Censorship gone stupid

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xpd

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#319198 1-Apr-2025 12:36

I'll admit I watch a lot of bodycam videos from the police in the US etc, but something that makes me laugh these days with them, is the amount of censorship that goes on...... I'm not talking about the video aspect, but the audio/captions.

Turns out saying hearing or seeing the words "murder" or "suicide" or "sex" is now highly offensive and beeped/blurred out. I've even seen ones where "drugs" is hit as well.

1) People watching these are very well versed in what they contain

2) People are not that stupid to not figure out what's being censored.

Anyone else noticed this......

XPD / Gavin

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Behodar

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#3359471 1-Apr-2025 12:50

I saw "hypocrite" censored to "hypoc****" earlier today. Absurd.

littlehead

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#3359474 1-Apr-2025 12:56

These days this type of censoring isn't done usually for the people viewing the content. They do this so the video either doesn't get de-ranked by the algorithm, or doesn't get fully demonetized. Advertisers don't want to be beside or in-front of videos with this content, so they edit or alter the videos to still be at least partially advertiser/algorithm friendly. The less friendly, the more likely the algorithms will not promote the videos.

This isn't PC gone mad, it's capitalism. Paid views matter more than the content or the interested audience.

Wheelbarrow01

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#3359595 1-Apr-2025 22:29

I read one content creator website which provided a list of over 600 keywords that are known to cause YouTube videos to be demonetised if the word appears in the title, description or content of the video, meaning the creator makes no revenue from that video (and the video itself could be pulled down/banned entirely).

While many of the words are obvious things (there are many well known/understood R18 terms), there are other less obvious ones such as "coronavirus", "democrat", "extraction", some medical terms including "cancer", "pencils"(???), "vacuum" - the list goes on. Interestingly the word "trigger" is in there, but not "ammunition" - maybe they just didn't test that one.

Yes su*c*de is on the list, along with any word that could be associated with it, including names of people who have died by those means eg "Chester Bennington". Anything related to Epstein (or people like him) and their alleged "pastimes" is also a hard no.

Factual content creators publishing videos with these keywords (eg documentary makers) either bleep things out, forgo revenue, or they simply have their own sponsors rather than relying on Google AdSense.

MadEngineer

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#3359601 1-Apr-2025 23:15

Even fires can trigger the great algorithm so you'll often see those being heavily blurred out

You're not on Atlantis anymore, Duncan Idaho.

sir1963

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#3371896 9-May-2025 20:00

MadEngineer:

Even fires can trigger the great algorithm so you'll often see those being heavily blurred out

It must be great living in a country with all the "free speech".....

Handle9

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#3371920 10-May-2025 00:59

sir1963:

MadEngineer:

Even fires can trigger the great algorithm so you'll often see those being heavily blurred out

It must be great living in a country with all the "free speech".....

You are confusing free speech with free speech that has no consequences for the person speaking.

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johno1234

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#3371928 10-May-2025 07:31

This is driven by Google and their monetisation algorithms on YouTube.
Failing at AI, Social Media, Cloud Computing and VR, Google are left with their search engine and YouTube which are positively legacy in this day and age. I think they’re doomed and if so then good. They’re evil.

gzt

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#3372069 10-May-2025 13:12

Personally I have a lot more trust in Google products and Google design philosophy than the competitors. It is unfortunate Google closed the social media product Google Circles. Growth was slow but it was a real alternative and growing slowly but surely, just like original search did. The slow growth approach is sometimes the best approach.