4 ms·

The insane part to me is just that the bar for killing content in YT is already so low, why don't they just kill it? I mean I was watching videos where people h

The insane part to me is just that the bar for killing content in YT is already so low, why don't they just kill it? I mean I was watching videos where people had to bleep the word "massacre" and hace been told by others that words like "incursion" and "Saladin" have to be censored else they run the risk of demonitized content.

mcv 6y ago
You're not allowed to discuss Saladin? The medieval Arab[0] general? Why not? [0] correction: Kurdish, not Arab.
- the_only_law 6y ago
  I'm not sure. I was told by a guy who does streaming for historical strategy games that this was a word he had to censor or else his vidoes got demonetized. Every single one of those words I listed could be discussed in a completely SFW, educational, historical context but I've either heard or heard of videos bleeping them. Perhaps its just hyper-caution on the side of the uploader.
- HideousKojima 6y ago
  Saladin was ethnically Kurdish, so I wonder if someone of Arab, Persian, or Turkish (or whatever other groups might have a historical beef with the Kurds) descent works at Youtube has an axe to grind. Or maybe the Crusades are considered a touchy subject by someone at Youtube? Stuff like this has happened before, I remember a year or two ago on Twitter there was someone who was friends with someone on the moderation team at Twitter and got them to shut down anyone tweeting anything negative about them, I can't remember the details at the moment. Or years ago on Reddit you couldn't criticize a certain moderator that had a friend who was an admin for the site.
  - avar 6y ago
    > Or maybe the Crusades are considered a touchy subject by someone at Youtube? Or more plausibly and less conspiracy-esque, a company like YouTube will eventually come up with a formula like: threshold=1.5 if hassle(topic) / threshold > revenue(topic): ban(topic) I.e. maybe they don't care at all about the subject, but dealing with reported videos, comments, the PR impact from flamewars about a contentious subject etc. just isn't worth it. All for a topic that's hard to monetize, easier just to ban it and move on.
  - notsureaboutpg 6y ago
    Hahahaha, way off base. Saladin is revered by khilafist Muslims who wish to reunite the Muslim world under one Islamic government. There's a lot of overlap between this group and groups proscribed by the US government. Guarantee most Muslims have no idea that Saladin was ethnically Kurdish or think that that matters. Most Muslims don't even know anyone Kurdish or care about Kurds. The Kurdish story is really only told much in the West because they were allies with the West in all the last two decades' wars. I'll bet the house that YouTube noticed lots of channels promoting Saladin are also heavily populated with videos praising groups with similar aims as Saladin but which are proscribed by the US govt (don't wanna say names for obvious reasons)
- notsureaboutpg 6y ago
  This is a false correction. The idea that there is a difference between Kurds and Arabs would not have even been recognized by Saladin himself.
Timpy 6y ago
These fake content farms are lucrative, it seems the demonetized items you're talking about are bad for advertisers. It's kind of like the stock market; you're not betting against what you believe, you're betting against what you think the general public will believe.

mcv 6y ago

You're not allowed to discuss Saladin? The medieval Arab[0] general? Why not? [0] correction: Kurdish, not Arab.

the_only_law 6y ago
I'm not sure. I was told by a guy who does streaming for historical strategy games that this was a word he had to censor or else his vidoes got demonetized. Every single one of those words I listed could be discussed in a completely SFW, educational, historical context but I've either heard or heard of videos bleeping them. Perhaps its just hyper-caution on the side of the uploader.
HideousKojima 6y ago
Saladin was ethnically Kurdish, so I wonder if someone of Arab, Persian, or Turkish (or whatever other groups might have a historical beef with the Kurds) descent works at Youtube has an axe to grind. Or maybe the Crusades are considered a touchy subject by someone at Youtube? Stuff like this has happened before, I remember a year or two ago on Twitter there was someone who was friends with someone on the moderation team at Twitter and got them to shut down anyone tweeting anything negative about them, I can't remember the details at the moment. Or years ago on Reddit you couldn't criticize a certain moderator that had a friend who was an admin for the site.
- avar 6y ago
  > Or maybe the Crusades are considered a touchy subject by someone at Youtube? Or more plausibly and less conspiracy-esque, a company like YouTube will eventually come up with a formula like: threshold=1.5 if hassle(topic) / threshold > revenue(topic): ban(topic) I.e. maybe they don't care at all about the subject, but dealing with reported videos, comments, the PR impact from flamewars about a contentious subject etc. just isn't worth it. All for a topic that's hard to monetize, easier just to ban it and move on.
- notsureaboutpg 6y ago
  Hahahaha, way off base. Saladin is revered by khilafist Muslims who wish to reunite the Muslim world under one Islamic government. There's a lot of overlap between this group and groups proscribed by the US government. Guarantee most Muslims have no idea that Saladin was ethnically Kurdish or think that that matters. Most Muslims don't even know anyone Kurdish or care about Kurds. The Kurdish story is really only told much in the West because they were allies with the West in all the last two decades' wars. I'll bet the house that YouTube noticed lots of channels promoting Saladin are also heavily populated with videos praising groups with similar aims as Saladin but which are proscribed by the US govt (don't wanna say names for obvious reasons)
notsureaboutpg 6y ago
This is a false correction. The idea that there is a difference between Kurds and Arabs would not have even been recognized by Saladin himself.

Timpy 6y ago

These fake content farms are lucrative, it seems the demonetized items you're talking about are bad for advertisers. It's kind of like the stock market; you're not betting against what you believe, you're betting against what you think the general public will believe.