Daily Archives: September 4, 2009

Interesting is that a lot of Tubers complain that they cannot contact YouTube staff directly to state their argument on why they think their video/account was falsely flagged and appeal against YouTube’s decision. In the comments section of videos related to flagging it is often found that users falsely accuse YouTube itself of flagging their [...]

4.2.1. Anonymity & accountability: who flagged my video? Control is introduced into the relationship between the entity of YouTube and the user at the very beginning, when the user is asked to self-identify by logging-in. While this action is not required, it is rewarded by an architectural design that privileges those who do log in; [...]

In the previous chapter we could already read the issues that flagging is trying to prohibit, but now we’ll take a look at the issues that are experienced with the flagging itself by the community. 4.1. Methodology Because the YouTube community addresses each other through videos and comments, I went ahead and looked up videos [...]

In this chapter I’ve analyzed the options in the interface, legal issues (such as TOS and TOU) and interviews with and blogpost by the company itself. In order to trace which (company) intentions, TOS etc. have formed flagging. I have also showed that flagging is not merely a technical aspect, but that on both the [...]

In the previously mentioned report Mr. Walker gives a small insight of how flagged videos are reviewed by YouTube. Due to obvious reasons YouTube gives minimal information about the technical back-end of the reviewing process, but this answer given by Mr. Walker implies that there is a certain flagging queue in the process and, by [...]

A few days before the official launch Zahava Levine (Chief Counsel for YouTube) reveals in an interview with Artist House Music a few details about the technology: Well, Google is working on some proprietary technology, that it’s testing right now. That will enable.. as to extract the audio.. the visual elements of a user-uploaded video [...]

The answer is we do not proactively review in a human way— (House of Commons, 2008, Ev121: Q302 YouTube’s staff does not pre-screen the content before it has been uploaded online, in the same manner as they do after it has been flagged. “(…) a rule that would be effectively trying to pre-clear or censor [...]

A. Sexual content – graphic sexual activity – nudity – suggestive, but without nudity – other sexual content The sub-category ‘graphic sexual activity’ used to be ‘graphic sexual content’ and is defined by Google as “content which contains actual visible or implied sex acts. ” In this sub-category together with ‘nudity’ (“refers to exposed or [...]

The self-regulatory model exists of two ways for viewers/ users of YouTube to help regulate the content. They can either submit a notice of copyright infringement directly to YouTube/ Google. And they can flag videos. (…) hundreds of thousands of videos are uploaded to YouTube every day. Because it is not possible to pre-screen this [...]

The previous mentioned Notice and Takedown Policy is part of The Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act (OCILLA), which is section § 512 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). In 1998, US Congress passed OCILLA in an effort to protect service providers on the Internet from liability for the activities of its users and [...]

“On the one hand we’re not generating the content and we aim to offer a platform for free expression. On the other hand, we host the content on our servers and want to be socially responsible.” YouTube is informed by the concerns of governments around the world (House of Commons, 2008, Ev 121: Q269) and [...]

Flagging is part of the way that content is being regulated on YouTube. As an extension on the first chapter about the ontology of user-tools, I’d like to get into the aspect of control; how is this executed, who controls this user-generated content and to what extent? In this chapter I not only look at [...]

I have researched the flagging system in a bottom-up approach; starting with the software itself, talking about the overall model, how this is presented and experienced. And from there I worked my way of the platform by comparing it with other platforms. Concluding with a proposal of how I think YouTube would work more democratically [...]

Just like cultural scholars, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, depicted media fandom as an important test site for ideas about active consumption and grassroots activity (Jenkins, 2006, p.257). Cultural scholars nowadays take social networking sites as their playground to test ideas on network theory, participatory culture, collective intelligence, identity performance and more. With [...]

2.1 Research hypothesis: adding a user-controlled meta-moderation to the YouTube flagging system would make it more democratic. This thesis is a qualitative analysis of the flagging system on YouTube to see how it works now and how it would work in a more democratic way when flagging would be combined with Slashdot’s system of meta-moderation. [...]

“There are two different ways in which environmental architecture can mediate experience and exert control. One is through the site navigation, and the other is through the way in which self-directed user action is empowered or limited. While YouTube may come across as a platform that allows its users an unmediated experience, free from ideological [...]

“(Note: This document is subject to change. What moderation policy isn’t?)“ The question of what the best way is to control the content on online platforms dates back to the earliest of virtual communities, such as The Well. The existing moderation systems, such as Slashdot, Wikipedia and Digg, have been written about both in analytical [...]