
YouTube actively deletes anti CCP comments - podnami
https://twitter.com/palmerluckey/status/1265077232176775168
======
r721
Recent discussions:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23317570](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23317570)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23223219](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23223219)

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

~~~
hartator
This one is another word.

~~~
dang
That difference isn't enough to support a significantly different discussion,
so I don't think it counts as SNI (Significant New Information), which is the
test we use. See past explanations at
[https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20%22significant%20new%20information%22&sort=byDate&type=comment)

The current submission is a nice test case actually. The comments here are no
different than the ones in
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23223219](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23223219),
which had over a thousand comments and was only a week and half ago.

Btw, since someone always wonders: no we're not doing this because we're
communists. It's a question of curiosity and repetition not going together
([https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20curiosity%20repetition&sort=byDate&type=comment)).
HN is for curiosity
([https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)).

~~~
mercer
However tiresome it can get, there is a value, or at least meaningful
information in repetition in itself. The constant desire for 'new' can be
harmful as a phenomenon. I suspect many politically unpopular
bills/initiatives do pretty well on repeat, when the 'newness' of the
controversy has disappeared.

I do appreciate the work y'all do to keep this place nice, but I also hope you
keep this in mind. I feel HN is 'influential' enough that being too ruthless
about optimizing for 'new and interesting and curiosity-focused' might
possibly diminish the values of HN as a spotlight/platform for important
issues. I would pick the curiosity side though if I had to choose.

~~~
dang
I think that's about right. I don't want to give the impression of being
simplistic about this; it's just that if HN is influential, the best way for
that influence to function is if we neither focus directly on it nor try to
exclude it, but leave it in peripheral vision.

There's a related issue, which is that the better HN gets at its core thing
(curiosity), the more the audience grows in quantity and/or quality, and then
the more people then want to use that audience for something else. Sometimes
that's to promote their company or event, sometimes it's to bring attention to
some other matter—maybe more important than what's actually on the front page
here. The more those things become the focus, though, the worse HN becomes at
the core thing, so there's a sort of paradox where the better it gets, the
worse it gets.

What seems to work is to focus on the core but not too rigidly. This is a good
because rigidity turns into predictability which is bad for curiosity anyhow.

------
dependenttypes
Recent and relevant
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23223219](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23223219)

------
lancesells
This is even more strange than the NBA tweet that started all of the
controversy at the beginning of the year.

Censoring messages about an arm of a government where YouTube is banned has me
wondering what is going on behind closed doors.

~~~
dcolkitt
I love a good conspiracy theory as much as the next guy. But isn't the most
likely explanation that individual YouTube moderators have been bought off,
rather than this being a policy directed by senior Google management?

How hard would be for Chinese intelligence to recruit YouTube moderators, and
offer them a briefcase filled with unmarked bitcoin in exchange for deleting
the comments that they flagged?

~~~
koheripbal
> How hard would be for Chinese intelligence to recruit YouTube moderators

I think it's much simpler than that. There are also just millions upon
millions of very nationalistic Chinese citizens (living globally) that would
happily abuse the mod button.

There are Google employees... in China... that know exactly how the company
works and how to game the system. Maybe they need to be "pressured" by the
Chinese gov't - but I wonder if that's even necessary.

Social media is rife with people who will advocate for their country for free
and without being asked to.

~~~
yorwba
> abuse the mod button

If someone insults them in the comments and they report it, are they even
abusing the system or are they using the reporting mechanism as intended?

~~~
throwaway_pdp09
I guess they're using it as intended there. But if they're using it because
they don't like factual anti-china criticism, that's abuse.

~~~
shadowgovt
It depends. YouTube's comment section doesn't have a particular editorial
purpose, the closest thing it has to a mission is letting people comment on
each other's videos for some vague sense of "community."

That's not an objective fact-oriented mission, and a moderation system that
allows users to flag and kill comments that make them feel bad is still
satisfying the constraints of the design.

------
FooBarWidget
I think this is just a case of fighting low-quality comments rather than
deliberate censoring of anti-CCP political speech.

Youtube is not supporting CCP. They regularly delete videos that are even
mildly supportive of CCP, for example
[https://twitter.com/rachw82451432/status/1265308476034519040](https://twitter.com/rachw82451432/status/1265308476034519040)

Another example is the 'Fighting terrorism' documentary by CGTN, which has
been deleted and reuploaded many times now.

Heck, I don't even call the above examples 'pro-CCP'. They just show a
different point of view that isn't anti-CCP.

I see people here claiming something along the lines of: all anti-CCP comments
are valuable examples of freedom of speech. But let's be honest here. Were it
any nearly any other topic, people's usual opinion of Youtube comments is that
it's a cesspool. While there is indeed valuable anti-CCP commentary out there,
some really is not worth reading and just degrade the quality of the website.

~~~
abjKT26nO8
_> I think this is just a case of fighting low-quality comments rather than
deliberate censoring of anti-CCP political speech._

As opposed to what comments? I've never seen a non-low-quality comment on
YouTube.

~~~
dylz
High-effort spam. I've seen URLs advertised by combining 3 accounts worth of
ascii-art.

It's almost an art form in itself, like when World of Warcraft trials didn't
allow chat and spammers would just sign in to a hundred accounts and die in
the shape of the domain name with all the corpses.

------
shadowgovt
"Who at Google decided to censor American comments on American videos hosted
in America by an American platform that is already banned in China?"

Probably no individual. There are enough Chinese pro-nationalists using
YouTube to generate noticeable signal if they all, independently based on
their political creed or as an organized brigade, decide to start flagging
posts. Once the flagging begins, the relative rarity of the characters in
question combined against the flagging signal would generate a Bayesian prior
that the word in question would tend to get flagged, and would preemptively
start killing those comments.

This is one of the ways to train an automatic moderation system that is
capable of discovering novel words the community decides are swears, and
brigading is a known pathology that those systems are susceptible to.

~~~
ric2b
If there are so many Chinese people using YouTube their signal would behave no
differently than people from other nationalities, no?

~~~
shadowgovt
It's not so much a function of how many Chinese people are using it as how
many instances of the word being posted result in a comment being flagged.

Intersections such as "The word is rarely used, but when it is used it happens
in a political setting where someone is more likely to decide to hit the flag
button" would train an ML algorithm that the word is unwelcome in general.

~~~
godelski
Couldn't you just have bot accounts that search for YT comments and key
phrases and flag those? Simply enough flags results in auto removal regardless
of YT's decision's on the acceptability of these words/phrases. This wouldn't
be very hard to setup either.

~~~
shadowgovt
No, no it would not. ;)

One challenge is that Google's actually got some pretty solid signal to find
and kill bots. But it's not impossible to botnet their services; just harder
than doing it to the average online service that doesn't have an army of
engineers who've trained on the adversarial space of people trying to automate
ad clicks for real-money revenue.

------
guscost
Congress should revoke immunity under Section 230 of the Communications
Decency Act, for any online community the size of YouTube that imposes their
own "code of conduct" independent of US law. This is a _very_ controversial
idea but anything else will lead to censorship, as we're seeing again and
again.

~~~
chimeracoder
> Congress should revoke immunity under Section 230 of the Communications
> Decency Act, for any online community the size of YouTube that imposes their
> own "code of conduct" independent of US law.

The EFF is one of the strongest champions of freedom of speech online, and
they disagree with you.
[https://www.eff.org/issues/cda230](https://www.eff.org/issues/cda230)

~~~
downerending
Thanks for the link. Unfortunately, the key item on that page is a link "makes
editorial judgments" to another page and is 404. Ha.

~~~
thejynxed
It's 404ing because the key cert for the page has expired.

~~~
downerending
That's awesome. :-)

------
vuln
Please keep upvoting.

[https://support.google.com/youtube/thread/19190975?hl=en](https://support.google.com/youtube/thread/19190975?hl=en)

~~~
topspin
I thought they said they would 'fix' this. Don't tell me eliding entries from
the naughty list is some enormous engineering exercise. Only a fool would
believe that.

------
daveytea
Before I got my pitchfork ready, I decided to test with a comment on YouTube:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufrR98sR7XY&lc=UgyRmEKscwt_U...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufrR98sR7XY&lc=UgyRmEKscwt_UgnrC-14AaABAg)
(scroll down to highlighted comment).

9 hours later it is still there... ️

~~~
LanguageGamer
Interesting. Looking at Palmer's claim: "Try saying anything negative about
the 五毛, or even mentioning them at all. Your comment will last about 30
seconds and get deleted without warning or notice, CCP-censor style." This
seems to be evidence against the broader claim that anything gets deleted,
rather than just negative comments.

~~~
mgiampapa
I wouldn't be surprised if Google's algo has some idea of how toxic a person
you are based on your previous comments.

That said, I wouldn't be shocked if every comment Palmer Lucky makes is
shadow-banned.

------
koheripbal
Google has major investments in China. Looking at "Youtube" in a bubble
doesn't tell the whole story.

I don't think "conspiracy theory" is correct - it's simply a private business
doing what's best for itself financially.

Google isn't some government institution. ...or is it?

~~~
wongarsu
If the CCP says "if you delete anti-CCP content on Youtube we will act more
favorably towards your other enterprises in China" and Google does just that,
that's a conspiracy. I'm not so sure if that's what's going on, but it seems
probable enough to consider.

------
FooBarWidget
This claim is misleading. Youtube doesn't just delete anti-CCP comments, they
also delete pro-CCP videos. For example
[https://twitter.com/rachw82451432/status/1265308476034519040](https://twitter.com/rachw82451432/status/1265308476034519040)

------
jjordan
We so badly need decentralized alternatives to these services. Unfortunately I
don't see anything on the immediate horizon that is up to the task.

~~~
jhasse
[https://joinpeertube.org/](https://joinpeertube.org/)

------
ggggtez
Someone below pointed out that when other random users post these phrases,
their comments are _not_ deleted.

Possible alternative explanations:

1) The CCP is autoflagging comments from _known anti-ccp users_

2) The CCP is autoflagging comments only on _chinese language videos_

etc...

Given that this doesn't reproduce (i.e. there is a comment with this phrase up
for over 9 hours) I'm skeptical of the explanation above that it's an
automated system inside of YouTube's backends.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufrR98sR7XY&lc=UgyRmEKscwt_U...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufrR98sR7XY&lc=UgyRmEKscwt_UgnrC-14AaABAg)

------
m0skit0
Nice hypothesis. Would be a shame if someone were to test it.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CbV_lMS0R6U&lc=UgyIxFgZnPM8T...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CbV_lMS0R6U&lc=UgyIxFgZnPM8T_OK6qN4AaABAg)

------
DiogenesKynikos
The linked tweet complains that the phrase 五毛 (50 cents) gets deleted. Does
the much-discussed 50-Cent Army even exist on non-Chinese sites?

I have a hard time imagining the Chinese government finding people who speak
fluent English willing to post for 50 cents a comment, and I've never run
across an English-language forum where such activity was apparent. The terms
"五毛" and "wumao" are usually just spammed at anyone perceived as
insufficiently anti-Chinese.

------
koiz
So we're calling spam filters censorship now?

------
abiogenesis
YouTube says that an error caused comments to auto-delete:

[https://techcrunch.com/2020/05/26/youtube-china-comments-
wum...](https://techcrunch.com/2020/05/26/youtube-china-comments-wumao-dang/)

------
fossuser
YouTube claims this is an accident [0] which I find a little hard to believe.

Is it crazy to think this is CCP state actors? [1] Both in the form of teams
of people or bots reporting anything that they dislike to trigger Google's
automation, or even just getting people hired by these companies to work on
the inside for their interests.

[0]: [https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/26/21270290/youtube-
deleting...](https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/26/21270290/youtube-deleting-
comments-censorship-chinese-communist-party-ccp)

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Cent_Party](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Cent_Party)

~~~
dathinab
My guess is that someone pro CCP sneaked the keywords which trigger the
deletion into a list of Chinese insults (i.e. on a list of purely offensive
words).

At lest one of the words found first can indeed be seen as denouncing
descriptions of communism. I can't judge if it's just that or quite insulting.

If this is true then the interesting question is how they sneaked it in there.
From outside by social enginering? From inside by affiliated devs? Through an
consultant company hired to create a list of Chinese insults?

The most ironic think is that if my guess is true then it might literally have
sneaked in without anyone intention by just using a list of insults from
somewhere else without cross validating it.

~~~
free_rms
The "communist bandits" thing is a Taiwan vs PRC thing -- Mao was basically a
bandit for like 10 years while fighting the ROC government. Or the
revolutionary vanguard expropriating wealth for the people's liberation, if
you'd prefer.

Seems roughly equivalent to calling someone "you syrian terrorist" to me? Not
sure where to calibrate it.

~~~
catalogia
'Communist' is an ideological alignment. 'Syrian' is not.

~~~
free_rms
In this context it's very clearly about the PRC, referencing specific history,
not some generic hypothetical communist.

Nobody calls berkeley student marxists 'bandits'.

~~~
catalogia
That context doesn't change my comment. Affiliation with the CCP, past or
present, is an ideological affiliation. 'Syrian' is not. Comparable to 'Syrian
bandit' would be 'Chinese bandit'. If you want a Syrian analogue to 'communist
bandit', you might try 'ba'athist bandit'.

'Communist' and 'ba'athist' are ideological affiliations, as are affiliations
with the Chinese Communist Party or the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party
specifically.

'Syrian' and 'Chinese' are not ideological affiliations.

~~~
free_rms
You're aware it's a 1-party state, right? That's an awfully fine hair to
split.

The people making that comment are talking about the government and the
nation, not an ideology (which is barely even followed in practice, anyways).

~~~
catalogia
Despite what the CCP would like you to believe, being ethnically Chinese is
not synonymous with supporting the CCP, anymore than being ethnically Syrian
makes you a supporter of Syria's Ba'athist Party. This is not a "fine hair to
split."

Whether these political organizations adhere to their own professed principles
is completely irrelevant; neither do. Whether these political organizations
tolerate opposition is completely irrelevant; neither do.

------
at_a_remove
This has been all over 4chan for a while now.

------
bobmcbobface
Well, this is kind of horrifying.

------
alexmingoia
It’s not just those words. They’re deleting any comment with the English words
“idiot communists” too.

~~~
downerending
This could be a new sport, a la Perl Golf: What's the most innocuous thing you
can put in that will get something banned?

------
jialutu
Didn't Palmer Luckey literally pay people to defame Hilary Clinton in the 2016
presidential campaign? I guess he knows all about how 50-cent army works,
especially US ones.

[https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/sep/23/oculus-
pa...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/sep/23/oculus-palmer-
luckey-funding-trump-reddit-trolls)

Edit:

[https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2017/03/31/oculus-
rif...](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2017/03/31/oculus-rift-
inventor-palmer-luckey-quits-facebook-funding-anti/)

~~~
nailer
There's literally nothing in the article about defaming Hilary Clinton. The
rest of the article is merely the newspaper complaining that Lucky doesn't
share their politics.

Edit: glad you noticed the discrepancy. The second article you added doesn't
show any defamation either.

~~~
fossuser
If you're genuinely asking, Palmer Luckey gave $10k to a group that put up an
anti-Hillary billboard in 2016 (with a cartoon caricature) [0]. This group was
also publishing stupid pro-trump political memes.

He was subsequently found out and forced by Zuckerberg to publish a letter
pretending he supported Gary Johnson (a lie that Zuckerberg thought was more
palatable than Luckey's Trump support). He ended up being sort of fired later
because nobody wanted him on their team anymore.

The best information I've read about this is in Steven Levy's new book
Facebook: The Inside Story [1].

[0]: [https://www.thedailybeast.com/palmer-luckey-the-facebook-
nea...](https://www.thedailybeast.com/palmer-luckey-the-facebook-near-
billionaire-secretly-funding-trumps-meme-machine)

[1]: [https://www.amazon.com/Facebook-Inside-Story-Steven-
Levy/dp/...](https://www.amazon.com/Facebook-Inside-Story-Steven-
Levy/dp/0735213151)

~~~
nailer
Ok. Where's the defamation? That's what I was asking about.

~~~
fossuser
I don't think you're really asking in good faith and this is veering extremely
off-topic and pedantic (and I am not a lawyer), but here:

"""

> Although laws vary by state, in the United States a defamation action
> typically requires that a plaintiff claiming defamation prove that the
> defendant:

> 1\. made a false and defamatory statement concerning the plaintiff;

> 2\. shared the statement with a third party (that is, somebody other than
> the person defamed by the statement);

> 3\. if the defamatory matter is of public concern, acted in a manner which
> amounted at least to negligence on the part of the defendant; and

> 4\. caused damages to the plaintiff.

"""

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defamation#Civil_defamation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defamation#Civil_defamation)

Arguably all of these points are met by a "too big to jail" billboard facing
the public. Though given the nature of a political candidate and free speech,
I think this would be protected. Particularly because "Defenses to defamation
that may defeat a lawsuit, including possible dismissal before trial, include
the statement being one of opinion rather than fact or being 'fair comment and
criticism'."

That said, even if it doesn't meet the technical level to convict I think it's
a reasonable thing to refer to as defamation colloquially and I suspect you
know that too.

For clarity on the specifics of a 'defamatory statement':

> A defamatory statement is a false statement of fact that exposes a person to
> hatred, ridicule, or contempt, causes him to be shunned, or injures him in
> his business or trade.

~~~
nailer
Hillary was found to have violated state secrets, but bizarrely not punished
as she'd done so accidentally. Saying she's too big to jail seems accurate.

------
andarleen
Somehow China manages to control directly or indirectly companies,
individuals, and sometimes politicians, in the US on a far bigger scale than
the Soviet Union did. Oddly enough on a scale even higher than under Obama.

------
MichaelMoser123
will they also ban me if I something against the CPSU?

~~~
MichaelMoser123
if youtube doesn't ban me than HN might do that, they both didn't read he
prague declaration
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prague_Declaration_on_European...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prague_Declaration_on_European_Conscience_and_Communism)

------
bzb3
Twitter censoring good, YouTube censoring bad.

------
trasz
Those are not "anti-CCP comments", it's just spam. They don't convey any
information or opinion.

~~~
techntoke
Thanks for have some sense here. Just typing two words is not a comment. It is
akin to spam on practically every platform.

~~~
colejohnson66
The point is that those two words are (in China) associated with being against
the CCP. It’s kindof similar to “black lives matter”. To some, it’s a symbol
of hate (with re. to the police). To others, it’s a symbol of fighting back.

~~~
trasz
Even if you assume those comments are written by Chinese trying to fight for
their rights - and I doubt it is the case - there's still a fundamental
difference: #blacklivesmatter was a tag that accompanied actual content. Here,
there's nothing but the "tag", copy/pasted all over the place without adding
any value.

------
socrates1998
It's amazing to me that this isn't against a US law. An American company is
actively helping spread propaganda of a hostile, foreign country.

Just insane. Google's new motto should "we do what we want"

------
knzhou
I’m all ready to bring out the pitchforks, guys, but I’m confused. Didn’t we
all agree _literally yesterday_ that Facebook not doing enough to reduce
division was a moral catastrophe? Isn’t deleting what hundreds of millions of
people see as a foreign propaganda slogan a textbook example of reducing
division? Is the rule that we should delete only what you in particular find
divisive?

------
techntoke
In other news, that should be front page, but doesn't follow the Google hate
that Hacker News accepts as front page material:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23322719](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23322719)

~~~
phreack
That's unrelated. Do you think it's alright for YouTube to delete comments
discussing the Wumao?

~~~
techntoke
Do you think it is okay for Hacker News to censor and rank content based on
their own agendas? Shadow ban and prevent users from posting? This post is
literally complaining about something that Hacker News does frequently. I
couldn't even respond to this comment for over two hours with a message
saying:

> You're posting too fast. Please slow down. Thanks.

This is what they do to people that don't follow their agenda. All the while,
you can't even respond to comments on your own comment.

~~~
phreack
I asked if you support Google's actions here of removing discussion of the
Wumao. Could you answer that question first?

~~~
techntoke
It depends on the context.

