
Google deletes “communist bandits” from comments on Youtube - zaggynl
https://support.google.com/youtube/thread/19190975?hl=en
======
dang
All: please don't miss that there are multiple pages of comments.
Unfortunately the two top subthreads have become so large that they fill out
the first page entirely. You have to click 'More' at the bottom to see the
rest (there are almost 1000 at this point).

~~~
dang
I made this a collapsed stub comment to collect replies, since we don't want
to distract the top of the thread too much.

~~~
jb775
The "more" pagination button appears to only be visible on the first page of
comments....you need to update the URL manually to get to comment pages 3+

~~~
dang
Oh! The second page was crashing. It should be fixed now. Eesh; I'm sorry.

There's a bug that we haven't fixed yet, the workaround for which is to
restart the server after renaming an account. I must have forgotten to do
that.

------
koheripbal
I think a more fundamental problem is a single private company having a near-
monopoly on various public communication channels, and having financial
interests in various global dictatorships.

The Founding Fathers could not have predicted this.

Google's "We're a private company" get-out-jail-free card cannot continue to
apply.

~~~
subsubzero
Here are some numbers to keep you up at night, they are very scary:

Google controls 91.89% of the search market [1]

G controls 68% of the browser market [2]

G's android is on 84% of phones operating systems [3]

G has 73% of the search advertising market [4]

[1] [https://gs.statcounter.com/search-engine-market-
share](https://gs.statcounter.com/search-engine-market-share) [2]
[https://www.statista.com/statistics/544400/market-share-
of-i...](https://www.statista.com/statistics/544400/market-share-of-internet-
browsers-desktop/) [3]
[https://beta.trimread.com/articles/16433](https://beta.trimread.com/articles/16433)
[4] [https://www.geekwire.com/2019/amazon-gaining-google-
search-a...](https://www.geekwire.com/2019/amazon-gaining-google-search-
advertising-market-share/)

~~~
SilasX
At risk of nitpicking, why do say "controls" rather than e.g. "services" or
"handles"? When you say "controls" it's like you're saying Google has some
kind of monopoly power that makes it hard to switch. And yet anyone can easily
switch to e.g. DuckDuckGo. If that's a monopoly, it's not quite the kind of a
monopoly we should generally be worried about.

Browsers would be a different issue. In that case, there are network effects
like about what standards are supported and how, which make it difficult to
launch a competing browser, even with technological superiority, and in that
case, it would be reasonable to worry about too much market share.

~~~
three_seagrass
This is the perennial discussion on HN as HN'ers get popularity confused with
monopoly. I get the anti-Google sentiment but outside of the Play services
agreements that Google got dinged for with Android manufacturers, they're not
being anti-competitive.

If Google were to block search results to DuckDuckGo for example, that would
be monopolistic and warrant antitrust action. As it is now, Google isn't
blocking competition, consumers are choosing to use Google despite the
privacy-oriented preferences here on HN.

~~~
gentleman11
They do deliberately slow their sites on Firefox, as has been discussed in
many past hn articles. YouTube for example. Pardon my lack of references, you
should confirm for yourself with a hn search in case I am mistaken

~~~
alasdair_
In addition to this, their use of reCaptcha makes using a non-chrome browser a
significantly worse experience on several sites.

~~~
Czarcasm
This is my biggest issue. I tried using Firefox exclusively for a period of
time but experienced a 10x increase in the number of reCaptcha manual
verifications I had to complete. Going to the same sites on Chrome has no
reCaptcha.

For me, this is blatant anti-competitive practice and should be punished.

~~~
Tiksi
I've used both firefox (dev edition) and chrome pretty evenly for a long time
(work stuff in chrome, personal in ff), and I haven't noticed any more
reCaptchas in firefox than I get in chrome. If you just started using firefox,
I could see the extra captchas being due to having "too clean" of a browser,
or a different browser that was never used before tripping some sort of anti
malware or suspicious login system.

All just speculation, but I haven't noticed the same issue.

~~~
eyegor
This is exactly it. Modern recaptcha is "reputation" based. So if it
fingerprint matches you against a known profile, you never see the captcha.
One could argue that a residential ip block combined with a common browser
should be sufficient to filter most bot traffic, but it's not exactly in
googles interest to worry about non-chrome user experience.

------
gabaix
Youtube is in a tough spot. They will be blamed:

\- if they don't take down speech some consider hateful

\- if they take down speech some do not consider hateful

共匪 is seen as an insult by a group, but others do not. If Youtube bans
nothing, then hate speech thrives and they get bad PR. If Youtube bans
anything anyone flags as hate speech, then they become de facto as censorship
agents for foreign powers. Anything critical can be seen as offensive and
taken down by CCP or Russia.

Youtube is more and more siding towards removing content. I wonder, can US
regulators do something about it?

~~~
manigandham
The solution is to realize "hate speech" is mostly subjective and revert back
to the clear rules that we had last decade before the current political
climate of gratuitous outrage.

~~~
Flantastical
I think part of the issue is the power of comments like yours that pretends
there's a simple solution.

In some conversations bad actors can gain more power in a debate using
misleading information than a good actor can by using the truth.

Most conversations, such as this one about free speech, are so complex that
it's tough for a 'good actor' to offer solutions. They may discuss the pros /
cons of each side, talk about where further research is needed, talk about
experts that are more informed, etc. They can still offer solutions but they
shouldn't be pretending an unconfident solution is complete if they really are
a good actor.

Bad actors, on the other hand, can simplify the complexities. They can provide
confident solutions to complex problems and do so without worrying about the
information they don't know or about misleading others.

Fortunately bad actors are often weeded out in discussions, but in
conversations that abuse humans fear we become more demanding of answers.
Explaining to fearful people "it's complex" isn't satisfying so we become more
susceptible to lies / misinformation spread by bad actors. Conversations
abusing this fear / anger is where there is an argument about whether
misinformation should be limited.

~~~
skissane
> In some conversations bad actors can gain more power in a debate using
> misleading information than a good actor can by using the truth.

Can "actors" be neatly divided into "good" and "bad"? Who decides who is a
"good actor" and who is a "bad actor"? Your judgement of who is "good" and
"bad" may well differ from mine.

~~~
mike_d
> Your judgement of who is "good" and "bad" may well differ from mine.

One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter.

~~~
kortilla
Usually that only works if you ignore the definition of terrorism.

~~~
ric2b
What is the definition?

------
socrates1998
I can't fathom how private companies still think that they can make the CCP
happy AND their western customers.

The CCP holds values that are completely untenable to western values. As time
goes on, companies who don't know this will lose massive brand value in the
western world.

The NBA has managed to tight rope this so far, but I doubt they can hold it
together for very much longer. The CCP is still calling for the Houston
Rockets GM to be fired 10 months after he tweeted vague support for the Hong
Kong Democracy movement. They still refuse to show NBA games domestically
because of it.

One vague tweet in support of democracy.

~~~
shadowgovt
Actually it's super-easy; barely an inconvenience.

Most Western customers really do not care. Like, really-really. The default
attitude is "Well, China has its rules and the Western nations have theirs.
They can get along." Leaks between rulesets are relatively rare in the sea of
regular day-to-day operations.

And honestly, I don't think the CCP's goals are as far different from the
goals of, say, the US government's as some believe. The countries are trading
buddies. They're both empires with a number of citizens that is too-big-a-
number-to-visualize-in-one's-head. If they ever came into direct conflict,
these differences would start to put Western-headquartered countries in
difficult positions, but that's not the current state of things.

~~~
socrates1998
I think that attitude of customers is changing as we speak. Before, sure, it
was easy to ignore the ramblings of how the CCP was upset at something and a
western company just gives into them.

Now, anti-CCP sentiment is growing. I think western people are starting to
realize how different we actually are. The CCP will be blamed for the pandemic
(which is mostly correct), and you will see a massive decoupling here in the
next couple of years.

This is the first real anti-globalization movement in about 80 years. Who
knows where it will end.

~~~
shadowgovt
Hopefully not where the last anti-globalization movement did (isolationism,
fascism, and a world war).

~~~
socrates1998
Obviously. I think the CCP has been given a pass the past 15 years. It's high
time they conform to the western liberal democratic model of government.

I really hope it doesn't get ugly, but it could. We are so different than
them, I just don't see how we go back to business as usual after this mess.

~~~
jhpriestley
Actually even longer than 15 years, the US has all-too-generously allowed the
CCP to continue to exist ever since we benevolently allowed their army to
fight ours to a standstill on the Korean peninsula in 1953.

~~~
shadowgovt
It's not really an "allow" kind of deal; a nation's options are limited
dealing with the most populous nation on the planet.

Lots of options end in nose-cutting to spite faces, and the winning move
starts to look like "don't play" real quick.

------
humaid
Similar happens with the name "Eric Ciaramella", which YouTube instantly
deletes. This is a name of a CIA whistle blower. It would be interesting to
know what other words are in the YouTube censor list.

~~~
CamelCaseName
Wow.

No Wikipedia articles on him either, and reports of people getting permanently
banned from Wikipedia for trying to create that article, or even mentioning
him in another.

~~~
willis936
Wow.

It's almost like the missions of popular websites fall in line with protecting
individuals against government-sponsored attacks on whistleblowers.

Witness protection isn't some flashy thing in movies. It's real and society
benefits from it.

~~~
CamelCaseName
1\. I imagine state actors have better information than Wikipedia editors.

2\. Leaving that aside, why permanently ban those who make such contributions
to Wikipedia?

~~~
dodobirdlord
1\. State actors also have a long and established history of abuses of power.
We should not defer to what they have to say on issues related to their
possible abuses.

2\. Propensity for creating such a page is a strong indication of extremely
poor judgement.

------
mikaeluman
Imagine you posting “nazi bandits” on a WW2 video and seeing it vanish after
15s.

We in the IT community need to disassociate with google as much as we possibly
can.

Free speech is more important than ever.

~~~
leoh
It's more complex than that. Imagine that you are a US company operating in
Germany that provides German citizens with an incredible amount of information
that wouldn't otherwise be available. You have thousands of people working in
Germany. Occasionally, the Nazis ask you to censor things, If you don't, your
entire team is at risk and will all loose their employment and citizens of
Germany will loose access to an incredible amount of information and services.
It's not cut and dry.

~~~
chance_state
>It's not cut and dry.

Yeah, it actually is. You tell the Nazi's to fuck off and if they kick you
out, they kick you out.

~~~
tomc1985
And then a number of your former staff and their families are kidnapped and
sent into work/death camps

------
jimbob45
Counterpoint: this is (weirdly effective) reverse psychology. We know China
runs slave camps near the NK border and slavery is typically demonized here in
America. However, no one talks about it because China deplatforms relatively
benign topics instead. Do we really think they wouldn't prefer a Winnie the
Pooh image of their leader over slave camps? Even Tiananmen Square is
preferable to forced human organ harvesting.

~~~
mrobot
> We know China runs slave camps near the NK border

We don't, actually.

> slavery is typically demonized here in America

No it's not, it's just hidden so liberals (including republicans) don't have
to think about it. It's the prison industrial complex.

> Do we really think they wouldn't prefer a Winnie the Pooh image of their
> leader over slave camps? Even Tiananmen Square is preferable to forced human
> organ harvesting.

Anything you read in the western media about China or North Korea should be
second-guessed and double-checked against eastern media, usually chinese
language, for facts. The so-called "free press" is really a coordinated
operation run by a few media companies in the interests of the capitalist
class. People supposedly iced by Kim Jong Un have been magically resurrected
many times. Western media tries to put all the blame of the coronavirus deaths
in the US on China "not coming forward" when they had months and months to
prepare. The US has entire media structures like "Radio Free Asia" to spread
anti-China propaganda.

~~~
pauliunas
so you think it's smart to look for "facts" in Chinese media with all their
censorship? What a ridiculous idea, there are no facts there, only things
their government wants people to see.

------
JumpCrisscross
How far does this go? How far could it go?

Can one take out an ad with "共匪" in the text? Adwords against it? Is this
censored on Orkut? Would Google consider censoring Gmail? Or Google Voice?
Would they consider bleeping Google Meets?

Google will need to be very public about who signed off on this and under what
framework.

~~~
mmhsieh
What if "共匪" is presented graphically? Do the sniffers have the image
recognition to flag those too?

~~~
ocdtrekkie
Generic corporate spam filters can OCR for spam text in pictures and have been
able to do that for many years, I would assume Google can too.

~~~
mmhsieh
Very interesting. I wonder what would happen if you put in some special noise
from adversarial AI methods today. Would be a real arms race of detection vs
evasion.

------
zaggynl
Try commenting 共匪 on any youtube video, the comment will be deleted after ~15
seconds

~~~
snapetom
Just tried it on a video about WHO and Bruce Alyward. It's still up after 6
minutes. Either we're inundating their censor bot, it's been shadowbanned, or
Google has stopped under the flak. I'll keep checking later.

~~~
Mizza
Try looking at your comment in an Incognito window and sort by new. You'll
still see your own comment if you're logged in, but you won't see it
otherwise. I just tried this.

~~~
snapetom
It's still up after two hours:
[https://imgur.com/a/9x0Yvyc](https://imgur.com/a/9x0Yvyc)

I just tested it via two methods:

1) VPN'ed into work with Firefox in Private Mode (I posted from Brave)

2) Had a friend test it. He's on Chrome from a different city.

~~~
Mizza
Interesting. What's the content of the video? Link?

~~~
snapetom
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5n0j93sOCcg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5n0j93sOCcg)

------
barbegal
As a software engineer I understand these sort of bugs.

A product manager in China asks: can we find a way to prevent people
commenting on these videos with comments that contain the word 共匪. Engineer
goes away and comes up with a plan to train an AI model to detect these
comments. He present's this solution to his manager who informs him that the
solution needs to be in place next week, there is no time to gather the
required training data and annotate it. There is also no budget for this
project.

So the engineer goes off to find a new plan and finds that Google already has
a basic spam comment detector which uses simple heuristics to delete comments.
He adds a new rule to the detector. Mark as spam if it contains the "共匪" sub-
string.

His boss is now happy, it gets sent to a test team in China who confirm that
commenting with the word 共匪 on one of the videos results in the comment being
deleted. Test passed job done, ticket closed. At no point does this get
escalated or reviewed by anyone properly.

And if you don't believe this can happen anywhere, see the Scunthorpe problem
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scunthorpe_problem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scunthorpe_problem)

~~~
envy2
Except YouTube is blocked in China, so no one really should be trying to solve
this to begin with...

~~~
natestemen
people read/write chinese outside of China though...

~~~
fermienrico
Why do we have to kowtow to them or even the Chinese government?

If someone says "Fuck the US government", we allow that on Youtube, don't we?

------
nunodonato
wow, three "google bans/deletes" on the frontpage today. Its never too early
to start ditching everything google.

~~~
freshhawk
I like how there are a bunch of comments in those other threads insisting
Google doesn't do anything moderation that's "political".

~~~
uoaei
One fascinating thing about being Very Online in the past 10-20 years is
watching the messages of astroturfing campaigns slowly leak into public
sentiment. I'm sure the same thing happens with other forms of media,
primarily cable television. But as an example, with the whole 50 Cent Army, a
few people have heard convincing arguments from them and turned into unwitting
(or otherwise) propagators of the same rhetoric.

~~~
jungletime
Carl Jung: “People don't have ideas. Ideas have people.”

~~~
uoaei
That dude was right on. The concept that's helped me the most in my personal
growth has been that of the Jungian shadow.

------
exo-pla-net
YouTube filtering slurs and hateful memes is not surprising.

They would target anything that gets spammed and reduces the quality of
discourse (such as it is on YouTube).

I see no evidence that China is getting any special treatment here. It was the
subject of hateful spam, so now it gets a filter. Same would apply to any
other country or topic.

From my perspective, the absolutist "freedom of speech"/anti-censorship belief
is naive. There would be no havens for intelligent communication online
without censorship.

When an intelligent, well-reasoned critique is deliberately suppressed,
protest is warranted.

Until then, it's shrill and spammy and divisive and ascribes nefarious intent
to people simply trying to keep the room clean and is, ironically, best
moderated away to preserve the quality of discourse elsewhere.

~~~
jakebasile
Who decides what is intelligent, well-reasoned critique?

Those in power have an incentive to categorize anything that threatens them as
"hate speech" or "obscene" or "threatening to the social order".

~~~
exo-pla-net
There are two parties that decide what constitutes an intelligent, well-
reasoned critique.

The first party is the owner(s) of a platform. For any owner, there is
incentive to preserve power, but there is also incentive to not act as an
oppressive villain.

The owner sometimes has ideals beyond power, such as cultivating free
communication to build ideas for a better world.

But even the most callous, iron-fisted dictator can sniff the danger in being
overly oppressive. They also sometimes recognize that unstifled communication
serves as a competitive advantage.

As a consequence, free speech is less fragile than it seems. There are even
whiffs of it in China itself: [https://www.cecc.gov/freedom-of-expression-in-
china-a-privil...](https://www.cecc.gov/freedom-of-expression-in-china-a-
privilege-not-a-right)

The second party that decides what constitutes an intelligent, well-reasoned
critique are the viewers of and contributors to a platform.

We have pitchforks, and pitchforks have sharp ends, but they can be dulled by
overuse. Furthermore, the citizen's militia grows weary when called upon too
often.

And thus, when the rallying cry is sounded for the non-event of a crude slur
being censored, we're eroding our own power. We're jumping the gun, which
should fire only when _we_ think an intelligent, well-reasoned critique has
been suppressed.

Making a slippery slope argument is betraying a lack of understanding about
the above complex dynamic.

~~~
jakebasile
I disagree, since I think all speech* is equally protected speech, including a
crude slur. The reason for that is because it is far too easy for the powers
that be to use claims of "only cleaning out the trash" to censor legitimate
thoughts and expressions. Throughout history humans have proven incapable of
making the right call on where to draw that line, so the only option is to
draw it at all.

To refute your points: the owner of the platform has all the power in this
relationship, since there are essentially zero repercussions for them over-
censoring discussions. Most of the users of a platform won't know, won't care,
or will accept the "just censoring the evil speech" argument. The audience
itself is also not infallible, since there is a such thing as the tyranny of
the majority.

*: of course, there is the point where speech itself requires harming another to create, such as child pornography or snuff films. But that is not what is at issue here or anywhere in modern discourse.

~~~
exo-pla-net
You posit a false dilemma:

* Accept suppression of intelligent dissent.

* Allow all speech, including unintelligent and hateful speech.

This is evidently false, given:

1) Intelligent, well-reasoned dissent against a platform is permitted on
virtually all large platforms on the internet, and this has been the case for
decades.

2) Virtually all large platforms censor unintelligent, hateful speech.

Your nightmare scenario of intelligent speech disappearing due to censorship
of small-minded vulgarity simply hasn't happened.

Quite the opposite, intelligent speech does disappear when small-minded
vulgarity _isn 't_ censored. See voat or 4chan or the thousands of other
poorly censored, poorly moderated places on the internet. Productive,
intelligent communication does not happen in public forums without censorship.

Concerning what-ifs and slippery slopes, call me when someone with a well-
reasoned argument is being suppressed by a large platform. All I've ever seen
is hate and misinformation being pushed down the drain, and good riddance.

Censoring kids spamming "communist bandit" isn't a problem, not in this
universe.

Censoring a professor critiquing communism as a viable form of government
_would_ be a problem, but that's neither here nor there.

Meanwhile, legitimate problems in the free speech domain are draconian
copyright laws, suppressing science and creativity, and espionage laws,
suppressing whistleblowers such as Snowden.

If we've decided that free speech shall be our crusade, and we're in the US,
our limited time and resources should be focused on these real, ongoing, and
broad-reaching problems.

~~~
jakebasile
So-called "unintelligent" speech is still speech, and therefore should be
protected. "Unintelligent" people have the same human rights as anyone else.

------
MangoCoffee
its really sad to see Google kowtow to China. i guess money trump everything.

a free, open and democratic China is Taiwan. you can see it by Taiwan's
handling of covid 19. they are open about their cases, allowed press to ask
unlimited questions and show everything to Taiwanese and not conceal any info.

its sad that Western companies love money more than the Western values that
they always talk about. "Don't be evil"

~~~
pm90
Western companies don’t talk about values, Western governments do. The past
few decades have seen an aggressive destruction in the power of Western
governments to subdue them to Corporate power. The US is a prime example where
the Republican party’s only policy platform (not even exaggerating) is “tax
cuts are the solution to every problem”.

The US government specifically has been declawed and dismembered by the
current administration to the point of uselessness. The only time it’s willing
to assert power is to enable the corrupt dealings of political appointees and
lobbyists.

~~~
chance_state
>Western companies don’t talk about values, Western governments do.

This is completely wrong.

Every other ad on TV in the US is preaching about how much
Walmart/Amazon/Pepsi/etc. care about the environment/LGBT rights/safe working
conditions/etc.

Western companies talk about their supposed values _all the time_, they're
just mostly full of shit when they do.

~~~
pm90
I’m talking specifically about values in an international context. Google
won’t try to enforce free speech values it loves when operating in China. They
will abide with warantless searches there if need be.

The US government though has more power to resist such demands acting as a
sovereign equal to the Chinese State.

------
AdmiralAsshat
From the actual Google Support question, this was posted on 11/10/19\. Why are
we only now just noticing? Was it previously confined to China and has now
just rolled out globally?

~~~
jshevek
Viral noticing is fed by widespread predispositions, which change over time
like fashion.

There is a critical mass of people paying attention to censorship in general,
and recently a critical mass of people attentive to the evils of the CCP.

Also, seems to have been at least since 2012

[https://en.greatfire.org/blog/2012/jun/all-blocked-
keywords-...](https://en.greatfire.org/blog/2012/jun/all-blocked-keywords-
according-google)

~~~
yorwba
> Also, seems to have been at least since 2012

[https://en.greatfire.org/blog/2012/jun/all-blocked-
keywords-...](https://en.greatfire.org/blog/2012/jun/all-blocked-keywords-
according-google)

You're misrepresenting that link. It's not a list of things that Google
censors, but a list of things that Google wanted people to know are blocked by
the Great Firewall (i.e. Google calling attention to censorship, not censoring
themselves).

------
myartsev
Interesting - the support ticket at Google is from 11/10/2019, and doesn't
look like anything has changed since?

------
sacks2k
We never had free speech online. Only the illusion of it.

I've noticed, especially recently, that most websites that allow commenting
will shadow ban comments they disagree with, even if it's not trolling or
abusive.

The scary part is that most people don't even see this and just assume that
all of the comments they see are the only ones on the site. This can create
the false sense that a larger number of people have a particular viewpoint.

This sort of censorship and controlling behavior absolutely effects the
outcome of our elections and is much worse than anything Russia can even dream
of.

The Chinese government knows this well and in addition to online troll
campaigns, they fund our media companies directly and will pull funding if
these companies don't toe the line.

With Covid ripping through the profits of many of these media companies, now
is the time they will buy them up in mass.

We all should be prepared for an online future of CCP controlled media and
influence.

~~~
gator005
This site will shadow ban comments they disagree with, even if it's not
trolling or abusive.

------
tru3_power
In the end, we just have to stop using this stuff. We’re all addicted,
complain that google shouldn’t have all this power, yet we can take that power
away by choosing not to use these platforms. I’m guilty of this myself.

------
zozin
Section 230 of the CDA either needs to be re-interpreted by the judiciary or
Congress needs to get its act in order and pass a new law that is more
reflective of society in 2020 and beyond. It's not 1996 anymore...

------
kevin_thibedeau
I vote for 1989年4月 as a replacement. It's just a harmless date.

~~~
shalmanese
Yes, posting the date for 2 months before Tiananmen Square is clearly going to
rile the Chinese.

------
self_awareness
Just tried it, and after 30 seconds it was deleted

~~~
RodgerTheGreat
I hope your youtube account isn't linked to a gmail account you consider
important.

~~~
stri8ed
This is the first time I am seriously considering leaving Gmail. Seems like a
royal pain in the ass to switch though, since you don't "own" your email
handle like you would a domain.

~~~
ricardo81
It's not so bad if you have a domain tied to the gmail account. I use
myname@mydomain.com but point my MX records to use gmail for it. So switching
for me basically means re-pointing to another mail service.

The only reason I use them is their spam filters are excellent. Otherwise I
wouldn't.

Switching would be laborious if you're using @gmail, probably a case of
looking at each unique domain name you've received an email from, logging in
and switching addresses. Could be relatively methodical about it by taking a
backup and then working down your inbox and deleting the emails from those
recipients until you have nothing left. Could be a day job.

There is an option in gmail to forward your emails to another address if you
wanted to do it over time.

------
dirtydroog
Here's my take on what's probably going on:

YouTube is a platform designed around showing video ads to targeted audiences.
In order to show those ads they need to allow people to upload user generated
content. This content needs to be 'brand safe', i.e. it cannot be content that
advertisers don't want to be associated with.

'Content' is more than just the video itself, comments are part of this.

If an Easily Offended Entity, in this instance 'China', sees an ad from
AdvertiserX appearing on content they deem offensive they can kick up a stink
about this, this is especially true in China where nationalism is extremely
strong. Western brands have a long history of apologising to China over minor
things, they really cannot risk fervent nationalism from damaging their
balance sheet either through boycotts or having authorities turning a blind
eye to counterfeiting.

So YouTube will remove this content, not because they're under the thumb of
China, but because advertisers call the shots.

------
zanethomas
They are also deleting comments containing 五毛 which refers to China's army of
censors.

------
mmhsieh
The netizens of China have come up with very clever code talk to get around
censors. For instance, Hu Jintao's surname can be broken up into the Chinese
radicals for "Old Moon." So instead of Hu, they refer to him as Old Moon, etc.
I wonder if non-Chinese Google users will be doing the same thing soon.

------
haram_masala
Why would Google do this, though? They seem to have mostly ceded the Chinese
market.

~~~
qubex
Because the Chinese market is huge. Because freedom of speech in the Western
world is an individual liberty which platforms such as YouTube do not need to
guarantee, whereas censorship in China is an absolute requirement they must
abide by. The payoffs are asymmetric. If we had legislation in the EU or in
the US that _demanded_ that YouTube _not_ tamper with users’ comments, then
they’d have to choose between one side and the other. As it is, they’re not
legislated as a utility, so they have editorial oversight.

~~~
duxup
That doesn't really answer the question of that other user.

Google largely has largely taken being excluded from China in stride, the
other user is wondering why they would do this now.

~~~
qubex
As another user posted, there’s a long list of terms dating back to 2012, so
this isn’t recent. Even the post referred to dates from the end of 2019, so it
isn’t exactly novel.

Google might well accept being excluded from China, but I’m assuming that the
prospect of being allowed to re-enter that market is periodically dangled in
front of them by the ruling party in China, and that consequentially Google
has an ongoing motive to somewhat abide by the PRC’s rules.

Also, Google may be excluded from China, but Google also has a lot to lose if
relations with China deteriorate, for example, if China somehow interferes
with the primacy of Android there and therefore causes a massive dent in
platform numbers.

~~~
duxup
I get that but that's just conjecture right?

As far as China disconnecting from Android or forking it... that seems
inevitable. Deleting some comment's wont change that.

~~~
qubex
Or they could do something awful to Chrome.

Point is, the longer Google can postpone any such occupancies, the longer they
can delay a drop in their stock market price (because surely such an event
would have a negative effect on their stock, both for rational reasons [such
as less telemetry data] and irrational [day traders] reasons).

And yes, of course this is pure conjecture. I’m not Larry Page in disguise
spilling the beans of Alphabet’s Boardroom musings.

------
kauffj
If you think the idea of trusting giant social media corporations with the
levers to control our speech is outrageous, so does everyone working on LBRY.

We are working hard to design systems that have the same user experience as
the traditional web, but fundamentally redesigned so that this kind of
behavior is outright impossible. LBRY allows for local control of the
publishing experience, and layers identity, discovery, and payments on top of
a distributed data network.

P2P desktop client: [https://lbry.com/get](https://lbry.com/get)

Web-version: [https://lbry.tv](https://lbry.tv)

Tech documentation: [https://lbry.tech](https://lbry.tech)

Almost 100 people contributed to LBRY last month, and more than 2 million
people used it.

Come join us, and escape YouTube :)

------
russli1993
I write some comments on Youtube that explains my understanding of the
situation happening in China, in a objective as much as possible. And it turns
out it could be viewed as Pro-china. Then these comments gets deleted by
Youtube. Whether its reported or deleted by the system I don't know.

------
root_axis
Look at all the flagged comments in this thread and all over the site. HN is
the most influential technology forum on the internet, the government should
really get involved in preventing the kind of mass censorship that goes on
this forum. I am being entirely sarcastic.

~~~
banads
Maybe if HN got a couple billion more users...

~~~
root_axis
Why does that matter?

------
leoh
>In 1996, Microsoft halted sales of its Windows 95 operating system in
mainland China due to discoveries that it contained the term in Chinese-
language input method software bundled with the operating system following
police raids on computer stores.

------
f0ok
"This question is locked and replying has been disabled."

Does anyone know about other censored phrases or expressions?

On a completely different note, wouldn't it be possible to create a free (as
in freedom), open-source, decentralized search engine?

------
cwperkins
There's something I've been thinking about lately and its the fact that I
learned about the Black feelings of the Hasidic (Jewish) community moving to
Bergen-Lafayette neighborhood of Jersey City only after the mass shooting that
occurred their earlier this year. I saw a news report from the neighborhood
and a resident mentioned how they have seen a big shift in their neighborhood
and longtime residents were getting harassed to sell their homes for the
incoming Hasidic residents as they were looking to leave Brooklyn for cheaper
real estate.

I bring this up in relation to free speech because it seems to me like there
was no outlet for the residents to speak up on what was happening. It looks
like there was a chilling effect and some discussions may just not have been
had. I think its important to provide that forum to air grievances so that a
chilling effect does not occur and people feel like they are a frog slowly
being boiled alive.

I don't think Democracy is the model for all nations today, but I do think
that as countries develop and have a certain educated populace that they will
trend in that direction. Its better to be enfranchised, then completely trust
the decisions made on your behalf elected by a group of technocrats but it
requires a populace voting in good faith and of a certain education attainment
overall.

We must keep an open dialog and forum for people to speak freely. I like to
think of confronting prejudice as a first responder running towards danger. I
don't cower from having those conversations, I'd much prefer to deconstruct
them. I have to say though that the internet makes that hard since it is easy
to find echo chambers.

I really want to see communities like r/politics on Reddit better try to
foster rich, insightful discourse because I really don't see it that way now
and if someone feels differently, I would love to hear from you.

I personally think Reddit should create a new "Featured Comments" feature like
they have in comments on NYT and appoint mods of different biases to choose
Featured Comments on highly upvoted content. In the US House of
Representatives they give members of the house equal time to address the floor
and should we try to virtually recreate that type of forum as well?

~~~
golergka
To be honest, I think that many, if not most, of israeli and diaspors Jews
(and quite a lot of religious, too) would be banned from YouTube for
antisemitism if they voiced their opinions on Hasidim there.

~~~
throwaway17_17
To my knowledge YouTube does not ban content that is antisemitic. There is
some evidence that antisemitism when couple to anything Nazi will be banned
(video wise), but there is no blanket prohibition against antisemitism.

------
throwaway17_17
I don’t understand the shock here, Google doesn’t even allow for Taiwan to be
considered a country on its search page. When you search for Taiwan it shows
the map picture and says ‘Taiwan’, but Germany for instance shows the map
picture and says ‘Germany Country in Europe’. This is the very top of the page
on the mobile layout. Doing things to avoid disgruntling the CCP is standard
operating procedure for Google at this point.

------
jshevek
I'm not sure how reliable the following site is, but it looks like this has
been banned at least since 2012, along with a long list of words that I find
shockingly restrictive.

[https://en.greatfire.org/blog/2012/jun/all-blocked-
keywords-...](https://en.greatfire.org/blog/2012/jun/all-blocked-keywords-
according-google)

~~~
zaggynl
Learned something new today, thanks.

------
dkdk8283
Very unfortunate - should be able to critique anything and not be censored.

------
djdjrjebfbfjd
I’m gonna go out on a limb and guess the phrase was added to their hate speech
filter. I would guess that if I wrote racist or anti-semitic phrases those
would be automatically deleted as well. Sometimes it gets a bit silly. I
remember that in the game Words With Friends you’re not allowed to play “jew”.
Which is one of the easiest ways to use a ‘j’.

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

“共匪” => “Gangster”

Interesting

------
1cvmask
All these platforms have always been censorship platforms. It is the nature of
the beast. They can explicitly or implicitly censor. They can censor by making
sure the algorithm downvotes or content is not discoverable. Many governments,
ranging from the US government to other countries have had these platforms
like YouTube enforce censorship of content:

[https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/12/us/politics/youtube-
terro...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/12/us/politics/youtube-terrorism-
anwar-al-awlaki.html)

------
really3452
Hopefully something like DTube ([https://d.tube/](https://d.tube/)) is able to
disrupt the Youtube market soon. This google censorship stuff is getting
ridiculous.

~~~
zeeone
Got excited for a moment, then I read the "About" section and closed my
browser tab at "crypto decentralized".

------
AmazingTurtle
"This question is locked and replying has been disabled."

See, they pulled a sneaky on ya

------
alewi481
I wonder if Google Play Books pulls down works with that phrase included
within.

------
yingliu4203
Google is becoming another wechat, one or two words a time. The stages are: \-
ban one or more words \- lock your account \- control the visibility of your
speech \- report your actions to Chinese government \- ...

------
nromiun
I am kind of surprised (and worried) that anyone is surprised by this. YouTube
has always been known for very heavy moderation. This is only about comments
but they also delete tons of videos without any explanation. If the creator is
big enough they can cause some outrage in Twitter and get YouTube's "offical"
attention and then maybe they will fix it. Otherwise you are out of luck. I
wish there was some alternative platform creators could switch to.

------
leephillips
“This question is locked and replying has been disabled.”

------
est
In my best guess, if large enough people report a repetitive keyword in a
comment, the NLP will mark it as backlist corpus and auto-deletes posts next.

------
arduanika
Never forget Dehomag:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dehomag](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dehomag)

------
sergiotapia
Stop using youtube, better more decentralized versions exist in the form on
lbry.tv or peertube. Why keep planting trees in their walled garden?

------
xhruso00
Tried and was deleted after 30 seconds (3rd refresh)

------
peter_retief
I did a search on youtube for 共匪 and got many results? I added 共匪, 五毛党, or 五毛
as a comment and it quietly disappeared after a few seconds

------
torrance
It appears that the comment is only deleted when it’s made on videos. I made a
comment on a YouTube “post” and it’s still there.

------
fareesh
I propose the following solution:

1) You must be signed in to view "controversial" comments

2) When you sign up you are given a "Safe search" style set of options for
what kind of comment moderation you want (Safe, Moderate, None).

3) For users who want no moderation, apply US law or whichever law applies.
For everyone else, apply the existing censorship.

------
gonational
“Then they came for me...”

I think we need to band together against censorship in general, not only when
it’s related to China.

------
anigbrowl
Can any native Chinese speaker offer some additional context, like whether
this is likely just a request from the CCP to mute criticism in general, or
whether the phrase in Chinese has some specific meaning/implications beyond
the separate meaning of the two characters?

------
ixxi
The only way this makes sense is if the intention isn't to ban in order to
stop the term being used, but the opposite; to appear to ban in order to cause
a sensation.

Is any anti-CCP content banned/blocked? epochtimes? falungong? ... it's all
still there.

------
geuis
Just tried this on one of my own youtube videos. Got deleted after only a
couple of minutes.

------
dionian
This phrase is a pejorative for Communists; it is more or less equivalent to
the term 'commies' in English.

EDIT: Please don't downvote me for contributing relevant facts to the
discussion. I do not support censorship.

~~~
vorpalhex
Youtube doesn't censor most pejoratives in comments, as you can tell by
reading any of the comments.

~~~
chki
I think you are reading things into the comment your replying to that aren't
there.

~~~
vorpalhex
It is either the case that the parent likes to add random facts into
conversations such as "the word communist contains 9 letters" which has
nothing to do with the conversation, or the parent clearly felt that the
phrase being perjorative was tied to it being censored.

Let us assume the parent was being on topic and relevant. Therefore they seem
to indicate the censoring was due to it being perjorative. As most other
perjoratives are not typically censored (per my comment), that would imply
that the "Communist Bandit" perjorative is somehow special.

Is it special because it's somehow especially worse than other perjoratives,
or is it special because it offends a foreign state's political party?

~~~
chki
I guess we're on a tangent now but maybe it's an interesting exercise.

>the parent clearly felt that the phrase being perjorative was tied to it
being censored.

How do you come to this conclusion? In my view the comment is not implying
anything at all, it is merely translating (not only using a direct translation
but also conveying the implications of the phrase "communist bandit"). The
word "pejorative" adds to the translation. There is nothing in the original
comment that says anything about censorship at all.

~~~
vorpalhex
So then the parent was adding in random fun facts for our benefit?

------
asah
The corner cases is why reddit cmostly using armies of humans for censorship
aka moderation - there are auto-report and auto-censor bots only for the most
egregious cases.

(former mod for a top subreddit)

------
ickwabe
There's a gazillion videos all over youtube criticizing, mocking, and calling
out the Chinese government for all sorts of repressive activities.

I'm confused as to why people would think youtube is bothering to sensor those
two characters in oparticular as opposed to something much more likely like
spam/bot filtering or channel word filtering. I'd think the Chinese Gov would
be much more animated about videos like this:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9AvUuEPgvA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9AvUuEPgvA)

or this:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?reload=9&v=S3RzKKfNkTk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?reload=9&v=S3RzKKfNkTk)

or this:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4TReo_G74A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4TReo_G74A)

or any of millions of other videos.

i can find plenty of negative comments directed at the chinese communist party
in comments all over youtube.

~~~
banads
Subtle creeping influence is often more effective is the long term than just
an all once take over

------
lifeisstillgood
Some interesting background on wikipedia:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_bandit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_bandit)

~~~
BlackCherry
I was just about to post this:

Communist bandit (Chinese: 共匪; pinyin: gòngfěi) is an anti-communist insult
directed to the Chinese Communist Party. The term originated from the
Nationalist Government in 1927.

This is direct censorship on behalf of the Chinese Government.

~~~
est
It's an insult but also a historical fact. KMT was listed a observer party in
COMINTERN and Chiang Kai Shek himself was nominated as president of COMINTERN
China branch. So in a sense KMT was the real Communist deal and CCP was a
copycat version.

COMINTERN even ordered CCP to join force with KMT to form "united front", Mao
himself was forced to join KMT. And it turned out to be a bloodshed purge by
the KMT. Afterwards The CCP failed to hold its insurgent territories, CCP vows
to kickout the Soviet consultants and cut links with COMINTERN and became
independent, thus began the famous "Long March". THe term "bandit" was
invented at that time.

~~~
ardy42
Wasn't it was an enemy-of-my-enemy alliance that occurred in the context of
the Japanese invasion, and both sides were planning on picking up their civil
war where they left off, after the Japanese had been removed?

~~~
yorwba
No, the First United Front was formed in 1924, the purge of Communists by the
Nationalists started with the Shanghai massacre 1927 and the Long March began
in 1934, before the beginning of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937.

------
vuln
Man I love the fact that the upvotes continue to increase.

------
lern_too_spel
Tried it myself. Can confirm. 15 seconds on the dot.

------
silasdavis
I think that just tipped me on to the negative side ambivalence wrt to Google.
It's been a journey.

Profanity filter gone wrong? Meh.

------
beshrkayali
Reddit has been doing this for a while now.

------
donatj
Just leaving this here: [https://xn--b6qv5b.com](https://共匪.com)

------
abandonliberty
This is mainly algo-driven through the report functionality, right?

Does Google even have any sort of significant oversight?

------
broabprobe
the date on this is 11/10/19, why wasn't this posted till now?

------
qbaqbaqba
What next? Winnie-the-Pooh?

------
whoevercares
Personally I’m not really offended by rare appearance of “共匪”. Politically
this word implies the failure to recognize the legal government of mainland
China, which goes against international consensus. I’m not surprised this word
is blocked at scale

------
wdr1
I just commented on a few of my videos & it's still there?

------
beyondkaoru
I was skeptical, so tried it out myself and tried making a comment there with
'communist bandits' / 共匪. My Youtube comment was indeed removed completely and
silently, including from my comment history. I am very disappointed with
Youtube.

------
tourist2d
Why is this news?

------
Zanneth
Just read on Wikipedia[1] that the Chinese Communist Party raided computer
stores back in 1996 that sold Windows 95 because the OS contained text input
software with the “communist bandit” word in its dictionary. Microsoft had to
temporarily halt sales because of the incident.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_bandit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_bandit)

------
zheli
共匪

------
Gollapalli
Every damn day, I see more and more reasons why google should be hit with
anti-trust.

------
janee
Scrolling through all this I still can't find an explanation. Can anyone shed
light on the context of this slur?

From my ignorant perspective I just don't understand why it would necessitate
a takedown.

Is it aimed at the whole country, some subset of people, the party, communism
in general??

I don't get it.

------
ddevault
Google & YouTube employees on HN: how do you justify still working at this
company? Enough of the cognitive dissonance. Face your choices and tell me how
you square yourself with them. For shame.

~~~
ajconway
How do you justify being a citizen of your country? (not sure what country
that is, but most of them have done bad things in the past). It's possible to
be a part of a large organization and not agree with its every action.

~~~
ddevault
I have much less mobility as a US citizen to move to another country than I
have as a software engineer. Almost any Google employee could have an offer
somewhere else within 3 weeks of starting their search.

~~~
scep12
You couldn't move to Canada easily?

~~~
filoleg
Compared to most other western countries, sure, Canada is on the easier side.

However, even with that in mind, it is still a very difficult and complicated
process, with tons of hard limitations that can put a complete stop to the
whole thing due to something trivial, like not having a degree. And even with
that barrier of hard requirements cleared, it is still a pretty draconian
experience.

Having gone through a similar thing myself (not with Canada, but I ended up
coincidentally reading a lot about Canadian immigration laws), I can assure
you, it is way more difficult than getting any job, even if you are a
successful Google engineer, and by a far margin.

I am pretty sure that any person who went through an immigration process to
another country can attest to that. And I am talking purely about the legal-
paper-stuff aspect of immigration to another country, not things like getting
adapted to your new country or anything like that.

~~~
dleslie
> Compared to most other western countries, sure, Canada is on the easier
> side.

Our process isn't that easy; we have an immigration system that the GOP would
_like to have_.

There are points awarded based on your education and training, variated
against the demand for those skills in Canada. If you are being imported by an
employer they must go to considerable lengths to prove that they attempted to
find an existing Canadian to fill that role. And so on.

And it can be all avoided by paying approximately $800,000 to what is
effectively an escrow: you get it back after a few years, less inflation.

~~~
filoleg
>Our process isn't that easy

That was the whole point of my comment. Out of all western countries, Canada
is definitely one of the easiest. But even with that in mind, it is still
extremely difficult.

------
chenzhekl
Isn't it an offending word to some just like what jap is for Japanese? I don't
think it should be allowed just because people don't like communism.

------
Simulacra
共匪

------
octocop
共匪

------
hujun
another fact, you know which population uses word "共匪"? people in Taiwan, this
is actually very old word dated way back from early 1900s when Kuomintang was
still controlling China; they call communist party "共匪", and keep using that
term after they got defeated in China civil war, and fled to Taiwan island.

~~~
elefanten
I'm not sure I understand your point. It makes sense that people in Taiwan
would use political rhetoric that aligns with their perspective.

The issue is whether societies without political censorship should support
their businesses adopting it. _Who_ uses any _specific_ rhetoric (that should
be categorically protected) is not salient to the debate.

------
rmason
Can someone help me? Who are the communist bandits? Are they people who oppose
the Communist government in China?

~~~
RichardCA
It goes all the way back to Chiang Kai-shek and Nationalist China. It's an
old-fashioned way to insult the Maoists and promote the idea that Taiwan was
(and still is) in the right.

------
missosoup
There was a previous unrelated discussion about this just a few hours ago
which was climbing to the top of the front page when I saw it. And then just
vanished:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23221264](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23221264)

It's not flagged, it just went from #13 on the front page to invisible. In a
single refresh. How does that work? Looking at the votes and age, it should be
in the top 5 of both Ask and the front page. What's the metric or decision
that made it disappear?

@dang might be worth commenting on this? Moderation is fine, opaque removal of
content with no explanation, not so much. I fully believe @dang has the best
interests of the community in mind, so please give us a clear explanation of
what's going on here.

~~~
brmgb
Some users tend to flag stories about China and censorship because they
generate a lot of nationalistic and hot headed comments and very little actual
intelligent discussion. Just look at the comments attached to this submission.

~~~
missosoup
The submission I linked is _not_ flagged (at least as far as I can see from my
account?). Either there's some non-intuitive stuff going on with the way
submissions stay on the front page, or HN soft-nuked it. Either way I think we
deserve an explanation and a clear understanding of the underlying rules.

~~~
Lewton
It takes some amount of people flagging it before it shows up as [flagged] but
flagging submissions affect rankings before it reaches that point. On top of
that "Ask HN" posts also have some modifier on them that makes them drop
quicker, these two effects seem to be cumulative, explaining why it dropped so
quickly

~~~
Zarel
In addition, I believe HN deranks submissions with a high comment-to-vote
ratio, also as a signal of controversy.

------
vxNsr
Same thing happens with JoeBiden.info on facebook. You can't send it in
messenger, facebook will tell you it's blocked. I'm sure it's only a matter of
time before google manually adds it to the "unsecure websites" list

------
xster
Surprised how everyone just reads the title and no one is discussing whether
"Google deletes comment globally" as reported by a single forum post by "Anti-
communist hero" who posted one time in 2019 is factually true.

------
Dahoon
>Anti-Chinese communist party hero

Yeah, most definitely a YouTube user.

------
BitwiseFool
I find it so ironic that the reason for censoring a slur against communism is
because a capitalist company stands to lose revenue from angering the
government of China.

~~~
Aaronstotle
What could be more American than selling out your values in the name of making
more money?

------
thoughtstheseus
N/A

------
buckminstrix
In other news, Youtube will soon be coming to China. Pick your adventure,
which do you want? Youtube in CN or write whatever you like?

You'll also get videos deleted if you include in them info against WHO advice.

~~~
anoonmoose
As an American that's a pretty easy choice you're asking me to make.

------
aml702
shame on Google

------
mesozoic
共匪

Does Hacker news?

------
sebastianconcpt
Welcome to the next stage of censorship:

Google anti-anticommunism is not covert but overt now.

Take note kids: all forms of anticommunism are going to be pathologized and,
when possible, criminalized.

------
aml702
SHAME on Google

------
runawaybottle
All youtube comments should end with ‘Communists Bandits’. Digital civil
disobedience.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carthago_delenda_est](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carthago_delenda_est)

------
rbanffy
As someone who's regularly on the receiving end of far-right anti-communist
rhetoric that, in places I have lived, includes death threats and a reasonably
credible suspicion government may soon want to arrest and disappear some
people, I welcome some measure of hate speech suppression.

Before I hit submit, let me add a mandatory "burn, karma, burn" because I know
what I'm stepping into.

~~~
elefanten
Yeah, it's stunning that someone who's experienced motivated authoritarian
repression is arguing in favor of the CCP's bullshit regime-preservation
distortions on speech, thought and discourse.

You know who the global leaders of disappearing citizens they disagree with
are?

Automated filters on a global communication platform instituted for bullshit,
regime-appeasing reasons are not going to solve community-driven hate in
localities.

Anyone motivated to hate you will invent as many slurs as they need. Warping
our institutions to play whack-a-mole against bad actors is shooting ourselves
in the foot.

------
yandrypozo
Unbelievable :( it's like deleting all comments that include: "fascist
bandits" Communism has killed more people than any other ideology.

> The European Parliament has condemned communism as equivalent to Nazism

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prague_Declaration_on_European...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prague_Declaration_on_European_Conscience_and_Communism)

------
mikaeluman
Tested and verified. It was deleted right away. I didn’t even right anything
harsh.

------
bryanrasmussen
At the risk of being branded insufficiently anti-chinese, anti-communist, or
overly suspicious: I don't believe it.

I mean obviously I believe putting the comment in youtube will get it deleted.
I just don't necessarily believe it means what it says or the reasoning is
because Google is pro-China.

First off, 15 seconds all the time means automatic deletion. Is this really a
common enough phrase that they have automatic deletion set up for communist
bandits, how about communist yak-fuckers? That sounds pretty unlikely to be
set to catch that phrase, so maybe it would just be caught by an automatic
sentiment/profanity analysis. How about just yak-fuckers, how about bandits?
I'm not going to try all these out myself because

I don't have the linguistic expertise to know if that ideograph means
communist bandits, I do have some co-workers I could ask I guess, maybe
tomorrow.

Everyone is asking about the phrase in other google services, well in Google
translate it translates it as Gangsters when I go to English and Italian. The
second one is pretty suspicious because Gangster isn't an Italian word but
that's what it gave me a couple minutes ago.

I guess I will wait until later to see how this pans out before getting my
rage fully on. rage cautiously in prep stage for now.

on edit: fixed some grammar.

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sb057
Will the people who previously defended YouTube/Google's other censorship come
out of the woodwork again? It's not as if it is no longer a private website
able to moderate its content however it desires.

Will they respond to this controversy with that then-popular xkcd strip[1]
about how, "if you're yelled at, boycotted, have your show canceled, or get
banned from an internet community, your free speech riots aren't being
violated. It's just that the people listening think you're an asshole, and
they're showing you the door."?

[1] [https://xkcd.com/1357/](https://xkcd.com/1357/)

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baybal2
I do remember, google had a record of collaborationism in China, especially
around 6-4.

They were self-blocking gmail, their forums, blogger, etc.

Now, the 6-4 hysteria came to Youtube, now in US!

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voiddb
To all the people think "共匪" is hate speech, what do you think we should do
with such a group that killed millions? Go check the history of CCP. Calling
them "共匪" is a gross understatement.

------
ecmascript
The US government should do something about Google, the sooner the better.

~~~
qubex
This may not be the Federal Government you want to legislate over Google...

~~~
ecmascript
Dude, I am from Europe. I don't care what government does it just that
somebody does something. In fact, I think the Trump administration is probably
perfectly suited to do this.

~~~
qubex
Dude, I’m in Europe too. If you think the Trump administration is “perfectly
suited” to do anything... well, that’s your opinion and you’re entitled to it.
I certainly don’t agree with you about that.

------
sebastianconcpt
The left _invariably_ requires censorship in order to give the impression of
prevailing and being strong. Those who’s interests are in line with their
values implement it.

~~~
qubex
Implying that “the Left” and the Communist Party of China are in any way
comparable by referring to them collectively demonstrated a remarkable lack of
political insight and a remarkable degree of intellectual dishonesty.

~~~
sebastianconcpt
On the contrary, but I welcome you to try to make a case instead of an easy
claim that an international movement isn’t.

BTW: the downvotes without arguments already proved my point.

~~~
aww_dang
Welcome to ycommienator, a site for entrepreneurs.

------
lonelappde
And the support page is locked, so Google is also censoring people from trying
to understand the rules they are expected to follow.

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alfiedotwtf
So I posted this last night [1], it got to the front page (77 points at the
time) and after about an hour, it was gone... also missing from the Ask HN
page.

I could imagine YouTube toeing the Chinese party line, but Hacker News?
Really?! Is this about the Y Combinator fund not wanting to upset Chinese
money?

This really leaves a bad taste in my mouth @pg

1\.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23221264](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23221264)

