“We put ‘gay’ in our magic algorithm bot but we’re backpedaling now so it’s okay”
No they did not. The restricted mode filter is based mostly on “inappropriate” flags that are placed by USERS. Meaning a lot of this was caused by conservatives/homophobes abusing the flagging system and reporting every LGBT video they find.
While the initial outrage was valid, and important to have so YouTube would A) be aware of the problem, and B) be motivated to fix it, now that they are publicly announcing that they were falsely filtered and are working to fix things, there’s no reason to be dicks about it.
That last comment 👏👏👏👏
Hey yeah so that comment is bullshit.
My youtube channel has 8 subscribers and 399 views. Sure, one could argue that, in the time it’s been up, some asshole decided to flag a video.
BUT that ain’t the case
After hearing this whole mess about youtube automagically restricting any LGBT related video, i decided to test the shitshow for myself
so i uploaded these 2 videos. Back to back. Only difference being that the first one has “I’m also gay so lets see if youtube restricts this” in the title.
And you know what happened?
Nearly instantaneously, that video was restricted
For reference, here’s two screenshots of my uploads page, both without and with Restricted mode:
see any glaring differences? (hint: the video with “gay” in the title ain’t there in the restricted version)
Also HERE is the video, to prove my point. (for those who don’t know, the restricted mode option is located at the bottom of any youtube page)
And for those who might not feel like following the link, if you have restricted mode on, this is all you’ll see:
So while i hate youtube’s idea for crowd-sourced moderation as much as the next person, this whole mess with restricting LGBT+ videos ain’t because of that
it is a direct result of youtube’s restriction algorithm flagging any LGBT+ content as “adult”. Which, as you all know, is absolute bullshit.
Please don’t try to shift the blame off of youtube for this. Yes, youtube’s userbase can be pretty fuckin terrible. But this mess? That’s aaaalllll youtube.
except the auto flagging algorithm is based off of what’s been flagged the most in the last few years and doesn’t distinguish from real flags and false flags. so if, not so hypothetically, over the years there were millions of false flags on gay videos that didn’t even effect the video because it never went beyond the homophobe clicking a button, it would see a pattern. It’s NOT the result of youtube purposefully flagging LGBT videos, but the accumulation of years of homophobes false flagging videos.