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YouTube age-restriction quagmire exposed by 78-minute Mega Man documentary
- throwawayhx 4y ago>>the video includes a three-second outburst of six F-words, Having the F-word six times is enough for most parents to not want their 7 year old to watch. Even the author doesn't spell out the word.
- JadoJodo 4y agoThis has been my struggle with YouTube, particularly gaming channels; I want to let my 9-year old watch fun Minecraft videos, but I have to “pre-watch” all of them since I have no idea which channels might have this kind of content dropped in the middle without warning.
- llanowarelves 4y agoNot exactly what you asked for but VidAngel is amazing for that on streaming. You get as broad or granular set of filters you want. From nothing blocked, to individual instances of swear words or suggestiveness->nudity are all there. Or even things like crudeness, smoking. Etc. Incredible detailed control if yoy want it. With easy toggles for the main categories. And you can see the instances of each of those on each episode based on what you have. It's listed out before you hit play. I have no affiliation, just thought it was cool for if I had kids.
- minton 4y agoI use this and it’s better than nothing. I’m hoping for a day when AI is powerful enough to filter these out not by skipping them but by altering them. Subbing in family-friendly alternatives for curse words and maybe blurring or clothing the nudity. Obviously some scene will still need to be skipped entirely.
- viraptor 4y agoI have absolutely no confidence in this. "family-friendly" is extremely context and culture specific. You'll get lots of people actively trying to push the boundary for fun. On the weird extreme of that are the Spiderman/Elsa videos. On the cultural extreme is Mr Rogers washing feet together with a black friend. Are we going to update the filters with time as well? Or would we get stuck with no toilets or flushing forever? There's a lot of old movies in my country where the nudity happened and it was extremely matter-of-fact - for example people go for a swim in the ocean so they're naked while they change. Those movies are way more family-friendly than what this filter would accept.
- rendall 4y ago> Mr Rogers washing feet together with a black friend. A Black, gay police officer, at that! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fran%C3%A7ois_Clemmons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fran%C3%A7ois_Clemmons
- llanowarelves 4y agoYeah I agree with the part of making it easier to do some of this stuff, heavily machine-assisted, even generative like you said, but will need a human at the end I think, to guide/audit and give stamp of approval. Flavors guided by culture like viraptor said. It's one of those "I know it when I see it" things. To make sure nothing glitches, is weird, or the sum of parts not "off" somehow. (Trying to synthesize both ideas)
- zeta0134 4y agoEthosLab is one of my favorite Minecraft players for this reason. Pretty much all of his content is good clean fun. When he's editing, like for PvP arenas, he's pretty good at muting teammates if they are more liberal with their speech, so his own videos don't have anything offensive.
- kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 4y agoImpulseSV, GoodTimesWithScar, Grian, PearlescentMoon, BDubs... most (not all) of the Hermitcraft gang are PG. Oh, and Skizzleman. Actually, Imp & Skizz's channel is great all around.
- springogeek 4y agoImp and Skizz are fantastic, as are the whole hermit crew. Wasn't expecting to see them get a mention on HN but it's refreshing.
- kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 4y agoI forgot to mention TangoTek. If you want a real good time, watch their Friday Night Stabby Stabby streams (they play Among Us). It's got a great group including a lot of the above mentioned folks.
- btilly 4y agoI am curious. What kind of harm do you think it does for kids to hear this speech? I've never seen anything that should worry me about it. And I say that as the father of 4.
- zackkitzmiller 4y agoMy kids are now 13 and 17. We've cursed in front of them and "allowed" them to curse since they were little. Language is language and words aren't inheriently "bad." The idea that a list of 7 words is some how offensive is asinine. My kids are exceptional students, smart, do all the same activites as other kids. All the other kids curse, too, they just pretend they don't in front of their parents. It's a very silly game.
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- JadoJodo 4y ago> What kind of harm do you think it does for kids to hear this speech? I guess it depends on what you mean by "harm". Hearing it every once in a while, it is certainly unlikely to affect them. But if it's frequent enough (as seems to be the case in the gaming community), it will set a level of normalization that I don't want to instill in my kids. That being said, this is my own personal opinion, and no one else should feel obligated to share it.
- btilly 4y agoI taught my kids that swearing is contextual. In contexts where they are not supposed to swear, don't. And then I model that. They've always known how to swear, but almost never do.
- cm2187 4y agoYou can download the subtitles as a text file using youtube-dl. Should be faster than to actually listen to the video.
- Ukv 4y agoThe video was age restricted to 18+ which, here at least, requires the watcher to prove their age with credit card or ID photo: https://i.imgur.com/hujQk37.png https://i.imgur.com/hujQk37.png Whether the video is for kids (under 13) or not is a separate flag. This type of video would generally be not-for-kids but not also age restricted.
- whartung 4y agoNaturally standards change. However, back in the day there was a forgettable, campy slayer film called, I think, “Student Bodies”. I saw it because it was playing at the $2 double feature second run movie house and had air conditioning in the summer. I pretty much went there every week regardless of what was playing. Anyway, in the middle of the movie, a fellow appears behind a desk and says something like “Everyone knows that movies with a R rating make more money. So in order for us to get that, ‘F… you’. “ And, that was apparently enough. Can’t speak to whether the tactic was effective.
- daguava 4y agoIt was under a category which accepts that, and --- given the timespan, dominated such a tiny fraction of the video that it's almost unheard of.
- cortesoft 4y agoAs the father of a 7 and 3 year old, I never understand the desire to shelter kids from swearing. Instead, I teach my kids that some words are swear words and are only to be used in certain circumstances. It has worked well for me so far.
- sumeno 4y agoYouTube's guidance says the following is ok: Abbreviated, censored, or light profanity (like “hell” or “damn”) in the title, thumbnail, or video. Moderate profanity (like “shit” or “bitch”) used in the video. Infrequent usage of strong profanity (like the "f-word”) after the opening or up to twice in approx. the first 30 seconds of the video; or strong profanity in a music video.
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- waiseristy 4y agothis guy should have censored the cursing if he didn’t want to be age restricted. If you expect a trillion dollar corporate entity to play fair, you’re delusional
- emkoemko 4y agosince when has cursing been age restricted? i hear it all the time and videos are not age restricted even war footage from Ukraine shows horrible stuff no age restriction on most of them. There are those channels that bleep out the last second of the word so you know and heard exactly what they said, is that how they are getting around it?
- bpodgursky 4y agoI would not really include the Ukraine footage in this discussion. Pretty much every media company has loosened their rules on this topic in the interest of allowing the free flow of information. There's a time-sensitivity that doesn't apply to child programming. It's really really easy for one side to abuse the moderation system and get the other side silenced, when all the content is horrible.
- Dalewyn 4y ago>since when has cursing been age restricted? Do you recall Mickey Mouse or Garfield or Charlie Brown dropping an F bomb? No? Exactly.
- Ukv 4y ago"Age restricted", in the context of terminology used by Youtube, specifically means 18+. Being age restricted heavily suppresses the video and, depending on country, watchers may be required to verify their age by credit card or sending an ID photo to Google. Whether the video is "for kids" (under 13) is a separate matter. Generally a video like the one in the article would be not-for-kids, but also not age restricted.
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- roenxi 4y agoThe secret behind a culture's list of arbitrarily banned words is that the list is arbitrary and it is really just a low-violence way of measuring who has power and who has respect. No single word has enough power to justify monetising or demonetising some video. There isn't a way to consistently enforce standards in this arena. The instinct for most people is to try and apply the standards irregularly to measure where social power centres are. As long as there is a middle-man, the standards they apply around language is going to be confusing, arbitrary and logically inconsistent.
- panarky 4y ago> list of arbitrarily banned words is that the list is arbitrary It's not arbitrary, it's a community norm. Not everyone in a community agrees with its norms, but enough people do to keep it a norm. As community norms change, the rules change.
- assttoasstmgr 4y agoWhat "community norms" were violated in this instrumental song to require age verification? (Likely the most egregious example I can think of.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4Mte6z7TQI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4Mte6z7TQI Stop making excuses for this horrible company. Or do we truly live in a world where all sorts of horrors have become socially acceptable yet a static image of a cartoon frog is deemed "adult content"?
- panarky 4y agoJust because you can find a handful of mistakes, or a thousand mistakes, or a hundred thousand mistakes, out of hundreds of billions of moderation decisions is not evidence of evil or malice. Thousands of warehouses filled with human beings trying to manage all of this manually would introduce far, far more errors and bias. If you hate YouTube then don't use it. There are plenty of competitors.
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- fimdomeio 4y agoFor the sake of future searchers everywhere: "There was a youtube video banned by showing a 3 second clip where a guy repeated the word fuck". /me looks at the sky above waiting to be struck by lightning.
- renewiltord 4y agoThanks, this doesn't sound quagmirish at all. YouTube is taking a lot of heat for kids viewing videos on its platform. It's unsurprising that they often exceed the boundary. You know the boundary exists and you know that censoring the audio then does the trick. So just do it.
- Ukv 4y agoMarking the video as not-for-kids (under 13) was expected. Age restricting the video to 18+, which heavily suppresses the video and requires watchers in many countries to give ID photo/credit card verification, was not expected. I've never seen that before just for swearing. > You know the boundary exists From the article, the video doesn't appear to break any of the publicly given rules. Likely it breaks some internal rule they use for judgement (X swears in Y seconds). The creator claims they'd be fine adjusting accordingly if Youtube gave some stance to follow - problem is pouring a ton of work into a huge video and only then having it unexpectedly restricted due to uncommunicated rules.
- kevinmchugh 4y agoA pg 13 movie can use the word "fuck" exactly once. More than once and it's an r rating (appropriate for 17+). I believe this has been the case in the almost forty years since pg-13 was introduced.
- Ukv 4y agoRecord for PG-13 movies is apparently Gunner Palace with 42 uses of "fuck". But more to the point, Youtube is not the MPAA. The documentary seems to comply to Youtube's publicly given rules more so than a huge number of other unrestricted videos, which makes the restriction unexpected.
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- rrdharan 4y agoI don’t understand why you think an alternative video monetization platform is going to do any better at paying long-tail video creators while not falling afoul of advertisers or legal authorities. This form of revenue generation / business didn’t even exist before YouTube.
- daguava 4y agoDo you understand the concept of competition under capitalism where the govt isn't forcing a single entity to the top?
- smoldesu 4y agoI don't think any of us do. Modern capitalism hasn't seen the US government abstain from promoting billionaire monopolies since before Rockefeller Steel. On a more pragmatic note, the reason people use YouTube is because everything is there. Competitors like DailyMotion and Vimeo exist and do compete, their content libraries are pretty pathetic though, and the advertising situation is no better than YouTube.
- throw_m239339 4y ago> Do you understand the concept of competition under capitalism where the govt isn't forcing a single entity to the top? The point is that advertisers essentially decide what's permissible and what isn't. An alternative to youtube backed by advertisement from major brands would have to abide by the exact same model.
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- yumswiss 4y agoMy 2 cents. They would have demographic data from these videos which probably more younger audience. Maybe a threshold for what profanity can been heard. Potentially results in complaints from parents > less viewing time from kids > less revenue.
- navjack27 4y agoWhat little kid is watching a lengthy video detailing the history of speed run records of a game older than them by a large factor?
- barneygale 4y agoI feel sorry for the children raised by these HN commentators. Fuck me what a bunch of prudes.
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- totetsu 4y ago
- dang 4y agoMaybe so, but could you please stop posting flamebait and/or name-calling and/or unsubstantive comments? You've been doing it a ton, unfortunately, and we have to ban such accounts. It's not what this site is for, and it destroys what it is for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- barneygale 4y agoThis is an off-topic response to my on-topic reply, and you've mischaracterised my post history to boot. I can't see anything in the guidelines about issuing threats but IMHO you shouldn't be doing that either. Otherwise keep up the good work!
- dang 4y agoYou're right that moderation comments are off topic, as well as tedious and repetitive. (They're even more tedious to write than they are to read, if that helps at all.) And yes, they sometimes break the site guidelines in other ways too. I try to keep them neutral but I don't always get that right, and am happy to take suggestions for improvement. Nevertheless, your comments have been breaking the site guidelines badly—it's not a close call! The reason I post replies like I did here is to give people that information so they have a chance to change; that seems better than just banning an account outright. I'm sorry if it came across as a threat. My intention is to persuade you to use HN in the intended spirit—I don't want to ban you.
- cm2187 4y agoIt also makes the video inaccessible without a youtube account
- ama5322 4y agoThis is a big issue. I don't have a youtube account, and likely never make one. I was bypassing the login wall as long as I could, but ever since login was enforced to watch age-restricted videos, I now simply skip the content. You'd think this would be a non-issue: I'm mostly following retro-content of this kind. But the amount of age-restricted videos I'm hitting is just baffling. I was following summoning salt, and I was able to watch the video before it got age-restricted. Is there any profanity there? No. If you think there is, you should reconsider your moral views. I've seen creators over-censor their videos for the same reason, to the point of absurdity. As in this one, I've seen as far as pixelating 8bit 8x8 "nudity" in 90ies games just to be on the safe-end side. There's no question youtube serves as a big audience window for small content creators. Youtube is amazing for discovery due to the immense choice. However I do support and watch videos outside of youtube (and I'm more and more eager to do so). I encourage all creators to post on youtube with this attitude in mind.
- CogitoCogito 4y agoI just tried watching the video and my question is: why is it age-restricted here in Sweden due to saying "fuck" a couple times?
- seydor 4y agoCause you are watching american TV
- CogitoCogito 4y agoSo if it were Swedish TV, then it wouldn't be age-restricted? If a Swede uploaded a video speaking English that used swear words, should it not be age-restricted because it was uploaded by a Swede?
- knaik94 4y ago"If you are in Australia, the European Union (EU), European Economic Area (EEA), Switzerland, or the United Kingdom, you may be asked to verify your age to watch age-restricted videos." This change was due to EU laws. The US does not have age verification laws that would affect this kind of video. https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/audiovisual-and-media-services https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/audiovisua... https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/10070779?hl=en https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/10070779?hl=en
- CogitoCogito 4y agoThis fact is irrelevant. Why is the video age-restricted in Sweden in the first place? Swedes use English swear words much more openly and they are significantly less taboo than in the US.
- knaik94 4y agoThe update is more crazy than the initial flagging. Youtube went back and doubled down saying the video violates their "sex and nudity policy". This is a channel that uploads how a speedrunning record was set https://twitter.com/summoningsalt/status/1575972292395667456 https://twitter.com/summoningsalt/status/1575972292395667456 . The creator only does voiceover explanations, all of the content is gameplay footage, and occasionally a picture in picture video of a speedrunner while they are achieving a specific record. The video is age-restricted again. There comes a point where Youtube is not saving money by automating their content moderation but Youtube decides to keep pushing forward. At some point a competitor that is good enough will arrive and once large creators like this one, around 1.5 million followers, almost every video with over 2 million views, 8 videos with over 5 million views, leave they will pay attention. Until content creators have an alternative choice, Youtube knows they can implement any black box policy and ignore 99% of the backlash. My personal theory is that they are doing manual review but only after an appeal. They definitely have software that flags videos for vulgar language internally, and I imagine only those parts and a couple minutes surrounding it are reviewed. They refuse to elaborate or make their methods public because they see it as a way to combat spam. It's becoming clear that the moderation team is mostly software at this point. I have a different theory that Youtube is also classifying channels into kid friendly and unfriendly based on video content while ignoring the context the channel was made for. Game are generally much more popular among kids, and so this channel was marked as kid friendly. The channel is getting treated with rules that should only apply to kid targeted channels, unfortunately this benefits Youtube way more than the creator. Youtube Kids has ads.
- laumars 4y ago> There comes a point where Youtube is not saving money by automating their content moderation but Youtube decides to keep pushing forward. When you deal with the scale that YT are operating at, automating content moderation is the only cost effective way. > At some point a competitor that is good enough will arrive Competitors have always existed. They existed before YT got big, still exist, and new competitors have been created since. The problem isn’t lack of competition, it’s the network effect. People go on YT, few specifically load YT to go on specific channels. Or to put it in an old world context, people don’t buy a TV for a specific TV show. They buy one to watch lots of TV shows knowing there are multiple shows they could enjoy. So content creators leaving YT doesn’t equate to all their subscribers leaving YT. If anything, what that actually equates to is that content creator loosing viewers. And bare in mind that most content creators will have significantly more viewers (regular + irregular) than the number who’ve subscribed.
- ranger207 4y agoThere's a lot of comments in here about the video being age restricted because of the cursing, but the real story here is the inconsistency in YouTube's moderation. SummoningSalt's video has one section where there's 6 f-bombs dropped in 3 seconds, which is what YouTube explicitly called out the second time the video was age-restricted. But the video was reinstated the first time: why did they reinstate it and then change their mind later? Furthermore, despite the density of cursing in that one segment, overall the video has less curse density than other comparable videos. Why is SummoningSalt's video age-restricted but not videos from the Angry Video Game Nerd, whose whole schtick is heavy use of profanity? Is the issue really just the use of so many curse words in such a short amount of time? That seems to be a really weird rule to have
- squeaky-clean 4y agoYeah his pinned comment which is copied at the end of the article is a perfect summary. It's not a problem to age restrict videos, but their content guidelines should actually reflect the criteria they use for that. The content guidelines actually say some profanity is okay, but excessive use will get you restricted. Salt's video had a 3 second clip in a video over an hour long. Had he known the real criteria ahead of time, he would have bleeped it. Now it's too late to fix the profanity because it's also been flagged as containing Sex and Nudity. In a Megaman 2 video.
- matheusmoreira 4y ago> Why is SummoningSalt's video age-restricted but not videos from the Angry Video Game Nerd, whose whole schtick is heavy use of profanity? Maybe YouTube works on a South Park system. Broadcasters didn't like them saying "shit" a couple times. So they repeated it 150+ times and kept count on screen.
- p49k 4y ago1. As he explains, YouTube's rules don't actually instruct creators to censor these types of outbursts, and he can site numerous examples of content by more well-known creators that are much more explicit than the 3-second clip. 2. After reversing their decision, Youtube has re-restricted the video because they now claim it contains nudity/sexual content. How does that tie into your argument, exactly?
- squeaky-clean 4y agoIronic that they embedded the video in the article, but because it's 18+ restricted the video can't be embedded. Well this just reminded me that I should have signed up for SS's Patreon a while ago.
- zimpenfish 4y agoHaving watched many SummoningSalt videos, I'm pretty sure I remember many times when someone breaking the world record after a long period of frustration has uttered The Forbidden Profane Speech, been included in SS's video, and the resultant SS video has not been age-restricted. etc. etc. You can understand the confusion...
- spuz 4y agoFor creators such as Summoning Salt, YouTube should offer an option to manually review a video _before_ it is made public allowing him to edit it appropriately. After manual review, YouTube should guarantee they won't restrict the video after it's published. They could make this a paid option with a legally binding agreement should either party fail to meet their obligations. I've never heard of the MPAA slapping a new certification on an already approved movie and if they did, I would imagine lawyers would get involved.
- PoignardAzur 4y ago> YouTube should offer an option to manually review a video _before_ it is made public They already have a system like that, but the process is pretty crappy, for the reasons you outline: - Youtube might add additional restrictions at any point without justification, so the early vetting process doesn't guarantee that the video is clear. - Youtube requires that the video be set to "Limited" and vetters don't have access to "Private" videos (I think, I don't remember the exact details) which impacts viewing statistics of the video (basically Youtube thinks nobody watched the video for a while after its release and therefore it's not worth promoting). I think "guarantee they won't restrict the video" isn't workable at Youtube's scale, but at the very least they should guarantee a proportional monetary compensation if additional restrictions are added after the fact.
- nathias 4y agoif there are clear rules (like for example existing laws) of what is allowed and what not the scale really doesn't matter
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- charcircuit 4y agoThis wasn't "exposed" by summoning salt. Literally everyone on the platform knows how YouTube is inconsistent with its moderation decisions even when asking for a manual review. A lot of creators get annoyed by this to the point where they make videos about it. YouTube seems like the number of false positives are acceptable.
- whywhywhywhy 4y agoYouTube doesn’t want you to swear in videos it recommends to children. If you don’t want to be age restricted then just don’t swear or use another platform. YouTube doesn’t owe you the chance of millions of children’s eyeballs.
- brightball 4y agoIt seems like the simple solution to this for content creators is to bleep/mute stronger swear words. The post seems to be trying to justify the frequency that they can be allowed. What is the benefit to keeping them in a video where you don’t want age restriction?