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YouTube is not getting rid of it's hit/miss auto-generated captions. Here's an instance from this year where the auto-generator thought people were saying slurs

YouTube is not getting rid of it's hit/miss auto-generated captions. Here's an instance from this year where the auto-generator thought people were saying slurs, but they weren't: https://twitter.com/thetomska/status/1222197520891334656 https://twitter.com/thetomska/status/1222197520891334656

bthrkekenene 6y ago
I mean in that example the language is kind of okay. With the new Supreme Court nomination gay marriage and abortion are on their way to being banned again which is a relief.
segfaultbuserr 6y ago
> the auto-generator thought people were saying slurs, but they weren't I'm sympathetic towards YouTube on this particular issue. I clearly remember that there was an early time when a lot of slurs were filtered from YouTube's auto-generator output to prevent such incidents, and then there were some furious complaints about how YouTube censors words in the caption. For example, see [0], and note how the comments are overwhelmingly negative, "Is YouTube becoming a kindergarten now?", "Haven't you got the latest dictionary of Newspeak?", "The age of snowflakes", yet no one realized the serious technical problem of incorrectly identifying words as slur. And now many word filters on auto-generator output have been lifted as the system became more reliable, then we get some furious complaints about how YouTube incorrectly identifies words as slurs. I think there has been a similar accusation that claims Google removes negative keywords for certain politicians from its search recommendations. But a quick test could confirm that it was true even for convicted criminals. Same reason - incorrectly recommending negative keywords about living persons would be a serious incident. [0] Youtube are Censoring the word BULLSHIT https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHvkEPL7mVA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHvkEPL7mVA
- MaxBarraclough 6y ago
  What's the point in the system censoring these words in the subtitles, if the words are uncensored in the source audio?
  - segfaultbuserr 6y ago
    Inadvertently censoring slurs from all subtitles with the intention of removing slurs from automatically-generated subtitles due to concerns on their correctness could be a persuadable explanation. BTW, I don't know whether the word filter was used on all subtitles or only automatic ones, so I'm limiting my scope of discussion strictly on automatically-generated subtitles.
  - filoleg 6y ago
    The point is to avoid false positives for autogenerated captions, since false positives are what's damaging about allowing slurs in autogenerated captions, not slurs in captions in general. For example, imagine there is a video where someone says a slur and the system transcribes that slur without censoring. If you detected it correctly (true positive), then everything is fine. However, if there was no slur and you detected it as a slur (false positive), it is a big problem. Imagine watching some video talking about perfume, the narrator says something like "the smell lingers for a while", and the transcription code thinks it got the n-word instead of "lingers". It would be disastrous. Now imagine there is a censoring system in place for slurs. What it does, it simply gets rid of false positives at the root by completely removing them from the list of possible words to autogenerate, thus guaranteeing that situations like the one I brought up above could never happen. So now, if it is a true positive that nets a slur word, it just gets rid of that word. PR disaster avoided. "Censorship", in this case, is just a very unfortunate side-effect of solving that problem I described above. As long as they don't censor those words in manually created captions, I am totally ok with it, because then the burden of a false positive is on the person who wrote the captions. I.e., if google doesn't ban "true positive slur" scenarios in manually generated captions, imo it is a reasonable and understandable compromise.
    - scrollaway 6y ago
      Censoring (as in bleeping) doesn't prevent the damage. It's like a phone autocorrecting "duck" to "f*ck". Putting a star there doesn't undo the "damage" of getting it wrong. Autocorrects solve this by omitting the word from their dictionary altogether, so if a false positive happens it's from duck to luck, not duck to something censored.

bthrkekenene 6y ago

I mean in that example the language is kind of okay. With the new Supreme Court nomination gay marriage and abortion are on their way to being banned again which is a relief.

segfaultbuserr 6y ago

> the auto-generator thought people were saying slurs, but they weren't I'm sympathetic towards YouTube on this particular issue. I clearly remember that there was an early time when a lot of slurs were filtered from YouTube's auto-generator output to prevent such incidents, and then there were some furious complaints about how YouTube censors words in the caption. For example, see [0], and note how the comments are overwhelmingly negative, "Is YouTube becoming a kindergarten now?", "Haven't you got the latest dictionary of Newspeak?", "The age of snowflakes", yet no one realized the serious technical problem of incorrectly identifying words as slur. And now many word filters on auto-generator output have been lifted as the system became more reliable, then we get some furious complaints about how YouTube incorrectly identifies words as slurs. I think there has been a similar accusation that claims Google removes negative keywords for certain politicians from its search recommendations. But a quick test could confirm that it was true even for convicted criminals. Same reason - incorrectly recommending negative keywords about living persons would be a serious incident. [0] Youtube are Censoring the word BULLSHIT https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHvkEPL7mVA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHvkEPL7mVA

MaxBarraclough 6y ago
What's the point in the system censoring these words in the subtitles, if the words are uncensored in the source audio?
- segfaultbuserr 6y ago
  Inadvertently censoring slurs from all subtitles with the intention of removing slurs from automatically-generated subtitles due to concerns on their correctness could be a persuadable explanation. BTW, I don't know whether the word filter was used on all subtitles or only automatic ones, so I'm limiting my scope of discussion strictly on automatically-generated subtitles.
- filoleg 6y ago
  The point is to avoid false positives for autogenerated captions, since false positives are what's damaging about allowing slurs in autogenerated captions, not slurs in captions in general. For example, imagine there is a video where someone says a slur and the system transcribes that slur without censoring. If you detected it correctly (true positive), then everything is fine. However, if there was no slur and you detected it as a slur (false positive), it is a big problem. Imagine watching some video talking about perfume, the narrator says something like "the smell lingers for a while", and the transcription code thinks it got the n-word instead of "lingers". It would be disastrous. Now imagine there is a censoring system in place for slurs. What it does, it simply gets rid of false positives at the root by completely removing them from the list of possible words to autogenerate, thus guaranteeing that situations like the one I brought up above could never happen. So now, if it is a true positive that nets a slur word, it just gets rid of that word. PR disaster avoided. "Censorship", in this case, is just a very unfortunate side-effect of solving that problem I described above. As long as they don't censor those words in manually created captions, I am totally ok with it, because then the burden of a false positive is on the person who wrote the captions. I.e., if google doesn't ban "true positive slur" scenarios in manually generated captions, imo it is a reasonable and understandable compromise.
  - scrollaway 6y ago
    Censoring (as in bleeping) doesn't prevent the damage. It's like a phone autocorrecting "duck" to "f*ck". Putting a star there doesn't undo the "damage" of getting it wrong. Autocorrects solve this by omitting the word from their dictionary altogether, so if a false positive happens it's from duck to luck, not duck to something censored.