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YouTube blocked chess channel after mistaken detection of racial slurs

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Re: YouTube blocked chess channel after mistaken detection of racial slurs

#31
post #3

Not sure what a thinly resourced piece like this is doing so high up on HN. There’s really very little evidence that this has anything to do with racial slurs. From a quick read: last June, the channel was banned for “harmful and dangerous” content. The ban was removed in under 24 hours. YouTube has not confirmed the reason. And yet: > Experts suspect that it was the usage of words like "black" and "white" that confu…

It’s so high because it fits general HN narrative of evil big tech.

I posted it because it was an example of automation yielding an unwanted result.

Re: YouTube blocked chess channel after mistaken detection of racial slurs

#32

“ The researchers now suggest that social-media platforms should incorporate chess language in their algorithms to avoid future incidents like this.” Or maybe don’t automate banning YouTube channels via nebulous black boxes? Or can advertisers stop being afraid of anything and everything?

> nebulous black boxes Probably a nitpick, I think you mean "opaque black boxes", you can see things through a nebula.

Did you really imagine that the physical characteristics of a nebula where what the comment referred to? Black boxes that are mostly dust and ionized gasses? Black boxes that last 3-4 million years? Black boxes that span up to 10 astronomical units across?

Re: YouTube blocked chess channel after mistaken detection of racial slurs

#33
post #3

Not sure what a thinly resourced piece like this is doing so high up on HN. There’s really very little evidence that this has anything to do with racial slurs. From a quick read: last June, the channel was banned for “harmful and dangerous” content. The ban was removed in under 24 hours. YouTube has not confirmed the reason. And yet: > Experts suspect that it was the usage of words like "black" and "white" that confu…

agadmator doesn’t do anything hateful or dangerous at all, so we can see here his name is being tarnished as well

Re: YouTube blocked chess channel after mistaken detection of racial slurs

#34
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The block was for “harmful and dangerous” content. That’s incredibly vague. Even describing a game using aggressive language could fall foul of such a broad filter. How many times do non-chess channels get caught in this filter? That’s the first question I’d be asking. I have to assume more than zero times. How many chess channels have not been banned by this filter? Again, presumably more than zero. And yet the arti…

Have you watched adagmator? He doesn’t really use aggressive language

It was just an example. Another example: “bishop attacks king” could be interpreted as dangerous or harmful content. It’s so vague we have no idea.

Re: YouTube blocked chess channel after mistaken detection of racial slurs

#36
post #17

Delegating prosecution of possible hate speech to commercial entities was always going to be bad. Youtube is essentially a public forum with audience of entire countries, where the people who run it choose what gets amplified, what gets shunned and what get outright blocked. Who would be happy with a private entity deciding the future mindsets at this scale?

That is it exactly what I’ve been saying about twitterführer Dorsey ever since he blocked the NY Post. Though in his case he went so overboard with banning and blocking everyone with a viewpoint he didn’t agree with that he made all the other world leaders take notice and be concerned that they could get blocked just as easily. I expect that after the next G7 summit we will start to see the social media companies broken up and/or regulated, or countries may just bleed them with fines to enable new players to get a foothold.

Re: YouTube blocked chess channel after mistaken detection of racial slurs

#37
post #21

inb4 someone will suggest that FIDE should change the color names to be more inclusive + why does white have the first move advantage, why can't black be the first. Perfect breeding soil for just another day of pointless race drama on Twitter

In fairness the advantage from going first in chess is really significant at high Elos, so a design improvement that resolves that imbalance would be pretty good for the game anyway. It would save playing two games to get one result.

But given that the only patch to chess in the last century was to prevent playing 0-0-0-0-0-0 with a promoted rook, I doubt I'll live to see that happen.

Re: YouTube blocked chess channel after mistaken detection of racial slurs

#38

Their either needs to be competition for Youtube or they need to face regulation. You can't have it both ways. The system does not work without one or the other.

There already are competitors to YouTube, and technically there's nothing stopping anyone from making their own video hosting site. Except overwhelming first-mover advantage and network effects, of course.

Re: YouTube blocked chess channel after mistaken detection of racial slurs

#39
post #26
post #3

Not sure what a thinly resourced piece like this is doing so high up on HN. There’s really very little evidence that this has anything to do with racial slurs. From a quick read: last June, the channel was banned for “harmful and dangerous” content. The ban was removed in under 24 hours. YouTube has not confirmed the reason. And yet: > Experts suspect that it was the usage of words like "black" and "white" that confu…

And what do you do to force them to confirm the reason? That's right, get it to be so high up on HN.

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Re: YouTube blocked chess channel after mistaken detection of racial slurs

#40
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do we really need to split hairs like this? The algorithms aren't completely opaque, as they have been trained on a set of representative inputs, and are continuously monitored. They are based on neural networks, presumably, with weights inspectable by the engineers deploying the model. So it is more "nebulous" and not completely opaque.

We do, because in terms of writing english black boxes are opaque by their very nature. OP could remove "black boxes" to make the sentence correct. You can't actually see inside a black box. That's why it's a "black box". Sure you can probe it, but that's not the same as being "nebulous", a thing you can actually see through sometimes. I expect better of HN.

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