YouTube reportedly discouraged employees from reporting toxic content
Seems like an alarmist headline but not really very alarming when you dig into the details. First of all, this is from &quot;more than 20&quot; staffers. Out of a company of 2,800 employees and who knows how many content moderators on contract.<p>&gt; One proposal offered a way to keep content that was “close to the line” of violating policies on the platform but remove it from the recommended tab. YouTube rejected that suggestion in 2016, a former engineer said, and instead continued to recommend videos regardless of how controversial they were.<p>This does not seem like a bad thing. Why <i>should</i> videos that do not violate site policies be removed from recommended? This sort of doesn&#x27;t-break-the-rules-but-we-just-don&#x27;t-like-it kind of content discrimination is rife for abuse, and would probably cause an even bigger uproar around people&#x27;s content getting hidden for being &quot;close to the line&quot; but not across it.<p>&gt; Employees outside of the moderation team were also reportedly discouraged from searching YouTube for toxic videos, for lawyers said the company would have a bigger liability if there was proof that staffers knew and acknowledged those videos existed.<p>This one is a bit strange. Why would employees outside the moderation team seeing a toxic video result in liability? Employees outside the moderation team presumably aren&#x27;t equipped to tell which content is an isn&#x27;t violating the rules, so I guess this rule might be to curb people trying to go out and find supposedly prohibited content on their own.