On the night of Oct. 16, Youtube was down for a little over an hour as users across the world complained of seeing the “500 Internal Server Error” on desktop web browsers and limited to no access on mobile. I noticed the app still working where I could see videos but not watch them, confirming the accessibility issue Youtube confirmed on twitter as they responded to numerous complaints in the form of tweets.
Following the “crash,” some users caught onto some changes that took place in the system. Youtube has had their feet to the fire plenty with the “Adpocalypse” and their approach to demonetizing videos they deemed to violate their terms of service in the most subjective manners. Following that, they imposed the new criteria regarding channels’ eligibility to get ad revenue to a minimum 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 watched hours of video content which further alienated small creators who had a small side hustle relying on small, devoted audiences.
The new changes that have been observed as of late are in the Youtube live stream chat box. Through some observations of livestreamers, censorship has invaded the chat box. Livestreamers on Twitter have posted screen captured video live chats being deleted in real time due to certain keywords deemed offensive. The scale is as expected, a mixture of highly subjective words to trigger these new algorithms with few understandable words triggering the algorithms. Before this change, livestreams would have mods in the live chat deleting messages they deemed offensive or irrelevant, as well as banning users spamming or disrupting the chat. Google took this to a new level of censorship by creating an algorithm with an undefined number of trigger words that will flag and delete messages from the live chat in real time, regardless of context.
Going a step further, a Spokesperson has come out and declared that these changes can impact monetization for content creators on the platform as well. If offensive or abusive speech is found in Super Chats then the revenue will be immediately donated to charity rather than being split between Youtube and the content creator.
This just furthers the censorship campaign of Silicon Valley, and the “private companies can do what they want” arguments are gonna start getting old as people speak as consumers to change how companies approach “free speech.”
You can read more from Amos Joseph on Think Liberty here.
