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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

#501
post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Essentually you are saying: "The other side is wrong, and my side is right." It's not really a nuanced point about the broader issue of speech.

The point I had in mind is that ideology is well and good, but sometimes pragmatism is better. If a desire for free speech, to pick a contemporary example, leads to defending the 'right' of the Myanmar military to use Facebook for their coup to oppress the Burmese, pragmatism is probably better. Consider Qanon people, or NeoNazis, or Boogaloo Boys, etc. It is impossible to prove beyond any doubt that are more dangero…

I agree democracy is messy, but the alternative you suggest is worse.

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

#502
post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Essentually you are saying: "The other side is wrong, and my side is right." It's not really a nuanced point about the broader issue of speech.

I'm not on either side. I don't even live in the United States. But one side, the Republican side, is batshitinsane and believes things that are provably untrue - Obama is a Muslim, climate change is a Chinese hoax, COVID-19 is the flu, that sort of thing. The Democrats are just run-of-the-mill, low-energy centrist politicians.

[deleted]

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

#503

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 isn't true. I am sure that you believe it's true, but advertisers have been used to being able to control what content they were put next to for a long time. I don't know whether it matters, or is valuable, but I do know that they have cared for long enough that it has been one of the largest influences on literally what television programs got made (even if this influence appears oblique, it has been one of the…

Your response isn't true. I'm sure you believe it's true, but prior to YouTube we didn't see demonitization happen - TV series were paid for ahead of time. While organizations like OneMillionMoms would harass advertisers to get content pulled, that's not a very effective strategy - they just usually got the spot price reduced.

Things did actually work differently. YouTube doesn't pay for content before it airs, and large amounts of the income for a show happen as it's left up. When YouTube demonitizes - and it can do this for an entire channel - it's not just a single episode either. Nor can the content be shopped around to other platforms as easily.

Even if the station wanted to take down your content, you at least got a station manager calling your production staff and not just a "We're sorry, but you violated our vague ToS." message with no response mechanism in it. It had some element of human review and wasn't susceptible to brigading.

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

#504
post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Essentually you are saying: "The other side is wrong, and my side is right." It's not really a nuanced point about the broader issue of speech.

I'm not on either side. I don't even live in the United States. But one side, the Republican side, is batshitinsane and believes things that are provably untrue - Obama is a Muslim, climate change is a Chinese hoax, COVID-19 is the flu, that sort of thing. The Democrats are just run-of-the-mill, low-energy centrist politicians.

[deleted]

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

#505

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well... the "other side" would oppose informing the populace that the equality dogma is false (or at least unproven), so it isn't just the far right that likes their myths. Attemps to ban things that are false runs into the difficulty that you need to first determine what is false, which is hard to do if one of the answers might contradict an important value. I should stop replying to political posts with more politi…

> the "other side" would oppose informing the populace that the equality dogma is false (or at least unproven) What do you mean by the equality dogma?

More or less the belief that we are all equal with equal potential (it's more or less a consequence of egalitarianism). That if little Timmy just tries hard enough and is given enough support he'll be able to master differential equations.

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

#506

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't true. I am sure that you believe it's true, but advertisers have been used to being able to control what content they were put next to for a long time. I don't know whether it matters, or is valuable, but I do know that they have cared for long enough that it has been one of the largest influences on literally what television programs got made (even if this influence appears oblique, it has been one of the…

Your response isn't true. I'm sure you believe it's true, but prior to YouTube we didn't see demonitization happen - TV series were paid for ahead of time. While organizations like OneMillionMoms would harass advertisers to get content pulled, that's not a very effective strategy - they just usually got the spot price reduced. Things did actually work differently. YouTube doesn't pay for content before it airs, and l…

One example springs to mind. The racism controversy on Celebrity Big Brother in 2007 led to the sponsor and several advertisers withdrawing. The show was "rested" the following year.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celebrity_Big_Brother_(British...

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

#507
post #486

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The KKK were part of the system, and the system in many states supported them, either tacitly or even openly in some cases. Members of the KKK rose to the highest positions in local and federal politics and influenced police and lawmaking: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ku_Klux_Klan_members_in_United... The rise of the different incarnations of the Klan can be directly tied to politics of segregation, Jim Crow laws an…

But are not now. There are groups with similar messages that never had any power. BLM also have supporters in the highest positions and also influenced police and lawmaking, some places actually did defunded their police force. My point still stands. According to that definition, in the alternate universe KKK or NSDAP would not be considered racist, if they didn't have the majority of support.

Saying that racism in the US is a systemic issue does not imply that individual racism does not exist. One is the basis of the other, as people with racist views implement racist laws and systems, which in turn embolden more people.

The KKK didn't come out of nowhere, they came out of a deeply racist society and system. Similarly the NSDAP didn't come out of nowhere, they came out of a racist (deeply anti-semitic) society and system, which they leveraged along with severely wounded German national pride and massive international sanctions after WWI, in order to rise to power.

Systemic and individual racism go hand in hand, but you cannot fight racism one individual at a time, there simply aren't enough hours in a day. You have to attack the underlying structures and systems that perpetuate racism.

Fighting against the thin blue line, and defunding the police in the US is one way to fight that fight, because of how selective policing is based on race and social standing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HehnDHNoItk

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

#508

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't true. I am sure that you believe it's true, but advertisers have been used to being able to control what content they were put next to for a long time. I don't know whether it matters, or is valuable, but I do know that they have cared for long enough that it has been one of the largest influences on literally what television programs got made (even if this influence appears oblique, it has been one of the…

Your response isn't true. I'm sure you believe it's true, but prior to YouTube we didn't see demonitization happen - TV series were paid for ahead of time. While organizations like OneMillionMoms would harass advertisers to get content pulled, that's not a very effective strategy - they just usually got the spot price reduced. Things did actually work differently. YouTube doesn't pay for content before it airs, and l…

You are missing the point that for years advertisers were accidentally putting commercials in front of garbage (multi-hour long videos that were only used as pacifiers for toddlers, with dozens of ad breaks) or scum (algorithm scammers getting billions of views from children on unlicensed, sexual content like Spider-man groping Elsa or worse).

These videos did very well in both view counts and watch time, driving perceived value (and thus CPM) straight up.

Your complaints about the specifics of the process are valid, and the dogshit content I’m referring to is absolutely YouTube’s fault. Massively popular channels called this content out for years but Wojcicki didn’t make a move until a newspaper called out PewDiePie for some jokes, go figure.

But the scale of what many advertisers would probably call click fraud was enormous. Further, this is probably the result of another YouTube decision to favor outside sales teams (such as Google) bundling views and selling them to advertisers like subprime mortgages.

Facebook is dealing with some fallout over misrepresenting (or maybe outright lying about) ad performance, YouTube has a parallel reckoning that may never come because the average business user on YT has never posted an ad. The other side of the coin is that many of the YouTube channels that get unjustly punished here presumably have a multi-social network audience that they can complain to.

Obviously advertisers also deserve blame for going along with ad spend that did not include a full breakdown of every video they spent money on, too.

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

#509

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A more accurate analogy would be 'the Soviets didn't give them airtime on All Union Radio'

How is that accurate? More, like, exaggerated to make a point but missing it by a mile. Soviets did not give airtime to pro-party ideologues to validate their position. There was no competition between ideologues to get more airtime. The program was _dictated_ by the powers that be.

  How is that accurate? 
It's still a bad analogy, but it puts fewer words in my mouth. If there is a line from 'Youtube deleted my video' to 'the government rounded me up and threw me in a sanitarium' it's not a direct one.

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

#510

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't true. I am sure that you believe it's true, but advertisers have been used to being able to control what content they were put next to for a long time. I don't know whether it matters, or is valuable, but I do know that they have cared for long enough that it has been one of the largest influences on literally what television programs got made (even if this influence appears oblique, it has been one of the…

Your response isn't true. I'm sure you believe it's true, but prior to YouTube we didn't see demonitization happen - TV series were paid for ahead of time. While organizations like OneMillionMoms would harass advertisers to get content pulled, that's not a very effective strategy - they just usually got the spot price reduced. Things did actually work differently. YouTube doesn't pay for content before it airs, and l…

Well, I didn't use the word demonetization, because it means something specific - which is what I think you're arguing here.

But what we did see happens is that shows which were likely to provoke a negative response from audiences or advertisers were never produced, in large part for the exact same reasons.

The specific shape of events may look different, but that's the result of democratization, allowing more people to be part of the game where they spend money, make stuff, and get ads run against it.

In the cases where YouTube does pay for stuff before it airs or offers a guarantee on future ads, I am fairly confident the old TV dynamics are at play - they will ensure that the content they are funding will garner viewers and not offend advertisers.

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