[logicalmonster]

Putting aside the ethics of censorship for a moment, there's a few oddities to me here.

* It seems to be sending mixed messages that content is so "problematic" that it cannot be recommended by YouTube, yet not "problematic" enough to be banned by YouTube.

* It seems odd that Google, with all of their algorithm geniuses, can't work out a system to not recommend "problematic" content for generic 1776 keywords. Aren't there hundreds of reputable channels that deal with pure history stuff? Aren't there maybe thousands of history videos on the Revolutionary War that have no connection to present day politics that can be linked to?

* Google's algorithm seems incredibly stupid if they're recommending more than an infinitesimal percentage of 1776 keywords to "alt-right" content. Recognizing 1776 as a very important historical year has been done in American schools forever. It's up there with 1492 with random years that kids are taught about remembering. The overwhelming majority of anything ever created with 1776 as a keyword is not about January 6.

[edmundsauto]

Just some quick counterpoints:

> It seems to be sending mixed messages that content is so "problematic" that it cannot be recommended by YouTube, yet not "problematic" enough to be banned by YouTube.

Not really - it shows nuanced understanding that some content by itself / with a small audience doesn't cause harm, but the company doesn't not want to amplify it. Protects peoples speech but also declines to promote them to a bigger audience.

> It seems odd that Google, with all of their algorithm geniuses, can't work out a system to not recommend "problematic" content for generic 1776 keywords. Aren't there hundreds of reputable channels that deal with pure history stuff? Aren't there maybe thousands of history videos on the Revolutionary War that have no connection to present day politics that can be linked to?

Not a justification, but a reason: big tech focuses on scale. Employees are generally discouraged from doing something for 1 specific area. Also, it appears the problematic content moves KPIs, so the general system is designed to promote that stuff. Once you start carving out exceptions, it compromises the whole system and velocity of the team. (Again, not a justification for this specific instance, which I agree should be a carve out - but it does require a deviance from normal business, which means it's less likely to happen)

[logicalmonster]

> Not really - it shows nuanced understanding that some content by itself / with a small audience doesn't cause harm, but the company doesn't not want to amplify it. Protects peoples speech but also declines to promote them to a bigger audience.

Putting aside the issue of what specific content causes harm or not (which is a very contentious issue), my issue with this kind of justification is that it puts mega-corporations in a position to have their cake and eat it too.

With a straight face, depending on their audience, Google can claim to both not be censoring content at the same time as they're claiming to be censoring content. This feels like they're putting themselves in a position to walk a legal tightrope on what they're actually doing and flout any laws they want.

[wyager]

This reminds me of when Google Shopping (remember that?) started returning zero results for any search containing the substring "gun", so "hot glue gun" or "gundam figurine" would return nothing.

[logicalmonster]

How did Google come up with that kind of solution with their teams of developers that pass those crazy leetcode interviews?

Matching strings like this seems like a solution that an average high-school programmer would find some question marks with.

[benj111]

>gundam

So even Google fails to avoid the Scunthorpe problem.

[bediger4000]

Agreed. This is really unpatriotic of YouTube.