"In particular if we are talking copyright claims abuse, could you give a ballpark number of the number of humans you think youtube needs to hire ?"
That's a really rough one. Not only do I not have an algorithm for a computer to determine if something is copyrighted, I don't have an algorithm for a human to determine if something is either.
Since you're probably going to be stuck with an adversarial system based on claims and counterclaims anyhow, I'd submit the problem is probably more related to a lack of symmetry. The content creators put stuff up, then there are thousands of entities that can analyze their stuff automatically and make automated claims with no apparent consequences for being wrong. The individual creator then gets notified of a claim, but they know nothing about the claimant, whether they make routine fraudulent claims, whether they have legit ownership, etc., and have to address them relatively individually, by appealing to an opaque system that tells them very little about why the ruling is what it is, and where all the penalties appear to fall on the content creator rather than the claimant.
Something needs to be a bit more symmetrical there.
This is something where a "YouTube union" might start really being dangerous to YouTube; suppose the union puts up a page where they ask all the members to record exactly what claims are made on what content, with all the (meager as it may be) metadata YouTube gives them on the claims. I betcha some patterns would emerge. (I believe there's already some word-of-mouth about certain claimants but I bet this would make it even worse for YouTube.)
Enough so that a human can review every claim. I don't know how many claims they process in a day so I can't give a hard number.
But I suspect the number of copyright claims would go down significantly once they have a bunch of people reviewing them, because the erroneous claims would become unprofitable, assuming they punish entities that make too many erroneous claims.
That could be a tenth of the planet’s working population, and we all know it. It’s not like youtube’s scale is some well kept secret.
If we are thinking about any serious solution and not some philosophical one, just throwing bodies at the issue is a no go (and would be inhumane in my opinion, I don’t want even millions of people spending their life dealing with copyright claims)
Either change the rules about who can emit claim, change how claims are emitted, change the effect of the claims so they’re not so drastic. There’s many realistic directions the issue can be taken.
If there would be a button for claiming copyright that has a checkbox above saying "I accept liability for falsely claiming copyright." the problem might fix itself after enough lawsuits?
A similar power imbalance exists between workers and employers. If the worker doesn't get paid, they face the prospect of having no money for rent, let alone suing their employer.
Happily, the Department of Labor exists and merely mentioning their name is frequently enough to scare an employer into compliance. I think a similar arrangement could probably be found to even the playing field in copyright, but finding the political willpower to get this done will probably prove difficult.
As usual, how many ?
In particular if we are talking copyright claims abuse, could you give a ballpark number of the number of humans you think youtube needs to hire ?