A VloggerHeads Update (Response To Myster Y1)

Well, hi, this is a response video to Mr. E. Thanks for your video. Really appreciate— I'm really appreciating the opportunity to once again try to clarify things. And it's hard to— it's hard to keep messages clear when, you know, they're— it's kind of like the game of telephone, you know, where you get a line of people and you start with You say something at one end and by the time it gets to the other end of the line, it bears no recognition of what you said at the beginning of the line. And that's human communication. That's not, you know, we're not any different than any other group of now, I don't know, 700 people. I don't know how many are actively involved, but who are communicating with one another in episodic, remote because of video, communication kinds of ways. So, you know, there is nothing unique about our ability to maintain clarity of messages. And so, you know, another good opportunity for us to communicate with you what our intent— our intents are around the issues that Mr. E raised. Let me start with the issue of YouTube videos. Now, I don't think you've heard any admin suggest that there is any prohibition or any admonition or any, any restriction on posting YouTube videos here. We've got, I just checked, like 2,164 videos that have been posted on Vloggerheads. I don't know, are 10% of them YouTube videos? Probably at least 10% of them are YouTube videos. I've posted YouTube videos here, so I— so, that's just not true. We are not suggesting that you don't post YouTube videos here. Anytime there's an embed code on a YouTube video, it's an implicit license for that video to be shared. Now, we've asked that people not do the same with Vloggerheads videos because we don't yet have the technical capability to allow the video producer to say no thank you like we can on YouTube. I don't want this video to be shared, and so that's that. So without having that technical capability, we're asking all Vloggerheads members to refrain from doing so. Secondly, the idea of playing nice. We, we, we know that blocking is something that we're all used to from YouTube and I guess from LiveVideo. I don't know, I never spent much time on LiveVideo, but we don't have that feature yet. Now, according to communication that we've had with Ning CEO Gina Bianchini, there will be a blocking function that will be rolled out by Ning sometime in either late September or early October. That'd be great. I mean, I think we all know that blocking is a part of the ways that we retain our freedom to have the kinds of relationships that we want to have with people that we want to have. And I just want to go back to this idea about treating people nice and blocking people. And, you know, having flame wars and so on. Look, we know that people are going to have disagreements. We're, we're, we're human, right? We're going to have disagreements. Now, keeping those disagreements within some boundaries of civility with one another is something we thought was a good idea to try to, uh, use as a fundamental platform for our community. Now, not everyone respects that, and so what we've said is, look, if you want to ask someone not to come into your space, your channel, your videos, your space, if you would like to ask someone not to do that because you no longer want to have the kind of, uh, whatever back and forth you're having with that person and you decided that you want to ask that person not to, uh, to not to come onto your space, then we believe you have the right to say that. Now, when you have the opportunity to block that person, you'll be able to do that much more definitively and much more clearly. And blocking, I assume— I don't know how it's going to work on Ning— but we know it essentially removes that person from your world. You don't see that person any longer. Now, You know, if somebody decides that, well, I'm going to get around this blocking and I'm going to take a YouTube video that I made and I'm going to put it on this channel and it's not really a vlogger head— well, you know, I mean, those are the kind of common sense determinations that we're going to ask people to make and that we're going to have to make if somebody chooses to use other mechanisms that are clearly designed to subvert the intent of that principle. So that's the second thing. As far as autoplay on the front page, absolutely correct, Mr. E. We've asked that people not put autoplay videos in blogs that would show up on the front page. Autoplay is a relatively simple HTML edit that people can make, and you know, again, it's kind of a It's sort of a respect thing. If I want to watch your video, I'll be happy to watch your video. If I don't want to watch your video, I don't want to feel like I'm being forced to watch your video through an autoplay. So that's our rationale there. I think it's fairly clear. Now I want to get on to this issue of a gated community and elitism because, you know, this one I think is, you know, as many times as we try to say the same thing, we're going to say it again here. Our intent is not to have a gated community. We want to have as many people who are interested in engaging in conversations with one another and vlogging on Vloggerheads as we can possibly attract and retain. That is our goal. But like every startup in the last 5 years, we are starting off with a group that is manageable, at least we're trying to keep it manageable, in order to test out the kind of functionality that we think is important to creating the kind of environment we want to create. We are not elitists. We are not intending to maintain a gated community. We are intending to have a site that is inviting and welcoming for everyone who wants to enter it. Will this entering process involve some kind of, um, verification process? Yes. Why is that? Well, because we believe that multiple anonymous accounts has led to the kinds of social problems on YouTube that we're trying to prevent on Vloggerheads. Multiple anonymous accounts, very simply, you come here, you attack me, I block you, you go off, you— we ban you, you go off, you make another account, you come back, rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat. That's not— we're not going to make that mistake. We'll make others. But we're not going to make that mistake. So the whole issue of gated community and elitism is just simply untrue. But we can't talk our way into you— into having credibility with you on this issue. We have to behave our way into it, and we will. Trust me. I know I'm asking you to trust me. We will. When we have the capacity to restrict multiple anonymous accounts. And we'll have a lot more to say about that, hope— wishfully— wishfully, uh-oh, we wish that we would have been able to have some of these mechanisms in place earlier, but unfortunately the Widget Laboratory situation created another level of complexity for us to have to manage. And again, we are not telling people that they can't talk about Vloggerheads things on YouTube. How nonsensical would it be for us to try to restrict what vloggers talk about elsewhere? I'm a blogger. I'm a vlogger. I talk about what I want to talk about where I want to talk about it. That's what we expect you to do. We're not people who live in some kind of, you know, isolated tower someplace. We've, you know, we didn't just fall off the vlogger truck, guys. We've done this. We understand what we're doing. I mean, as vloggers. We may not understand what we're doing as site administrators, but we do understand what we're doing as vloggers, and we know you do too. So it'd be crazy, ludicrous I think was the word, to have restrictions about what you could talk about and whatnot. Now, is there gonna be squabbling about that? Yeah, yeah, people squabble. Are we gonna tell you what you can't do? Not unless they go outside the confines of the very simple kind of guidelines we've tried to set for one another. Now this business of us being a support group, a support group for vloggers. It makes us— I like the Vloggers Anonymous analogy. Do we want to support vloggers? Absolutely. Absolutely. YouTube supports professional content producers. We want to support vloggers, but not in the sense that, you know, you poor vloggers, you know, you know, you're very tender sensibilities, and we want to support you in your vlogging efforts. No, we want to have a place where vloggers can thrive. Now, does that mean that it's a supportive environment for vloggers? You betcha. That's what we're trying to do, and that's hopefully what we're going to create. But please don't make it sound like, you know, we're trying to have some effete little thing going on here, because we're not. We are absolutely not. You know, I think that's about it. As far as the views are concerned about videos that are controversial and dramatic and squabbling, fine! Watch whatever you want to watch! If the number of views that a video gets is going to control the kind of content that people make in a targeted way, then some will do that. That's, you know, we've been through this business about whether or not we want view counters on our videos here. We've decided that we do, and that means that some people will use the view counters— that everybody will use the view counters according to ways that they want to use them. Feel free to do that. Please feel free to do that. Okay, so once again, you know, this business about, you know, the Golden Rule, and we do want people to— we do want people to try to treat one another as if, you know, they— as they would like to be treated, and Sometimes that doesn't happen, and hopefully, you know, we can resolve those things short of people blocking and certainly short of people being banned. But so that's really what we're trying to accomplish. And Mr. E, thanks very much for bringing up those issues. I appreciate again the opportunity to try to clarify what it is we're trying to accomplish and how we're trying to accomplish it. So keep those— everybody, please keep the videos and feedback coming, and we'll see you soon. Take it easy.