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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

#301
post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People often watch YouTube videos at 2x speeds, it’s part of their app to select 1.25, 1.5, 1.75, 2x because you can generally listen to most speakers at that speed just fine. Let alone 11 hours of ocean waves etc. Only averaging 1.3x assumed significant overhead and going back to re listen to segments, have an escalation queue for flagged videos, and randomly assigning multiple people to the same videos to ensure pe…

[disclaimer] I work at Google, all opinions are my own. I don't deal with Youtube but have had exposure to moderation operations. It is not an easy task. Google already has more than 10k people working on this: https://blog.youtube/news-and-events/expanding-our-work-agai... . If 100 people solved the issue, it would have been solved. You are incorrect about your assumptions in many respects. Let me list out a few: 1)…

> It continues to amaze me how some of the smartest and technically savvy people on HN either do not recognize or refuse to admit how complicated a problem planet scale moderation is.

It's probably a variation of the trivial-core-problem [0]. When looked at roughly, it seems very easy; only when you start implementing it, you'll see all the edge cases appear. I made pretty similar points above to the ones you made - but on a quick napkin calculation, Retric's math checked out, to be fair. And when you're not in the business, missing the inherent complexity is easy.

[0] See https://blog.codinghorror.com/code-its-trivial/

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

#302
post #75
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.

Black list and its opposite, white list, associate black with bad and white with good. The usage of black in “black box” means opaque, not bad. So these aren’t the same. I had never thought about the connotations of blacklist and whitelist before it was pointed out to me. In retrospect, blacklist and whitelist are unnatural meanings of the words black and white, and blocklist and allowlist make much more sense. Conse…

>I had never thought about the connotations of blacklist and whitelist before it was pointed out to me. In retrospect, blacklist and whitelist are unnatural meanings of the words black and white, and blocklist and allowlist make much more sense.

This is everyone's story with these words. This movement was not driven by POC taking issue with the word "blacklist". It started with some white dude's shower thought that because "blacklist" was a negative thing, and because "black" also can refer to skin color, that the term was thus racist [1]. Then a bunch of other white dudes ([2]) were like "oh yeah for sure that makes so much sense" and here we are--everyone goes along with it because they (rather patronizingly) think that someone else will be offended.

The word "blacklist" is many hundreds of years old. It does not have a racial origin. It's just a word. Nobody actually makes the association between "blacklist" and "black people" unless you tell them to! Our brains aren't nearly so stupid!

[1] https://twitter.com/andrestaltz/status/1030200563802230786 [2] https://twitter.com/dhh/status/1032050325513940992

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

#303
post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It may not be intentionally racist, but that doesn’t make it not racist. Consider why white moves first in chess. They literally did this two years ago: https://en.chessbase.com/post/carlsen-and-giri-campaign-for-... Anyway, in many religions the light illuminates things while darkness is the absence of light. So it’s not just about people’s race...

Also the night is black and dangerous. The daytime is bright and safe. These are ancient concepts and postmodernism isn’t some absolute truth

just like master bedroom, master branch, slave drive is racist to some people.

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

#304
post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People forget that they get these free services for free, and a big portion of that is because ML tools are able to cheaply do a really hard job of moderating. You hear about things like this because they're so unusual, which is a testament to the amount of time they work correctly without being noticed. Granted, there have been some issues with people getting banned from Google services for what appear to be wrong r…

> Those aren't great, but if you ask people whether they want to pay $10/month for YouTube so human moderators can stop this from happening or get it for free and have the .0001% chance that they get banned purely by accident, they'll take the latter. At this point, I view YouTube like I viewed bars that allowed smoking--it was sufficiently popular that nobody could compete against it even though it was harmful. So,…

> I firmly believe that smoking bans have killed live music

What's the connection?

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

#305
post #210
post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> all I see is white people being shit on I figured that would be the feel of the objection. Maybe I should be grateful as a white person that that's not the world I find myself in. Happy to pick my variable names. I can't help but feel that the antagonism here is very similar to the antagonism I mentioned about Gendered language. The anger seemed mostly caused by being surprised by being asked to think about somethi…

The problem is that you're not thinking about the context of the word and instead are using it in a different context to be offended by it. I'd argue that you are the one who needs to think about it a bit more instead of blindly calling others names and trying to police the grammatically correct words someone uses. Just because you think and associate something with a negative racial implication when you see a word d…

> Just because you think and associate something with a negative racial implication when you see a word doesn't mean others are. I personally am able to look at a word and understand the context surrounding the word.

We also only get change requests for the associations that point in one direction.

It's called "in the black" when you're making a profit. Is anyone trying to get accountants to stop calling it that?

Here are some synonyms my thesaurus lists for "white": blanched, bleached, frosted, pasty, achromatic, bloodless, chalky and ghastly. "White noise" is sound without meaning. "White flag" means to surrender. "White label" means you're too cheap for the name brand.

If it's a problem then it's all a problem.

Or, if we're going to change something, we could stop calling people "white" and "black". Where do I submit the pull request for that?

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

#306
post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because of how policed the online world feels with what you say it often feels like it applies in public. However I have yet to work/interact with anyone who seems as far gone as the permanently offended Twitter users seem to be. I swear not a day goes by anymore where I don't here about Twitter going after another person trying to cancel them. We see people losing their jobs simply for sharing a more conservative vi…

You also can’t defend anyone from getting canceled, as that makes you the “ism” as well. You must be anti-whatever“ism” or they will come after you as well.

When I was a little kid I went to a fundamentalist baptist church that worked exactly like this. If a deacon learned that someone wore a skirt above the knee, or listened to a pop song, that person was excommunicated. If anyone then contacted the apostate outside of church, they were excommunicated too. And so on.

It’s a purity cult.

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

#307
post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? I don't have anything to prove to you. Anytime I have chosen to engage with someone who has given a response like yours and chosen to give sources and examples I am met with a ignorant response saying something like "you can't be racist towards white people". It's just not worth it for me to engage like that anymore. How about bringing a discussion to what I said rather than asking for random proof of what I sai…

> If someone tries to dismiss an opinion by calling someone a "privileged white male" how would that be any better than dismissing someone's opinion for being black? It would depend on the content and context of the opinion itself, no? Why not just ask the dismissing person why they say that? We’ve come to the point where we generalize and characterize instead of understanding, then simply disagreeing. > Yet in today…

> I’m really curious to why you feel this way?

You actually answered this question yourself with your next paragraph :). Currently being racist towards white males gives businesses, influencers, and politicians more power. And I fundamentally disagree with this notion. I do not think shitting on particular groups of people should make someone excel. I think it should show what kind of negative person they are and they should lose not gain.

Some of my problem stems from the fact that these phrases are used to dismiss peoples opinions. I am far from being conservative, and also wouldn't consider myself liberal. I hold many views that fall under both spectrums. Some may even be considered more radical on both ends.

If I made a conservative sided comment online how do you think it would fair? Now if I made a liberal based comment how do you think that would fair in comparison? I think that the liberal ideology would gain me woke points and give me praise. Whereas that conservative view would get shat on, may be called some "ism", and then likely also would be called a "white privileged male". This would of course be used to dismiss the opinion/fact despite how true or accurate it may be. It is also making assumptions on race and gender simply based on a single opinion on a topic.

My main issue is that this kind of thinking creates a divide. It's hard to have a conversation on many websites because people hurl insults and don't care to actually have a constructive conversation. I try and come into a conversation being open-minded. The problem I have faced lately is that I feel like I have been becoming more and more jaded and against the other "side". I really dislike this and have been working to try and avoid doing that. But everytime I hear these kind of rude comments it further affirms my believe while also preventing me from hearing what intelligent people on that "side" actually have to say.

For example, people quite violently oppose Trump and Trump supporters. What doesn't make sense to me is why people would rather attack the group of people instead of trying to share their opinion. If there opinion is based on facts/research/science you'd think they would want to engage with the other side and try and get more people to share their opinion. But instead social media and society lately discourages this. It always has to be them versus us. There is no middle ground. Hell people get called "alt-right" and "nazis" for some pretty tame conservative views. I personally think calling someone a "nazi" is very extreme, yet the word gets thrown around like it means nothing. As a side note I find it quite ironic that these same people using these extreme words also will try to police what words others can use that they deem "offensive".

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

#308
post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You also can’t defend anyone from getting canceled, as that makes you the “ism” as well. You must be anti-whatever“ism” or they will come after you as well.

Yes exactly. Either you're "with" the mob or you're getting mobbed. The word police and thought police are in full force on sites like Twitter and reddit now.

It’s really ridiculous on TikTok.

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

#309

“ 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?

>can advertisers stop being afraid of anything and everything?

This is what I don't understand. If my memory serves, the whole demonetization debacle started when some activists at a newspaper wrote an article about big brands having ads on Alex Jones' content, in which they reached out to the brands and asked "are you happy with your content being seen next to XYZ?"[1][2] It struck me as just another article in a long list (that continues to today) where a legacy media giant lashes out at new media because they're worried about ad revenue being taken from them, the 'rightful' recipients.

If people are watching a video, regardless of the content, they are almost certainly there because they enjoy that content. Isn't this the point of all advertising; you want your brand on display when someone is enjoying something to (sub-consciously?) associate your brand with the enjoyment the viewer is experiencing? I wonder if there is a case to be made for loss of earnings for shareholders if the pool of eyeballs seeing their brands messaging is continually diluted.

I suppose the counter-argument is that the brands don't want their advertising funds to go to an organization they have moral disagreements with, but that certainly hasn't stopped them in the past. Is the income from a washing machine sale any less valuable if it comes from someone not politically aligned with you, or if they saw it while browsing a porn site? (I'm not interested in discussing Alex Jones). It seems to boil down to not wanting to be 'cancelled' and have the twitter-mob making waves and threatening boycotts.

[1] Mashable article about the advertising pull out - https://archive.is/6LkmL

[2] The hit piece from CNN - http://archive.is/4yHMF

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

#310

“ 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?

Advertisers, youtubers, users, brands - everyone was happy prior to the era of demonetization. What killed the golden goose was an extremely small set of activists and journalists (specifically Media Matters and Vox) methodically threatening brands with publication of screenshots of their "support" for controversial niche videos. And just enough brand marketing and YouTube employees were cowed, or at least ideologica…

This started long before. Remember when outlets like Bloomberg made a big deal because ads were running on random 5-view YouTube videos with objectionable content? It’s about money, not your culture war.
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