Senator Hawley Responds To Techdirt With A Bunch Of Nonsense And Lies About His Own Bill That He Doesn't Seem To Understand
from the you-did-the-what-for-the-who-now? dept
Hoo boy. We’ve criticized a bunch of Senator Josh Hawley’s nonsense over the past few months. After all, he’s the elite cosmopolitan “get big government out of business” Senator who is railing against elite cosmopolitans, while demanding that government get deeply involved in regulating companies. Well, not all companies. Just tech companies. It’s almost as if Hawley is deliberately picking on companies that he thinks don’t like his insane brand of politics. Anyway, while Hawley has introduced a slew of nonsensical bills targeting internet companies, the most laughable was the one that literally lays out what features certain websites can and cannot use. As we wrote in our post about it, Hawley seems to want to appoint himself the product manager of the internet.
Saagar Enjeti, a reporter for The Hill, recently sat down with Hawley, and Enjeti has posted some highlights from the interview. It’s kind of scary that this guy is a sitting US Senator, as almost everything he talks about, he demonstrates an astounding, almost comical, level of ignorance or a clearly superficial understanding. But, hilariously, Enjeti actually asks him specifically to respond to my criticism that he’s trying to appoint himself the product manager for the internet. Hawley’s response is… not good.
5/ A @techdirt columnist accused @HawleyMO of wanting to be the product manager of the internet with his proposals to ban infinite scroll, 30 min restrictions, among other things.
His counter: https://t.co/XGmKCIGbGc pic.twitter.com/Su8g3X0ayj
— Saagar Enjeti (@esaagar) September 17, 2019
Let’s write out the transcript here, because it is unbelievable. It’s so unbelievable that I don’t even think Hawley understands what his own bill says, and I’m almost wondering if he’s commenting about a different bill, introduced in the other part of Congress.
Enjeti: So I also want to talk about your SMART Act. It’s probably the most criticized foray of yours within the Big Tech debate. Among other things, you’ve proposed banning infinite scroll, autoplay, limiting users to 30 minutes a day. A Techdirt columnist said you want to appoint yourself “product manager of the internet.” What would your counter to that be?
Hawley: My counter is that parents ought to be in control of raising their children, not big tech. So parents ought to have tools and options and support. So take the thing limiting 30 minutes for apps usage. I mean parents can change that. It’s a default setting. But it gives control to parents to say, “look, these tech companies whose entire business model is focused on getting my kids addicted and then stealing, essentially, their information, and then turning around and selling it, it’s time to stop that.”
It’s time to give parents control. To say, look, if I’m comfortable with my kids online, fine, that’s the parents’ choice, and the kids’ choice. But it shouldn’t be big tech’s choice. Big tech shouldn’t be raising our children. Infinite scroll and autoplay. These are technologies, quote unquote, that Big Tech has developed, in concert with psychologists, to try to get us — and, again, especially kids and teenagers — addicted to their platforms. Why should they be able to do that without scrutiny? Why shouldn’t we give parents the ability to say “no”? It ought to be a choice, but the choice and the power of the choice ought to be in the hands of the family. Not in the hands of some Google executive.
First of all, none of this makes any sense at all. Parents already have that control. Not tech companies. Parents can block their kids from using certain services or apps or can use any number of the fairly long list of third party services to help control how much their kids use these services or their devices. Isn’t that the free market at work, Senator Hawley? Second, Hawley’s bill doesn’t actually do anything that he suggests above.
The word “parent” doesn’t even appear in the bill at all. Regarding the 30 minute limit, the bill says nothing about parents, but does say that any social media platform has to default to a limit of 30 minutes per day for all users, and while it does allow those users to alter the limit, it resets every month, and Hawley’s bill requires the services to continue to nag users. It doesn’t say that the ability to change the limit should be for parents changing things for their kids. Indeed, how hard would it be for kids to change the settings?
The same is true of the ban on autoplay and infinite scroll. Those are listed as “prohibited practices” — not “tools for parents to help their kids.” Yes, it does say that services can offer a way for users to “opt-in” to both, but says this can be accomplished by “pushing a button.” Does Senator Hawley think that kids can’t push buttons?
Also, we won’t even get into how wrong he is to argue these companies are either “stealing their information” or “turning around and selling it” (though, Senator Hawley, if they’re selling it, can you tell us where to buy it? Because it’s not actually happening. But, damn, you could really prove your point if you went out and bought that “stolen” information that you insist is for sale), but it seems worth pointing out that Hawley exempts autoplay ads from his autoplay ban. If he were really concerned about the privacy implications and the data implications of these services, then, um, wouldn’t that include ads? But, nope, Hawley’s all happy to let these companies continue autoplay if it’s for making money.
And, while I’d normally say this goes without saying, it appears to need saying based on Hawley’s own confused comments: how the hell is a bill that has the government “make choices” for you an example of “giving more choices” to parents?
Honestly, so much of Hawley’s description of his own bill actually sounds like he’s talking about an entirely different (but still dumb) bill, the one that was introduced by Rep. Goasar in the House, and which would require companies to offer content moderation tools for end users. That one, you could credibly argue, is about putting more control in the hands of end users (parents or not…).
But, really, all we’re left with here is a Senator who doesn’t seem to understand how technology works, what his own bill says or does, what it means for “big government” to meddle in private businesses, or, really, anything. How is this guy in a position of power?
Filed Under: big tech, choice, infinite scroll, josh hawley, parents, product manager, think of the children
Companies: amazon, facebook, google
Comments on “Senator Hawley Responds To Techdirt With A Bunch Of Nonsense And Lies About His Own Bill That He Doesn't Seem To Understand”
Ignorance breeds ignorance, so I assume his voter base shares his level of ignorance.
Re: Re:
It’s Missouri. All you have to do to get elected senator is have an (R) next to your name and avoid using the phrase "legitimate rape".
Re: Re: Re:
I was just in Missouri for a week and I didn’t spot a single Trump bumper sticker (and I was looking for them) and nobody was wearing a MAGA hat. Yeah, it’s a seriously backward place but those I talked with where politics came up are, despite still being vote-the-party-line Republicans, really aren’t fans of the orangutan in chief. At least not any more. Many if not most would like him to get the hell off Twitter and learn to follow scripts at speeches just so they aren’t all embarrassed on a daily basis.
Your point still stands; They all still vote for whoever has (R) net to their name, but at least they recognize stupid when they see it (even if that isn’t enough to get them to vote any other way).
Re: Re: Re: 'Despite knowing it will hurt, I will now shoot my foot.'
Your point still stands; They all still vote for whoever has (R) net to their name, but at least they recognize stupid when they see it (even if that isn’t enough to get them to vote any other way).
If anything that’s even worse. It’s problematic enough for someone to make bad choices because they don’t know that those choices are bad, but knowing they are bad and doing it anyway takes a special kind of stupidity, tribalism(but I repeat myself) and/or stubbornness.
That they may not support him overtly is meaningless if they’d still vote for him and/or support his actions in general, and if they want to stop being embarrassed by him on a regular basis, well, stop supporting him/the party that supports him.
Re: Re: Re: Re:
They just don’t wear their maga ness on their sleeves, there are a ton of em out there. Might have something to do with open carry, I dunno.
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"They all still vote for whoever has (R) net to their name, but at least they recognize stupid when they see it"
Do they, though? All your anecdote means to my mind is that Missourians are not as much into buying political merchandise.
But, of course, it doesn’t matter in practice. Whether they’re full-blooded Trumpian cult members or Republicans who begrudgingly vote for him because he’s on their team, the result is the same.
Re: Re: Re:
i Don’t know Thad.
These days those two things have a lot in commen.
And I’m not even a a democrat lol
My counter is that parents ought to be in control of raising their children, not big government.
Re: Re:
But, that takes work, requiring parents to, you know, be parents, and who has time for that?
No no, much better to force companies to shoulder that burden and blame them if anything goes wrong, allowing parents to avoid having to be ‘mean’ by setting limits or handing out punishments for any violations of those limits.
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For example, my kids aren’t allowed on Facebook, and need permission and vetting to use any other service that requires sign-up. Suddenly, Social Media isn’t as big an issue at our house.
It doesn’t matter what other parents let their kids do — if you don’t agree with the practices of an online service, DON’T USE IT. If this inconveniences you or your kids because they don’t know the latest gossip, miss some announcements about events, etc. — guess what? There’s more stuff going on in this world of ours than any single person could ever hope to accomplish. Just do something else.
If Senator Hawley really wants to make a difference, he should put forward a bill that requires online services to use publicly available APIs such that people’s data isn’t tied to a particular platform and service. Then people would have the choice to use platforms that protect their kids while still having them be interoperable with the leaky platforms everyone else is using.
'Here's my claims, and here's the site that lists their flaws.'
It would be one thing if he was just rebutting what he claimed were general criticisms, as he might be able to get away with lousy excuses and claims like that, but given it was specifically addressing TD’s coverage anyone interested is likely to come to TD to see what the fuss is about, at which point they will see the numerous explanations for why the bill is a bad idea and why his excuses fall flat in justifying it.
As attempts to defend a bill go to call this one ‘poor’ would be a bit of an understatement.
Re: 'Here's my claims, and here's the site that lists their flaw
i’m just gonna leave this here since my search-fu on finding the article i thought covering it on tech dirt failed me.
Study: 70% of Facebook users only read the headline of science stories before commenting
Saagar's face says it all
That incredulous look of "I know you are speaking English… but the words that are coming out of your mouth don’t make sense"
Re: Saagar's face says it all
Simpsons did it! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xq0XNILIYTw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDuMp2kDxos
WHAT'S an actual lie anywhere?
You headline "lie"; I read all your text, and you just gainsay — and rant.
Senator Josh Hawley (R). These days it’s hard to tell if it stands for Republican, Russian or Retard. Maybe all 3.
I guess I’ll die of old age before I can go back. 🙁
Re: 'moron', 'ditz', 'braindead buffoon'... so many other options
Please try to refrain from using ‘retard’ as an insult, there are much better ways to say that someone is blindingly stupid that don’t involve using slurs like that.
Re: Re: 'moron', 'ditz', 'braindead buffoon'... so many other option
Any that start with "R"?
Re: Re: Re: 'moron', 'ditz', 'braindead buffoon'... so many other op
Republican.
Re: Re: Re: 'moron', 'ditz', 'braindead buffoon'... so many other op
Quick check of a thesaurus site and didn’t see any single words unless you want to stretch and go with ‘ridiculous’. You could go with ‘rationally challenged’ perhaps if you’re dedicated to having an ‘r’ phrase for ‘stupid/foolish’, but at that point might be best to just drop it as a failed joke/insult.
Re: Re: Re:2 'moron', 'ditz', 'braindead buffoon'... so many othe
I actually think the term "Retarded" is used properly if he means that his thought process has been "retarded" by lack of actual thought.
Re: Re: Re: 'moron', 'ditz', 'braindead buffoon'... so many other op
Retrograde or just wRong.
Re: Re:
I’m sure you can think of ways to criticize Hawley without using a slur against an entire group of people who have nothing to do with this.
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Apologies. I don’t even think of those with Downs or other types of brain anomalies as being what I just termed. I reserve that for special cases like the senator in question.
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I thought those people wished to be called "intellectually disabled".
Also, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/retard
How do you know the author of the post wasn’t using the word as in forms 1 or 3 in the definition above?
Maybe don’t be such a snowflake?
Re: Re: Re: Re:
Well, you might note your link notes that entry 3 is usually offensive. It is considered offensive because it equates mental retardation with general stupidity. It was using the term for one afflicted with mental retardation to insult someone without mental retardation, thereby insulting those with mental retardation.
Form 1 generally applies to objects, as the application of the word retard to people is either in form 2 as a slur, or as an insult in form 3 reinforcing the idea that form 2 is a slur.
Re: Re: Re:2 Re:
Eh, we use the term "people with learning difficulties" here in the UK. Works for me.
As for "wish to be called," there’s little truth in that. What actually happens is some Ivy League scholars decide what the new politically correct term is and we’re all expected to go along with it without question. If you’re not sure how people actually wish to be described, it’s perfectly reasonable to ask them (or in the case of people less able to speak for themselves, their carers or advocates). The arrant paternalism of the PC brigade annoys me no end. Let’s not pretend they actually consult anybody on the receiving end of nomenclature choices — per people I have actually spoken to (ethnic minority folks), they don’t. And they’re bemused at the idea that they find Christmas, etc., offensive since many of them celebrate it themselves. Well, the people I spoke to do. /End rant.
Re: Re: Re:3 Re:
" What actually happens is some Ivy League scholars decide what the new politically correct term is"
Not really. What happens is that the obvious outright offensive slurs have been correctly outlawed, and then some people go a little too far the other way. So, people start pushing back against terms that can be used to bully, but the targets themselves don’t necessarily have a problem with. We’ve managed to get rid of "n*gger" in polite conversation and removed "spastic" from the names of charity shops, but some people just think the line shouldn’t end there and they need to continue the purge.
It’s silly, but it’s less a command from on high than it is busybodies getting offended for other people for no reason.
"And they’re bemused at the idea that they find Christmas, etc., offensive since many of them celebrate it themselves"
That’s because the idea is rooted firmly in Daily Mail-style lies that are intended to stoke the flames of xenophobia and hatred, rather than anything resembling reality. The idea that British Muslims are offended by Christmas isn’t bemusing, for instance, it’s a lie intended to stoke Islamophobia among people who believe tabloids over their own eyes.
Re: Re: Re:
The Russians?
subject
WHAT’S an actual lie anywhere, Maz?
You headline it; I read all your text, and you just gainsay — and rant.
Re: subject Lies?
A lies is when someone promises to leave and then comes back with a different username.
Re: Re: subject Lies?
"A lies is when someone promises to leave and then comes back with a different username."
To be fair Baghdad Bob/OOTB/Bobmail doesn’t have much of a choice there. The sock puppet one man army is all he’s got going for him given that he tends to burn any credibility of his new nicks within the first line written by any of them.
WHAT'S an actual lie anywhere
Hawley may indeed have other or more ideas than the current text! So what? There may be changes before passed.
In any case, slanting / rambling is NOT lying.
State the specific words that you claim are lies, or "Gary" will call you out.
[And yet again, comment in on prior piece, and immediately after, is BLOCKED here!
You have chutzpah accusing others of hidden tactics.]
Re: WHAT'S an actual lie anywhere
Apparently Maz prohibits long names in his pieces. Definitely NOT same as in minion pieces of late.
WAY back, he said the controls on the site are "pretty fine-grained", so I think that’s possible.
It’s certainly fact that three tries failed, then in with just "name".
And, again, since AM getting in, WHY?
Re: Re: Re:
Because you announce your intentions to spam the site like an ignorant motherfucker? Protip, maybe don’t do that?
Re: an actual lie
You promising to leave an never come back is a great example of an actual lie bro.
Re: WHAT'S an actual lie anywhere
“He May indeed have more ideas then the current text!”
Lol you can’t even lie for him without admitting his ideas need help to suck less.
Re: WHAT'S an actual lie anywhere
Irrelevant. The criticisms are regarding the current text, which Hawley does not say even might change. We are not debating a hypothetical future version of the bill but the current bill. Hawley also didn’t say that these are changes to the existing bill that he will make in the future. He’s saying that this is what the bill says now, which is clearly a lie, not a slant, because the bill says nothing like that.
I’m not entirely sure who ‘Gary’ is, but if you actually read the article, you might see that they actually do specify which words are lies. It also explains why they are lies.
That stuff about being blocked is a PRATT that I’m not going to address. Suffice to say that you’re not credible, Techdirt has good reason to block you given past and current behavior, and I have no idea what you mean by “hidden tactics” in a way that has anything to do with Hawley.
You have to understand here that by "parents", Hawley means "the government" and by "their kids" he means you.
So I guess go with this story...
And ignore that Google is currently getting taken apart on CSPAN.
Yeah… I doubt anybody cares about how badly Google is doing.
Re: The dog zoffed in the corner again
Where is your super hot blog bro?
Oh you don’t have one and just want to act like a little bitch.
Re: Re:
I haven’t watched it but I can almost guarantee that is not what happened.
More likely a bunch of senators spouted off a bunch of "feel good" statements that completely misunderstand what is actually going on and show that they are more or less technologically illiterate.
Re: So I guess go with this story...
Well, first of all, only an idiot would write a story on something that is on-going as we speak before it at least ends for the day. Writing this story now doesn’t mean they won’t report on that story later. I mean, you wrote your comment before noon; there was still plenty of time for them to address that.
Second, the fact that something is happening on CSPAN hardly means that anyone actually cares about it outside of politicians. CSPAN essentially shows everything going on in Congress if it’s public, regardless of interest from the public.
Finally, unless Techdirt is mentioned on CSPAN while Google is being taken apart, this story would probably take priority for Techdirt. After all, they have a more personal interest in it.
Actually, I’d be OK with banning infinite scroll or at the very least forcing companies to offer a numbered page alternative.
I’m sure infinite scroll seemed like a good idea to whoever thought it up, but I wonder if they ever stopped to consider that it would effectively make older content on active sites impossible to reach. Browsers weren’t designed to handle web pages that 1,000+ screens long with 3,000+ images. Even if they can handle it without crashing, nobody is going to scroll through hundreds of pages trying to find something that was posted a long time ago. If they were broken up into numbered pages, you could jump 10-20 pages at a time, or even edit the URL to jump farther back.
Then there are the times that the Javascript for the infinite scroll bugs out and stops working, usually after you’ve spent the last ten minutes scrolling down. At that point, your only recourse is to reload the page, which will probably reset the browser to the top of the page, discarding your position and causing you to say "Fuck this, it’s not worth my time trying to get back to where I was when it will probably just screw up again!"
So yeah, I’m not a fan of infinite scroll at all.
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Infinite scroll doesn’t work at all the way you think it does.
This "feature" came about with the advent of NoSQL data repositories as a substitute for a SQL database. NoSQL doesn’t paginate well if at all, instead returning a "token" representing where it last left off each time more results are asked for. Send that token back to the repo and you get the next batch of results with a new token. NoSQL also is terrible at telling you how many results there are in total so you can’t provide those little page buttons at the bottom with a "go to end" button. SQL repos can paginate very well so they don’t have this limitation.
UIs based on infinite scroll won’t keep everything at the top of the scroll forever or the browser would quickly run out of memory. Already viewed results are typically discarded as you scroll forward. Services that support backscrolling will usually keep the IDs of each entry around but discard the content itself to save memory. Then, when you scroll back, it can reload those entries by ID.
Ignoring all of that, banning a perfectly legal function ostensibly because some political hack thinks it’s "bad" but justifying it by misstating how the technology works is simply ridiculous.
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That’s a bit misleading. Infinite scroll is a design choice, there are as many ways of using data from NoSQL databases as there are SQL databases. It depends on how you program your webpage to display this data.
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No it’s not. Yes it is a design choice but there is nothing inherently bad or wrong with it. It’s no different than Microsoft putting the close window button on the right and Apple putting it on the left.
Re: Re: Re:2 Re:
I agree that the government instituting a ban on this sort of design choice is going too far, and that going for numbered pages instead of or in addition to infinite scroll isn’t that simple when dealing with NoSQL.
That said, both infinite scroll and the fact that Microsoft and Apple place the close buttons on opposite sides of the window are annoying. They should be able to do it, but they shouldn’t actually do it, IMO.
Re: Re: Re:3 Re:
Are you saying they should both put the close buttons in the center? 😛
Re: Re: Re:4 Re:
Lol!
TBH, I’m not exactly saying Microsoft or Apple necessarily should do anything. Both designs have advantages and disadvantages, and which is which depends on the user’s preferences. Maybe they should make it configurable? IDK. It’s just a pet peeve of mine since I have to do work on both because I’m a programmer.
Re: Re: Re:2 Re:
No, it’s not. It takes the exact same amount of time to move the mouse to the close button, regardless of which corner of the window it’s in.
On the other hand, if a site had page buttons, you can typically jump to the 100th page of results in about 10 clicks, or even less if you can just edit the URL to change "page=1" to "page=100". With infinite scroll you would need to scroll through 99 pages of content before reaching the 100th, which takes significantly longer than clicking page buttons.
Try going back 5-6 years on a YouTube channel that puts outs a couple videos a day and see if you still think there’s nothing bad about infinite scroll.
Re: Re: Re:3 Re:
I disagree. Moving my hand to the right, away from my body is always much faster for me than moving it to the left, towards or across my body. This goes for any activity, not just computer mice but anything.
Again, I disagree. In some cases where sites are coded poorly and it takes a while to scroll, sure, I can see that as a valid complaint. But on decently coded sites, scrolling through 99 pages is at least as fast (if not faster in some cases) as jumping pages. The only thing that would be faster is modifying the URL but not all sites are programmed with page numbers directly in the URL.
Page buttons work great for traditional mice and keyboard setups. Not so much for mobile devices where you are mostly navigating with one finger or your thumb. Page buttons on my phone are severely annoying and editing the url is worse, given the small screen real estate. Infinite scroll works better than page buttons on mobile.
Ultimately this is a design choice which is essentially someone’s personal preference. Yes it could be moderately influenced by whether it’s being designed for a desktop or mobile experience but at the end of the day, both are equally valid ways of doing the same thing. Your personal preference is fine but that doesn’t make either one inherently bad or evil.
I have. What exactly am I supposed to think is horrible about it? To me there’s no real difference in function between the two. I can either scroll really fast or jump pages. Both get me to the same spot in relatively the same amount of time. What’s more annoying to me is that there aren’t more granular search options so I don’t have to scroll or go through multiple pages at all. Just let me put in some additional filtering options so I get better results.
Re: Re: Re:4 Re:
"Moving my hand to the right, away from my body is always much faster for me than moving it to the left, towards or across my body"
Unless, of course, you’re left-handed in which case the opposite is true.
I’m not saying you’re wrong just that this is a good example of how something that seems right to one person may not be the best for everybody. Which is why the key here is to make things configurable, not to force your preference on to others.
Re: Re: Re:4 Re:
I’ve never seen a computer setup where moving the mouse to any point on the screen required moving the mouse more than an inch or two in any direction and even this normally accomplished by just moving the wrist while the arm rests on the desk. If you have to move your hand large distances to make the mouse pointer move across the screen, your mouse sucks.
Form a technical standpoint, there’s no way it can be faster to scroll through 99 pages of content, downloading the contents of each as it goes versus just downloading the contents of the ten pages or so required to get there by clicking page buttons.
Also, most people scroll a page by using the scroll wheel on the mouse, which would require them to roll it down much more than 99 times. Even using the keyboard would require them to press the End key at least 99 times, or hold it down until they reach the required page. Probably the fastest, least strenuous way to do it would be to use the auto-scroll function by clicking the middle mouse button and moving the pointer to the bottom of the screen, but few among the general public are aware of this. And they would still have to wait for all that content to load.
Ideally sites should have an option to use one or the other.
Re: Re: Re:3 Re:
"Try going back 5-6 years on a YouTube channel that puts outs a couple videos a day and see if you still think there’s nothing bad about infinite scroll."
Sounds like those guys should get better at archiving and create easy playlists for you to scroll through rather than force you to go through their entire back catalogue,.
Re: Re: Re:4 Re:
You mean playlists for each year? Each month? Each week? Why is it on the video authors to provide workarounds for YouTube’s broken system? A site that archives huge amounts of videos should provide better ways of accessing old videos. You should be able specify two dates and see a list of videos published between those dates, or at the very last, be able to specify a date to start from.
As it is now, the only standard options provided by YT are to scroll through the entire list in chronological order, either forward or reverse. And you can’t even do that with a channel’s search results. Search for something and the results aren’t presented in any logical order. You can’t refine the search results by searching again in the results. In fact, you can’t even re-search the channel without going back to the main video page for the channel.
And even the searching on the main site is slightly broken. While it usually puts the most relevant results at the top, sometimes videos that match what you searched for are hidden on the second or third page, even though they have all the words you searched for and the videos that were shown higher up in the list did not. Also, when you switch pages of results, it often lists the same videos multiple times. It’s not uncommon to see the same couple videos listed on the first page, second page, third page, etc.
Re: Re: Re:5 Re:
"You mean playlists for each year? Each month? Each week?"
Whatever works for their viewer base. Most channels I go to have playlists organised yearly, by subject, category, theme, whatever. Good ones have multiple lists so you can find what you want. YouTube can only guess as to what viewers of a particular channel want, it’s up to the admins of that channel to correct them if they have made the wrong guess.
"Why is it on the video authors to provide workarounds for YouTube’s broken system?"
Because it’s not broken. YouTube have hundreds of millions of channels, and their default setting will not work for everybody. If they imposed a certain scheme on everybody, you’d probably be here whining that they made the wrong choice.
Therefore, it’s up to the authors to provide extra service to make things more applicable to their viewership. Or, use another service that fits their needs better.
"You should be able specify two dates and see a list of videos published between those dates, or at the very last, be able to specify a date to start from."
Or, the channel you go to can do some basic admin to supplement the free hosting, free bandwidth, free marketing, free monetisation services and everything else they already get. It would be nice to have that in the UI, but if YouTube have decided that their business is better served overall by having other search option, they will do that.
"As it is now, the only standard options provided by YT are to scroll through the entire list in chronological order, either forward or reverse"
Does the "sort by" list in filter options not work for you?
"sometimes videos that match what you searched for are hidden on the second or third page, even though they have all the words you searched for"
Are you putting the words in quotes to tell them you want that specific phrase, or are you just whining that they made the wrong guess when you left it ambiguous?
You think this is a YouTube problem, but all I’m seeing is a whiny brat who can’t be bothered to use the tools provided properly and a channel that cares so little about its audience it won’t do basic archiving work.
Re: Re: Re:6 Re:
Assuming the channel properly categorized everything and didn’t accidentally omit a video or two from their lists.
How does letting me specify exactly what I want equate to YouTube guessing what I want?
How are additional search and sorting options imposing anything on anyone?
You mean the option to sort the list either by newest to oldest, or oldest to newest, like I said in my post? OK, there’s a popularity option, but that’s not going to help finding specific videos on specific dates. If there are additional filter options for each channel’s videos, you’ll have to point them out to me because I can’t find them. There are some additional filtering options when you search the entire site but not on each channel’s video page and there are no filter options when you search a channel’s videos.
Putting words in quotes doesn’t do a damn thing. It may bring some matches to the top, but YouTube will still show you some results based on popularity over ones that match exactly what you searched for. Google does the exact same thing. You can put the word in quotes, add "+" in front of them to indicate that the results MUST include those words and the search routine will still happily ignore them for a large share of its matches.
And you seem to think that YouTube should do as little work a possible and provide nothing more than the most basic tools to users while the channels’ authors should spend their time carefully curating archived lists of their old content to make up for the fact that YouTube can’t be bothered to implement a few basic search options, because somehow letting users specify that they want to see what videos a user posted in March of 2015 is somehow imposing their draconian will on the world.
Re: Re: Re:7 Re:
"Assuming the channel properly categorized everything and didn’t accidentally omit a video or two from their lists."
Which is why they should put some goddamn effort into their archiving.
"How does letting me specify exactly what I want equate to YouTube guessing what I want?"
Because you’d still whine if they omit an option you want, no matter how many options they offer?
"You mean the option to sort the list either by newest to oldest, or oldest to newest, like I said in my post?"
Along with options to sort by popularity, search relevance, rating, as well as other filter options. This is what I mean – they offer a lot of options, but you’ve found one they don’t offer so you’re whining. Then, if they gave you another option, you’d probably find another limitation and whine about that. Maybe YouTube get more ad dollars from their actual customers by not providing the options you want?
"Putting words in quotes doesn’t do a damn thing."
Yes, it does. It tells YouTube to search for that phrase as a whole, while not quoting tells it to search for words individually. I’m not sure why you’re not seeing that working.
"And you seem to think that YouTube should do as little work a possible"
Bullshit. I’m saying that the service that provides a massively reliable service for free is only going to service its actual customers (the advertisers), and that might not mesh with the demands of people who use the service to broadcast and watch content. I love the fact that you think that providing a global world-class service with nearly 100% uptime is "doing nothing" because they haven’t coded the exact options you personally want.
Re: Re: Re:8 Re:
That’s not what you said. Please try to be consistent.
Well, beyond that fact that searching by popularity and relevance do sweet FA for helping you find older videos if you don’t know what the author was making videos about a few years ago, you’ll have to point out to me where those "other" filter options are on the channel’s videos page, and the channel search results page, since I’m obviously too stupid to find them on my own. Please feel free to humiliate me by highlighting them on the following images;
https://i.ibb.co/HTjfgy1/YouTube1.png
https://i.ibb.co/dGZ39bJ/YouTube2.png
And I love how you think it’s crazy that a service that indexes millions (billions?) of videos would provide more comprehensive search tools to help people find what they want to view.
Re: Re: Re:9 Re:
"That’s not what you said. Please try to be consistent."
Where was I inconsistent?
"searching by popularity and relevance do sweet FA for helping you find older videos if you don’t know what the author was making videos about a few years ago"
Which is why it’s nice if they bother to curate their videos for you, rather than doing sod all and hoping YouTube will have done all the work for them.
Look, I agree with you that it would be nice if certain extra options were available at a more granular level. But, if they’re not then YouTube have a reason for that, and it’s not because they couldn’t be bothered. It’s either a business level decision (at a guess, advertisers pay more money for ads on new videos) or some other reason to limit time-based searches.
"And I love how you think it’s crazy that a service that indexes millions (billions?) of videos would provide more comprehensive search tools to help people find what they want to view."
No, I think it’s crazy to think that they would be offering global tools that return lower value to their customers (remember: not you) rather than hand tools to individual channels to determine how to best service each community individually. That the channel you favour has opted to ignore those tools does not mean that YouTube has done nothing.
Again, these extra search tools might be nice to have, but to categorise it as YouTube being lazy is really missing the point of what goes on behind the scenes. Especially as they do give individual channels the tools to customise their offerings for their audiences’ needs. If the channel really is pumping out so many videos that it’s difficult to impossible to find what you want using YouTube’s default settings, they should be providing that service rather than expecting YouTube to do it.
Re: Re: Re:10 Re:
While I agree that it would be nice if the video creators gave you tons of options for finding their past videos, not everyone has the time to do that. Many of them didn’t expect to turn their videos into a full-time occupation and by the time they do, they’ve amassed a pretty large collection. They spend most of their time making and editing new content.
Then there’s the issue of standardization. One channel makes playlists by year, another makes them according to seasons, another makes them according to days of the week, another makes them according to subject matter, etc.
And even if they do put in the time and effort to create curated playlists, mistakes always happen. They miss a video here and there, or put it in the wrong category.
OK, maybe it’s not laziness. I don’t know why there aren’t more search/sorting options, but it’s not like this is the first Google "product" to have this problem.
Do you remember a web site called Deja News? They were a site that archived the text-only Usenet newsgroups. They had quite powerful search options and the results would be presented in a list similar to what you’d see in a dedicated newsreader program. When sorted by date, you’d see the original messages and the replies to them. There was also an option to view the entire thread on one page. It was quite easy to find what you were looking for. Many times my news server would miss messages and I’d go to Deja News to get them.
They shut down and were bought by Google, who immediately slapped their web search interface on it, presented the results in the same format as web results, meaning that you could only see 3-4 results per page, depending on your screen size and rebranded it as Google Groups. They asked for suggestions and I suggested that they simply restore the Deja News interface rebranded with Google’s name. Of course that never happened.
Then they started hiding "similar" results, which usually meant that they would hide the initial post and show you only the replies. Then they grouped the messages in a tree display, according to which replies went to which messages, but they completely broke that by limiting the number of messages visible at one time to something like 10. You can’t display a proper tree if only some of the items are visible at any given time. Then they started obscuring email addresses, even though people already did that themselves if they didn’t want their address public. If they didn’t obscure it, it meant that they wanted people to be able to email them.
Over the years, the interface has gotten even more confusing. They did add archives of messages going back even further than Deja News, so that was good, but it became a chore to use. I used to use Deja News almost daily, but I haven’t even been to the Google Groups website in years.
To be perfectly honest, when I go to the YouTube help group, I don’t have a clue what I’m doing. I make a post about something and then it disappears into the system. I have never been able to find something I posted by browsing or searching the help group. I don’t have the faintest idea how anyone else ever sees it either. I just post and then wait to see if I get an email alert that someone has replied to me, then click the link.
I use a bunch of different forums and it always seems like the ones provided by large companies are the most confusing to use, while hobbyist sites always have simple forums that are easy to understand and follow.
I would think it would benefit everyone to give users more search options. It improves goodwill with the users, it lets users more easily find older videos of their favorite channels, it gives the channel creators more exposure of their older videos that are mostly just (figuratively) sitting there collecting dust, etc.
I’ve only ever uploaded a few videos to share privately with friends and I’ve always found their video manager interface to be kind of clunky.
Playlists aren’t always perfect. I’ve seen people put up multipart Let’s Play series for a particular game and forget to include one of the parts. Or again, they make playlists, but categorize the videos in a weird way that makes sense to them, but doesn’t to anyone else.
Since YouTube maintains the database of all the videos, they have access to the all the data. They’re the ones in the best position to offer more options. Like being able to sort the channel search results in chronological or alphabetical order. As it is now, when you search a channel’s videos, there are no sort options (second screenshot above).
Here is the playlist page for the channel The Young Turks, who have been creating videos for the past 13 years.
https://www.youtube.com/user/TheYoungTurks/playlists?view=1&flow=grid
They have page after page after page of playlists. I stopped counting after the 10th page.
Let’s say that I want to see what videos they did from seven years ago. Which playlist would that be? How does any of this help me? Are those playlists comprehensive and not just "best of" collections?
They obviously spend a lot of time and effort curating their videos, but it’s still a mess. There’s just as many playlists as other channels have videos.
You paint me as wanting unreasonable options, all I want is an option to specify what date to start viewing a channel’s videos from. Letting you jump to a specific year or specific month within a year would work too. Tumblr does this automatically, as do some of the more text-based blogging platforms.
I don’t see how having such an option, along with options to sort the channel search results by date or name, would bother or offend anyone. Other sites offer such options and nobody complains that they want less options.
Would there still be options I wish it had? Probably. Being able to specify searching only the title, description or keywords would be nice. However I see being able to search by date as being a pretty basic feature for a site that archives years worth of content. Sometimes I wish this site had that option.
Re: Re: Re:11 Re:
"not everyone has the time to do that"
If they’re making a living using the free services that YouTube provides to support their business, then yes they do have time. It’s not even that hard once you get on top of the backlog, you just have to be professional enough to remember to add things when you upload.
"Do you remember a web site called Deja News?"
I remember a lot of things that are irrelevant to modern business models and the internet at large. I might prefer the way Lycos did something, that means nothing to the websites I use now, though.
"They shut down and were bought by Google, who immediately slapped their web search interface on it"
Yes, when a business buys another business, they’re not normally interested in leaving it exactly as it was.
"I would think it would benefit everyone to give users more search options"
Including advertisers (their actual customers) who insist on having ads relevant to new videos at the expense of older ones?
"You paint me as wanting unreasonable options"
No, they’re reasonable from the point of view of a paying customer who demands what they pay for. Since neither you nor the channels you watch are paying, you have to understand that YouTube services the people who pay them, which might conflict with what you want.
Re: Re: Re:12 Re:
Or apparently in providing something that works properly. As I recall, pretty much everyone who used Deja News reacted negatively to the change in UI. And even today "Google Groups" isn’t exactly a thriving service. You could argue that Usenet in general isn’t doing so well, but that can be greatly attributed to the fact that most all major ISPs stopped providing free access as part of their accounts about a decade ago.
Google took something that worked well and broke it. They didn’t have to leave it exactly as it was, but they should have used the original site as a roadmap for how to build theirs instead of trying to adapt a UI from a completely different service.
Then YouTube should stop pretending that they care about their users.
The IMDb is the same. It started as a community project to provide movie and TV info to the masses. Now they don’t give a shit about their users. I used to contribute trivia items, goofs and user reviews to help add to the site, but I stopped when I realized that the staff regarded the users as something that had to be tolerated rather than something to be valued. Why should I help add to a site that regards me as a parasite?
Of course without content creators to attract viewers and users to view those videos, there’s no point in running the ads in the first place. So it’s not as if us non-paying users are completely irrelevant.
Re: Re: Re:13 Re:
"Google took something that worked well and broke it."
That’s a shame. Use a competitor to get your point across rather than whining that Google don’t what you specifically wanted them to do..
"I used to contribute trivia items, goofs and user reviews to help add to the site, but I stopped when I realized that the staff regarded the users as something that had to be tolerated rather than something to be valued"
Why? What changed after Amazon bought them 20 years ago? Or, are you still bitter about thing from decades prior? I know they still take such submissions, as there’s a running joke on a podcast I listen to about how specific pieces of fake trivia get added to any film they announce they’re covering the following week. So, what changed? Can you think of reasons for that?
I’ve had this conversation with someone recently about how bitter they were about the forums leaving (was that you, I wonder?). They couldn’t get it through their thick skull that it was a business decision made on the basis that the forums were expensive legacy code that Amazon no longer wished to maintain and which wasn’t worth their while rebuilding due to low usage. No, that person used it themselves, so IMDB were just evil and anti-consumer because they opted to service the majority of their customers rather than the one individual who wanted what they wanted (for free, of course, with no mind paid to how much that legacy service was costing to keep active).
"Why should I help add to a site that regards me as a parasite?"
Why do you use it at all then, instead of one of their many competitors? themoviedb.org, for example, is almost as useful, if not more so, for most purposes and you can edit what you think needs adding or changing immediately. There’s not really a trivia section as such but there’s other resources for that too, most better at fact checking than IMDB.
Sounds to me like yet another bout of "I’m not happy with a service so I’ll whine and pout about how they won’t personally serve what I want, rather than use the alternative options already available."
Re: Re: Re:
So basically it’s the result of a broken system system designed by someone who couldn’t be bothered to make it work properly. Who designs a database that doesn’t even know how many entries are in a given category and doesn’t allow a specific number of results to be requested? How is it a good idea to have a database where all you can tell it is "send me some entries" and then you have to settle for whatever the program decides to give you?
And what’s the excuse on sites like YouTube? When you press the Load More button, it always loads exactly 30 videos. Given that fact, there’s no reason they couldn’t have page buttons like they used to many years ago. Even if the system doesn’t know the total number of results so they can’t provide a button to jump to the end, they could just calculate pages based on batches of 30. Maybe this doesn’t count as true "infinite scroll" since you have to click a button each time, but there’s no other way to access older videos other than to keep loading more.
Yes, you can sort the videos in reverse date order to start with the oldest ones, but if you want to view videos from the mid point in the channel’s life, you’re going to need to scroll through dozens of pages, no matter which end of the list you start from.
Then why is that I get noticeable pauses at the bottom of each page as it loads in new content, but scrolling backwards, even all the way to the top never has any visible loading?
Re: Re:
There’s a difference between "not a fan" and "this should be legally prohibited." I don’t trust the US Congress to legislate web design patterns.
Re: Re: Re:
So if I understand you correctly, you’re not a fan of Rekrul’s post and you think it should be legally prohibited 😛
Re: Re:
The bigger issue is when they have infinite scroll content…and then stick links like ‘about’ and ‘contact us’ and ‘terms of service’ BELOW the infinite scroll. You scroll down, you see the links, you reach to click on them…and right as you’re doing that new content loads in, the links drop away right under your fingers, and you end up clicking some ad instead.
Maybe he should be writing legislation governing the behavior of parents instead of tech companies. I’m sure that would go over better.
me thinks you doeth protest too much.....
like everything you write, almost without exception, is to protect the interests of big corporate ass-ets. cutting yourself another piece of pai? how do you afford so many knee pads?
right, they pay you.
prove me wrong with actual verifiable facts. you know, like stories that defend the individual, and not the corpse. it’s not your right to enable mob rule via info sell out, and protecting the big boy’s interest. [do they give you scripts?]
I haven’t looked into hawley, so I’m not going to comment on him. BUT, YOU COULD NOT BE MORE OBVIOUS.
Re:
You have no excuse for such ignorance when the bottom of the article contains a tag for stories about Josh Hawley.
Re: me thinks you doeth protest too much.....
You mean the assets Article 17/13 are supposed to protect the interest of? Many big corporations want upload filters to stop copyright infringement, and even to bring the language of Article 17 stateside. But I’d be hard-pressed if you’ll find any of those talking points here on Techdirt, apart from quotes from politicians in the EU that are as clueless as Hawley is when it comes to technology!
Re: me thinks you don’t understand the saying
“I haven’t looked into hawley, so I’m not going to comment on him.”
Most of the time people are ashamed of being an ignorant fuckwit.
Re: me thinks you doeth protest too much.....
like everything you write, almost without exception, is to protect the interests of big corporate ass-ets.
Must be why we published pieces about how to build a better internet that takes down the big corporate companies:
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20190825/21540442853/protocols-not-platforms-technological-approach-to-free-speech.shtml
Or how about the time we mocked the big companies for their tone deaf attempts to undermine privacy rules:
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20190903/08283242910/facebook-twitter-hope-to-fix-californias-troubled-privacy-law-withmisleading-ads.shtml?threaded=false
Or the many times we’ve called out their privacy flubs:
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20190321/13060141846/facebook-screws-up-again.shtml
I think you’re thinking we’re a different site than we are.
cutting yourself another piece of pai?
I’m not even sure what this insult is supposed to mean? Are you suggesting that we’re supportive of FCC chair Pai? Or against him?
Re: Re: me thinks you doeth protest too much.....
Are you suggesting that we’re supportive of FCC chair Pai?
As an advocate of copyright as a religion, blue is promptly triggered whenever it looks like someone is trying to cut in on his corporate paymasters’ favor.
Insecurity is a dominant trait amongst copyright trolls.
Re: me thinks you doeth protest too much.....
"I haven’t looked into hawley"
So… you remain wilfully ignorant of the subject of the article you’re commenting on despite having the information immediately available linked from the article itself?
I’ll give you something, at least you announce to everybody how worthless your comments are up front.
Re: Re:
Dude, talk about clueless. Nobody on this site likes our current FCC Chairman (except paid shill commenter Richard Bennett). I think there has only been one article written by TD about something he did right that they agreed with. The fact that you seem to suggest TD is in favor of him shows you have no idea what you are talking about.
You mean like this article that you’re commenting on? The one that says people should be able to choose how they want to view the web? Or how programmers should be allowed to code their sites however they want?
Then your entire comment can be tossed as irrelevant since the entire article involves him. Since you blatantly admit you know nothing about him, you are speaking from a position of absolute ignorance.
Why don’t you provide us with actual verifiable facts to back that up. You know, like showing us how TD rights nothing but articles that praise big tech and NEVER criticize any big tech companies, such as Google, Amazon, etc… I’ll wait.
Re: me thinks you doeth protest too much.....
Yes, because Techdirt never goes after big corporations like Google, Facebook, Verizon, T-Mobile, Sprint, Spectrum, Nintendo, Microsoft, AT&T… Nope, never. /s
I have no idea where you got that from. None of us here are exactly fans of Ajit Pai. Also, that pun is terrible.
[citation needed]
Did you not read the article? Or the many articles on this subject that can be reached by clicking the tags?
Again, I don’t know where you’ve been, but Techdirt does that all the time!
I don’t think you understand what “mob rule” actually means, because it has absolutely nothing to do with selling out info or protecting big corporations. Even if they may not be completely inconsistent, they are completely unrelated concepts. “Mob rule” is more similar to “tyranny of the majority”, while corporate rule is rule by a rich minority, and selling out info is a consequence of ethics-free and regulation-free capitalism or corporate rule.
Not that Techdirt has ever promoted any of those ideas. (Again, have you read the articles here?)
Thus showing you haven’t read the article, as I suspected, which makes your point invalid. The entire article is about the specifics of things Hawley said and the legislation he, specifically, introduced. It’s not about the general idea of imposing regulations on Big Tech, protecting individuals’ privacy, or parental controls; it’s about a specific proposal and the arguments Hawley gave defending that proposal. If you don’t know anything about those specifics (which would be trivial for you to do by clicking the Hawley tag), then you don’t have enough information to draw any conclusions about this specific article.
Also, learn how capitalization and markdown work. Reading something in all lowercase is annoying, and using bold or italics is much more readable than using all-caps.
Hawley's straw-man proves he's as insane as his bills
Reporter: Your bill doesn’t make any sense. Tell me how this doesn’t make you the "product manager of the internet"?
Hawley: Let me tell you a little something about the problem with the way big tech is raising our kids today…
Me, facepalming: That’s not what he asked you! That’s not what’s happening, and your bill doesn’t even say anything about parental controls!!
Re: Not insane, dishonest
That’s not stupidity or insanity, that’s dishonesty. Rather than answer the question asked of him he shifted to answering a completely different question, one where he could control the narrative rather than the person asking him questions.
Re: Re: Not insane, dishonest
"Rather than answer the question asked of him he shifted to answering a completely different question, one where he could control the narrative rather than the person asking him questions."
Practiced by every shady politician in history, alas…as well as a few of the nominally "good" ones. Churchill stands out there.
But today it’s a lot less subtle than it once was, for which I blame Trump, after whose demented rants and tweets the bar has been significantly lowered on at what point a politician is seen as discardable by the electorate.
Re: Re: Re: 'Maybe I wasn't clear, my question was...'
That politicians do it isn’t surprising, even if it’s still sleazy, the annoying part is that those interviewing them when they do it allow them to get away with it so often.
If a politician dodges a question like that the one asking should circle right back to it and nail them to the floor until they answer it, as if the one being interviewed can steer the conversation however they want it that’s not an interview, that’s PR that someone else is paying for.
UNBELIEVABLE!!
Autoplay
Personally, I’d be FOR banning autoplay, especially ads. Penalty should be dragging and quartering for the perpetrators.
Re: Autoplay
Radarmonkey is looking at you, Chrome.
Glossary of terms
You forgot the glossary!
Parent: A government official
Child/Kid: everyone else
"stealing their information" or "turning around and selling it"
I agree the dudes a moron and his bill is idiotic. However I’ve read a million articles on here about your supposedly anonymized being sold and that with a couple of cross references it’s personally identifiable. I’m not sure why all of a sudden data being sold isn’t happening?
Re: Re:
However I’ve read a million articles on here about your supposedly anonymized being sold and that with a couple of cross references it’s personally identifiable.
Can you point to where we’ve said that? Because I’m pretty sure we’ve said the exact opposite:
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20180320/18011039462/facebook-has-many-sins-to-atone-selling-data-to-cambridge-analytica-is-not-one-them.shtml
So if you could point to one of the "million articles" that would be helpful.
Won't someone think of the children?
That’s pretty close to a canned "won’t someone think of the children?" response.
Given how little thought seems to have gone into his bill, I’m not all that surprised that he couldn’t come up with a more thoughtful response.
Re: Won't someone think of the children?
In that it is exactly a canned "won’t someone think of the children?" response, yes.
Look..
Can we just start firing people that say "quote unquote" into the Sun? The world will be a better place and I’m sure science can find some research value.
Data, what data
A lot of screed there.
Hawley is one of the two senators who I didn’t vote for. I don’t vote for Koch brother idiots. Or Alec supporters. And, that’s why he doesn’t know what’s in the bill. Or even care. As long as it degraded another rights, made it easier to do business, or made it illegal to have a dissenting opinion, he’s for it. And, now, he’s on a national stage.
How is this guy in a position of power
How is this guy in a position of power?
He’s Republican in Missouri. ‘Nuff said.