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YouTube is deleting comments with two phrases that insult China's Communist Party
YouTube is automatically deleting comments that contain certain Chinese-language phrases related to criticism of the country's ruling Communist Party (CCP). The company confirmed to The Verge this was happening in error and that it was looking into the issue.
"This appears to be an error in our enforcement systems and we are investigating," said a YouTube spokesperson. The company did not elaborate on how or why this error came to be, but said it was not the result of any change in its moderation policy.
[...] Comments left under videos or in live streams that contain the words "共匪" ("communist bandit") or "五毛" ("50-cent party") are automatically deleted in around 15 seconds, though their English language translations and Romanized Pinyin equivalents are not.
[...] The accidental censorship is even more puzzling considering that YouTube is currently blocked in China, giving its parent company, Google, even less reason to censor comments critical of the CCP or apply moderation systems in accordance with Chinese censorship laws.
The automatic deletion of these phrases was highlighted on Tuesday by US technologist and former Oculus founder Palmer Luckey on Twitter. But earlier reports of the issue date back to the middle of May when they were spotted by human rights activist Jennifer Zeng. As mentioned above, though, The Verge also found complaints on YouTube's official help pages dated to October 2019.
Shadows of Project Dragonfly.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday May 27 2020, @01:01PM (5 children)
"五毛" is "five mao" and is such a trivial and ubiquitous amount of money that nobody would ever censor it. It's like censoring every incidence of "nickel."
"共匪" is a portmanteau between "共产" (gongchan - "communist") and "土匪" (tufei - "bandit"). It's not naturally occurring in the language, so censoring it is not accidental.
YouTube, Google, Twitter, and Facebook are treading on increasingly thin ice with their censorship. Yes, maybe some people are OK with it today because it's censoring speech or ideas they don't like. How will they feel tomorrow when it's their speech or ideas that are censored? It will happen, because purity spirals always arise. What happens to the TERFs when the transexuals get their hands on the censorship cudgel? What happens when anti-vax people are allowed to censor those who like vaccines?
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2, Touché) by khallow on Wednesday May 27 2020, @02:00PM
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday May 27 2020, @03:14PM (3 children)
It is entirely possible for it to be accidental. Google has created a labyrinth of automated systems that can do stupid things. For example, nuke Google accounts because they spammed emotes on YouTube livestream chat (intended to be fast-paced environment like Twitch):
https://www.businessinsider.com/markiplier-youtube-fans-heist-lost-access-google-accounts-spamming-emotes-2019-11 [businessinsider.com]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday May 27 2020, @03:38PM (2 children)
Such a system would be immediately useless because it would be hitting false positives at such a rate as to make "legitimate" conversation useless. In this case, we have two terms that both criticize the CCP, one of which is so anodyne in and of itself and the other which is an artificial construct, targeting topical videos on YT. That's no accident, and we shouldn't let Google get away with pretending it is. Because if we don't spank them now, and spank them hard, then they'll only retreat into ever subtler forms of shaping information for nefarious purposes. That will kill democracy and human freedom for 1,000 years.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 27 2020, @11:30PM (1 child)
Usage of 共匪 dates back to the national government in 1927, censoring it is definitely not an accident.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Thursday May 28 2020, @11:28AM
That's interesting. I didn't know that. Sun Yat Sen died a little while before then, I think, but I wonder if he coined it.
Washington DC delenda est.