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The fact that people continue to be surprised by actions like this, betrays a lack of understanding of how content moderation works, and a willful lack of educa
by hammock 5y ago
The fact that people continue to be surprised by actions like this, betrays a lack of understanding of how content moderation works, and a willful lack of education on the part of YouTube.
This video was taken down because 2 or 3 people reported it in short succession. Those reports flagged it for review by a human moderator, who removed it.
If it had never been reported, it would have stayed up. If no one ever reported it, it's possible a human never reviewed it in those 14 years.
The 14 years it was up doesn't mean YouTube reviewed it previously and decided to keep it.
If YouTube did a better job explaining exactly how its content moderation works, outrage like this might be less common. However YouTube doesn't explain better because it encourages gaming the system and report-brigading.
- 015a 5y agoIf you don't think a meme sensation video that's received millions of views and copycats hasn't been reported thousands of times over the years, for any reason, or no reason, just because people can, because people want to watch the world burn; I want to come live in your world.
- darkwater 5y ago> The 14 years it was up doesn't mean YouTube reviewed it previously and decided to keep it. You cannot possibly know, unless you work on YT moderation in Google. Also, moderation rules might vary over the years, so it might have even been checked once per year and survived for 14 years, til now. The real issue here is that nobody outside an internal Google team has voted on these policies.
- BostonFern 5y agoIsn't the real issue that no one knows how they work?
- revolvingocelot 5y agoAs you can see all over this thread, tons of HNers are willing to blithely assert how they work, and isn't that enough?
- treesknees 5y agoYou really think this video was only reported recently by 2 or 3 people after 14 years? People will report and dislike videos all the time just to be trolls. I don't have any sources to link to on this outside of my experience moderating content on much smaller subreddits/forums, but I'm willing to extrapolate and imagine a video that's been up for 14 years with millions of views has received its fair share of reports.
- shadowgovt 5y agoThis video was recently part of a Vice article, which is going to multiply eyes on by several orders of magnitude. It might not have been literally "2 or 3 people," but it's a reasonable assumption that the differentiating factor in 14 years is that a bunch of people saw it all at once, and some critical mass of those who saw it flagged it. The fact that this one specifically was taken down while copycats and reuploads have not strongly suggest it was hit by community moderation flagging.