Monday, August 11, 2008

Will VloggerHeads be better?

The worst thing about YouTube is the Orwellian way in which people disappear.

The second worst thing is the way YouTube removes videos without giving a reason.

“Inappropriate content” is not a reason; it’s roughly equivalent to saying “for some reason.” If a video gets removed, obviously it must have been removed because of the content, since the user had no choice in the first place about the form of the video. (YouTube rejects a video immediately if the form is unacceptable – e.g. if the video is too long – and always converts the video to flash format, not something the user has a choice about.) Any other reason (e.g. a copyright issue) is really a special case of “inappropriate content” (since e.g. it is inappropriate to post content that infringes on someone’s copyright). YouTube has a few special cases, and the rest are “inappropriate content,” which essentially says, “This video was removed for some other reason, and we’re too busy to put the reason into words.”

There are a lot of other bad things about YouTube – obviously not bad enough to outweigh the good things, or I wouldn’t still be on YouTube – but those two are the big ones. So here’s my question: is it going to be any better on VloggerHeads? From what I’ve heard so far, I worry that it is going to be even worse.

No comments: