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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

#91

Post by stubish »

afavour wrote: 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…

Indeed, hate speech is just a guess. It is just as likely it was taken down because it was a Pawn Site.

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

#92

Post by nemo44x »

ben509 wrote: post #50
lwouis wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You kid but i've received 2 pull-requests on my open-source project, which only goal was to replace "Blacklist" with "Blocklist" in the app preferences. I don't receive many PRs. This is a real trend.

A lot of language-fixing slacktivism easily becomes a trend because it's highly visible and requires no genuine effort. It's complete bullshit, though. This particular bullshit is awful since it trivializes all this historic pain to some inane game of word association. There's no point arguing, though, just drag your heels until they get bored and go off on some other crusade.

It’s tokenism and if anything it is detrimental to actual, concrete, transformative improvement. Malcolm X spoke at length about this going back to the early 1960’s. And it hasn’t changed. Condescending tokenizing is a way to avoid anything that would take effort or energy while comforting the narcissist in a warm blanket of moral righteousness. If you look around you’ll see endless tokenism but not much in terms of effective improvements.

I don’t doubt these hall monitors think they’re doing the “right thing” or being a “good person”. But really they’re only exploiting people for their own benefit.

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

#93

Post by tgsovlerkhgsel »

LocalH wrote: post #54

It should be a criminal act to ban someone from your platform without pointing exactly to why they were banned. "Oh but we can't expose details of our ban process for people to game" Bullshit. They just don't want to have to answer to anyone for cutting them off.

GDPR contains automated decisionmaking rules: https://gdpr-info.eu/art-22-gdpr/

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

#94

Post by Mountain_Skies »

reaperducer wrote: post #53
whatshisface wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny thing is, since nobody ever submits PRs to change it in the opposite direction, even one person going around on GitHub would be virtually guaranteed to eventually change all of them.

even one person going around on GitHub would be virtually guaranteed to eventually change all of them It only took one complaint from someone in Canada to get Dire Straits' "Money for Nothing" cut in half on SiriusXM for an entire continent. (Though you can still hear the full version on the deep tracks channel).)

I don't know how radio stations handle "Alice's Restaurant" since I listen to my own copy but I did see Arlo Guthrie sing it live at a concert when he was in town a few years back. When the song got near the slur, he stopped playing for bit and went off on a short tangent before picking the song up after the slur. It's his song so I doubt anyone minded him changing how he performs it. The change felt a lot more natural than simply bleeping or cutting the audio.

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

#95

Post by zelphirkalt »

nanagojo wrote: post #66
vecplane wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Political correctness run amok! My company has now official guidelines that discourage 'whitelist' and 'blacklist' in new features, but I wonder how long before they make everyone go back and refactor these names. Git 'master' branch derangement is another example of this BS.

See if any of them have attainted a Masters degree ;)

That's my favorite example of how silly it is! Lets give all the people with a master degree a change to "main degree". "main of arts", "main of engineering", "main of science" lol

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

#96

Post by newacct583 »

lathiat wrote: post #88
lwouis wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You kid but i've received 2 pull-requests on my open-source project, which only goal was to replace "Blacklist" with "Blocklist" in the app preferences. I don't receive many PRs. This is a real trend.

There's a distinct difference between trying to make things less accidentally discriminatory or exclusionary.. and banning an entire channel in an often un-appealable way (which can in many cases end up disabling peoples personal google accounts etc as well).

It wasn't un-appealable. They restored it within 24 hours per the article.

Please don't hyperbolize about this stuff. If you want people to take you seriously about real censorship you need to not fly off the handle with accidents (which have ALWAYS been with us, c.f. buttbuttination).

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

#98

Post by perryizgr8 »

LocalH wrote: post #54

It should be a criminal act to ban someone from your platform without pointing exactly to why they were banned. "Oh but we can't expose details of our ban process for people to game" Bullshit. They just don't want to have to answer to anyone for cutting them off.

Why? YouTube has no obligation to host anyone's videos. If these chess channels don't like it they can make their own YouTube.

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

#99

Post by [deleted] »

tacitusarc wrote: post #69
vecplane wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Political correctness run amok! My company has now official guidelines that discourage 'whitelist' and 'blacklist' in new features, but I wonder how long before they make everyone go back and refactor these names. Git 'master' branch derangement is another example of this BS.

My company has mandated all of this. Change blacklist and whitelist, change the git master branch name, don't use master-slave, there's a list of "racially charged" terms and the replacements we're supposed to use. It's all a corporate virtue signal mask so they can lay people off and increase exec compensation and still claim to have some moral high ground.

[deleted]

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

#100

Post by lmm »

afavour wrote: 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…

If YouTube won't give any explanation for these decisions then assuming the worst is entirely fair.
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