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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

#421

Post by read_if_gay_ »

LordDragonfang wrote: post #349
fooqux wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that the other guy is saying the same thing you are. The radical left and the radical right both think each other's points are dangerous. And the moderates are pointing at both sides and claiming the same thing. From their respective viewpoints, they're in the "right", just as you think you are. There's a slippery slope here, and I feel it's one so large that we can't even tell we're already sliding on…

>The obvious answer is a well-informed populace that isn't easily swayed by emotion and fear, and has the time and inclination to do their own fact checking. Trouble is, that's obviously a pipe dream. The other trouble is that one side is actively opposed to a "well informed populace" and unironically calls secondary education "liberal brainwashing camps". If you want a well informed populace, you have to privilege t…

It is insane how people will always continue to blame the other side even when replying to a comment pointing out how basically everyone on the political spectrum currently feels this way.

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

#423

Post by blackbrokkoli »

chii wrote: post #331
drak0n1c wrote: post #225

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…

It's stupid, because in the era of television, people understood that the advertising commercial breaks in programmes were distinct from the actual content of the programme, and that the advertisers are _not_ endorsing the contents of the programme at all! How this somehow translated, in the era of online youtube videos, to the exact opposite is still a mystery to me. So what if your ad appeared next to something rad…

So this may look like I am arguing against you, but I actually have a very similar stance.

Look at it like this:

Nowadays, the ads (and the videos) are targeted. Additionally, the algorithms are - no other way to put it - really fucking dumb and are constantly "overcommitting". E.g., I watched a few episodes of a podcast months ago and my YouTube recommendation has been 98% episodes of the same show since then, because the algo registered I spent a disproportionate amount of watch time for those (who knew, podcast episodes are long). Or look at Amazon grouping every single book I read the untranslated English version of in "International Books" because it determined that English ain't my mother tongue. Now I am constantly getting cultural, cosmopolitan and language learning stuff; because I read Ian Banks and software philosophy books.

I am aggressively ad-blocking, but I imagine ads are quite the same and I am sure you can recite similar experiences. Now based on this shitty, bizarro reality I would say that the fear of an ad bubble heavily overlapping with a content bubble (for absurd reasons) is not irrational. It is weird, it is dumb, and we could probably overcome it, but products would be associated with weird/illegal/controversial niches by...association.

This whole situation is a shit cocktail of misguided KPI's, straight up scams, questionable assumptions (we still don't know whether targeted ads do anything), cancel culture, bad software and US censorship (we can show you two passenger planes colliding and 700 people incinerating but we can't show you the pilot going "motherfucker"). But this specific choice, to aggressively ban to avoid bad association, is actually somewhat rational.

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

#424

Post by [deleted] »

drak0n1c wrote: post #225
andrewzah wrote: post #5

“ 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…

[deleted]

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

#425

Post by zelos »

throwaway_1301 wrote: post #293
Retric wrote: 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)…

I'm not saying it's not complicated, but complaints about expense and overheads for a company that makes something like $40 billion a year in profit ring a little hollow. That's roughly the size of the UK's defence budget.

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

#426

Post by xxs »

awillen wrote: post #148
dehrmann wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Setting this case aside because it's sloppy reporting based on what another classifier found, this is a hard problem. Youtube gets too many videos and comments for humans to manually review them. Flagging helps, and Google likely uses ML more complex than just text and classifier (who is commenting, is the post trending, patterns in comments, etc.) When things do reach manual review, remember that humans make mistake…

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…

>People forget that they get these free services for free

This would be true if youtube/google created the content as well. Youtube essentially gets the content "for free"... and then decides what to do with.

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

#427

Post by jasode »

chii wrote: post #331
drak0n1c wrote: post #225

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…

It's stupid, because in the era of television, people understood that the advertising commercial breaks in programmes were distinct from the actual content of the programme, and that the advertisers are _not_ endorsing the contents of the programme at all! How this somehow translated, in the era of online youtube videos, to the exact opposite is still a mystery to me. So what if your ad appeared next to something rad…

>, because in the era of television, people understood that the advertising commercial breaks in programmes were distinct from the actual content of the programme, and that the advertisers are _not_ endorsing the contents of the programme at all!

This isn't true. In the past, some viewers have always followed the money trail of a tv show which inevitably leads to the sponsors/advertisers that help fund it. Example of tv advertisers pulling out of controversial topics:

https://www.nytimes.com/1997/04/30/business/main-character-e...

As I've mentioned many times before, there is no media institution on the planet (whether private corporate or public government funded) -- that is immune from censorship because every piece of the chain (creation, distribution, broadcasting, advertising, etc) all require money and money is the ultimate lever to apply pressure via government decrees, consumer boycotts, advertiser boycotts, employee revolts, journalists shaming, etc.

Nobody has invented an implementation that can withstand any pressure to filter content but also be available to the mainstream masses. Google even with its billions has to tame Youtube to placate advertisers. Apple, even with its billions has to placate China. Niche/obscure "censorship-proof" tech like Freenet/IPFS is not for the masses and the desirable content creators can't monetize their effort there.

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

#428

Post by pjc50 »

read_if_gay_ wrote: post #421
LordDragonfang wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The obvious answer is a well-informed populace that isn't easily swayed by emotion and fear, and has the time and inclination to do their own fact checking. Trouble is, that's obviously a pipe dream. The other trouble is that one side is actively opposed to a "well informed populace" and unironically calls secondary education "liberal brainwashing camps". If you want a well informed populace, you have to privilege t…

It is insane how people will always continue to blame the other side even when replying to a comment pointing out how basically everyone on the political spectrum currently feels this way.

Well, yes, everyone feels that way, but whose feelings are well-founded and whose aren't?

This is the difference between "we are banning substance X because we did a controlled experiment and found it to be carcinogenic", and "we are banning X because we are afraid of ghosts".

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

#429

Post by steffandroid »

chii wrote: post #331
drak0n1c wrote: post #225

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…

It's stupid, because in the era of television, people understood that the advertising commercial breaks in programmes were distinct from the actual content of the programme, and that the advertisers are _not_ endorsing the contents of the programme at all! How this somehow translated, in the era of online youtube videos, to the exact opposite is still a mystery to me. So what if your ad appeared next to something rad…

On the contrary, television advertisements have (rightly) always been viewed as inextricably linked to the content they appear between. As such, advertiser boycotts have been a favoured tactic of conservative organisations throughout the past few decades. For example, from 1982:

> For the second time within a year, the Coalition for Better Television is threatening a boycott of one or more companies that advertise on prime-time television, but this time without the support of its most prominent member, the Moral Majority.

https://www.nytimes.com/1982/01/28/arts/a-boycott-of-tv-adve...

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

#430

Post by mlang23 »

uniqueid wrote: post #311
Filligree wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should people be allowed to watch anything except what's best for them? /s

I don't care if what you watch is good or bad for you . I care if what you watch turns you into a threat to me . Based on the past few years, it looks like maybe 20% of the general population is suggestible enough to endanger the rest of us.

Sounds like the typical 80/20 story. I submit the "other" 20% likely have a very similar story to yours, only with the numbers reversed.
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