yahoo!/Flickr account that can be turned ‘off’, on ‘moderate’ or ‘on’ by the user. By doing so, the user allows the engine to filter the content that shows up in the results. This ‘filter’ focuses on pornography and explicit sexual content. With the filter on ‘moderate’ it blocks explicit [...]

In the flagging procedures of Blip.tv, Dailymotion, Veoh and Yahoo the copyright infringement flag redirects the user to another form/instructions outside the flagging menu. 56.com, Google Video, Spike, Tudou and Youku don’t include copyright in their flagging options. Although 56.com does give the “other” option, which could serve this purpose.

One interesting finding is that in 7 out of 10 sites (with the exception of Tudou, Vimeo and Yahoo Video) the user does not need to be logged in to flag a video. In Vimeo the flagging option isn’t even visible when the user isn’t logged in. And with 56.com the option will show itself [...]

I have compared the flagging procedure of the following video sharing sites: 56.com, Blip.tv, Dailymotion, Google Video, Spike (formerly iFilm), Tudou, Veoh, Vimeo, Yahoo Video and Youku, with the flagging system on YouTube. This in order to see what implications the small differences in software has. 6.1. Categories The number of categories given ranges from [...]

It is of no surprise that a subject such as homosexuality causes these types of negative reaction, because traditionally this is a type of group that has not gotten much representation in the mass media. Over the past several decades the traditional groups, such as corporate gatekeepers, educational authorities and church leaders, have lost their [...]

Similar like Internet pioneer John Gilmore puts it (“The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.” ) the LGBT community has come up with their own ways to deal with their seemingly unwanted presence at YouTube. There are different ways in which the LGBT community and affiliates react to ‘fagging’. One way is [...]

In the previous chapter I mentioned that often the practice of flagging is not necessarily directed towards one particular video, but it is often to be found used against a certain group and/ or opinion. With this case study I will look at the side of the flagged instead of the flagger, as an addition [...]

The main cause for the issues is invisibility of the flags and the flagger towards the community, which keeps them from responding in an accurate way. So they create their own strategies to deal with falsely flagged videos by appropriating the flagging system in many different ways. Both the unauthorized use of votebotting and flagging [...]

There are three possible methods of analyzing the First Amendment: 1. The Absolutist Approach holds that the First Amendment means exactly what it says: that Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech. 2. The Categorical Approach would protect or not protect speech based on the label that is attached to the speech [...]

Another issue that takes place on YouTube is what the community calls ‘votebotting’; which is similar to flagging campaigns, except for it being done by bots and not users and it is not misusing the flagging system, but the rating system instead. Resulting in a video receiving for example 9000 one star votes in order [...]

Groups and/or persons that initiates or participates in a practice called ‘group flagging’ (also known as ‘flagging campaigns’). This is a semi-organized form of collectively flagging one specific video or account. Similar to the ‘Ego-Flagger’ there is a sense of power at play, because a lot of these types of channels list a number of [...]

There are different motivations at play when it comes to flagging practices. In my countless hours of watching YouTube movies that address or are related to flagging, I repeatedly came across similar type of movies and issues that revealed certain archetypical types of uses and users in the practice of flagging: The Classic Flagger The [...]