
YouTube is now altering comments? [video] - sleighboy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptiWBrd9YbQ
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MiguelHudnandez
The author does not even bother to mention which video, which browser plugins
he is using, or even what domain he is on. I am skeptical of these claims with
no attempt to reproduce.

I would like to know if another browser would show the original comment or the
altered one. Because the comment shows up and is then altered after the fact,
I would blame a translation plugin on the client side.

I could see a poor-quality plugin being fooled by a different-language version
of YouTube and auto translating.

~~~
wazoox
He mentions the video, it's the latest Curious Droid video :
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZHONQAMV48&t=626s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZHONQAMV48&t=626s)

I met the same problem when some videos had bizarre, translated titles.
Nothing as weird as the OP, though.

This one:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8TS1Nnbc54](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8TS1Nnbc54)

I see the title "Grandpa's Grub #2 in the Aude" in Firefox; but in Chromium
the title is "LA POPOTE À PÉPÉ Épisode #2 Dans l'Aude à Saint-Gaudéric." which
is probably right (all the videos in the series are French, in French and
titled in French).

So there's definitely something weird going on, and it's breaking badly
youtube. Google never was able to understand that I'm able to read several
languages, thank you, and I don't want no stupid auto-translate, ever.
Particularly when auto-translate randomly drops words (as in my video
example).

~~~
squarefoot
"Google never was able to understand that I'm able to read several languages,
thank you, and I don't want no stupid auto-translate, ever."

Same problem on Ebay, and they have a much worse translator than Google, so
that English product names get sometimes translated in funny totally unrelated
words. I asked them if there's a way to turn off the translation and get only
original English terms but alas no way.

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half-kh-hacker
Honestly I'd be more inclined to write this off as a bug with Polymer.js or
something rather than jumping to a conclusion from the YouTube comments like
"Say goodbye to free speech﻿" \-- It's much more plausible to be a technical
issue than an attempt at controlling the contents of _YouTube comments._

The guy says it was an amalgam of his previous comments he'd made that day and
I'm sure if you have a channel of his size, you're likely to have YouTube open
for quite a while, and since it's an SPA, you could get all sortsa concurrency
bugs or whatever.

~~~
hjek
Probably a bug with the new DragonFly rollout.

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tontonius
I guess the main critique here would be the question of authenticity. How can
you prove that it was actually youtube and not some homebrew lookalike site he
cooked up?

With that said, I'd like to add the obvious "BIG if true"

~~~
buboard
> "BIG if true"

I 'm sorry, but even if true, who cares about youtube comments?

~~~
larkeith
That it's YouTube is utterly irrelevant - _if_ this is not an external factor
(e.g. a clientside translation plugin, as suggested elsewhere) it sets a very
dangerous, and likely illegal, precedent, even more notable from being a
Google-owned site.

I strongly doubt that this is on YouTube's end, however - not because I trust
Google not to alter comments if they believe it fits their interests, but
rather because I believe they could do it in a more subtle manner (test
backlash by only fixing typoes at first, for example, and probably hide major
alterations from users).

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buboard
could it be .. spez again

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anigbrowl
Easy to fake, and a sample size of 1...I think this requires more examples
before being taken seriously.

~~~
agildehaus
I post YouTube comments frequently and I've never seen this.

I'd be inclined to think it's a bug in some extension he's using, or Chrome's
automatic translation feature is doing something it shouldn't.

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type0
This title is misleading and should be changed. At least use the "YouTube is
now ALTERING our comments?!" or something,,,

~~~
mintplant
In what way is the title misleading?

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dang
Perhaps because it turned into a statement rather than a question? We've put
the title closer back to the original. (Submitted title was "YouTube
automatically modifying comments on submission".)

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notananthem
Is hacker news suddenly clickbait shitpost?

