Friday, August 25, 2017

Google Has Built an Automated AI Censor

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

I figure a free market alternative solution is in the offing.

Pastorius said...

You do? Based upon what?

Anonymous said...

I admit it is primarily my optimism and belief in the near infinite creativity of the American people.

But consider this: just how profitable is You Tube? That is a murky subject and Google doesn't admit much. I don't believe it makes much profit at all. The costs are enormous and the entire business model is paid advertising. Not exactly a recipe for huge success.

I personally believe that YT is a loss leader and the demonetization has an underhanded purpose: to let the parent keep more of the operating revenue while pretending to police "hate speech."

Believe it or not there are a number of alternatives out there. None of them are anywhere near YT...yet. But remember Myspace? That was the big thing before Faceborg came out of nowhere and it blew it out of the water. Remember when Blackberry was the only phone in town?

Things can change quickly and YT, and Google for that matter, don't have a whole lot of diversity in their business model.

Pastorius said...

Anonymous, you write -
But consider this: just how profitable is You Tube? That is a murky subject and Google doesn't admit much. I don't believe it makes much profit at all. The costs are enormous and the entire business model is paid advertising. Not exactly a recipe for huge success.

I respond - Well, there is TV, by which I mean, TV makes HUGE profits all on advertising.

Anonymous said...

Actually TV makes huge profits on subscription packages. CNN can afford to alienate all but its core anti-Trump audience because advertising revenues make up only 1/3 of their revenue stream. The other 2/3 come from royalty payments from the cable cartels. Paid by people who never watch the channel.

The days when advertising ruled the roost are long gone. That was back when there were four or five network and independent stations in most big city markets. Cable blew that model to smithereens. And it has done nothing but further atomize since.

To be effective now advertising has to be laser targeted and total gross advertising budgets can only get so big. This is why the tech monsters are all trying to cozy up to big government because long term survival means harvesting the Washington money tree and buying a political protection racket like the cable cartels do.

Unfortunately for them the wizards of tech went all in on HRC last fall. Oops! They forgot the first thing DJT, and every other Wharton grad, learned first week of B school: diversify, diversify, diversify! It pays to cultivate friends on all sides.

Pastorius said...

I see what you mean.

The answer is we need to break up the semi-Monopolies of the Cable companies.

Anonymous said...

A couple more points:

1) The death of cable has been greatly exaggerated. They still own the cable. And they can make you pay for it. I have three connections (home, remote office, and main office) plus necessary redundancies. I pay more for cable access than I pay to power, heat, and cool these locations every month. Even in summer.

2) So I am helping pay the salaries of the Trump haters at CNN despite the fact that I don't watch or even own a television.

3) Google / YT infrastructure consists of server farms and they have no general financial leverage over their users. It's take it or leave it.

4) Cable is initially more expensive to install than server farms but maintenance is a whole other story. It costs an incredible amount of money to operate a server farm in energy and cooling.

5) So it makes more sense for Google to use it's A/I skills to match YT advertisers to content videos rather than police YT to protect their users from "hate speech".

6) So politics, not profit, is the overriding motive and that orientation will, in time, bring down any going concern no matter how big.

7) Then there is the anti-trust. I was in business school when Ma Bell was busted up and nobody thought it could be done. If Google insists that content providers like Diamond and Silk constitute a danger because they promote a politician they like...well it simply isn't justifiable.

Pastorius said...

You have a good point. I will have to think about this.

I am not sure CNN gets money when people subscribe to a Cable company for purposes of getting an internet line.

Cable companies provide three services:

1) phone lines

2) TV

3) internet lines

I let go of the phone and the TV and I think I am VERY FAR FROM ALONE IN THIS.

All my "TV watching" is Netflix and Amazon Prime.

Most of that is anti-Conservative shit too, but it doesn't feed CNN/MSNBC/Fox News AT ALL.

Anonymous said...

My cable providers are limited so I am stuck with Comcast and WOW. Revenues being fungible I am paying into a pool of money that is harvested in part by the anchor tenants of the cable subscription cartels. It may be different where you are, I don't know.

Just remember though there are many providers in name only but only a few actual underlying carriers. They lease the same infrastructure on a private label basis. So the big players are still really in control.

Also, I DO NOT want to see this go the anti-trust route because gov't will fuck that up either way. However anti-trust is better than the Google / government crony partnership that AlphaBet is working to create. Had HRC won there would be no stopping that outcome.