Poll of the Day > Youtube comment censorship is China-level heavy-handed

(+) Yeah! (+)

Apparently I'm on youtube's "naughty list". It's odd because I never swear/cuss in the comments or post anything inflammatory, but I think it started back around the time of the Sony censorship, when I posted a comment complaining about it on one of their videos. That was the first time I ever noticed the "shadow ban", had to re-enter my comment multiple times and change it to "sense of ship" among other things and then it finally posted. Ever since then, the list of words I'm not allowed to use seemingly grows every passing month.

Here are a few words off the top of my head that have gotten my posts removed:

Censorship
Website
Link (for example, "there's a link for that on the top of X page")
Reddit (just naming the website)
Video
Fraud
Vanishing (replied to myself about how my comments kept vanishing and had to change it to "poofed")
Edits (or other forms like editing, etc...)
Shot (no matter the context, like "give it a shot" or "I got the booster shot")

Yeah, I'm a real monster... Every time it's the same deal. It'll pretend my comment posted and sometimes on my end still show even hours later. But if I go to a private/incognito tab and check the comments, it's not there. Or it's there at first but then when I reload newest comments first (choose top comments, then back to new) it's gone after 20 seconds or a minute. If I try to edit a shadow banned comment, it'll give a "Return Error" and then vanish even from my logged in perspective.

The fact they don't even tell you the comment's being deleted and deceive you into thinking it actually posted is honestly even more annoying than the insane amount of banned words that they keep adding to the algorithm and refuse to provide publicly let alone enforce evenly/universally. Joke what you will about how awful youtube comments are, but sometimes I put a lot of time and effort into a comment trying to give advice or identify a song/game/whatever and provide recommendations because someone liked it or answer a question, and then it just gets disappeared. So now I spend tons of time constantly copying and pasting any important comment, tweaking words I suspect might be the problem (as you can see from the above, it's not at all intuitive!), and checking on a private tab until I'm sure it actually stays.

I'm far from the only one with this problem:
https://www.reddit.com/r/youtube/comments/n1wf ag/youtubes_comment_censorship_is_so_bad_that_im/

(What irony...the random URL of the link tripped GFAQ's own AI so I had to space it to post, lol)

But holy shit did this last "battle" piss me off and I needed to vent

You're saying you lost in a Shadow Game?

welcome to the club

why not post on one of my videos... I could use the engagement

Lok and TC are getting engaged!

Metalsonic66 posted...

You're saying you lost in a Shadow Game?

So the TC is in the Shadow realm then?

I hear it's lovely this time of year.

I like how youtube now warns you whenever it thinks your comment might be disrespectful or if it contains a naughty word like "fuck". Whenever it comes up I click where it says "Let us know" and leave a perfectly friendly message for Team Youtube's pet bot to ignore.

Another thing I've noticed lately is almost every comment that has multiple replies will have the majority of them hidden when you click "Show all replies". Even totally innocuous comments get hidden. Whenever people point this out to youtube/google they just give an irrelevant copy-pasted stock reply about how their system detects and removes spam.

streamofthesky posted...

The fact they don't even tell you the comment's being deleted and deceive you into thinking it actually posted is honestly even more annoying than the insane amount of banned words that they keep adding to the algorithm and refuse to provide publicly let alone enforce evenly/universally.

This is probably the worst thing about youtube comments. Taking the time to type out a thoughtful comment only for it to be silently deleted without any reason given is beyond frustrating. I guess their lazy solution is the new warning system before your comment is posted, but all that does is tell you to read the ToS, which is garbage to begin with.

kind9 posted...

This is probably the worst thing about youtube comments. Taking the time to type out a thoughtful comment only for it to be silently deleted without any reason given is beyond frustrating. I guess their lazy solution is the new warning system before your comment is posted, but all that does is tell you to read the ToS, which is garbage to begin with.

I've never seen the warning system, b/c I never even try to use actual naughty language.
So no, it's not even a lazy solution, it's just literally making the system more helpful to actual hateful speech than innocuous comments.

You not only comment on Youtube videos but you also check and see if they stay up/people engage with them. That is sick demented behavior and you are absolutely a monster.

streamofthesky posted...

I've never seen the warning system, b/c I never even try to use actual naughty language.
So no, it's not even a lazy solution, it's just literally making the system more helpful to actual hateful speech than innocuous comments.

What a good boy you are, but using swear words does not equate to hateful speech. It is a lazy bandaid solution like every single one of their attempts to counter trolls/harassers/spammers/etc.

It's not just youtube. On this site, you can't say anything that contradicts Satan's mass media.

BEERandWEED posted...

Satan's mass media.

That would imply Jesus-god is the one supplying the alt-media... and you know how nutbar those people are

YouTube is awful

a shame they're too big to fail

reminds me of this video from an LGBT youtuber
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DE3MzecRj-0