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YouTube actively deletes anti CCP comments

442 points by podnami 6y ago

corrupt_measure 6y ago
From a comment tweet: "Silicon Valley believes in the technocracy non-democratic state capitalism practiced in China. They believe they should rule over America just like the ccp rules over China" While Silicon Valley's end goals are different than the CCP's it does seem that they share an appreciation for ends justifying manipulative and un-democratic means.
- viraptor 6y ago
  Anthropomorphising a region full of companies and assigning that collective some active goals seems weird. Seeing a company with multiple departments in real life should be enough to destroy that idea.
  - arghwhat 6y ago
    Anthropomorphising companies is not that weird. You could also consider a company a higher-level multi-cellular organism. Where humans have cells, companies have... Humans. It lives across several generations of its cells, continuing operation with its own self-interest in mind. I have also heard people put companies as odd forms of AI, usually in the context of paperclip maximization.
- briefcomment 6y ago
  Some of the people in charge definitely do have "grand ideas", and once you're that large, there isn't too much negative feedback to keep you grounded. Even if 99.9% of the company is reasonable and well meaning, one decision maker who gets ahead of themselves is all it takes to set an unreasonable agenda. Either we can pray for them to exercise good judgement, or take away some of their power by voting with our dollars. Competitive alternatives are hard to come by, but I think the general public is becoming more amenable to the idea that they can sacrifice some convenience and savings for civil liberties and good intentions, kept in check with healthy competition.
- shrimp_emoji 6y ago
  And it's insane because democracy and unfettered capitalism seems to be going so well for us. :v Hospitals putting emergency beds in former gift shops, states bidding for medical equipment, incentives that poison and politicize even the statistics coming from hospitals, homeless crises, richest country in the world[0] but #1 in COVID-19 cases, #12 in deaths per million and #35 in tests per million[1]... 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)#Lists https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomi... 1: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
  - dathinab 6y ago
    Well given that the US had from the beginning only a very weak/broken form of democracy you can't really blame it on that aspect. (A democratic system which enforces a two party system over time is a somewhat broken democratic system, combine this with the even more broken version of representative democracy through electors and some other slightly less democratic aspects about their law system and you have a problem sooner or later.)
    - shrimp_emoji 6y ago
      Would a direct democracy be an ideal one? I fear that would be even worse. People, as a whole, are necessarily ignorant creatures of id, and to me it seems like expecting millions of them to agree on and solve difficult, complex problems (i.e., anything costly, inconvenient, and not immediately urgent to their well-being; e.g., climate change) is just collective malpractice. xD People mean well, but they're lazy and dumb. We didn't evolve to expend frenetic effort superspecializing in all the fields you need to know about to have well-informed opinions about complex problems. We need to appeal to authorities on subjects, trust those authorities, and then do what they say. Many people fail one of those three steps. So just design the system to preclude the failure: autocratic technocracy. It's probably the most painless system in the long term by far.
      - dathinab 6y ago
        You could just have a representative democracy or similar with a system which is known to be broken on a fundamental level. Like some European countries have democratic systems which allow for a proper versatility of possible parties and the chance for new parties to be created all the times. The US on the other hand has a systems which will always converge to a two party system without any chance for any new parties. At the same time that your choice to choose your representative is massively restricted. There are a bunch of possible systems to allow a this without leading to too much fragmentation. Then there is the problem with how the "winner takes it all" is applied even before the final result is reached, there might be historical technical reasons for it but today there is no reason why any persons vote should count more then another persons vote (like it's in the US indirectly through there electors system). Then normally there should be local results given on somewhat natural zoning like cities, normal city districts or not absurdly cut area codes. But in the US this is not the case instead the zone are redone frequently and while this can be done in the interest of the public it's to often used to remove the voting power from local minorities (Gerrymandering). Then there is the think about the president seemingly being elected directly but that actually not being the case as the vote goes through electors, which basically can just change it. Even just a single elector abusing his/her power would cause a insane amount of votes to be flipped to the exact opposite. While this has historical technical reasons (which probably made sense back then) by now it serves no purpose except that if it's ever abused it will cause instability and potential civil unrest if it changes the end result of a presidential election. There is also a problem with the US ID system (like there is non) which can cause people problems when they want to vote, but I guess it might not matter to much, maybe?? Also the US president has IMHO to much power. As far as I understand the US system the president was never meant to hold to much power but and orginally didn't hold much power but by now is holding practically quite a bit more power. Through in difference to what is often believed outside of the US the US president doesn't have the complete power at all. Even through Trump said so at least on time. There are also problems with the US "check & balances" system but I don't remember them. Basically executive, juriscrative and legislative power should keep each other in balance but don't do so well. Btw. this is a problem which isn't too uncommon in democracies. This is sadly not a complete list of problems with US democracy and IMHO the main problem is still the way the system forces a two party system. Also it's not that other democracies don't have their own problems, they do. But I feel that the US need to improve on it's system or it might run into problems in the near future, I hope it's not to late. But then I guess they won't change anything until they hit a wall. (Also there are some representative democracies with elements of direct democracies which work just fine.)
- dathinab 6y ago
  Honestly for most companies it's just literally capitalism having gone out of control placing moral and human values or generally any responsibilities if possible below (long term) profit. One expectation seems to be Facebook as from what I can guess (from interviews with Mark Zuckerberg) it has a vision of how it likes the future to be and tries to force that trough. (Which is IMHO even worse and more dangerous.) So basically I believe if the US fixes their (IMHO) fundamentally broken approach to capitalism then the companies in Silicon Valy (except Facebook) will fix them self after some time.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
vuln 6y ago
Please keep upvoting. https://support.google.com/youtube/thread/19190975?hl=en https://support.google.com/youtube/thread/19190975?hl=en
- topspin 6y ago
  I thought they said they would 'fix' this. Don't tell me eliding entries from the naughty list is some enormous engineering exercise. Only a fool would believe that.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
fossuser 6y ago
YouTube claims this is an accident [0] which I find a little hard to believe. Is it crazy to think this is CCP state actors? [1] Both in the form of teams of people or bots reporting anything that they dislike to trigger Google's automation, or even just getting people hired by these companies to work on the inside for their interests. [0]: https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/26/21270290/youtube-deleting-comments-censorship-chinese-communist-party-ccp https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/26/21270290/youtube-deleting... [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Cent_Party https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Cent_Party
- dathinab 6y ago
  My guess is that someone pro CCP sneaked the keywords which trigger the deletion into a list of Chinese insults (i.e. on a list of purely offensive words). At lest one of the words found first can indeed be seen as denouncing descriptions of communism. I can't judge if it's just that or quite insulting. If this is true then the interesting question is how they sneaked it in there. From outside by social enginering? From inside by affiliated devs? Through an consultant company hired to create a list of Chinese insults? The most ironic think is that if my guess is true then it might literally have sneaked in without anyone intention by just using a list of insults from somewhere else without cross validating it.
  - free_rms 6y ago
    The "communist bandits" thing is a Taiwan vs PRC thing -- Mao was basically a bandit for like 10 years while fighting the ROC government. Or the revolutionary vanguard expropriating wealth for the people's liberation, if you'd prefer. Seems roughly equivalent to calling someone "you syrian terrorist" to me? Not sure where to calibrate it.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - catalogia 6y ago
      'Communist' is an ideological alignment. 'Syrian' is not.
trasz 6y ago
Those are not "anti-CCP comments", it's just spam. They don't convey any information or opinion.
- dathinab 6y ago
  There had been multiple previous threads on this on hackernews which show that YouTube is indeed deleting comments with certain chinese keywords which are mostly used in anti-CCP context. Furthermore YouTube comment are full of spam and YouTube doesn't delete them, so why is it that if they contain certain Chinese keywords (in Chinese) they do delete them?
  - trasz 6y ago
    I'm not sure YT doesn't delete other kinds of spam, in particular other instances of hate speech.
  - cortesoft 6y ago
    > Furthermore YouTube comment are full of spam and YouTube doesn't delete them, so why is it that if they contain certain Chinese keywords (in Chinese) they do delete them? I think this just shows their spam filtering is not perfect. They delete lots of spam, in both English and Chinese, but some slip through. Your comment seems to imply that the ONLY comments that are being deleted are the ones with the Chinese keywords. That is certainly not true. It tries to delete all spam, but the spam detection has both false negatives and false positives. That doesn't necessarily mean there is a conspiracy (doesn't mean there isn't, but provides no evidence that there is)
    - brodouevencode 6y ago
      > I think this just shows their spam filtering is not perfect. Excuse my bluntness here, but that is a very lazy excuse. A lot of comments are repeated, utter trash that span multiple channels and videos from known bad actors. Sure no spam filtering is perfect but in this case it's obvious YT has gone out of their way to handle that data differently.
- 6y ago
techntoke 6y ago
In other news, that should be front page, but doesn't follow the Google hate that Hacker News accepts as front page material: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23322719 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23322719
- phreack 6y ago
  That's unrelated. Do you think it's alright for YouTube to delete comments discussing the Wumao?
  - techntoke 6y ago
    Do you think it is okay for Hacker News to censor and rank content based on their own agendas? Shadow ban and prevent users from posting? This post is literally complaining about something that Hacker News does frequently. I couldn't even respond to this comment for over two hours with a message saying: > You're posting too fast. Please slow down. Thanks. This is what they do to people that don't follow their agenda. All the while, you can't even respond to comments on your own comment.
    - phreack 6y ago
      I asked if you support Google's actions here of removing discussion of the Wumao. Could you answer that question first?
      - techntoke 6y ago
        It depends on the context.
lancesells 6y ago
This is even more strange than the NBA tweet that started all of the controversy at the beginning of the year. Censoring messages about an arm of a government where YouTube is banned has me wondering what is going on behind closed doors.
- dcolkitt 6y ago
  I love a good conspiracy theory as much as the next guy. But isn't the most likely explanation that individual YouTube moderators have been bought off, rather than this being a policy directed by senior Google management? How hard would be for Chinese intelligence to recruit YouTube moderators, and offer them a briefcase filled with unmarked bitcoin in exchange for deleting the comments that they flagged?
  - jtms 6y ago
    Isn't bitcoin, by its very nature, "marked"? Perhaps you should change your conspiracy to use Monero or other privacy focused coins as the medium of bribery. :-)
  - koheripbal 6y ago
    > How hard would be for Chinese intelligence to recruit YouTube moderators I think it's much simpler than that. There are also just millions upon millions of very nationalistic Chinese citizens (living globally) that would happily abuse the mod button. There are Google employees... in China... that know exactly how the company works and how to game the system. Maybe they need to be "pressured" by the Chinese gov't - but I wonder if that's even necessary. Social media is rife with people who will advocate for their country for free and without being asked to.
    - yorwba 6y ago
      > abuse the mod button If someone insults them in the comments and they report it, are they even abusing the system or are they using the reporting mechanism as intended?
r721 6y ago
Recent discussions: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23317570 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23317570 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23223219 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23223219 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23221264 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23221264
- hartator 6y ago
  This one is another word.
  - dang 6y ago
    That difference isn't enough to support a significantly different discussion, so I don't think it counts as SNI (Significant New Information), which is the test we use. See past explanations at https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20%22significant%20new%20information%22&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu... The current submission is a nice test case actually. The comments here are no different than the ones in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23223219 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23223219, which had over a thousand comments and was only a week and half ago. Btw, since someone always wonders: no we're not doing this because we're communists. It's a question of curiosity and repetition not going together (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20curiosity%20repetition&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...). HN is for curiosity (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html).
    - mercer 6y ago
      However tiresome it can get, there is a value, or at least meaningful information in repetition in itself. The constant desire for 'new' can be harmful as a phenomenon. I suspect many politically unpopular bills/initiatives do pretty well on repeat, when the 'newness' of the controversy has disappeared. I do appreciate the work y'all do to keep this place nice, but I also hope you keep this in mind. I feel HN is 'influential' enough that being too ruthless about optimizing for 'new and interesting and curiosity-focused' might possibly diminish the values of HN as a spotlight/platform for important issues. I would pick the curiosity side though if I had to choose.
jialutu 6y ago
Didn't Palmer Luckey literally pay people to defame Hilary Clinton in the 2016 presidential campaign? I guess he knows all about how 50-cent army works, especially US ones. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/sep/23/oculus-palmer-luckey-funding-trump-reddit-trolls https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/sep/23/oculus-pa... Edit: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2017/03/31/oculus-rift-inventor-palmer-luckey-quits-facebook-funding-anti/ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2017/03/31/oculus-rif...
- fossuser 6y ago
  Palmer Luckey wouldn't be my symbol of anti-authoritarian either, but that's irrelevant to what YouTube is doing here.
- nailer 6y ago
  There's literally nothing in the article about defaming Hilary Clinton. The rest of the article is merely the newspaper complaining that Lucky doesn't share their politics. Edit: glad you noticed the discrepancy. The second article you added doesn't show any defamation either.
  - fossuser 6y ago
    If you're genuinely asking, Palmer Luckey gave $10k to a group that put up an anti-Hillary billboard in 2016 (with a cartoon caricature) [0]. This group was also publishing stupid pro-trump political memes. He was subsequently found out and forced by Zuckerberg to publish a letter pretending he supported Gary Johnson (a lie that Zuckerberg thought was more palatable than Luckey's Trump support). He ended up being sort of fired later because nobody wanted him on their team anymore. The best information I've read about this is in Steven Levy's new book Facebook: The Inside Story [1]. [0]: https://www.thedailybeast.com/palmer-luckey-the-facebook-near-billionaire-secretly-funding-trumps-meme-machine https://www.thedailybeast.com/palmer-luckey-the-facebook-nea... [1]: https://www.amazon.com/Facebook-Inside-Story-Steven-Levy/dp/0735213151 https://www.amazon.com/Facebook-Inside-Story-Steven-Levy/dp/...
    - 6y ago
bzb3 6y ago
Twitter censoring good, YouTube censoring bad.
guscost 6y ago
Congress should revoke immunity under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, for any online community the size of YouTube that imposes their own "code of conduct" independent of US law. This is a very controversial idea but anything else will lead to censorship, as we're seeing again and again.
- akersten 6y ago
  So you're ok with porn on YouTube? What about ISIS beheadings and recruitment? Just to be clear, that is what you are proposing.
  - guscost 6y ago
    It is exactly what I’m proposing, yes. These companies should be forced to participate in the making of laws about free speech, they should not effectively be able to decide what free speech is by fiat.
    - fossuser 6y ago
      This is both bad policy and politically untenable. It also adds noise to the discussion which detracts from the very real bad behavior that’s happening here.
      - guscost 6y ago
        I would probably call your position on this issue "noise", too, but that's unfair.
    - dahart 6y ago
      You know that porn and beheadings are already explicitly not protected speech in the US and elsewhere? You know that comment moderation on a privately owned website is both legal and protected by law, and in no way affects your free speech protections?
      - 6y ago
alexmingoia 6y ago
It’s not just those words. They’re deleting any comment with the English words “idiot communists” too.
- hartator 6y ago
  For real?
- downerending 6y ago
  This could be a new sport, a la Perl Golf: What's the most innocuous thing you can put in that will get something banned?
jjordan 6y ago
We so badly need decentralized alternatives to these services. Unfortunately I don't see anything on the immediate horizon that is up to the task.
- jhasse 6y ago
  https://joinpeertube.org/ https://joinpeertube.org/
FooBarWidget 6y ago
This claim is misleading. Youtube doesn't just delete anti-CCP comments, they also delete pro-CCP videos. For example https://twitter.com/rachw82451432/status/1265308476034519040 https://twitter.com/rachw82451432/status/1265308476034519040
koheripbal 6y ago
Google has major investments in China. Looking at "Youtube" in a bubble doesn't tell the whole story. I don't think "conspiracy theory" is correct - it's simply a private business doing what's best for itself financially. Google isn't some government institution. ...or is it?
- wongarsu 6y ago
  If the CCP says "if you delete anti-CCP content on Youtube we will act more favorably towards your other enterprises in China" and Google does just that, that's a conspiracy. I'm not so sure if that's what's going on, but it seems probable enough to consider.
  - baybal2 6y ago
    I have another explanation: Take a look at Sundar Pichai background. He grew up in a middle class family in Tamil Nadu, quite a red part of India back in seventies, and then West Bengal, an even more hard red state. Add that he been to one of IITs, which were a product of Nehruism. IITs were quite known for left slant in alumni networks in the Western states to full blown Marxism classes being taught in the east in seventies. He might have been recruited there. Remember, there are basically two flavours of communism in India. One is more or less vanilla one, and another clandestine/militant one came from China, and Nepal, with a potent Maoist spin.
    - ryanisnan 6y ago
      When you're making tinfoil hats, do you prefer name brand or generic? My wife likes to save a few cents by purchasing generic, but I am an Alcan fan, all the way.
      - baybal2 6y ago
        Saying that somebody under the influence of the left for a long time can be a secret communist is not a joke concern at all. You know, just 40-30 years ago USSR, was recruiting millions of communists in the West in the most literal sense of this word during the cold war. They were ready to launch attacks, kill, sabotage, subvert. Nothing funny. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left-wing_terrorism#History https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left-wing_terrorism#History
DiogenesKynikos 6y ago
The linked tweet complains that the phrase 五毛 (50 cents) gets deleted. Does the much-discussed 50-Cent Army even exist on non-Chinese sites? I have a hard time imagining the Chinese government finding people who speak fluent English willing to post for 50 cents a comment, and I've never run across an English-language forum where such activity was apparent. The terms "五毛" and "wumao" are usually just spammed at anyone perceived as insufficiently anti-Chinese.
MichaelMoser123 6y ago
will they also ban me if I something against the CPSU?
- MichaelMoser123 6y ago
  if youtube doesn't ban me than HN might do that, they both didn't read he prague declaration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prague_Declaration_on_European_Conscience_and_Communism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prague_Declaration_on_European...
FooBarWidget 6y ago
I think this is just a case of fighting low-quality comments rather than deliberate censoring of anti-CCP political speech. Youtube is not supporting CCP. They regularly delete videos that are even mildly supportive of CCP, for example https://twitter.com/rachw82451432/status/1265308476034519040 https://twitter.com/rachw82451432/status/1265308476034519040 Another example is the 'Fighting terrorism' documentary by CGTN, which has been deleted and reuploaded many times now. Heck, I don't even call the above examples 'pro-CCP'. They just show a different point of view that isn't anti-CCP. I see people here claiming something along the lines of: all anti-CCP comments are valuable examples of freedom of speech. But let's be honest here. Were it any nearly any other topic, people's usual opinion of Youtube comments is that it's a cesspool. While there is indeed valuable anti-CCP commentary out there, some really is not worth reading and just degrade the quality of the website.
- baybal2 6y ago
  > deleted and reuploaded many times now. I wonder, how many times did they go through their 3 strikes? With the amount of videos google banned on all of their channels should now go into hundreds. An ordinary content makers may well be banned after 1. An evident velvet glove treatment.
  - FooBarWidget 6y ago
    I don't know, maybe as a journalistic organization they have a special deal with Youtube. But if I read in between the lines of your comments, you appear to be saying that all of CGTN's videos are propaganda that should be dismissed out of hand. I don't agree with that notion. Whether you agree with their views is another story, but I do think it is valuable for their story to be at least heard.
    - bijection 6y ago
      From Wikipedia: CGTV "is an international English-language news channel based in Beijing and is also referred as a mouthpiece of Chinese government." [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CGTN_(TV_channel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CGTN_(TV_channel)
daveytea 6y ago
Before I got my pitchfork ready, I decided to test with a comment on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufrR98sR7XY&lc=UgyRmEKscwt_UgnrC-14AaABAg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufrR98sR7XY&lc=UgyRmEKscwt_U... (scroll down to highlighted comment). 9 hours later it is still there... ️
- LanguageGamer 6y ago
  Interesting. Looking at Palmer's claim: "Try saying anything negative about the 五毛, or even mentioning them at all. Your comment will last about 30 seconds and get deleted without warning or notice, CCP-censor style." This seems to be evidence against the broader claim that anything gets deleted, rather than just negative comments.
  - mgiampapa 6y ago
    I wouldn't be surprised if Google's algo has some idea of how toxic a person you are based on your previous comments. That said, I wouldn't be shocked if every comment Palmer Lucky makes is shadow-banned.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- m0skit0 6y ago
  Yeah, mine too still there. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CbV_lMS0R6U&lc=UgyIxFgZnPM8T_OK6qN4AaABAg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CbV_lMS0R6U&lc=UgyIxFgZnPM8T... This sounds like yet another anti-China thread that comes the same day as the new security law for Hong Kong (I'm sure it's just a coincidence). I wonder: does China comment on repressive laws approved in other countries? Isn't Hong Kong a part of China? Why wouldn't they approve any laws they see fit? Why are the people that are concerned about this never concerned about repressive laws approved in US-friendly countries like Turkey or Saudi Arabia or the Emirates?
socrates1998 6y ago
It's amazing to me that this isn't against a US law. An American company is actively helping spread propaganda of a hostile, foreign country. Just insane. Google's new motto should "we do what we want"
koiz 6y ago
So we're calling spam filters censorship now?
m0skit0 6y ago
Nice hypothesis. Would be a shame if someone were to test it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CbV_lMS0R6U&lc=UgyIxFgZnPM8T_OK6qN4AaABAg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CbV_lMS0R6U&lc=UgyIxFgZnPM8T...
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
shadowgovt 6y ago
"Who at Google decided to censor American comments on American videos hosted in America by an American platform that is already banned in China?" Probably no individual. There are enough Chinese pro-nationalists using YouTube to generate noticeable signal if they all, independently based on their political creed or as an organized brigade, decide to start flagging posts. Once the flagging begins, the relative rarity of the characters in question combined against the flagging signal would generate a Bayesian prior that the word in question would tend to get flagged, and would preemptively start killing those comments. This is one of the ways to train an automatic moderation system that is capable of discovering novel words the community decides are swears, and brigading is a known pathology that those systems are susceptible to.
- Vysero 6y ago
  This sounds like a reasonable conclusion to me. Anyone here work for YouTube that can confirm/deny this?
- ric2b 6y ago
  If there are so many Chinese people using YouTube their signal would behave no differently than people from other nationalities, no?
  - shadowgovt 6y ago
    It's not so much a function of how many Chinese people are using it as how many instances of the word being posted result in a comment being flagged. Intersections such as "The word is rarely used, but when it is used it happens in a political setting where someone is more likely to decide to hit the flag button" would train an ML algorithm that the word is unwelcome in general.
    - godelski 6y ago
      Couldn't you just have bot accounts that search for YT comments and key phrases and flag those? Simply enough flags results in auto removal regardless of YT's decision's on the acceptability of these words/phrases. This wouldn't be very hard to setup either.
ggggtez 6y ago
Someone below pointed out that when other random users post these phrases, their comments are not deleted. Possible alternative explanations: 1) The CCP is autoflagging comments from known anti-ccp users 2) The CCP is autoflagging comments only on chinese language videos etc... Given that this doesn't reproduce (i.e. there is a comment with this phrase up for over 9 hours) I'm skeptical of the explanation above that it's an automated system inside of YouTube's backends. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufrR98sR7XY&lc=UgyRmEKscwt_UgnrC-14AaABAg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufrR98sR7XY&lc=UgyRmEKscwt_U...
dependenttypes 6y ago
Recent and relevant https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23223219 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23223219
bobmcbobface 6y ago
Well, this is kind of horrifying.
knzhou 6y ago
I’m all ready to bring out the pitchforks, guys, but I’m confused. Didn’t we all agree literally yesterday that Facebook not doing enough to reduce division was a moral catastrophe? Isn’t deleting what hundreds of millions of people see as a foreign propaganda slogan a textbook example of reducing division? Is the rule that we should delete only what you in particular find divisive?
andarleen 6y ago
Somehow China manages to control directly or indirectly companies, individuals, and sometimes politicians, in the US on a far bigger scale than the Soviet Union did. Oddly enough on a scale even higher than under Obama.
at_a_remove 6y ago
This has been all over 4chan for a while now.
abiogenesis 6y ago
YouTube says that an error caused comments to auto-delete: https://techcrunch.com/2020/05/26/youtube-china-comments-wumao-dang/ https://techcrunch.com/2020/05/26/youtube-china-comments-wum...

442 points by podnami 6y ago

From a comment tweet: "Silicon Valley believes in the technocracy non-democratic state capitalism practiced in China. They believe they should rule over America just like the ccp rules over China" While Silicon Valley's end goals are different than the CCP's it does seem that they share an appreciation for ends justifying manipulative and un-democratic means.

viraptor 6y ago
Anthropomorphising a region full of companies and assigning that collective some active goals seems weird. Seeing a company with multiple departments in real life should be enough to destroy that idea.
- arghwhat 6y ago
  Anthropomorphising companies is not that weird. You could also consider a company a higher-level multi-cellular organism. Where humans have cells, companies have... Humans. It lives across several generations of its cells, continuing operation with its own self-interest in mind. I have also heard people put companies as odd forms of AI, usually in the context of paperclip maximization.
briefcomment 6y ago
Some of the people in charge definitely do have "grand ideas", and once you're that large, there isn't too much negative feedback to keep you grounded. Even if 99.9% of the company is reasonable and well meaning, one decision maker who gets ahead of themselves is all it takes to set an unreasonable agenda. Either we can pray for them to exercise good judgement, or take away some of their power by voting with our dollars. Competitive alternatives are hard to come by, but I think the general public is becoming more amenable to the idea that they can sacrifice some convenience and savings for civil liberties and good intentions, kept in check with healthy competition.
shrimp_emoji 6y ago
And it's insane because democracy and unfettered capitalism seems to be going so well for us. :v Hospitals putting emergency beds in former gift shops, states bidding for medical equipment, incentives that poison and politicize even the statistics coming from hospitals, homeless crises, richest country in the world[0] but #1 in COVID-19 cases, #12 in deaths per million and #35 in tests per million[1]... 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)#Lists https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomi... 1: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
- dathinab 6y ago
  Well given that the US had from the beginning only a very weak/broken form of democracy you can't really blame it on that aspect. (A democratic system which enforces a two party system over time is a somewhat broken democratic system, combine this with the even more broken version of representative democracy through electors and some other slightly less democratic aspects about their law system and you have a problem sooner or later.)
  - shrimp_emoji 6y ago
    Would a direct democracy be an ideal one? I fear that would be even worse. People, as a whole, are necessarily ignorant creatures of id, and to me it seems like expecting millions of them to agree on and solve difficult, complex problems (i.e., anything costly, inconvenient, and not immediately urgent to their well-being; e.g., climate change) is just collective malpractice. xD People mean well, but they're lazy and dumb. We didn't evolve to expend frenetic effort superspecializing in all the fields you need to know about to have well-informed opinions about complex problems. We need to appeal to authorities on subjects, trust those authorities, and then do what they say. Many people fail one of those three steps. So just design the system to preclude the failure: autocratic technocracy. It's probably the most painless system in the long term by far.
    - dathinab 6y ago
      You could just have a representative democracy or similar with a system which is known to be broken on a fundamental level. Like some European countries have democratic systems which allow for a proper versatility of possible parties and the chance for new parties to be created all the times. The US on the other hand has a systems which will always converge to a two party system without any chance for any new parties. At the same time that your choice to choose your representative is massively restricted. There are a bunch of possible systems to allow a this without leading to too much fragmentation. Then there is the problem with how the "winner takes it all" is applied even before the final result is reached, there might be historical technical reasons for it but today there is no reason why any persons vote should count more then another persons vote (like it's in the US indirectly through there electors system). Then normally there should be local results given on somewhat natural zoning like cities, normal city districts or not absurdly cut area codes. But in the US this is not the case instead the zone are redone frequently and while this can be done in the interest of the public it's to often used to remove the voting power from local minorities (Gerrymandering). Then there is the think about the president seemingly being elected directly but that actually not being the case as the vote goes through electors, which basically can just change it. Even just a single elector abusing his/her power would cause a insane amount of votes to be flipped to the exact opposite. While this has historical technical reasons (which probably made sense back then) by now it serves no purpose except that if it's ever abused it will cause instability and potential civil unrest if it changes the end result of a presidential election. There is also a problem with the US ID system (like there is non) which can cause people problems when they want to vote, but I guess it might not matter to much, maybe?? Also the US president has IMHO to much power. As far as I understand the US system the president was never meant to hold to much power but and orginally didn't hold much power but by now is holding practically quite a bit more power. Through in difference to what is often believed outside of the US the US president doesn't have the complete power at all. Even through Trump said so at least on time. There are also problems with the US "check & balances" system but I don't remember them. Basically executive, juriscrative and legislative power should keep each other in balance but don't do so well. Btw. this is a problem which isn't too uncommon in democracies. This is sadly not a complete list of problems with US democracy and IMHO the main problem is still the way the system forces a two party system. Also it's not that other democracies don't have their own problems, they do. But I feel that the US need to improve on it's system or it might run into problems in the near future, I hope it's not to late. But then I guess they won't change anything until they hit a wall. (Also there are some representative democracies with elements of direct democracies which work just fine.)
dathinab 6y ago
Honestly for most companies it's just literally capitalism having gone out of control placing moral and human values or generally any responsibilities if possible below (long term) profit. One expectation seems to be Facebook as from what I can guess (from interviews with Mark Zuckerberg) it has a vision of how it likes the future to be and tries to force that trough. (Which is IMHO even worse and more dangerous.) So basically I believe if the US fixes their (IMHO) fundamentally broken approach to capitalism then the companies in Silicon Valy (except Facebook) will fix them self after some time.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

vuln 6y ago

Please keep upvoting. https://support.google.com/youtube/thread/19190975?hl=en https://support.google.com/youtube/thread/19190975?hl=en

topspin 6y ago
I thought they said they would 'fix' this. Don't tell me eliding entries from the naughty list is some enormous engineering exercise. Only a fool would believe that.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

fossuser 6y ago

YouTube claims this is an accident [0] which I find a little hard to believe. Is it crazy to think this is CCP state actors? [1] Both in the form of teams of people or bots reporting anything that they dislike to trigger Google's automation, or even just getting people hired by these companies to work on the inside for their interests. [0]: https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/26/21270290/youtube-deleting-comments-censorship-chinese-communist-party-ccp https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/26/21270290/youtube-deleting... [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Cent_Party https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Cent_Party

dathinab 6y ago
My guess is that someone pro CCP sneaked the keywords which trigger the deletion into a list of Chinese insults (i.e. on a list of purely offensive words). At lest one of the words found first can indeed be seen as denouncing descriptions of communism. I can't judge if it's just that or quite insulting. If this is true then the interesting question is how they sneaked it in there. From outside by social enginering? From inside by affiliated devs? Through an consultant company hired to create a list of Chinese insults? The most ironic think is that if my guess is true then it might literally have sneaked in without anyone intention by just using a list of insults from somewhere else without cross validating it.
- free_rms 6y ago
  The "communist bandits" thing is a Taiwan vs PRC thing -- Mao was basically a bandit for like 10 years while fighting the ROC government. Or the revolutionary vanguard expropriating wealth for the people's liberation, if you'd prefer. Seems roughly equivalent to calling someone "you syrian terrorist" to me? Not sure where to calibrate it.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - catalogia 6y ago
    'Communist' is an ideological alignment. 'Syrian' is not.

trasz 6y ago

Those are not "anti-CCP comments", it's just spam. They don't convey any information or opinion.

dathinab 6y ago
There had been multiple previous threads on this on hackernews which show that YouTube is indeed deleting comments with certain chinese keywords which are mostly used in anti-CCP context. Furthermore YouTube comment are full of spam and YouTube doesn't delete them, so why is it that if they contain certain Chinese keywords (in Chinese) they do delete them?
- trasz 6y ago
  I'm not sure YT doesn't delete other kinds of spam, in particular other instances of hate speech.
- cortesoft 6y ago
  > Furthermore YouTube comment are full of spam and YouTube doesn't delete them, so why is it that if they contain certain Chinese keywords (in Chinese) they do delete them? I think this just shows their spam filtering is not perfect. They delete lots of spam, in both English and Chinese, but some slip through. Your comment seems to imply that the ONLY comments that are being deleted are the ones with the Chinese keywords. That is certainly not true. It tries to delete all spam, but the spam detection has both false negatives and false positives. That doesn't necessarily mean there is a conspiracy (doesn't mean there isn't, but provides no evidence that there is)
  - brodouevencode 6y ago
    > I think this just shows their spam filtering is not perfect. Excuse my bluntness here, but that is a very lazy excuse. A lot of comments are repeated, utter trash that span multiple channels and videos from known bad actors. Sure no spam filtering is perfect but in this case it's obvious YT has gone out of their way to handle that data differently.
6y ago

techntoke 6y ago

In other news, that should be front page, but doesn't follow the Google hate that Hacker News accepts as front page material: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23322719 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23322719

phreack 6y ago
That's unrelated. Do you think it's alright for YouTube to delete comments discussing the Wumao?
- techntoke 6y ago
  Do you think it is okay for Hacker News to censor and rank content based on their own agendas? Shadow ban and prevent users from posting? This post is literally complaining about something that Hacker News does frequently. I couldn't even respond to this comment for over two hours with a message saying: > You're posting too fast. Please slow down. Thanks. This is what they do to people that don't follow their agenda. All the while, you can't even respond to comments on your own comment.
  - phreack 6y ago
    I asked if you support Google's actions here of removing discussion of the Wumao. Could you answer that question first?
    - techntoke 6y ago
      It depends on the context.

lancesells 6y ago

This is even more strange than the NBA tweet that started all of the controversy at the beginning of the year. Censoring messages about an arm of a government where YouTube is banned has me wondering what is going on behind closed doors.

dcolkitt 6y ago
I love a good conspiracy theory as much as the next guy. But isn't the most likely explanation that individual YouTube moderators have been bought off, rather than this being a policy directed by senior Google management? How hard would be for Chinese intelligence to recruit YouTube moderators, and offer them a briefcase filled with unmarked bitcoin in exchange for deleting the comments that they flagged?
- jtms 6y ago
  Isn't bitcoin, by its very nature, "marked"? Perhaps you should change your conspiracy to use Monero or other privacy focused coins as the medium of bribery. :-)
- koheripbal 6y ago
  > How hard would be for Chinese intelligence to recruit YouTube moderators I think it's much simpler than that. There are also just millions upon millions of very nationalistic Chinese citizens (living globally) that would happily abuse the mod button. There are Google employees... in China... that know exactly how the company works and how to game the system. Maybe they need to be "pressured" by the Chinese gov't - but I wonder if that's even necessary. Social media is rife with people who will advocate for their country for free and without being asked to.
  - yorwba 6y ago
    > abuse the mod button If someone insults them in the comments and they report it, are they even abusing the system or are they using the reporting mechanism as intended?

r721 6y ago

Recent discussions: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23317570 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23317570 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23223219 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23223219 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23221264 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23221264

hartator 6y ago
This one is another word.
- dang 6y ago
  That difference isn't enough to support a significantly different discussion, so I don't think it counts as SNI (Significant New Information), which is the test we use. See past explanations at https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20%22significant%20new%20information%22&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu... The current submission is a nice test case actually. The comments here are no different than the ones in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23223219 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23223219, which had over a thousand comments and was only a week and half ago. Btw, since someone always wonders: no we're not doing this because we're communists. It's a question of curiosity and repetition not going together (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20curiosity%20repetition&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...). HN is for curiosity (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html).
  - mercer 6y ago
    However tiresome it can get, there is a value, or at least meaningful information in repetition in itself. The constant desire for 'new' can be harmful as a phenomenon. I suspect many politically unpopular bills/initiatives do pretty well on repeat, when the 'newness' of the controversy has disappeared. I do appreciate the work y'all do to keep this place nice, but I also hope you keep this in mind. I feel HN is 'influential' enough that being too ruthless about optimizing for 'new and interesting and curiosity-focused' might possibly diminish the values of HN as a spotlight/platform for important issues. I would pick the curiosity side though if I had to choose.

jialutu 6y ago

Didn't Palmer Luckey literally pay people to defame Hilary Clinton in the 2016 presidential campaign? I guess he knows all about how 50-cent army works, especially US ones. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/sep/23/oculus-palmer-luckey-funding-trump-reddit-trolls https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/sep/23/oculus-pa... Edit: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2017/03/31/oculus-rift-inventor-palmer-luckey-quits-facebook-funding-anti/ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2017/03/31/oculus-rif...

fossuser 6y ago
Palmer Luckey wouldn't be my symbol of anti-authoritarian either, but that's irrelevant to what YouTube is doing here.
nailer 6y ago
There's literally nothing in the article about defaming Hilary Clinton. The rest of the article is merely the newspaper complaining that Lucky doesn't share their politics. Edit: glad you noticed the discrepancy. The second article you added doesn't show any defamation either.
- fossuser 6y ago
  If you're genuinely asking, Palmer Luckey gave $10k to a group that put up an anti-Hillary billboard in 2016 (with a cartoon caricature) [0]. This group was also publishing stupid pro-trump political memes. He was subsequently found out and forced by Zuckerberg to publish a letter pretending he supported Gary Johnson (a lie that Zuckerberg thought was more palatable than Luckey's Trump support). He ended up being sort of fired later because nobody wanted him on their team anymore. The best information I've read about this is in Steven Levy's new book Facebook: The Inside Story [1]. [0]: https://www.thedailybeast.com/palmer-luckey-the-facebook-near-billionaire-secretly-funding-trumps-meme-machine https://www.thedailybeast.com/palmer-luckey-the-facebook-nea... [1]: https://www.amazon.com/Facebook-Inside-Story-Steven-Levy/dp/0735213151 https://www.amazon.com/Facebook-Inside-Story-Steven-Levy/dp/...
  - 6y ago

bzb3 6y ago

Twitter censoring good, YouTube censoring bad.

guscost 6y ago

Congress should revoke immunity under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, for any online community the size of YouTube that imposes their own "code of conduct" independent of US law. This is a very controversial idea but anything else will lead to censorship, as we're seeing again and again.

akersten 6y ago
So you're ok with porn on YouTube? What about ISIS beheadings and recruitment? Just to be clear, that is what you are proposing.
- guscost 6y ago
  It is exactly what I’m proposing, yes. These companies should be forced to participate in the making of laws about free speech, they should not effectively be able to decide what free speech is by fiat.
  - fossuser 6y ago
    This is both bad policy and politically untenable. It also adds noise to the discussion which detracts from the very real bad behavior that’s happening here.
    - guscost 6y ago
      I would probably call your position on this issue "noise", too, but that's unfair.
  - dahart 6y ago
    You know that porn and beheadings are already explicitly not protected speech in the US and elsewhere? You know that comment moderation on a privately owned website is both legal and protected by law, and in no way affects your free speech protections?
    - 6y ago

alexmingoia 6y ago

It’s not just those words. They’re deleting any comment with the English words “idiot communists” too.

hartator 6y ago
For real?
downerending 6y ago
This could be a new sport, a la Perl Golf: What's the most innocuous thing you can put in that will get something banned?

jjordan 6y ago

We so badly need decentralized alternatives to these services. Unfortunately I don't see anything on the immediate horizon that is up to the task.

jhasse 6y ago
https://joinpeertube.org/ https://joinpeertube.org/

FooBarWidget 6y ago

This claim is misleading. Youtube doesn't just delete anti-CCP comments, they also delete pro-CCP videos. For example https://twitter.com/rachw82451432/status/1265308476034519040 https://twitter.com/rachw82451432/status/1265308476034519040

koheripbal 6y ago

Google has major investments in China. Looking at "Youtube" in a bubble doesn't tell the whole story. I don't think "conspiracy theory" is correct - it's simply a private business doing what's best for itself financially. Google isn't some government institution. ...or is it?

wongarsu 6y ago
If the CCP says "if you delete anti-CCP content on Youtube we will act more favorably towards your other enterprises in China" and Google does just that, that's a conspiracy. I'm not so sure if that's what's going on, but it seems probable enough to consider.
- baybal2 6y ago
  I have another explanation: Take a look at Sundar Pichai background. He grew up in a middle class family in Tamil Nadu, quite a red part of India back in seventies, and then West Bengal, an even more hard red state. Add that he been to one of IITs, which were a product of Nehruism. IITs were quite known for left slant in alumni networks in the Western states to full blown Marxism classes being taught in the east in seventies. He might have been recruited there. Remember, there are basically two flavours of communism in India. One is more or less vanilla one, and another clandestine/militant one came from China, and Nepal, with a potent Maoist spin.
  - ryanisnan 6y ago
    When you're making tinfoil hats, do you prefer name brand or generic? My wife likes to save a few cents by purchasing generic, but I am an Alcan fan, all the way.
    - baybal2 6y ago
      Saying that somebody under the influence of the left for a long time can be a secret communist is not a joke concern at all. You know, just 40-30 years ago USSR, was recruiting millions of communists in the West in the most literal sense of this word during the cold war. They were ready to launch attacks, kill, sabotage, subvert. Nothing funny. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left-wing_terrorism#History https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left-wing_terrorism#History

DiogenesKynikos 6y ago

The linked tweet complains that the phrase 五毛 (50 cents) gets deleted. Does the much-discussed 50-Cent Army even exist on non-Chinese sites? I have a hard time imagining the Chinese government finding people who speak fluent English willing to post for 50 cents a comment, and I've never run across an English-language forum where such activity was apparent. The terms "五毛" and "wumao" are usually just spammed at anyone perceived as insufficiently anti-Chinese.

MichaelMoser123 6y ago

will they also ban me if I something against the CPSU?

MichaelMoser123 6y ago
if youtube doesn't ban me than HN might do that, they both didn't read he prague declaration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prague_Declaration_on_European_Conscience_and_Communism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prague_Declaration_on_European...

FooBarWidget 6y ago

I think this is just a case of fighting low-quality comments rather than deliberate censoring of anti-CCP political speech. Youtube is not supporting CCP. They regularly delete videos that are even mildly supportive of CCP, for example https://twitter.com/rachw82451432/status/1265308476034519040 https://twitter.com/rachw82451432/status/1265308476034519040 Another example is the 'Fighting terrorism' documentary by CGTN, which has been deleted and reuploaded many times now. Heck, I don't even call the above examples 'pro-CCP'. They just show a different point of view that isn't anti-CCP. I see people here claiming something along the lines of: all anti-CCP comments are valuable examples of freedom of speech. But let's be honest here. Were it any nearly any other topic, people's usual opinion of Youtube comments is that it's a cesspool. While there is indeed valuable anti-CCP commentary out there, some really is not worth reading and just degrade the quality of the website.

baybal2 6y ago
> deleted and reuploaded many times now. I wonder, how many times did they go through their 3 strikes? With the amount of videos google banned on all of their channels should now go into hundreds. An ordinary content makers may well be banned after 1. An evident velvet glove treatment.
- FooBarWidget 6y ago
  I don't know, maybe as a journalistic organization they have a special deal with Youtube. But if I read in between the lines of your comments, you appear to be saying that all of CGTN's videos are propaganda that should be dismissed out of hand. I don't agree with that notion. Whether you agree with their views is another story, but I do think it is valuable for their story to be at least heard.
  - bijection 6y ago
    From Wikipedia: CGTV "is an international English-language news channel based in Beijing and is also referred as a mouthpiece of Chinese government." [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CGTN_(TV_channel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CGTN_(TV_channel)

daveytea 6y ago

Before I got my pitchfork ready, I decided to test with a comment on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufrR98sR7XY&lc=UgyRmEKscwt_UgnrC-14AaABAg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufrR98sR7XY&lc=UgyRmEKscwt_U... (scroll down to highlighted comment). 9 hours later it is still there... ️

LanguageGamer 6y ago
Interesting. Looking at Palmer's claim: "Try saying anything negative about the 五毛, or even mentioning them at all. Your comment will last about 30 seconds and get deleted without warning or notice, CCP-censor style." This seems to be evidence against the broader claim that anything gets deleted, rather than just negative comments.
- mgiampapa 6y ago
  I wouldn't be surprised if Google's algo has some idea of how toxic a person you are based on your previous comments. That said, I wouldn't be shocked if every comment Palmer Lucky makes is shadow-banned.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
m0skit0 6y ago
Yeah, mine too still there. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CbV_lMS0R6U&lc=UgyIxFgZnPM8T_OK6qN4AaABAg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CbV_lMS0R6U&lc=UgyIxFgZnPM8T... This sounds like yet another anti-China thread that comes the same day as the new security law for Hong Kong (I'm sure it's just a coincidence). I wonder: does China comment on repressive laws approved in other countries? Isn't Hong Kong a part of China? Why wouldn't they approve any laws they see fit? Why are the people that are concerned about this never concerned about repressive laws approved in US-friendly countries like Turkey or Saudi Arabia or the Emirates?

socrates1998 6y ago

It's amazing to me that this isn't against a US law. An American company is actively helping spread propaganda of a hostile, foreign country. Just insane. Google's new motto should "we do what we want"

koiz 6y ago

So we're calling spam filters censorship now?

m0skit0 6y ago

Nice hypothesis. Would be a shame if someone were to test it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CbV_lMS0R6U&lc=UgyIxFgZnPM8T_OK6qN4AaABAg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CbV_lMS0R6U&lc=UgyIxFgZnPM8T...

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

shadowgovt 6y ago

"Who at Google decided to censor American comments on American videos hosted in America by an American platform that is already banned in China?" Probably no individual. There are enough Chinese pro-nationalists using YouTube to generate noticeable signal if they all, independently based on their political creed or as an organized brigade, decide to start flagging posts. Once the flagging begins, the relative rarity of the characters in question combined against the flagging signal would generate a Bayesian prior that the word in question would tend to get flagged, and would preemptively start killing those comments. This is one of the ways to train an automatic moderation system that is capable of discovering novel words the community decides are swears, and brigading is a known pathology that those systems are susceptible to.

Vysero 6y ago
This sounds like a reasonable conclusion to me. Anyone here work for YouTube that can confirm/deny this?
ric2b 6y ago
If there are so many Chinese people using YouTube their signal would behave no differently than people from other nationalities, no?
- shadowgovt 6y ago
  It's not so much a function of how many Chinese people are using it as how many instances of the word being posted result in a comment being flagged. Intersections such as "The word is rarely used, but when it is used it happens in a political setting where someone is more likely to decide to hit the flag button" would train an ML algorithm that the word is unwelcome in general.
  - godelski 6y ago
    Couldn't you just have bot accounts that search for YT comments and key phrases and flag those? Simply enough flags results in auto removal regardless of YT's decision's on the acceptability of these words/phrases. This wouldn't be very hard to setup either.

ggggtez 6y ago

Someone below pointed out that when other random users post these phrases, their comments are not deleted. Possible alternative explanations: 1) The CCP is autoflagging comments from known anti-ccp users 2) The CCP is autoflagging comments only on chinese language videos etc... Given that this doesn't reproduce (i.e. there is a comment with this phrase up for over 9 hours) I'm skeptical of the explanation above that it's an automated system inside of YouTube's backends. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufrR98sR7XY&lc=UgyRmEKscwt_UgnrC-14AaABAg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufrR98sR7XY&lc=UgyRmEKscwt_U...

dependenttypes 6y ago

Recent and relevant https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23223219 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23223219

bobmcbobface 6y ago

Well, this is kind of horrifying.

knzhou 6y ago

I’m all ready to bring out the pitchforks, guys, but I’m confused. Didn’t we all agree literally yesterday that Facebook not doing enough to reduce division was a moral catastrophe? Isn’t deleting what hundreds of millions of people see as a foreign propaganda slogan a textbook example of reducing division? Is the rule that we should delete only what you in particular find divisive?

andarleen 6y ago

Somehow China manages to control directly or indirectly companies, individuals, and sometimes politicians, in the US on a far bigger scale than the Soviet Union did. Oddly enough on a scale even higher than under Obama.

at_a_remove 6y ago

This has been all over 4chan for a while now.

abiogenesis 6y ago

YouTube says that an error caused comments to auto-delete: https://techcrunch.com/2020/05/26/youtube-china-comments-wumao-dang/ https://techcrunch.com/2020/05/26/youtube-china-comments-wum...