
A Tesla YouTuber Wants a Gas Car and Now YouTube Keeps Taking Down His Video - Alupis
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/7kp4ma/a-tesla-youtuber-wants-a-gas-car-and-now-youtube-keeps-taking-down-his-video
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rightbyte
It is quite similar to function of "down votes" on eg. Reddit and Hacker News,
where the righteous can hide contributions from dissidents. I feel proper
moderation against a rule set is the way to go, not automatic deletion or
banning from "disagree votes".

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panpanna
You would be surprised how often flagging is abused on HN.

Say something that puts certain companies (you know who you are) in really bad
light and your post will be magically flagged.

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dang
I don't believe that's true. People imagine all kinds of things—invariably
sinister, and invariably based on their personal likes and dislikes. The vast
majority of this is over-interpreted randomness.

That's why the site guidelines ask you not to post evidenceless insinuations
of astroturfing or brigading:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html).
There needs to be _something_ objective to go on, not just however the mind
connects the dots based on a few data points. People with opposite tastes to
yours connect the dots in an entirely contradictory way, I assure you.

~~~
panpanna
Obviously any claims I make are based on "anecdata", since you guys are the
only ones who hold the full data.

But please don't dismiss this so quickly. I have seen pretty harmless types of
post getting brigaded or flagged pretty consistently. This happens more often
to new or less known users - who might have something interesting to say but
are quickly shut down.

Now, we can always blame it on different tastes or whatever, but knowing that
certain companies engage heavily in "online presence" wouldn't it be naive to
think they don't operate on HN too??

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pvg
_I have seen pretty harmless types of post getting brigaded or flagged pretty
consistently._

Can you link some you've recently encountered?

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panpanna
Well, for obvious reasons they are hard to find afterwards.

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Wowfunhappy
Turn on "Show Dead" in your profile. The posts will all become visible and can
be linked to (although you will need to instruct potential viewers to also
enable the profile setting).

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RealStickman_
It should simply not be possible to have your video taken down automatically
after having undergone a manual appeal for that same video. At the very least
YouTube should have somebody look through the video again.

~~~
aeternum
I don't disagree, but this could incentivize spammers to just upload tons of
videos then 'manually' appeal them all.

Maybe some threshold around subscriber count or views would help.

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JungleGymSam
Maybe but surely you don't believe someone couldn't come up with a reasonable
solution to that problem, right?

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ed25519FUUU
> _“The Tesla fanboys formed like Voltron and ganged up to flag my video for
> removal on youtube,” Benoit said in a tweet. “The video which was flagged
> for ‘inappropriate content’ was about me selling my Tesla and buying a gas
> car instead.”_

The algorithms strike again. This had nothing to do with EV or gas cars, but
rather people spam flagging a post. I see this happen all of the time on other
platforms such as twitter, but that's almost always because of political
reasons.

~~~
nutjob2
This was a political reason: supporters of EVs took offence and abused the
content reporting system.

In his videos he quite often reads hate mail he's receive from such people who
are outraged by even the slightest dig at Elon, Tesla or EVs.

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ncr100
Is there counter-action taken by YouTube against people who expressed a
"bullying" or "harassing" vote?

When using a group-chat system, it's possible to abuse anti-spam reporting.
One design idea is to punish those who were involved in an "unjust report".
This requires a "justification evaluation" \- that can be done by a moderator,
or by a broader community vote.

Does YT remove the ability to harass other YT users if that power is clearly
being abused?

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chillacy
I know there's an entire black mirror episode about this [1] but it would be
interesting to have some skin in the game for people who submit "unjust
reports", even if it's some sort of trust score.

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

~~~
Alupis
Some video games take it a step further and say it may result in your account
being banned if you are found to have filed to many false "cheating" reports
against other players.

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ianai
I’m more curious what his reasoning was. This would be useful information for
Tesla potentially, investors, or just people interested in the cars.

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natch
fwiw he’s getting rid of a rebuilt, salvaged vehicle, not a current production
Tesla. So the video title is arguably a little bit misleading and clickbait.

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nutjob2
What is unbelievable about this story (and other similar ones reported here)
is that YouTube enables bad actors by not making their own reviews definitive.

What's also surprising is Tesla's pettiness and thin-skin response to Rich's
videos, having banned him from their referral programme because they don't
like them, and which are entirely benign, if a little provocative.

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tibbydudeza
Not Tesla but rather the toxic section of their fandom.

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xkjkls
Stay on brand, I guess

