General Entertainment CoryxKenshin accuses YouTube of racism and favoritism.

[CastletonSnob]

What do you think? Is he right?

[Bacon]

Well, Quantum TV is not banned so...

 

[Fizzzzle]

There definitely is favoritism in the algorithm. Certain large channels are basically white-listed, can talk about whatever they want, and will still get promoted. Other channels mention the same topics and get suppressed for "sensitive content" or whatever. That's been a thing for a long time.

[Ghost_MH]

Yes. Absolutely, yes. YouTube treats non-white opinions or anything else really as its own genre. That seems innocuous on the surface but then realized that means white creators become the default for anything.

 

If you want a game review you'll get white guys and need to search for "game reviews by black gamers" if you want to find. Want some news commentary? You'll also get white creators while needing to specify you want black or Hispanic or Asian or whatever creators. This goes on for enough years and you end up with many of the top YouTubers being white dudes, followed by white women.

 

I read an article a while back about how this affects YouTube yoga. Searches for "virtual yoga class" will assume white as the default, leaving out any Desi YouTubers or want other revivify you could think of. Want a yoga class with a Desi creator and you need to specify Desi as if ethnicity is some genre.

 

Of course, since the YouTube algorithm is slightly takes for everybody, this affects everyone's feed a little differently. Sure, there are plenty of non-white creators that have broken through, but it's a lot of hustling to get passed YouTube's bias.

 

I should probably also watch the video here.

[Fizzzzle]

48 minutes ago, Ghost_MH said:

Yes. Absolutely, yes. YouTube treats non-white opinions or anything else really as its own genre. That seems innocuous on the surface but then realized that means white creators become the default for anything.

 

If you want a game review you'll get white guys and need to search for "game reviews by black gamers" if you want to find. Want some news commentary? You'll also get white creators while needing to specify you want black or Hispanic or Asian or whatever creators. This goes on for enough years and you end up with many of the top YouTubers being white dudes, followed by white women.

 

I read an article a while back about how this affects YouTube yoga. Searches for "virtual yoga class" will assume white as the default, leaving out any Desi YouTubers or want other revivify you could think of. Want a yoga class with a Desi creator and you need to specify Desi as if ethnicity is some genre.

 

Of course, since the YouTube algorithm is slightly takes for everybody, this affects everyone's feed a little differently. Sure, there are plenty of non-white creators that have broken through, but it's a lot of hustling to get passed YouTube's bias.

 

I should probably also watch the video here.

He basically says that his video got supressed/age restricted for showing certain content in a game, then pointed out to YouTube that Markiplier showed the exact same shit from the same game and didn't get supressed/age restricted.

 

Iirc YouTube was first like "whoops we fucked up" then was like "nvm" and ended up age restricting Markiplier's video, too.

[Ghost_MH]

2 hours ago, Fizzzzle said:

He basically says that his video got supressed/age restricted for showing certain content in a game, then pointed out to YouTube that Markiplier showed the exact same shit from the same game and didn't get supressed/age restricted.

 

Iirc YouTube was first like "whoops we fucked up" then was like "nvm" and ended up age restricting Markiplier's video, too.

 

Yeah, I hadn't actually watched his video yet, but that sounds about right for non-white creators. I have read stories about, though. Stories like how Markiplier did his best to get a video age restricted short of playing actual uncensored porn and has yet to be age restricted.

 

 

[Keyser_Soze]

They also discriminate against female content creators even if a guy reposts the same video of the girl the guy's video will be featured more prominently.

[Ghost_MH]

1 hour ago, Keyser_Soze said:

They also discriminate against female content creators even if a guy reposts the same video of the girl the guy's video will be featured more prominently.

 

Same as with non-whites, depending on the topic, female content creators are treated as a subgenre. If you're looking for someone streaming a certain game, you need to specify if you want a female gamer or a non-white gamer because YouTube's algorithm just seems to assume that a search for "Valorant stream" means you want a white male gamer. There is no way YouTube can claim they don't take race, ethnicity, and gender into account.

[Keyser_Soze]

29 minutes ago, Ghost_MH said:

 

Same as with non-whites, depending on the topic, female content creators are treated as a subgenre. If you're looking for someone streaming a certain game, you need to specify if you want a female gamer or a non-white gamer because YouTube's algorithm just seems to assume that a search for "Valorant stream" means you want a white male gamer. There is no way YouTube can claim they don't take race, ethnicity, and gender into account.

 

I mean literally a guy can copy the female's original content and put it up on their channel and because they are a guy the exact same content (that they copied) will be featured more prominently than the original female content creator.

 

 

[Guest]

YouTube is a reflection of the customers it serves. I would be shocked if minority lead channels don’t get reported for rule violations at a way higher rate than white dude channels. I would also bet white dudes spend more on the platform on average than any other group.

 

But I am always left in these situations thinking the companies bending over backwards to appease what is actually a minority of potential users is missing out on growing their business much further by actually embracing these non-white dude channels.

[Ghost_MH]

4 hours ago, sblfilms said:

YouTube is a reflection of the customers it serves. I would be shocked if minority lead channels don’t get reported for rule violations at a way higher rate than white dude channels. I would also bet white dudes spend more on the platform on average than any other group.

 

But I am always left in these situations thinking the companies bending over backwards to appease what is actually a minority of potential users is missing out on growing their business much further by actually embracing these non-white dude channels.

 

The non-white dude that kicked this all off has 14m subscribers. People obviously want his content, but you're also likely right in that he probably has to deal with more reporting harassment than white dudes covering similar topics with similar a similar number of subscribers. Same likely goes for Naomi Wu. She's a fantastic maker, but I'm almost 100% sure that she has a sort of shadow ban in place from so many people with nothing better to do than report every one of her videos.

 

Everyone knows YouTube comments are a cesspool and that YouTube has a really unsavory contingent that does nothing but harass women and non-whites. YouTube like every other tech or gaming company on the planet acts like they can't do anything to more forcefully rebuke these people because...reasons. Those...reasons do nothing but enable their toxic behavior.

 

[TwinIon]

I feel like there are at least two distinct issues at play in this conversation. The first is algorithmic bias and the second is human review, but the issue with both of them is ultimately that moderating user created content at scale is simply impossible. Channels with over million subscribers outnumber Youtube employees and contractors by nearly 3 to 1, and my guess is that those videos are likely the least moderated.

 

With Elons' purchase of Twitter, we've seen plenty of discussion about how difficult it is to determine authentic behavior. Given a user's entire Twitter history, it can still be very difficult to tell a real person from a bot, but then you have an even more difficult problem of if a specific action is legitimate or not. If a creator like Naomi Wu is getting repeatedly reported, building an algorithm that can tell the difference between legitimate reporting and someone being targeted for harassment is not something I've seen any social platform figure out.

 

So naturally those kinds of issues end up falling to human content moderators, a job I wouldn't wish on anyone. The idea that those content moderators are inconsistent doesn't shock me in the least, and that they would give more leeway to popular channels isn't a surprise either. You've got 10k+ workers around the world being pushed to evaluate content at an incredible rate. I can see why the guy in the OP would be upset, but I'm certain that whatever moderator reviewed his video didn't watch the whole thing, or look for context, or look at what other videos showing the same stuff had been rated. They probably got a short clip, applied their standards, and moved on.

 

None of this is necessarily meant to give Google a free pass and waive it away as a problem that will never be solved. It's good that creators continue to surface these issues and it's important to keep a spotlight on platform owners so they will keep working on it. That said, I don't think there is a real explicit bias in the algorithm or human moderation. They need to find ways to minimize the hidden biases that these complex systems end up developing, but if you think youtube is scanning a video, determining that the creator is a white dude, and then promoting it over a similar video that was made by a minority creator because of those characteristics, I think you're just wrong. That doesn't mean the result isn't necessarily the same, and that's where the complexity and scale become a challenge.

[Guest]

I could kiss @TwinIon

[Kal-El814]

 

 

[SuperSpreader]

On 8/29/2022 at 8:20 AM, sblfilms said:

YouTube is a reflection of the customers it serves. I would be shocked if minority lead channels don’t get reported for rule violations at a way higher rate than white dude channels. I would also bet white dudes spend more on the platform on average than any other group.

 

But I am always left in these situations thinking the companies bending over backwards to appease what is actually a minority of potential users is missing out on growing their business much further by actually embracing these non-white dude channels.

 

 

I only watch black ppl reaction videos tho