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Chris Ulmer, who runs the popular YouTube channel Special Books for Special Kids, said that comments were removed from his channel despite no evidence of unacce

• flokie 8y ago
  Looks like YT wrote back to that post to say that's not true? "...Channels will not get deleted if you re-enable comments--can you send us the post where you saw that?"
  • jawns 8y ago
    Ah, thanks for pointing that out! It appears that he saw demonetization and mistook that as deletion. That said, for some channels, demonetization means effectively shutting down the channel.
    • dosshell 8y ago
      Limited Monitization Video that include minors and are at risk of predatory comments may receive limited or no ads (yellow icon). If you think we made a mistake please appeal [link]. We will continue to refine our approach in the coming weeks and months. Is misstaken as deletion? English is not my first language, but I have a hard time reading this as "we may delete your channel".
      • tw04 8y ago
        Removing monitization is as good as deletion for the content creators. Furthermore, their "appeals" process tends to be a black hole, as is basically everything at google that would require human intervention.
        • nradov 8y ago
          That's only true for "professional" content creators. The silent majority of creators don't care about monetization and won't be impacted.
          • Mirioron 8y ago
            The majority of content that is watched on Youtube is monetized and people do depend on it to some degree. If they didn't, then they wouldn't be on Youtube, because there are plenty of other services that offer you the ability to upload videos for free.
            • macintux 8y ago
              > because there are plenty of other services that offer you the ability to upload videos for free. Even without monetization, the community/discoverability benefits of YT have to be appealing. As much distaste as I have for Google, the ability to find a plurality (at least) of the content related to my area of interest in one place is quite appealing.
          • dosshell 8y ago
  • dosshell 8y ago
    YT also ask for referns so they can correct the faulty information. If i understand the twitter thread correctly, he referens that ads can decrease, and this somehow in his mind means that YT will delete his channel... Edit: In my world, that is called a lie. And well, who wants to advertize if the comments is full of pedophils?
• derefr 8y ago
  > Seems like YouTube will need to come up with some sort of "trusted subscriber" designation, and allow content creators to permit comments only from those subscribers, so that any random bad actor can't swoop in and destroy a channel. Alternately, a "trusted moderation service" designation, where you—if you think it's worth it—can pay a third-party to do the moderation that YouTube doesn't want to pay for, and YouTube can verify such third-parties as being "thorough enough" that it won't automatically nuke a channel upon report if such a verified moderator service is doing the moderating (just like they wouldn't nuke a channel upon report if they were doing the moderating.)
• deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
• tfha 8y ago
  Only KYC'd accounts can post on videos featuring children.
• Didymos 8y ago
  laowhy86 had all his video comments removed by youtube because his toddler daughter was in a couple of his videos, despite not being the focus of or even in 99% of his videos, and despite the fact that he does curate comments. He received no notice of this from youtube. He found out when one of his twitter followers pointed it out.
  • Numberwang 8y ago
    Yes it seemed like a big overreaction from Youtubes side. I enjoy his channel, so I really hope it doesn't affect the output.
    • beering 8y ago
      What's worse for YouTube? That news articles continue to be written about how they're ignoring a pedophilia problem, or some channels getting caught up in the algorithm? It sucks to be negatively affected as a content creator, but YouTube is doing what everyone has been pressuring them to do.
      • eropple 8y ago
        People are pressuring YouTube to hire and train moderators to competently and soberly evaluate context and take intelligent action. Nobody is pressuring YouTube to blow channels away because one of their ML algorithms hit a probability threshold.
        • themacguffinman 8y ago
          It's simply absurd for YouTube to manually moderate comments at the scale they currently operate. If you force them to do that, it won't be profitable, and you'll end up with YouTube blowing channels away because they can't afford to host them anyway.
          • pferde 8y ago
            So, quality instead of quantity? How horrible.
• jobu 8y ago
  On any popular video or channel the comments have always been a cesspool of hate and evil. I am glad that YouTube is finally trying to do _something_ about it, but it also seems really shitty that it took pedophiles to instigate an advertiser boycott and get them to act.
  • bilbo0s 8y ago
    Pedophiles are just the proverbial "Straw that broke the camel's back." Advertisers have always been agitating, often behind the scenes, that their ads not show up on certain channels. It's just that now that there are all these code words, out and out brazenness, and what not that undesirable people use to have their conversations on otherwise innocuous channels, the advertisers are really starting to put their collective foot down. This really is an "existential" level threat for YT. I understand the urgency. I'm just wondering if there is a better way to accomplish the same goal? Is there a way to, more directly, target undesirables?
    • Mirioron 8y ago
      Or maybe advertisers want better ad deals? They're also agitated from behind by traditional media that sees Youtube as a threat. Back during the first adpocalypse it seemed as though media organizations were threatening companies to pull out otherwise they'd be written poorly of.
  • commandlinefan 8y ago
    Gab just released a tool that permits anybody (with a browser plugin) to comment on any web page, so this will probably not only hurt legitimate users, it will not do what it's intended to either. Just like every other moral panic in history.
    • krapp 8y ago
      This isn't a moral panic, I don't know why people push that line anytime racists or pedophiles are even mildly inconvenienced. Advertisers left Youtube because people left creepy and sexually suggestive comments on some videos, and Youtube responded to preserve ad revenue. No one was clutching their pearls over this.
• hammeiam 8y ago
  > See child comments. But YouTube won't let me
• supergirl 8y ago
  > see child comments I can't, they were removed. But seriously: YT is just hiding the problem by disabling comments; pushing it under the rug.
• xfitm3 8y ago
  I might be in the minority here but I enjoy the low quality youtube comments. Most people dismiss them as cancer but the reality is a lot of people think in patterns that drive these comments. I would rather be in touch with and exposed to this rather than try to pretend it doesn’t exist. It won’t ever go away, it will just be hidden.
  • Barrin92 8y ago
    >It won’t ever go away, it will just be hidden. deplatforming is an effective strategy to reduce the spread of malicious content for several reasons, in the case of youtube because it reduces the incentive to monetize and spread harmful content. To say that you'd rather be a exposed to pedophilia in youtube comments than to remove them is a little bit like saying you'd like to stay in contact with the marburg virus.
    • Mirioron 8y ago
      I agree! Since Hacker News could also potentially be such a way to disseminate bad information we should remove all comments here too. See the problem? That's basically what you're justifying.
      • number_six 8y ago
        IGNORE ME! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMNJuSl91qY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMNJuSl91qY
      • clucas 8y ago
        There are logical stopping points on the way from "all comments should be allowed" to "no comments should be allowed." One such stopping point could be "no comments should be allowed on media with certain features that overwhelmingly tend to attract morally reprehensible comments." Another such stopping point could be "all comments should be allowed, except those which the community has decided have no merit." In fact, (almost?) all worthwhile online communities are somewhere between the two extremes you seem to advocate. They don't always call it "deplatforming," which may be where you're getting hung up, but comment moderation is everywhere, and it does work. Now, if you want to say that Youtube could handle this particular type of comment moderation in a better way, I think there are plenty of arguments to be made. But the choice isn't "all comments" or "no comments."
• pgt 8y ago
  Thanks for pointing me toward SBSK. Fair warning to others: have some napkins handy.
• endofcapital 8y ago
  This is so bizarre, so Google/Youtube is still trying to claim that they are NOT a media company, just a platform, no media, not responsible of course, but at the same time they are putting responsibility of moderating user comments ONTO THE VIDEO MAKERS themselves. This is completely hypocritical and idiotic. Youtube comments have been famous for a decade for being among the worst of the worst content on the web, and now they're going to try to just foist that cancer on channel owners and wash their hands of it? Are you kidding? Is this a joke? Is nobody in charge at Google anymore? Are they just going to keep endlessly reacting to whatever media story got the most attention last week instead of actually trying to build something new?
• hbosch 8y ago
  I only have a peripheral knowledge of Twitch, but don’t they have a similar solution to what you’re outlining here? There is a “public” channel, on major streams this is full of spam and nonsense, then a separate channel for subscribers where they can talk amongst each other. Perhaps a subscriber-only gate to comments would be a good thing. And only subscribers could read the comments, too. Channel owner is tasked with moderating the conversation or recruiting mods to do it, like any chat room or message board. Then, whatever happens in the comments becomes the channel owners responsibility.
• joe_the_user 8y ago
  So it sounds as if YouTube content creators are now in the unenviable position where they need to actively moderate the comments section for videos featuring children, and if they don't do so to YouTube's satisfaction, they could have their entire channel nuked. Is that a problem? If a run a large forum and have moderators running subforum, they either moderate comments in their subforum to my satisfaction or I "nuke" their subforum. Given that the channels can just turn comments also, I can't see a terrible burden here.
  • mixedbit 8y ago
    Popular forum software (discourse, phpbb) have good mechanism for comments moderation. For example a comment from every new user can require approval before it becomes public. YouTube doesn't seem to have such mechanism, so the moderator would need to continuously monitor the comment section.
    • Dumble 8y ago
      Youtube has this functionality: https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/7284070?hl=en https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/7284070?hl=en
  • FeepingCreature 8y ago
    Yeah but also your moderators are actually just users who don't know anything about moderation, and you didn't tell them at any point that they have to handle moderation duties.
    • joe_the_user 8y ago
      So you turn comments off and tell them if they do turn it on, they have to moderate the comments.
      • tastroder 8y ago
        Does YouTube even provide tools to let people do effective moderation nowadays? Just telling content creators that it's essentially their problem now can't be the whole solution. This reads like the typical Google response of leaving the people that fill their platform with quality without any useful feedback.
• Jenz 8y ago
  :o First time I’ve actually seen "[sic]" being used
• oliwarner 8y ago
  > YouTube content creators are now in the unenviable position where they need to actively moderate the comments section Why is that so wrong? I understand that it's often hard work. I understand that they might want to be making videos, or product-placing, or whatever it is any given creator wants to be doing, but they're the people at the hub of their own communities. They should have some responsibility over the conduct displayed there. And if they don't want that, they can host it themselves somewhere else, or disable comments. Honestly, I feel YouTube would be a lot nicer place if the standards required weren't just the channel owner's. Plenty of niches are way too happy to foster the the next /b/.
  • JohannesH 8y ago
    If youtube can determine when to delete a channel due to bad comments wouldn't they also be able to just delete the comments?
    • JulianWasTaken 8y ago
      Of course not. One requires hypothetically only noticing something afterwards, and one actively nannying in real time. "I can tell something bad happened here" is way easier.
    • oliwarner 8y ago
      Sure, but getting people to keep their bedrooms clean serves as an additional metric for YouTube. You can see who's putting in the time and effort to keep things clean, as well as another metric to rate the content they're uploading. If you upload videos of kids and you're sitting back and letting paedos write this weird shit, you probably shouldn't be making, let alone uploading videos of children. Just as if your community has an above-average number of people calling for the lynching of Muslims. Or quacks suggesting you can cure cancer with alkali diet pills. You let this stuff stick on your videos, it sticks to you and that attracts more. Pushing this onto the uploaders forces them to think about what they're doing, and whether or not they really want to build that community.
      • 8y ago
• shittyadmin 8y ago
  So did they ban comments as the headline indicates or just default disable them. Default disable seems much more reasonable to me, let creators decide if they want to moderate comments but keep them default off so family videos don't have to deal with that.