2y ago

YSK that YouTube shadow bans people (for a time) + implications to creators

I'm having my comments I made the past few days receive zero engagements. It's not just me losing the early bird lottery too; my replies to a highly engaged comment has zero likes, while several comments immediately after me has double digits. It's nothing incendiary at all, just normal people's comments. But something just tripped the enigmatic AI and thenceforth I'm shadow banned.

Why you should know this?

Because YouTube is being a thought police between creators and their communities. It feels to me like 99.999% of creators on YouTube have no idea that this is happening, that honest to goodness people's engagements are never going to reach them on the platform; they're being silently silenced, by an AI that is figuratively a black box.

Look at this screenshot. If that's not damning evidence you tell me what is.

The comment is straight up gone when viewing with a logged out tab. I'm definitely 100% shadow banned right now.

46 comments

TIL people take commenting on YouTube seriously.
- Yeah I’ve blocked the comments section with uBlock. Most of the time it’s just garbage in there.
  
  Me: watching a car repair video
  Some asshat: dId YoU kNoW bIdEn eAtS bAbBy'S?!
- I take supporting creators with engagements seriously.
  
  youtube doesn't actually care if you comment, "engagement" is through sharing, and watching. that's all youtube cares about for engagement. how many watch hours, how many adverts, how many click throughs on those adverts.
  also literally every large social network has shadow bans, it's the only successful way to deal with unwanted elements. if you tell the unwanted element that they are banned, then they just go make a new account.
  
  Commenting isn’t support. Not sure if you know that. see, I’m commenting on your post- this is not support.
  
  I like adverts and hammering nails into my head.
  
  Then you would not comment on their videos, and the whole thought of "supporting" them via watching their videos is questionable but at least there's some direct, material, merit to that.
  
  Probably shouldnt. Youtube comments are rightful Serbian soil and should be treated as such
- He says in a comment on another social network.
  
  You realize that commenting on lemmy isn’t the same the as commenting on YouTube, right?
It’s probably the owner of the channel that shadow banned you. As a creator, I have an option to “Hide User From Channel” any user I want, which is effectively shadow banning them.
- Might also be a blacklisted word or something, there is sometimes really weird stuff on these
This was a hard post to read.
You're not shadowbanned from YouTube. The creator you're commenting on has simply "hid" you from their channel. Which ironically is a shadowban, just on a creator level.
The level of panic and outrage you've displayed here despite not having a clue as to how the mechanic you're discussing works is remarkable.
- That's incorrect. Here is a decent video explaining it https://yewtu.be/watch?v=48ObNiT_hpM
More generally, it's an important reminder for content creators that their entire youtube career is built on quick sand.
You can be earning a decent living one day, the next day youtube can block your account or remove monetisation for no valid reason, and you're shit out of luck.
I mean, if you're making a lot of money on youtube, power to you. But you should be saving as much as possible for that day and have a back-up plan. It may never come, it may come tomorrow.
I cringed when one creator mentioned giving up on her degree to focus on youtube. I mean, sure she's making bank right now. But who knows how long that'll last.
- I cringed when one creator mentioned giving up on her degree to focus on youtube. I mean, sure she's making bank right now. But who knows how long that'll last.
  Unlike their YT career, that degree course will probably be there in five years. It'll be more expensive, but it's not gone forever or anything like that. For some opportunities you really have to strike while the iron is hot. For the record, I'm a HS teacher and I've had the "so you want to be a YouTuber for a living" conversation with countless students over the years, including with my own child. But for someone who's starting to get some traction, and wants to take time off of school to see where it leads them, I think it's an understandable move.
- You don't have to finish a degree before you're 25 to make use of it. Hell, plenty of people have two or even three degrees.
  She does YouTube now, and she'll have huge financial security to finish the degree later. Hell, she'll have a degree that's probably up-to-date with her field at the time she'll actually use it, as opposed to getting one now and having to explain that her lack of work experience after getting it was due to "youtube".
AITA for thinking shadowbanning - as a concept - is actually a good thing?
It allows a sort of ban-on-probation. A way to isolate and observe in isolation whether someone exitibits ban-worthy behavior, while already protecting others from said behavior.
Yes, often banning would be preferrable. But I can also see why immediately going to hard ban is not warranted in many cases. Not everyone is an Alex Jones or a Donald Trump.
Now whether or not this specific case, or even Youtube's use of shadowbanning is good or bad... eh, different beast.
- I can see where you are coming from, though I must disagree with the implementation of this system. Firstly, it's applying a de facto punishment without ever informing the target about them being punished in the first place. For all we know they might not even be aware they should refrain from certain behaviors. Secondly, they either did deserve a punishment or they didn't. It doesn't need to be a "ban or not ban" situation, I'm all for more nuance (a warning, a short-term ban, you get the idea), but we shouldn't just put anyone on probation just in case, just to observe them in isolation first.
  
  Shadow Banning is very useful for spam bots. If you let them know they're banned, they'll just open a new account. But if YouTube keeps accepting their comments with a smile on its face before immediately tossing those comments into the shredder, it'll take some time before the bot figures out what's going on.
  
  We're not talking about habeas corpus, we're talking about the dubious ability to post on a private website's comments section that has been widely regarded as a cesspool for over a decade. As someone else in this thread pointed out, this is being taken too seriously.
- It's an age old system that was called "cave the trolls" at first. If you let a problematic user know he is banned, he will simply create a new account.
  Isolating the troll however frees up moderator time spending, as it will usually take a good while for the person to realize he is in fact isolated.
  They should add dummy upvotes and AI generate replies to these troll's comments too. That would make it even harder to realize.
  
  True, now with AI we have the ability to make shadowbanned people not realize for a long time that something has happened to their account. And as you say, it's far more efficient than just banning them.
I don't doubt this given YouTube record with the creators themselves. YouTube is a slimy company.
IMO at least the educational content of YouTube shouldn't be in private have entirely, too important today.
This is coming out of my orifice but I think this also affects creators in that once people like myself know we're shadow banned we will not be posting comments because, you know, what's the point? And that is a deduction in engagement, and reductions in engagement affects the creators in visibility in equally vague ways (because opaque black box ML-AIs are driving both of these actions).

46 comments