Google, Inc. likes to present itself as a champion of free speech, and is a major contributor to the Chilling Effects website, a site that documents DMCA takedown requests. But if you follow the broader copyright debate you know there’s a major flaw in Google’s empire, and that’s its video hosting site YouTube.

For years now, YouTube’s “Automated Content ID” system has erroneously taken down videos left, right and center that are completely legal, including one recent laughable case where it actually went as far as taking down a speech about copyright law that used sampled music that qualified as fair use, but previously the site has failed to recognize it has a problem.

Until now.

In a post to the YouTube support forums, a team member identified only as “Spencer” has revealed that not only is YouTube aware of the problem, it’s now actually doing something about it, and in this case that something is the creation of a human team to consider appeals to false takedowns.

According to the post:

I’ve been a member of the YouTube Policy team since 2008 and throughout that time, I’ve seen how your input has helped YouTube get better. For example, when I started on YouTube Policy, we didn’t have an appeals process for video removals. Through user feedback, we realized that we needed to establish a channel for users to alert us to our mistakes. We eventually launched an appeals form for age-restrictions, and just recently launched an appeals form for videos rejected due to policy violations. YouTube isn’t perfect, but thanks to your feedback, we are able to learn quickly and get better.

Recently, there’s been a lot of discussion about the enforcement of our policies, from video takedowns to channel demonetization. We want you to know that we monitor video takedowns very closely, and while we haven’t seen a big change in the overall rate of removals, it’s true that we do make mistakes. For this, we’re sorry and we strive to do better by you, our community.

The good news is that the feedback you’ve raised in comments and videos on YouTube and beyond is having an impact. It’s caused us to look closely at our policies and helped us identify areas where we can get better. It’s led us to create a team dedicated to minimizing mistakes and improving the quality of our actions. And it’s encouraged us to roll out some initiatives in the coming months that will help strengthen communications between creators and YouTube support. We’ll also make improvements to increase transparency into the status of monetization claims. And of course, as we work to implement these improvements as quickly as we can, we’ll continue to take your feedback seriously.

Confirmation that this is a legitimate change in policy at YouTube came via a Tweet linking to the thread from YouTube Chief Executive Officer Susan Wojcicki.

Thank you @YouTube community for all the feedback. We're listening: https://t.co/xLFmojjegI @GradeAUnderA @ChannelAwesome @IHE_OFFICIAL

— Susan Wojcicki (@SusanWojcicki) February 26, 2016

A start

While it’s great that YouTube is finally listening to its users when it comes to fake and/or false takedown requests, whether they be via the Automated Content ID system, or via DMCA submission directly with the site (a feature used by Islamic Terrorists… seriously), this is only a start, because ultimately while parent company Google talk the good talk about free speech and the chilling effects of stifling it have, YouTube is still taking these videos down to begin with; note they are legally obliged to so with DMCA requests, but they certainly are not with “matches” through the Content ID system.

As SiliconANGLE’s Mason Pelt explained back in September: “With 300+ hours of video being uploaded to YouTube every minute, I fully understand a need for an automated system to look for infringement,” before referencing how the case of a specific video he writes about “shows how easily automated takedowns could make it to suppress free speech.”

“While YouTube has no specific responsibility to uphold the first amendment right to free speech, this automated takedown system could be easily manipulated to suppress citizen journalism.”

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