
Ask HN: How long has Google been censoring YouTube comments critical of China? - alfiedotwtf
I was just alerted to YouTube censoring comments critical of China. I then tested this by commenting on one of my own videos with random hotkeys that I knew would trigger anything of the sort. About 10 seconds later, my test comments were gone.<p>Edit: I posted the following comment to my video, and this was deleted too. This could not be a spam filtering false positive:<p>&quot;The world&#x27;s sanitisation problem could be helped with more recycling of chinese trash, especially in wuhan. The green waste that&#x27;s turned into compost in tiananmen square is a bonus to sustainability.&quot;
======
jacknews
I don't know about China in particular, but I find youtube censorship to be
particularly deceitful.

If you make a comment, and it is censored for some reason, perhaps the video
owner blocked you or whatever, the comment still shows; TO YOU. When you are
logged in, you can see your comment.

But no-one else can see it.

Log out, or logon as someone else, and your comment is simply not there.

I found a similar thing with facebook. If you join a group, and are then
banned for some reason (I'm not sure the exact mechanism), you can no longer
see the group - it's as though it doesn't exist; it doesn't show in searches,
etc. But log out, or logon as someone else, and there it is.

This 'customized view of reality' seems to me much more dangerous than simple
censorship.

~~~
comprev
I think this method is called a "shadow ban" on Reddit. You can see your
comment on the sub only when logged in.

~~~
jacknews
Yes that's it exactly, thanks for naming the practice.

It should be banned, lol.

~~~
bitwize
It's used here on Hackernews too.

It contains troll harassment. By not letting a troll know they've been banned,
you remove the incentive they might have to create a new account to continue
their harassment.

~~~
yesenadam
> It's used here on Hackernews too.

Source?

Many times I've seen a comment that's dead for unknown reasons, then realized
all that user's comments are dead. Then tracing back in their history to the
point that started (I'm curious!), inevitably there's dang explaining
patiently to them why they've been banned (and usually doesn't sound like a
first warning, but the last of many) and what to do about it. I've never seen
a user's comment history just mysteriously turn dead at some point for no
reason. (A couple of times I've seen every comment of a user is dead for no
apparent reason, I figure it's from being a sock puppet or something.) So that
makes me think shadow banning is not used.

There are subterranean dwellers who comment dead comments for years,
apparently not knowing no-one can read them, but trace back their history -
and they know very well they're blocked, and usually have a conspiracy theory
to explain why. Maybe people see those comments and assume they're shadow
banned. Because who would spend years writing dead comments on HN?!

~~~
dang
We still use shadowbanning, but only when an account is new and shows signs of
spamming or trolling. When an account has an established history then we tell
people we're banning them and why.

Past explanations here:
[https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20shadowban&sort=byDate&type=comment)

------
mcfly1985
Watching people embrace censorship is the most depressing thing I’ve ever
witnessed.

~~~
aboringusername
I mean, defining "censorship" is kind of difficult.

You've got a stream of data, in the form of text, that is being added to a
database. It would be logical to apply a 'filter' of sorts because let's be
honest, there are bad actors out there (remember penis enlargement/viagra for
example).

More and more of these filters are being done automatically, based on models
of previously removed comments. You could try this yourself, create a simple
application that submits 1,000,000 comments per second, of all sorts of
varieties including links and disguised motives and try to decide which stays
and which goes. Analyze your results, do you have a platform where the
comments are meaningful/useful? Are you more "liberal" in allowing comments to
stay even if they are _obvious_ spam/unwanted content because "muh free
speech!"?

If you're lucky, you may end up with something half readable, and not
completely overridden with bots or content that is absolute meaningless.

Imagine if hackernews or other content sites didn't have the same measures,
awful content would over run the site and make it less attractive.

All sites _need_ to have some form of moderation. As a result, sometimes,
content is removed. Whether that's "malicious" to you depends on your
worldview.

I appreciate that moderating a large platform is a thankless task, you have
potentially _millions_ of comments each and every day, no human could possibly
handle that volume of information.

Reddit is the same, automoderator can "censor" users, without them even
knowing, and allows regex based filters, which may not be perfect but at least
allow obviously terrible content to be removed before it's posted.

Remember, the bad actors (some might say russian interference during an
election is bad) will always be trying to "game the system", so you need to
constantly adapt your filters to try and be one step ahead in a cat and mouse
game.

Just some food for thought not everything is "censorship".

------
zorked
Try to post some grammatically incoherent comment and include the words
"penis", "enlargement", and "pills". Let us know how it went.

This is probably just an anti-spam measure. There are many anti-china bots out
there, so posting off-topic bot-like comments will get you removed.

What happened to Occam's razor?

~~~
alfiedotwtf
It was a comment on my own video, and this is after I saw a clip from a friend
doing the same thing to one of his videos - random words that would be picked
up be a naive regex.

~~~
dessant
It would help if you'd share the exact comments that got removed.

~~~
alfiedotwtf
I mentioned then in another comment here. It was: Chinese trash wuhan
tiananmen square

The comment below was that "Chinese trash" could have been blocked for "anti-
harassment", but for a year old, low-viewed volume video giving a synthesizer
demo, I'm not sure how Google could have interpreted it as harassment vs a
comment on sanitation and recycling.

~~~
dessant
I don't think the video and its popularity matter, your comment looks like
spam. It's entirely possible for Google to censor comments critical of China,
but this is not evidence of it.

~~~
alfiedotwtf
I posted the following, and it too was deleted:

The world's sanitisation problem could be helped with more recycling of
chinese trash, especially in wuhan. The green waste that's turned into compost
in tiananmen square is a bonus to sustainability.

~~~
dessant
Now that's more problematic. You could test this further by replacing those
phrases with references to a different country, though it's possible that your
account will receive more scrutiny from moderation bots due to your recently
deleted comments.

It would be interesting to test trigger phrases on a larger scale from
different accounts and publish your findings.

------
missosoup
Came across this recently when posting on someone else's video, the comment
wasn't even critical of China but I can see how a pair of words in sequence
might have come off that way. Tested on a private video of my own just now,
comment gone within seconds.

~~~
alfiedotwtf
Thanks for the confirmation. Can you tell us what words you used?

------
eastendguy
Link with more details that I found (I am not sure if this is the original
post about this):

[https://www.reddit.com/r/HongKong/comments/glr2h4/youtube_go...](https://www.reddit.com/r/HongKong/comments/glr2h4/youtube_google_llc_is_banning_words_that_the_ccp/)

I really hope that is just some stupid bug and not on purpose. The trigger
keywords seem pretty harmless to me.

~~~
mytailorisrich
The terms listed in what you've linked to are insults, not "words that the CCP
considers offensive".

It's like if you called someone a "Republican asshole", "libtard", of whatever
the poetic Americann English lexicon has invented.

For example, I'm sure someone could write in response to this very comment:
"how much are you paid to post, you 50 Cent Commie Bandit". This is not a
reply, this is an harassing insult.

This has nothing to do with political censorship. This is about insults,
harassment, and civility.

~~~
Zak
If a large fraction of insults were being automatically deleted, this would be
a different conversation. I, for one would welcome a setting where I could
hide incivility by default.

This is more like permitting "libtard" while deleting "Republican asshole",
suggesting a preference for one side over the other.

------
aboringusername
Personally, I feel the YouTube comment section is vastly better than it used
to be in the early days of the site. I watched a music video by an artist and
the comment section surfaced a comment that the artist had died last year, a
piece of information that was actually useful, rather than "FIRST!" or
whatever tripe I used to see.

It's not perfect, but progress has been made here, more often than not an
overly aggressive moderation that yields better more informative comments is
better, even at the risk of the legitimate ones being removed.

~~~
Nextgrid
> rather than "FIRST!" or whatever tripe I used to see

It's sad that the lack of "first" is considered as a breakthrough while it was
actually the normal situation for decades (every single forum will give you a
ban if you start spamming "first" or similar shitposts). The only reason why
"first" became a thing is because YouTube has near-zero comment moderation.

------
newyankee
All of the social media platforms have become hotbeds for information warfare.
From country based subreddits (or any subreddit with some political content)
to Youtube banning videos that are mass reported, it is crazy. Right now in
India a popular youtuber had his video deleted. It was apparently on track to
becoming the most liked non music video on the platform.

~~~
alfiedotwtf
Sure, but that's why I chose my video, which was posted a year ago with only
800 views. I knew there was no way somebody could have been watching my video
within a minute and saw that comment then flagged it - this was automated.

------
keiferski
The fact that it may be an automatic filter is sort of missing the point, IMO.
An irrational, mechanical Kafkesque dystopia is still a dystopia. Censorship
doesn't need to be obvious and straightforward, like _1984._

------
jeroenhd
I'm more intended to think that YouTube is trying to prevent the leaking shit
stain that is the youtube comment section from growing even further.

There's some nice channels I see, but anything discussing something even
remotely political (which, these days, includes mobile networks, solar panels
and other categories that have fallen victim to conspiracy nuts) are full of
trolls or shit people in general. Some comment threads incite violence against
Jews, others violence against Muslims, and then there's the white supremacists
inciting violence against everybody.

Putting comments trolling any Chinese viewers below anything that covers China
is something that's taken off lately, either because of racism or because of
increased activism in Hong Kong.

Having everybody be free to say anything had led the YouTube comments to be
generally regarded as a place or toxicity and horror for many people. YouTube
trying to brush up their image after Elsagate and other such PR disasters only
makes sense, and their comment section is the first I'd personally clean up. I
don't know how you'd do that without dancing on the dangerous line between
(American) expectations of complete freedom of speech and getting out the
nutjobs, but someone over at Google seems to be trying to and probably uses
this new-fangled machine learning thing to do it because it doesn't involve
paying people to keep the stream of verbal manure in check.

There's also the danger to your platform that comes with angering Chinese
nationalists. When Notepad++ added a message to stand up to the Chinese
concentration camps, its Github got completely flooded by angry Chinese people
and trolls from both sides. Some of the people calling the author "filthy dog"
and other expletives were maintainers of seemingly commonly-used libraries and
projects. Criticising the worst of China seems to have the same effect as
posting a video of a burning American flag. I doubt many platform owners would
like their platform to host these social garbage fires.

All of that culminates into topics where trolling often occurs being removed
or shadow banned. Posts on HN get shadowbanned as well, usually after manual
flagging, but I do have doubts about the absence of troll farms controlling
the narrative here.

As far as I know, YouTube has always had certain words being blacklisted,
usually swears and such. This system can also be used by channel owners to
maintain their comment section. I can only imagine when Google decided to add
material criticising China, but I'd expect it would have started when the
first Hong Kong protests were met with violence.

~~~
zozbot234
> There's also the danger to your platform that comes with angering Chinese
> nationalists. When Notepad++ added a message to stand up to the Chinese
> concentration camps, its Github got completely flooded by angry Chinese
> people and trolls from both sides.

I've definitely seen this kind of thing happen, even on HN, but it's not
necessarily organized or paid for like the wumao stereotype implies. Just
ordinary "human flesh search engine" dynamics will easily do that - the West
has its 4chan trolls, the Chinese have their angry internet nationalism. The
most you can say with certainty is that it's definitely tolerated by the
authorities, but then there's no reason why it _wouldn 't_ be.

~~~
jeroenhd
I don't think these people were paid at all. From what I read about it at the
time, it seemed that a somewhat popular Chinese news source pointed out the
message put into Notepad++ which caused outraged people to lash out across the
internet.

The trolls were just there to ruffle feathers and laugh at other people's
misery. Chinese nationalists were met with overt racism, which sparked more
outrage by other Chinese people, which was then met with more resistance from
people defending the software author from the attack on their Github page,
creating an argument between two groups that would have otherwise never
considered going up at arms against each other.

There wasn't as much of an agenda as there were just a bunch of angry
nationalists (you're bound to have those in a country counting over a billion
people) and trolls using their outrage for their own amusement.

------
thrlllllll
Can confirm works on my own videos, even if they are unlisted. My own video, 0
views, 0 comments.

共匪, 五毛党, or 五毛

These are all instantly deleted, roughly 10-20s

~~~
mytailorisrich
These are insults, trolling terms.

It sounds like Youtube now has filters against harassment in order to keep
things a minimum civil (rather than being involved in a pro-China
conspiracy...)

There is plenty of material highly critical of China and its government on
Youtube.

~~~
AlchemistCamp
That's not true. The 1st term is a historical name for soldiers on the winning
side of the civil war that has become a _political_ smear somewhat like
"Rethuglicans" or similar.

The second and third refers to the well-documented practice of government paid
commenters trying to shape public opinion. There's no good justification for
YouTube to censor all comments on that topic. If anything the topic has become
more important over the years and people are more concerned about it than ever
after the 2016 elections.

~~~
mytailorisrich
So the first one has indeed become an insult (if it wasn't all along...)

The second and third are also insults. Whether the Chinese government pays
posters or not, the fact is that the terms are most commonly used in an
insulting and harassing manner against anyone that has posted something deemed
too "pro-China".

------
_iyig
Moderators, why was this post removed from the front page (and the Ask HN
front page)? It is newer and has more upvotes than many other submissions. Are
questions like the OP's still allowed on HN?

~~~
zihotki
If many people will flag it it will automatically removed from front page.
This is likely is not a mod's job but flagging.

------
quantummkv
What is really sad is that it is neither new or unexpected. People have been
warning about exactly this for years. We have seen this happen before. Yet I
see a lot of people throwing around Occam's razor and trying to convince
themselves that this is not happening in this very thread.

------
jpxw
[https://translate.google.com](https://translate.google.com):

共匪 => “Gangster”

Interesting.

------
tossAfterUsing
It wouldn't be such a problem to have YouTube colluding with Chinese censors
if we didn't depend so much on YouTube to disseminate information.

------
yorwba
"random hotkeys that I knew would trigger anything of the sort" Just single
keywords? And which ones? The stories I've seen were about people posting just
共匪, and honestly I'm not too bothered if comments that are just name-calling
get deleted. If actual well-written criticism disappears, that would be
another matter.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _I 'm not too bothered if comments that are just name-calling get deleted_

I am if it's done silently. Particularly at the behest of a government that's
more than willing to flatten well-written criticisms alike.

~~~
Aunche
YouTube has banned harassment for a while now. That why YouTube comments are
mostly memes now instead of a complete cesspool like they used to be. I'm sure
YouTube bans other political slurs like "libtard." That doesn't mean they're
doing it at the behest of the Democratic Party.

------
throwaway_pdp09
This submission was flagged. I just upvoted it, the flag disappeared
instantly. Maybe that's the answer?

------
alfiedotwtf
And now this post has been removed from the Ask HN front page too...

------
bootloop
What video did you comment on? Your own? The owner/uploader can remove
comments too so it might not have been YT.

Edit: As comments pointed out, I clearly didn't read the post properly, OP
already stated it was his own video.

~~~
alfiedotwtf
I commented on _my own video_ and the comment was gone in about 10 seconds!

------
alfiedotwtf
... and this post has now disappeared from the front page? It was #13 with 77
upvotes.

------
ladyanita22
What is going on with Google lately? They're really going downhill

~~~
libertine
They're too big for their own sake.

That shows on things like this, lack of vision in some products, lack of
consistency, abandoned products, products that seem to be detached, etc...

------
EmilioMartinez
Obviously automated, so this is irrelevant and besides the point (in this
case).

But it strikes me as odd that that comment sounds so innocent to you. There's
an ongoing multi-sided arms race between AI-assisted spam filters, censorship,
trolls, socio-political movements, scammers, etc. The result being that many
groups find new ways of communicating and circumventing filters.

So, if I randomly came across your uncanny and unnatural post in the current
context, it would read to me as if you were crypto-advocating for chinese
genocide to help resolve world overpopulation, calling the Tiananmen massacre
a net positive for mankind.

Seriously, read it carefully.

------
jtdev
I wonder if YT deletes comments or content critical of the U.S.? Based on some
of the comments here, only China is being shielded from criticism...

~~~
Jonnax
Is America an authoritarian state that would prevent YouTube from doing
business in its country if people were allowed to post anti American comments?

Should it be?

~~~
jtdev
No, and it should not be... freedom of speech is a good thing.

