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Comment by vachina

12 hours ago

Platform may retroactively make up and enforce rules that makes your content violate terms (and remove them)

See YouTube.

I certainly dislike how everyone on YouTube is saying “SA” and “unalive” and “corn”.

It’s one thing if it’s some funny commentary channel avoiding those words, but what bothers me is the true crime YouTubers. In the subject of true crime, rape and murder are just things that are probably going to come up, and when they refuse to use the appropriate language, it comes off as infantilizing, which is weird considering that my actual YouTube account is over 18, let alone the viewer using it.

Advertisers ruin everything, I guess.

  • I don't think those filters are even real, I think it's just mass-hysteria. I call these kinds of behaviours "traditions", but I'm not sure if there's a better term for it.

    Basically someone comes up with something which is nonsensical, but plausible. Like believing that their videos are unpopular because they said the word "rape" and the algorithm magically got them, rather than because their videos suck. Then someone else sees that and starts thinking it is true. It silently spreads across the population.

    I've seen this in organisations, where new recruits haven't been properly trained. Someone has come up with a method which is wildly incorrect and illegal, but plausible. The other new people around them have copied them. They've become slightly more experienced people, they've taught the next round of new people.

    Before you know it, half of the organisation is doing something hilariously wrong, and they all sincerely believe it is the right way of doing it, because everyone does it. It's just self-reinforcing at that point.

    • No it isn't mass hysteria. YouTube has a set advertiser friendly guideline. It will scan uploads and streams automatically.

      YouTube used to demonetise profanity unless it was mild. YouTube would demonetise profanity in the first X number of seconds of the video. These rules change and have been relaxed of April last year, but generally these rules still exist.

      There isn't a hard filter if you say "suicide" you automatically get it. However it increases the likely hood of demonetisation. So people avoid it to be safe. So you end up with people using stupid euphemisms all the time.

    • > I call these kinds of behaviours "traditions", but I'm not sure if there's a better term for it.

      In psychology that kind of thing is referred to as "superstition".

      More specifically, "superstition" in this sense refers to the phenomenon of copying someone else's successful approach to a problem you have. (In your example, getting views on youtube.) Since you don't know what parts of their approach matter, you copy the effective parts and the ineffective parts equally.

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    • I am sure they are bullshit. Like when they mute cursing and "risky" speech, but when you enable autogenerated subtitles they show up there. Youtube knows what thay said regardless if it's censored or not. It's so fucking stupid

  • A (baseless) hypothesis: perhaps there are plenty of YouTube creators who use the proper, mature terminology but you never see their videos because the algorithm really is penalizing them for it...

  • It's become so bad that even quality history youtube channels are frequently using euphemisms like "moustache-man" instead of just saying "Hitler", to avoid their videos being buried by The Algorithm, and therefore cut severely into their viewership.

    • > even quality history youtube channels are frequently using euphemisms like "moustache-man" instead of just saying "Hitler"

      That can be quite confusing. You had German mustache-man, Russian mustache-man, French mustache-man (Petain), French small-mustache-man (de Gaulle), Spanish small-moustache-man (Franco)

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