(…) hundreds of thousands of videos are uploaded to YouTube every day. Because it is not possible to pre-screen this much content, we have developed an innovative and reliable community policing system that involves our users in helping us enforce YouTube’s standards. Millions of users report potential violations of our Community Guidelines by selecting the “Flag” link while watching videos.
But if one would read this thoroughly, it says that they’re not able to pre-screen “thousands ” of videos. But they are able to review/moderate those “millions” reported potential violations. In other words, they are actually openly admitting here that their flagging system is flawed. And that while the emphasis of the self-regulation part of the model is based on flagging, as will become clear in the responds of Mr. Walker and the company’s blog.
“Many of our solutions are in fact worldwide. We have a variety of different tools, from the global flagging to the global review teams that we have in place, to an increasing emphasis on filtering tools which are designed to block and remove inappropriate videos.” (House of Commons, 2008, Ev121: Q268) In respond to the question [Q308] whether somebody has got to flag a video before it is taken down, Mr. Walker answers that it is an important part of the way the material comes down.
Q299 Philip Davies: How many people do you employ to monitor what is going on? You have said that you get hundreds of thousands of things a day being put on there. How many people do you employ to monitor what gets put up there?
Mr. Walker: It is a variety of different teams that are working on it. Our primary focus is on the tools and the development of something that facilitates what I think is actually the industry leading responsiveness on the speed of review. If we are reviewing more than 50% of the things within half an hour, the large majority within an hour, the queues are short. The challenge is not so much the review teams but in making sure that we have identified the things quickly. It comes back to the earlier point that was made about how to enhance community flagging. How do we enhance that process and potentially empower the community itself to be able to identify and remove material and suspend the appearance of material pending review? (House of Commons, 2008, Ev 121)
In answer to the question “how many people YouTube employs to look at stuff that is flagged as offensive” (House of Commons, 2008, Ev121: Q323, 324, 325), Mr. Walker says it’s impossible for him to sort out the people who are doing the physical review from the people who are engineers. He was accordingly asked to supply the Committee with further information, which has been supplied in confidence according to the report. The answer was also withheld when Jeffrey Rosen asked the question for his NYT article “Google’s Gatekeepers”, but he was allowed to walk around the YT office in San Bruno passing “one 20-something YouTube employee after another — all sitting in cubicles and wearing the same unofficial uniform of T-shirt and jeans. The internal reviewers were identifiable, [he] was told, only by the snippets of porn flickering on their laptops.”
The idea of a 20-something with a laptop in San Bruno (or anywhere else, for that matter) interpreting community guidelines for tens of millions of users might not instill faith in YouTube’s vetting process. But the most controversial user flags or requests from foreign governments make their way up the chain of command to the headquarters of Google, in Mountain View, Calif., where they may ultimately be reviewed by Wong, McLaughlin and Walker. (Rosen, 2008)
The feature of moderating video content by the use of video flagging was announced on August 11th, 2005 on the companies’ blog. Moderating other users is a feature that was announced in a blogpost on December 14th, 2005 where YouTube introduced the ability to block/report other users.
Flagging is one of the options given to users to react/ respond to any video on YouTube. The others being: share it, favorite it, add to playlist, comment on it either in text or with a video response and rate it. None of these options (with the exception of ‘flagging’ and ‘commenting’) are moderated by the YouTube staff. In the beginning there were five reasons the user was asked to choose from when flagging a video. More than two years later , these were changed into six categories (adding ’spam’) and subdivided into 17 different subcategories . After a video has been flagged, it will be reviewed by the YouTube staff or, as they say on their blog:
We will aggressively monitor these submissions and respond as quickly as we can.
Two blogposts in October address and explain how the flagging system works;
How Flagging Works
(…) A video gets ‘flagged’ by a user clicking on the ‘flag as inappropriate’ [this later changed into 'flag'] link located below each video. Once a video is flagged, it is sent into a queue for our customer support team to review. Videos are NEVER automatically removed simply because they’ve been flagged. Every single flagged video is reviewed by someone at YouTube who then determines if the video contains material that is against our terms of use. You may have noticed that sometimes you’re asked to login or register to verify your age because the video you’re attempting to view may contain content that is inappropriate for some users. Sometimes flagged videos that we review do abide by our terms of use, but are not quite appropriate for all YouTube users. This could be due to a number of things – profanity, violence, adult content etc. Although they still abide by our terms of use, you can think of these videos as ‘R’ rated.
There are thousands of videos that are flagged for review every single day, and since we’re still a small company with an even smaller team of people reviewing videos we do admittedly make mistakes at times. Occasionally a video gets flagged and we accidentally take it down, or mark it as inappropriate. We’re doing everything we can to diminish that margin of error but we would be lying if we said it’s a 100% fail proof system. (…)
The fact that it is not an automated process is again being mentioned on November 6th, 2007. When they write about the improvements they’ve made in the flagging system to make “the video flagging system consistent, fair and less mysterious.”
“When users flag a video, it is reviewed by real-life humans at YouTube who check to see if the video should be removed, age-restricted or left alone.”
A small change has been made and announced on Oct 27, 2008, when YouTube replaced “minors fighting” with “youth violence.” In this post they also mention the flagging system as a way for the user to communicate with the YouTube staff and emphasize the role that the user has in making flagging work as a tool of regulating the content on YouTube. After that they repeat what they have said before about their strive for transparency about their policies and that they see the blog as one way to do so;
Think of the Guidelines and the flagging pull-down menu as part of our ongoing conversation with you. We give you a structure that makes it easier for you to talk to us, and you become the eyes and ears of the site. Of course, the best conversations are never static, and the same is true about this one. We’re always reviewing our Guidelines and the flagging categories to make sure they reflect what you see on the site.
The new flag is part of a larger, continuous effort here at YouTube to keep the community safe for all of our members. But we can’t do it alone.
Literally.
With 13 hours of video uploaded every minute, we need you to be our first line of defense against content that violates our Community Guidelines, and we’ll keep doing all we can to make doing your part clear and easy.
We’re committed to having transparent, effective policies and to helping you understand them through blog posts like this.
A reminder about the system was given on November 13, 2008 with the blogpost “Flagging at YouTube: The Basics.” in which they shortly address what the flagging is for, what are the rules, how-to flag and how they respond to it.
On June 24th, 2006 YouTube commented on a bug in their comment code that was being exploited by several users. Maryrose of The YouTube Team explains the situation, apologizes, addresses the users in question and explains a part of the YouTube philosophy:
(…) To all of our users who have been abusing comments with flagrant spamming, hate speech and other malicious activities – this behavior will simply not be tolerated on our site. If you engage in such activity be forewarned your account will be deleted and you will be permanently banned without warning. YouTube is a place for everyone to express themselves. It is meant to be a creative, entertaining and democratic environment. Let’s not allow a few bad apples spoil the bunch.
Maryrose and Mia of the YouTube staff join together on October 19th with a blogpost directed at the YouTube community. In which they address the subject of discrimination towards “sexual orientation or weight or looks or skin color” in comments, without using the word ‘discrimination’ specifically. YouTube makes it quite clear on their blog, they wish to be a democratic environment where everyone is accepted. Recently however they’ve softened up by making changes in their policy enforcement. As of April 16, 2008 they’re working with “strikes that expire” and “muting accounts” instead of banning users permanently and deleting accounts.