YouTube is accidentally censoring anti-Chinese Communist Party terms
#YouTube "automatically" deletes a comment in Chinese, "Gongfei", which means "communist bandit", in 15 seconds.
This person tested 3 times, same result. #油管 15秒內自動刪除「共匪」留言，網友連試三次皆如此。
他們找了個比李飛飛更厲害的AI專家？ pic.twitter.com/MLCeko0SIY— Inconvenient Truths by Jennifer Zeng (@jenniferzeng97) May 13, 2020
YouTube is automatically deleting comments including two phrases that are critical of the Chinese Communist Party. The Verge first reported the phenomenon, including the phrases “共匪” (“communist bandit”), an old slur for Chinese communists, and “五毛” (“50-cent party”), a term for paid internet commenters propping up the Party. (I tried this on a Liberty Mutual ad, and they do vanish almost immediately.)
“This appears to be an error in our enforcement systems and we are investigating,” a YouTube spokesperson said in a statement to Gizmodo.
YouTube also said that the company has been increasingly reliant on automated systems due to covid-19.
It’s an ominous error in the wake of Google’s massive secretive operation, Project Dragonfly, a Chinese state-appeasing search engine, which Google dropped last year after criticism from employees and senators.
