YouTube deletes your comments

[@Bisqwit]

Many people suggest that this is a synchronization/load balancing issue. The fact that it is _repeatable_ suggests a censorship issue rather than synchronization one. My guess is a neural network that analyzes posts and deletes those it does not like. Just today, you can try it yourself. Try replying here and include the word “pοоf” in your reply. Type, don’t copy-paste (I used special characters to thwart the censorship.) Notice then, that your reply is consistently gone in about 20 seconds. (I do not delete it, nor is the word banned on my channel!) EDIT: An hour later I have seen 16 comments get autodeleted because of that word, and 3 comments _not_ despite the word (one of them was deleted by the author later, I think). EDIT: If you want to see a difference between autodeletion and shadowban, try posting a comment that includes the word “reupload”. It is temporarily on my blocked words list, due to a spam infestation. All comments containing this word will be put in the “held for review” tab, and will be visible to nobody but you (and I, if I go check the tab). You can clearly see the difference. Try editing the comment, try reloading the page, try viewing the page in incognito mode and finding your comment, etc. This will _not_ place your account in a ban; it just hides that particular comment on my channel.

[@Bisqwit]

@@Azchk Well that’s an exception, for some reason. I saw your earlier (and later) attempts got deleted though. I think this provides support to my theory that it’s not just a word list, but a neural network. Ever see those image classifiers, where you show it a photo of a chair, and it says that 90% chance that’s a chair, 8% chance that’s a lamp and 2% chance that’s actually an elephant, and if you shift the image by 1 pixel, now it says 99% chance that’s an elephant? That sort of thing. Fuzzy logic, used to be the craze a few decades ago.

[@Splicher]

KZbin is just weird...

[@scibot9000]

I can say that I've seen this. the obvious culprits are external links, but often I simply can't tell what made youtube decide to delete. the comments usually stay in your notification button (top right of your screen) even after deletion. maybe one day we'll have an explanation.

[@TattiePeeler]

External links get nuked for me. Certain sites in particular, a certain place with a bit of everything, an Archive, a well *org*anised one.. gets squished within seconds. Oh well.

[@JimLeonard]

@@Bisqwit You are posting the exact same comment with copy/paste and youtube filters against that. It's to prevent comment spam. The first time you noticed your comment gone, it could have been a synchronization issue, or a fluke, or who knows what -- but every time afterwards, it's because you're posting exactly the same text.

[@oof-software]

That feel when your legitimate comment, that you put thought into, gets deleted and the horny bots can still comment-spam seemingly without a problem :(

[@pacianoheroofthehero]

M⬜Y⬜P⬜U⬜S⬜S⬜Y⬜I⬜N⬜B⬜I⬜O -ahh comments

[@GruppeSechs]

2 year old comment, but yeah, it's still going on today. I can have people spew insults and vitriol at me no problem, but I choose my words carefully and be polite to avoid censorship, and my comment is still deleted. Meanwhile, they can drop F-bombs and be completely petulant and it's fine.

[@Zacaryquack]

@@oof-software ruined so many good channels the all blacks rugby channel is basically a bot circus because of this, there are many others I want to make a list of the forbidden words,

[@Ganerrr]

Yea, this happens constantly, especially on anything vaguely opinionated or political. It also seems to scale with reply length and thread length, I think its a general form of censorship because they want more mindless/reactionary responses rather than actually inciteful ones, as clearly none of this works to fight off bots

[@alice_in_wonderland42]

Very long comments also get deleted Or if the comment has some words like stupid, moron etc Let's hope this one doesn't get deleted

[@ludfde]

Do a quadruplehexadupersuper flip reset maybeee?

[@TattiePeeler]

KZbin penalises creators too. 'lostinstone' mentioned he was getting warnings for seemingly replying to too many comments under his videos. That's so bizarre.

[@Resod11]

Although it's not the same company you can go through the leaked documentation for twitch moderators. There just nothing regarding scams or identity theft. It's purely political and almost exclusively oriented toward blocking symbols from a disappeared political party that belonged to an infamous austrian painter. An obsolete and brutal method to remove anything that is not far left of their platform

[@alice_in_wonderland42]

@@TattiePeeler and yt kids exists But then also a creator cannot post a video with some mature or controversial content without getting demonetized

[@KotleKettle]

YT is unusable at this point. It deletes even the very innocent comments. It's so annoying

[@MLGaeming]

As a creator, I see so many comments that I get a notification for but that disappear a minute later, sucks that I cannot read a portion of the feedback my fans are writing. And no, it does not put them in the "held for review" section.

[@Bisqwit]

That’s exactly my experience too.

[@darealshinji]

That explains stuff which I had experienced and thought it was a glitch.

[@MLGaeming]

@Don't Shoot I have no idea how your comment contributes to this discussion in any way.

[@bonbonpony]

If this won't be the last straw for people to stop using KZbin for good, then I don't know what will.

[@deepblack2193]

Boy cot t YT why is anyone even using this carp?

[@AcceleratingUniverse]

censorship like this, that simply tricks you into thinking you're alone or being ignored, is a form of psychological torment.

[@CristiNeagu]

Precisely. Social media is filled with this sort of thing. This is why people are convinced that certain ideologies are very popular these days, despite the fact that less than 10% of the population hold those beliefs. But because of social media promoting those beliefs and censoring other opposing points of views, it looks as though most people agree with them. Divide et impera. But sometimes it's even worse. With this, you can at least see that your comment is gone. But sometimes you can still see your comment, but no one else can.

[@justinc4782]

indeed, i think of this as shadow banning. they will let you shout into the void and make you think no one cares about what you have to say when in reality a lot of people probably do, they just never see it. how is this not a form of torture?

[@alice_in_wonderland42]

@@CristiNeagu hmm A lot fringe stuff gets just too much amplified on social media

[@jktech2117]

a

[@ninja_raven256]

@@jktech2117 thanks JK Tech, very cool

[@Erarnitox]

Experienced this before. I'm not gonna write the keywords that triggered it last time, but you can't discuss anything serious on youtube without it being removed instantly. Thanks a lot for pointing it out so directly.

[@HairyPixels]

They've been censoring comments for a while now. I haven't found a certain way to get comments deleted every time but it does happen often. YT doesn't want us to know they're doing it but they certainly do want to control what you're saying.

[@mrpix3011]

Bisqwit Sir! "PLEASE MIGRATE YOUR VIDEOS" this platform is not secure anymore.

[@skaruts]

I'm not even sure it's about keywords. I've had comments deleted which seemed to be due to certain words, but then I see people using those words and not being affected...

[@kopuz.co.uk.]

You can as long as what you type is in line with their motives.

[@damiengates7581]

@@skaruts it's personal

[@SonOfMeme]

Boy I sure love living in the cyberpunk dystopian future.

[@LKRaider]

Foop and now you are gone!

[@birbies]

dystopia is when free platform removes comments

[@Danimal.69]

Poof sounds like this might be a bot

[@JackeyBoyyy]

@@birbies If youtube supported democracy, then surely it would encourage all sides of political views? even the bad ones?

[@oldskolacura9798]

@@JackeyBoyyy that's freedom tho. No matter how much we might disagree with it. Someone is always going to agree or disagree wether they like it or not. Censoring will not change anything but others viewing it. They still exist for real.

[@user-vn7ce5ig1z]

Yup, I've seen this a lot. Sometimes KZbin will delete/hide/send-to-spam ALL of my comments for several hours or the rest of the day, other times, I'll post a comment, then try to edit it, but it gives an error (because the comment is gone). There have been numerous times when I posted a comment which got nuked, then posted the same comment but removed a "sensitive" word and it was allowed through. Like Bisqwit said, it's definitely algorithmic censorship.

[@devjock]

I'm experiencing this all over ther place. I have a feeling it's KZbin putting flags on specific accounts, randomly memoryholing their comments, or shadowing the comment so it only appears to the one that posted it (ea; it has very few likes compared to comments that were posted in the same timeframe, with roughly the same content. Either that, or I'm really unfunny). The net effect of this is that I'm reluctant to type any comment with any kind of substance. I love to engage with video content, and often type very long comments that try to go deep on the subject matter. I'm starting to self-censor, or self-summarise. This cheapens my whole interaction with the KZbinr, and the rest of the people in the comment section to the point where I don't even want to interact anymore.. It's very very disheartening.

[@TealJosh]

There are many things that cause it in my experience. The obvious ones are seriously bad words, but that depends on the context. Sometimes they get through and sometimes they don't. There's also spam prevention. Don't make many comments on the same channel, especially copy-paste. VPN gets flagged almost immediately, like one comment per channel and the rest are gone. Also comments made on mobile KZbin app have higher chance of staying.

[@Bisqwit]

Interesting observations!

[@changeagent228]

Yes why train a machine to learn the diversity of human interactions when you can train humans to modify and simplify their machine interactions.

[@devjock]

Let's see what happens when I type one of my nice big long deep comments. Hope this half an hour of typing won't disappear, but yeah, the likelihood of my comment containing the naughtywordage increases with every word I type. Another bias I'm now fully aware of, and are typing over reluctantly. There was this website that could give each visited page (including youtube URL's) it's own external comment section. Had it's own browser extention and everything. It was so succesful they had to nuke it from orbit. And that's including the fact that anyone (ea; most of the world's population) not having that browserextention installed would not even know of the existence of the comment section. Shut it down they said. The internet is far from the equal playing field it was a decade ago. And the voices that are still brave enough to engage in real discussion are either being slandered, mocked or silenced. We were told to just make our own platform if we didn't like it, so we did, and they took it down on an ISP level. We made our own ISP. They made it financially impossible to run. So we made our own currency. They made it illegal to own in large parts of the world, because it's not able to be regulated. Which was exactly the whole point why the internet is such a great place. Unregulated access to literally everything. Now? Only for the right price, and if you have the right opinion, and the right friends. Big tech made the platform and the people came and built. And they kept building. And now they're so invested they can't live without the platform. And Big Tech saw that it was good. Mostly for them. They knew they could shorten the leash inch by inch. Now you're unable to leave. Big tech honed their algo's so you stay right here. Either producing or consuming content. All those comments you made? The engagement with your audience? The hundreds if not thousands of hours spent working on video's? It could be gone tomorrow. And all you get when you complain is an AI generated boilerplate response. They're practically mocking you that you can't leave, because there is no alternative that has quite the audience this has.. And they're sadly right. Google is no longer the "Don't be evil"-company of olden times..

[@SIGSEGV1337]

You can check if your comment was shadowed by looking at the thread in incognito

[@Rex-sy8ye]

KZbins optimized goal: No thumbs down, Short videos

[@alice_in_wonderland42]

As comments decrease interaction time with videos which also decrease how many ads they can show you So ...

[@aarondcmedia9585]

and no way of stopping auto play. Stuck on the site forever.

[@michaelwerkov3438]

Yeah. This is really less political than people make it out to be. You can say almost as many cesspool worthy things as you want to. As long as the video and comments are formatted for ads, rapid engagement, and watch time. There's no shortage of anti-woke anti-sjw whatever that most people complain about being "censored"

[@me67galaxylife]

such a shame that they got the monopoly

[@jeanivanjohnson]

@@michaelwerkov3438 i don't understand what are you talking about. what anti-woke anti-sjw stuff you are talking about??? nobody mentioned any of that. have you watched the video? comments are deleted literally for no explanable reason

[@snap_oversteer]

Glad I'm not alone in this, I've noticed it few months ago - sometimes my comment gets posted fine, sometimes I'll have to write the same thing multiple times for it to stay, so from my experience it doesn't look like spam filtering. (attempt 1)

[@a.lithia5664]

This is extremely frustrating, I've experienced this countless times. Most of the time I don't even know what causes censoring. It's insane

[@hydralisk98]

Ya, that phenomenon of comment censorship and overall status of YT is even worst in some less... secular yet still reasonable aka concilling communities. Some of which I am actively part of. As a example, for the whole subliminal community there are several vast problems still on-going. From literal censorship + shutdowns of safe sane content from commenters and content creators alike, this trend of comment removal across the entire site and much collaboration between unethical government agencies & corporative bodies like Google. It makes me sick of even using KZbin in 2021 as those situations are only worsening across the whole board but I think you can see why I am still stuck on this hellscape of a framework. Anyway, if you are interested, go ahead find alternatives fitting your needs and don't hesitate to contact me if you are ready to learn some new things over that quest of ours.

[@buttholesurfer1266]

There were times i dropped the n word and it didnt get censored, most of the time its ordinary comments. I dont get it

[@violenceisfun991]

Well your profile picture is from one of those peeDoughFile cartoons so i have an idea why your shit gets deleted

[@a.lithia5664]

@@violenceisfun991 Really? Attacking somebody under such a topic? I guess learning to be polite is indeed harder these days.

[@violenceisfun991]

@@a.lithia5664 what is your native language? Just curious. And no its not about politeness, i just really hate peeDoughFiles and the people that try to brag about it and promote/normalise it

[@Samlolol]

Thank you Susan Wabbajack, Google and Co. for making KZbin into the shitshow that it is with ni real competition.

[@steelprophecy5951]

There is a competition worth time

[@Herkan97]

There are other platforms, not sure what you're on about. If you want to blame anyone, blame those that stick around since those are the people you probably want to watch. I see little problem in it myself, I'm here to watch videos and that this platform accomplishes well, sometimes I write long messages and at one edit when I try to press save I get an error message and it's gone, all I do is move on. It's just a bit of fun, if I wanted to seriously discuss I wouldn't be on social medias.

[@jongdonglu]

need a Vorpal sword to slay the Wabbajack xD

[@Sparkette]

@@jongdonglu USE YOUR WABBAJACK!

[@lookupverazhou8599]

My guess is she is very sensitive, and caring.

[@AlessandroPacifico]

The fact, that the comment is left up for a few seconds/reloads, so the user thinks it's all good and leaves is really disgusting. What a shady and dishonest tactic.

[@phonox]

…and, looking at other comments here, they even took the extra step of showing the comment to everyone for those few seconds. Just in case you check from another device I guess?

[@Herkan97]

Doesn't have to be shady, doesn't have to be instant, could be queued actions. The shady here is your assumptions about something none of us know almost anything about.

[@lookupverazhou8599]

@@Herkan97 I know a lot about it actually.

[@AlFredo-sx2yy]

@@Herkan97 so you are just another NPC who thinks its good for lord YT to delete your thoughts, nice!

[@gircakes]

Always reload until it says “30 seconds ago” because it will always be deleted within the first 30 seconds. I do this on all my comments to make sure they were actually posted before moving on.

[@BitWise501]

They censor the whole platform like that, comments just go straight into the black hole and you never know what words triggered it.

[@The-Anathema]

Some accounts also seem to get away with comments others do not, probably some sort of flagging system in place.

[@killistan]

I assume it has very little to do with the words you used, and very much to do with what videos you've watched recently.

[@trucid2]

It's not a word or phrase that triggers it. It's machine learning AI that's censoring comments. That means it's the totality of the comment that it considers. Good luck trying to evade it. It's very persistent when it comes to certain topic--it will not allow any discussion on them.

[@R.Daneel]

And yet if you turn comment reply notifications on, you get hundreds of milkshake-bots replying to every post. Artificial Intelligence or Actual Incompetence?

[@666chapelofblood]

@@trucid2 I change word for word replacing each letter in the word with a number (e.g. 3 instead of e, or 0 instead of o) until the comment sticks. That's how I evade it.

[@Agora2021]

I'm experiencing it now. It's random, I have no idea what sets it off, and I'm not even sure this one will get through either.

[@kinkkku]

Yeah I've noticed this a while ago. I had a "debate" with a guy on youtube. I wasted like an hour of my time to reply to him with some statistics to prove my point. Couple of days later I was wondering why he had not replied and when I went to check, my comment was removed. At first I thought it was something set up by the channel owner, but later found out it was just youtube being youtube. There's no point in having any kind of real converstations or debates on youtube comments. Just say "Great video!" and move on, because that doesn't sound like a bot at all.

[@damiengates7581]

Get with the program or get serviced bots...

[@pavelperina7629]

I don't think it's blocking bots or something. It's blocking disagreements especially when you provide 🔗 to something.

[@bonbonpony]

Yeah, that's the most evil aspect of it: KZbin farts, but we stink. People think that it's the channel owners who delete their comments, and they get all the blame, while KZbin is getting away with their shit.

[@amurloc6933]

Test other channel "poof"

[@historischerevisionist1969]

Test 3th account.

[@MathUDX]

What's really amazing is when you check out old reply chains from ancient videos before they implemented this system and conversations are unintelligible because half the replies have been silently nuked.

[@RelakS__]

At the same time if you upload a video, spambots start to write comments, or as lately, answer to the commenters and include not really safe links.

[@coolvase7224]

@@RelakS__ if I say the s to the y word of the us currency my comment will be deleted

[@gubx42]

KZbin tries its best to make the comment section harmless, it means opinions, controversies, loaded terms, etc... are hidden. And since meaningful discussions usually imply some form of disagreement, KZbin makes sure nothing meaningful happens.

[@jktech2117]

i got censored many times on yt.. and i take it as a reward... it means im not inside the hivemind, but trying to make people leave it... i got censored many times when saying to dont use google chrome, but vivaldi or librewolf... or talking things like this

[@benbaselet2026]

Funny how they still tolerate bots spamming the same bullshit link to every popular video 200 times without removing them immediately...

[@alice_in_wonderland42]

@@jktech2117 just write some crazy comment and refresh after 15 seconds and yll see that comment is Gone

[@damiengates7581]

This is not true. Wrong opinions are allowed, the truth is not.

[@bonbonpony]

Not "harmless" but "useless".

[@bramblebop1904]

Sometimes they keep comments so it looks like everything's all right, but if you _log out_ before reloading, _then_ they're gone. Sneaky.

[@TheDa6781]

"Comments are overrated." - KZbin

[@damiengates7581]

"only idiot comments allowed" -KZbin

[@TheDa6781]

@@damiengates7581 obviously

[@yam79]

I think instead of comments, KZbin would rather prefer videos instead. Because it's all about the money. 🤑

[@damiengates7581]

@@yam79 it's literally not about the money at all

[@blitzme99]

we should find a new platform that hosts videos and doesnt censor people and then we never have to give any more ad revenue to youtube (CIA) ever again.

[@ProjectPhysX]

I have noticed this too. If the KZbin AI™ detects a keyword it does not like, it deletes the comment. What a piece of shit this software is, the only thing that works is the ads. 💩

[@darealshinji]

Semi-related issue: I've seen KZbinrs doing more and more bizarre censorship in order to not get demonetized. Like pixelating the bust of "naked" mannequins. I mean they start censoring things that would be safe to air in many European TV channels. But video game violence is still okay to be monetized.

[@WDC_OSA]

Funny thing is that I remember seeing one video about a particularly violent game where the commentator was avoiding saying the word "blood." Presumably acknowledging blood in his violent computer game would automatically disqualify him from some advertisements or put him at a disadvantage with the engagement algorithm.

[@WDC_OSA]

Once I reloaded the comments, I couldn't find this for a moment and thought my reply had been auto-deleted lol. But I'm glad it's not, at least as far as I can see.

[@damiengates7581]

It's not about money at all.

[@Anutechtrwebgodz]

Censorship is not okay. Regardless of the circumstances.

[@singingstars5006]

Nearly everything I comment is deleted, even innocuous comments on animal videos. I have noticed that the first comment on a short is often allowed through and the rest of the comments placed on other threads is deleted.

[@singingstars5006]

My comment was deleted

[@jeanivanjohnson]

ummm, no, it's okay in some circumstances, like, banning cheese pizza is also a censorhip, do you think it's not okay too??? the problem we are having with youtube is that the comments might be deleted in ANY circumstance, WITHOUT explanation

[@GO-GO_SO-SO]

I know people that say that every comment they made gets deleted no matter what it is and does not know what to do or what is going on. There is definitely something going on with censorship. What are you even supposed to do if that happens to you?

[@Bisqwit]

You can check if the comment stays by trying to edit + save it in about 30 seconds and see if you get an error message. If you do get an error, it was deleted, and you should try to rephrase and post again.

[@jeanivanjohnson]

@@Bisqwit now there is no error anymore, to know if your comment gets deleted you have to reload the page. what is this? why don't bigger channels talk about this?

[@pawagnathom]

Thanks for explanation. It's really frustraiting in fact that the Internet is used to express ourselves, opinions and so on but in fact YT is owned bo Google so "their vision" of what is right and wrong is "better" than others statements and explanations, that is how i see it.

[@MaceUA]

Sometimes they even "ban" your comment without deleting it. I.e., you can still see your comment as if everything was OK, but it isn't visible to anyone else.

[@TealJosh]

Now that's a proper shadow ban, which is a tool channel owner can use to moderate their comments.

[@Bisqwit]

KZbin Studio indeed has the option of “hiding” a user, for channel owners. It used to be called blocking, but now it is called hiding. As far as I know, it indeed acts like a shadow ban; that is, the affected person does not get any feedback on their posts and will not know they have been hidden.

[@SapphFire]

I've seen the automatic shadow ban get triggered when I've tried to help people that had problems that were similar to each other. I guess it somehow detected that as "spamming", even though each of the replies I wrote were different and weren't copy+pasted. The shadow ban appears to be permanent, since it's been more than a year since I noticed it happening on a specific channel and the new comments still get shadow banned.

[@damiengates7581]

@@Bisqwit and how stupid is that? The channel potentially gets to keep the views of someone they fucked over.

[@skaruts]

I've been having this a lot lately. So much so that I started saving my comments in a text file in case I need to repost. Happens with any kind of comments, about any subject, even if it's the most cordial or neutral, on any channel (some kinds of channels more than others, though, I think), I can't really see a pattern. Just yesterday a lengthy comment about programming disappeared on me (which I forgot to save -.-). I've had comments stick but get deleted after a few hours. I've had comments disappear after people replied to them. Hell, I've had an entire thread deleted about a month or two ago. It's annoying af and wasting people's time, and probably deterring many people from engaging in conversations.

[@skaruts]

Also, btw, when a comment is deleted instantly or within seconds, another way to see if it's deleted is to try to edit it. When you click to commit it, it'll throw an error in red text. Also, one more thing: some comments seem to stick, but when I look for them from another account they're not there. And sometimes, reposting from an alt-account makes it stick, so it's not even about keywords...

[@KayOScode]

It would be one thing if youtube notified you and said "hey, this comment doesnt meet our community guidelines because of x y z reasons." Then gave you an opportunity to edit and repost it. Even then its mildly annoying, but silently deleting it making you think youre being heard when youre not is just terrible

[@tissuepaper9962]

@@KayOScode they do give you that kind of notification if they suspect that your comment contains an insult, or if you swear a lot. I constantly get a pop-up nagging me to be more polite. If they wanted you to know, they would tell you.

[@KayOScode]

@@tissuepaper9962 ive never seen that personally, so you think yt is being intentionally devious?

[@tissuepaper9962]

@@KayOScode yes, I think malice is a valid assumption here. KZbin has been doing subtle censorship and manipulation for too long for this to be mere stupidity. I only ever get the "be more polite" pop-up on mobile, maybe that's why you don't see it. I also normally only get it when I'm directly insulting somebody. For example, I'm very partial to the word "dumbf*ck", but, whenever I use it on KZbin uncensored, it gets my comment deleted.

[@kruruneiwyn2107]

I started noticing this about a month ago with my comments. I think it works sort of like "shadow-ban this person for X number of comments". Ever since then I've been dreading using this place & hoping desperately for an alternative that doesn't take inherent biases on its users.

[@AT-zr9tv]

This isn't directly relevant to the matter, but I wanted to tell you how much I appreciate your content. Good luck on your current studies, I hope you find the time / energy to create further NES password videos, they are so much fun. Be well.

[@Bisqwit]

Thank you very much!

[@Saturos02]

We shall not create disharmony. We shall consume the empty content. We shall smash that like.

[@Bisqwit]

That seems to be the aim.

[@lookupverazhou8599]

I shall not create disharmony. I shall consume the empty content. I shall smash that like.

[@AlFredo-sx2yy]

beep boop beep, consume content, smash like, subscribe, repeat.

[@feraldrgn]

This is still happening, it's maddening.

[@c4llv07e]

I hate this censorship so much! I remember when, after I watched one video about an interesting feature of one site (in this context it is not so important), I simply wanted to write a program that would be more convenient for this feature. And even though this script was done in 15 minutes, I spent 2 days trying to somehow write a link to the repo in a comment. I still haven't succeeded. KZbin doesn't like links very much.

[@AlFredo-sx2yy]

or site names. If you write the name of a site, even if its not a link, it can also delete the comment lol...

[@paulgibbons2320]

I hate this platform now. It's total trash.

[@charlesasmith7836]

Yes me too they so unfair

[@paulgibbons2320]

@@charlesasmith7836 that's being polite.

[@charlesasmith7836]

@paulgibbons2320 IKR I wanted to say more but afraid of youtube police on our comments these days

[@paulgibbons2320]

@@charlesasmith7836yeh 50% of mine go missing.

[@MathUDX]

One last observation of my own: sometimes, but not always, I can break through the censorship algorithm and post something by simply switching my web browser (from my daily driver Palemoon to Firefox in my case). No change of IP or anything like that, simply logging into my account with a different web browser sometimes clears whatever hold has been placed on my ability to comment and then the exact same comment will stick. So it seems that browser fingerprinting is also involved in this. Second time posting this comment. The first was in Palemoon, where I clearly have some sort of current hold on my commenting ability. This one was in Firefox.

[@olof-palme]

poof google KZbin China

[@ticktockbam]

The earliest I remember getting my comments deleted here on KZbin was around the time the Christchurch terrorist attack happened in New Zealand in 2019, which also happened to be the same year where KZbin started to comply with the US COPPA law for childrens' protection. I can't remember a single comment of mine getting deleted before that year.

[@Quesbe]

One time I posted a reply saying "?" under a very confusing reply to one of my comment, and it was as if it never existed. There was also one time were I posted a comment talking about my experience being part of a minority under a video about inclusivity and it just... never appeared until I did not say the name of that minority (even if it's not a controversial term by itself).

[@orion9k]

This is happening to me right now, everything I type when trying to communicate with other people, my comments removed instantly... !

[@asasdsaasda]

Same, what i assume happened is, in the past we said something that youtube did not like and got shadowban, at this point i don't fully understand what is the point of comment section

[@orion9k]

@@asasdsaasda fb is just as bad, sometimes i can't even see the comments or I am not allowed to take part in the comments 🤦‍♂️ these companies have to many ressources, to many employees and nothing better to do 🤷‍♂️

[@BallisticNuts]

e

[@BallisticNuts]

for testing

[@MathUDX]

One more pattern I've noticed: the censorship seems to be more active on "hot" channels versus others. For example you might be able to get away with saying something on a relatively niche channel that Google hasn't taken an interest in, but if you go to Jimmy Dore or The Analysis News and try to post the exact same thing you may find it autodeleted there.

[@Bisqwit]

The previous comment you posted, beginning with “Several months? Try at least a year or more”, seemed to get autodeleted.

[@MathUDX]

@@Bisqwit It's good to hear some confirmation that channel owners can see these sorts of comments before they get autodeleted, I've never been quite sure of that. Did you just happen to be checking your comment notifications at the right time?

[@Bisqwit]

@@MathUDX We do not get notifications about deletions. Rather, we get normal notifications of new comments even if the comment was deleted. I still see the notification on all --three-- four of your attempts to post that comment (four in studio app, three in the bell menu). But all of them lead nowhere. In studio app, it leads to "this comment is no longer available" error popup and in the bell menu, it leads to the list of all comments under that video without opening any particular comment.

[@lookupverazhou8599]

@@Bisqwit Don't worry, they will remove those notifications, too, soon. Their coders are literally just there brainstorming how to optimize censorship.

[@ActionableFreedom]

@@Bisqwit What the hell is happening though from your perspective? Censorship and dystopian control in all its devious glory is an interesting topic but this seems to be more akin to a system nobody is in control of. Some kind of AI machine learning? But how hasnt it improved in 4 years? Its just goten worse it seems?

[@KayOScode]

As someone who posts lots of comments, I noticed this months ago. No ones started talking about it till recently

[@__gig__]

I've had this happen to me pretty frequently lately; I have no idea why. The videos I've been trying to comment on aren't even controversial or political. It's frustrating to spend time typing stuff out only to have it disappear immediately. I don't even know if this comment will make it through.

[@Hadeks_Marow]

2 years later. Still dealing with it. How do I stop getting shadow-banned?!

[@Bisqwit]

Well, at least for this particular comment, you were not shadow-banned.

[@Hadeks_Marow]

@@Bisqwit Lucky me. 😅-_-

[@Spainkiller]

@@Hadeks_Marow I'm shadowbanned as well.

[@trucid2]

Same for chats in livestreams. KZbin's AI is out of control. A lot of times if you're logged in it will look like your comment is there, but if you log out and look, it's gone.

[@tissuepaper9962]

It's like the fake multiplayer in an io game.

[@yam79]

Another problem with KZbin comments nowadays are "bots" not just linking random links, but also these "bots" are also copy-pasting other & actually valid comments which are not spam. I think KZbin is trying to counter these comment bots, but if my hypothesis is true, it has been quite a poor job, I must say.

[@Bisqwit]

I don’t see any evidence of KZbin trying to counter these comment bots. It has been going on for a week now, and most pornbot comments do not get removed without my explicit action. (A fraction of them are already deleted before I can do it, because they fall victim to the same censorship as everyone else.) I have manually reported every single one of those pornbot posts on my channel - about 1300 of them in total. It takes about 15 minutes of my time to process each wave of spam. However, I fear that in doing so, I have inadvertently reinforcement-trained the censorship AI to treat regular comments as spam. I have asked @TeamKZbin on Twitter about both of these issues, but so far they have only replied to the first one with a canned response containing incorrect and inapplicable advice, and ignored the second one altogether.

[@Herkan97]

I've seen a bunch of different bots and then I've stopped seeing these bots and seen new types of bots, I don't know if they're doing a poor job but they're accomplishing something..Probably some pathetic people into spamming messages while KZbin isn't as invested in getting rid of them. Probably more motive to be mean than it is to be nice, respective of each party.

[@Bisqwit]

@@Herkan97 Vast majority of the bot posts were not deleted automatically; they were deleted by me, individually. However, for the last 24 hours, I have not seen new bot posts on my channel. Either they stopped their assault, or they moved elsewhere, or KZbin finally managed to stop it.

[@AV1ch]

Oh yes, too familiar. You can't have any discussion whatsoever on this site because of it, reword or not. Hey, thanks for the video. It's always nice to know you're not alone with this.

[@arvaneret_329]

Comments not only can be silently deleted as a censorship method, they might also get shadowbanned. This is even more irritating because you don't realize unless you take the time and effort to open the same KZbin video on a browser tab in which you're not logged in, proceeding to find the place where the vanished comment should be, while you still see it logged in. The good thing is that the free market offers competitive options to choose from in cases like this, so maybe it's time to gradually leave KZbin behind and go for other alternatives.

[@damiengates7581]

Hate to break this to you, but you can forget about your free market. Soon the world will burn though, so that's a positive.

[@mafn_]

Thanks for confirming. At least now I know that my comments randomly disappearing: * doesn't just happen to me * isn't just me being paranoid

[@cosminvisan520]

The algorithm went totally insane. Now it dilits everything, even if you don't use bad words or say something bad. So many geniuses programmers. lol

[@HannibalLecter-w3r]

I lost really really big comment like this once. It happened during politics discussion despite I didn't use any slurs or hate speech.

[@HannibalLecter-w3r]

Make sure to save the comment and check if it exists using incognito browser mode.

[@damiengates7581]

Too bad that saving the comment won't help as no one will ever see it anyway

[@HannibalLecter-w3r]

@@damiengates7581 if you see it gets deleted just replace some symbols with cyrillics, it breaks their algorithm.

[@Herkan97]

@@HannibalLecter-w3r You first have to know which sentence or word it is, sometimes I have no idea. I wish the error message would tell me, but as usual with any error message, these are useless.

[@jeanivanjohnson]

@@HannibalLecter-w3r i did that before, but it seems to me that now EVEN THIS doesn't work......

[@samuelbankston2108]

This has been happening to me nonstop.

[@soldierofchrist7343]

This is so frustrating. The worst part is when you know the comment has nothing wrong or controversial in it, but KZbin's AI still deletes it. Only about a fourth of the comments I make stay, and hopefully this is one of them. I'm pretty sure I can make a comment that says the sky is blue and KZbin's AI still won't like it.

[@phonox]

It's probably identified as disenfranchising towards those in other time zones, you know?

[@soldierofchrist7343]

@@phonox Haha lol, I guess your right. Don't want to offend anyone by being in a different time zone then them. It's 2021 we need to stop being so time insensitive.

[@myersparanormal]

Thank you so much I was looking into this a group of us are having problems with this and getting yelled at for them deleting people's comments which it couldn't be us because we all sleeping when it happened😅

[@Legiondude]

it's been frustrating for me on another KZbin channel I post podcast timestamps for(Their videos are 2-3hrs long), KZbin suddenly finds my posts not worth keeping around and I basically have to skip an episode or two before it lets me post again

[@jktech2117]

i am doing a live of me being censored kzbin.info/www/bejne/f4DZoaSVqN-qpLs

[@mattiviljanen8109]

It looks like KZbin cut the video a few seconds short, too :)...

[@27182818284590452354]

Eventually the only comments the censor AI will approve will be meaningless fluff that can be generated by another AI.

[@Sparkette]

This just happened to me on your video about the text-mode mouse cursor. I was so irritated that I used the "send feedback" form to express my frustration. Then this happened to appear on that video's end screen.

[@SimGunther]

Social credit seems to be attached to comments and channels. Any blacklisted word = auto delete or shadow ban (not visible unless you sort by new). Not sure why they've reduced us to kindergarteners having to spell out those kinda words, but here we are. Bye bye comments and hello dedicated forums!

[@leafbush7248]

This keeps happening for me too. I don't even place any sensitive words in my replies. I usually just comment compliments about the video and yet it still disappears.

[@coolvase7224]

if I say the s to the y word of the us currency my comment will be deleted

[@visancosmin8991]

Yes, the algorithm is out of control. This is what happens if you place too much trust on random AI technology.

[@Bigfoot_With_Internet_Access]

I think sometimes the comment sorting algorithm will randomly decide that a certain word is bad and start removing any comments with that word in them until youtube eventually find out and fixes it. Usually you can just reword your comment and it'll go through

[@phraggers]

I have this happen every time I want to post a link. Even trying to fool the system doesnt work. My comment gets deleted and where it wouldve been are thousands of VERY obvious bot accounts replying generic stuff like "Great video!!" and the username is something suggestive with an almost nsfw profile pic

[@coolvase7224]

if I say the s to the y word of the us currency my comment will be deleted

[@paco3447]

Yep. I think is some trouble with the AI’s algorithm. Also, the comment is saved (banned), so as long as you paste the comment again quickly disappears. It must be rewritten differently and I suspect not to be pasted also (maybe due recent scam comments bombing).

[@PlainDoll]

It's so bloody annoying, sometimes it goes through, sometimes it just doesnt, terrible webside, if only there was a viable alternative

[@paulgibbons2320]

Doing it to me also. They have gone full in fascist.

[@BackwardSabotage]

1. Write your comment and copy it to clipboard 2. Post your comment 3. Reload page to see if it's still there 4. If it's not, paste your copied comment, change a politically charged word for another one and post again 5. Repeat until KZbin is pleased

[@Bajso84]

This is very frustrating. You put the effort in writing up something and then its just removed for no good reason.

[@morgziliuz1972]

All my comments get deleted for no reason. Hopefully this one isn't one of them.

[@JOHNwasBORN]

@@morgziliuz1972 I see you

[@JOHNwasBORN]

My replies get deleted i think

[@JOHNwasBORN]

A

[@Bisqwit]

I do see all five of yours though, @Johnwasborn.

[@Flare03l]

this happened to a penguinz0 video before. it was so weird the comments would work fine on different videos it was just _that video in particular_ where comments were being blackhole'd after 30 seconds.

[@demoergo]

Almost none of my comments go through anymore. I quit posting months ago because it's just a waste of time. I don't know if their AI is broken or if they are just purposely trying to discourage commenting.

[@Bisqwit]

You are both visible. You can test it yourself by trying to edit the comment ~30 seconds later, and hitting “save”, even if you made no changes. If the comment was autodeleted, then the save will fail with an error message. No error message ⇒ not autodeleted.

[@unchi1999]

Yeah Fuck modern KZbin and fuck the modern world these days.

[@donnybrook8824]

I had two accounts deleted because of this. I still get shadow banned and comments out deleted. It doesn’t have to be just curse words. Using emojis instead of words when you can seems to help.

[@rockyrivermushrooms529]

KZbin can't stop me from typin-

[@ketsune23]

This happened to me i was making a friendship with someone in the comments in a video we both liked and youtube simply deleted my last comment 25 times lol i tried to write it in different manners and now i cannot communicate with that person simply because I am not allowed by KZbin

[@Z0Z33KY]

Censorship is god awful, I’m not a hateful person. I don’t come on here saying negative, mean things. Usually it’s pretty harmless yet my comments are always getting deleted.

[@dertyp6833]

Another thing is, that the counter of the comments doesn't increment when your comment got hidden or deleted for other people.

[@ВладимирЧапайкин-у4р]

_A third-party service should be created for commenting KZbin videos, that is, a service that will not depend on KZbin's censorship and rules and will not be able to be controlled by Google at all. And it can be integrated into KZbin video pages via (for example) a browser extension._

[@damiengates7581]

Want to team up?

[@phonox]

You mean like TheGab which were nuked by Silicon Valley? You'll probably have to launch a new web browser via Bastyon or Mastodon to not have the same happen to yours.

[@ticktockbam]

It's already been done, I think it is (or was?) called Dissenter or maybe Gab. The thing is, you didn't even knew such a thing already existed since all the major companies like Google and Apple already banned the app from their stores. If anyone created something like that, it will 100% be banned again by these companies once it gets big enough unless it gets moderated in order for people to no be able to share their opinions freely.

[@jeanivanjohnson]

@@ticktockbam i don't need a platform for far-right extremists, i need a platform that you can use to post something without it being unreasonably deleted, while also having a large and diverse audience

[@FiXato]

Meanwhile the 'check my profile' bots still get to repost random comments from users and stay up for days if not weeks...

[@Bisqwit]

It bemuses me.

[@jameshughes3014]

they are everywhere lately, which makes me think KZbin is trying to tweak it's AI to fight them as well as the ones talking about how great electronic cash is - and human comments are getting lost in the process

[@Fr3ak_MM8BDM]

20 seconds in and it gets auto deleted if certain words or enough of certain words are detected. Thanks for showing I'm not the only one who noticed this.

[@window.location]

Also chances of getting deleted is high when you copy paste, especially if you paste very long text or links

[@moversti92]

It seems to delete anything with the word "p" + "o" + "o" + "f"

[@Bisqwit]

That seems to be the case.

[@moversti92]

I saw your reply get deleted :)

[@MarsofAritia]

was thinking the same thing lol. it's a derogatory term for homosexuals in some places

[@trucid2]

It's true. I just tried it. This is insane.

[@krakulandia]

KZbin also does much more covert version of such censorship: it shows that the comment is there forever, until you logout of your account. Then you see that the comment doesn't show to anyone else, except to yourself, when you are logged in to KZbin.

[@hebertlcs]

It's really looks like a quirky of KZbin infrastructure. Probably after some reloads u end up being served by a server where your comment still doesn't exist yet. That remember me the issue in Twitter where the reply and retweet counts where behaving erratically. Sometimes going up and down randomly.

[@Bisqwit]

It’s not a temporary issue. The comment is gone permanently, as if someone deleted it.

[@mr-meek]

@@Bisqwit I have noticed this as well and most of the time if you change the sort order from top comments to newest first they will be displayed. I'm curious to know if that works in this case, as well

[@david_4246]

@@mr-meek no it's not a sorting issue. The ai picks up words and will automatically delete the comment.

[@Bisqwit]

@Mike Mertes What you are describing is a different thing. That’s not the comment being deleted; it’s just the sorting algorithm doing its thing. What I am talking about is where the comment is absolutely gone. A link to the comment will not work, attempting to edit the comment (if still on screen) will give out an error message, and on the studio app it says ”this comment is no longer available” when you try to click the notification.

[@jameshughes3014]

I think they are trying to use AI to filter the new wave of spam, and it's just more Artificial than Intelligent. Of course, I might as well be telling my cat this.. since no one will probably ever be able to read it :D

[@violenceisfun991]

It deletes them with 19 second if there are words in their they don't like. You can bypass it by using homophones

[@batlin]

Interesting... I made two very uncontroversial comments on a technical video the other day... one of which was a brief explanation of how to avoid running into a problem that I got stuck on for a while... and both disappeared very quickly. At first I figured the video uploader just didn't like what I said, but maybe it was something like this.

[@Bisqwit]

It was most likely this phenomenon.

[@TealJosh]

@@Bisqwit I've been running into this for at least a year. Probably longer.

[@tissuepaper9962]

@@TealJosh *at least* a year. IME it's been a lot longer, like 2 or 3 years, but I also curse and insult people a lot so I probably got marked as "problematic" a long time ago.

[@unchi1999]

@@BisqwitDude same i thought i was going crazy here 😂

[@user-sl6gn1ss8p]

I've notice this when editing posts, sometimes to insert links. Now I'm not sure whether it had something to do with the edit, the links, or just the fact that I reloaded into this timeframe

[@r1pfake521]

@@zxbryc Same I issue here. I post a long comment and notice a typo -> edit, ups I found an other typo and click edit again -> suddenly the whole comment is removed, I guess clicking edit too often is not allowed

[@thaituanly8955]

can it be that because their servers were trying to sync the data and there's something with the syncing process that makes the a specific server pulls out the oldest synced data? if that make sense

[@Bisqwit]

It always happens in about 20 seconds and if it happens to a comment, it always happens again to the same comment no matter how many times you try to repost it. This does not indicate a syncing issue. However, if you superficially reword it, trying to superstitiously change things that you think the filter that does not like, if you get lucky enough, it goes through. It is some form of censorship thing.

[@trucid2]

KZbin's AI does this consistently with comments on politically incorrect topics. This is not an accident or a technical issue. It's the AI doing its job.

[@thaituanly8955]

@@Bisqwit interesting, i experienced this once recently but didnt think much of it. is there a paper or something that looks into this?

[@Bisqwit]

A paper on the internal workings of KZbin? I don’t think Google likes to tout this kind of things in particular.

[@illustriouschin]

This happens to me a lot. Not a problem for bots of course. I agree that they just want the dumbest comments possible because those people click ads, and bots generate revenue as well.

[@SuportoVc]

I've been censoring my comments with "∆" instead of "A", and "•" instead of "o" when there are words that can be interpreted by them as inappropriate. I guess "swe∆r" is the responsible for that.

[@Bisqwit]

The comment in question did not have the word “swear” in it when I first posted it. The first line was added after the previous one got autodeleted.

[@fernandoz6329]

KZbin algorithm is fine-tuned to English. That also means if the algorithm has a 'bug' it will affect a lot of comments. In spanish for example comments with links usually get automatically get rejected. But bad words in spanish are very hard to detect.

[@tomstaten558]

Had a funny feeling this was going on. Now for sure.

[@meklu]

I've noticed a ridiculous amount of spam messages recently on the videos I've watched and they never get deleted despite me reporting them. The format of those messages isn't too complex either: a few random ASCII characters and a link whose domain name is three letters long, starts with a 'v', and whose TLD is just one of those weird relatively new ones. Surely it would be much more valuable from a user's perspective to get rid of that problem rather than to be policing discussions, right?

[@AlFredo-sx2yy]

that is because the aim is to police discussions

[@grproteus]

I'd write my personal experience here, but all those comments will be lost, again, like... ... tears... in rain.

[@l3p3]

There should be a proper process for it, like a notification "Your comment appears to be..." with the options "Delete", "Edit" and "Report AI mistake".

[@Alec_Reaper]

This issue ruins my jokes, I typically have a dark sense of humour and I have to suggest what I'm implying or saying to get it to stay. Balls to nuts It doesn't matter if the community is edgy or can tell what's a joke. It's extra frustrating when I see people say far worse than me, but I can't even swear. It must also be due to my long history on KZbin, I've probably made edgy comments and now my comments are flagged as "problematic"

[@user-xo2og8kv1o]

i didnt think we would have to deal with censorship in 2022 on the interweb, and specially not on such a mainstream and popular platform, scary.

[@Bisqwit]

And it only seems to be increasing.

[@visancosmin8991]

America, the land of freedom! lolz

[@amedicabg]

I clearly subscribed to this channel but...why? Time to find out EDIT: Ah you're the EXE file guy

[@Bisqwit]

Also, an explanation of an absence of uploads lately is posted here: kzbin.infoUgxwAlTPke-Ow4LwoLd4AaABCQ

[@amedicabg]

@@Bisqwit Ah, I see. Good luck with your studies man. That video was pretty dope tho so looking forward to similar when you have the time

[@lucabrito6155]

Hey, Bisqwit! I have a question for you and I don’t know if this is too personal or something. The question is: what do you think that makes life worth living for you?

[@Bisqwit]

Life is a multiplayer game, each of us partaking it at different times, and for each of us, eventually it comes time for the next stage - which is decided by our choices during this one. During this very short time we grow and learn enough and gain opportunities to make a choice. Mankind is essentially one collective entity. Each person is man; man is all people. Coming from the same seed that is Adam, we are different manifestations of different opportunities in life and of different ways to live. Not one person is better than another. In a way, when Adam sinned, and ate from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, God gave him what he wished for: The opportunity to know. We are manifestations of that wish. Opportunity to exercise that capacity to know, yet the sum of all of it is infinitely less than that which created us. It all comes to end at some point. In the beginning, God made sure to lay out foundations so that we know how he works, how we work, what he expects from man and what man can expect from him. In the end, God rhetorically asks man if we are happy with what we learned. Some of these paths lead us to abandon God, some of them lead us to follow Him. Some of them lead to further life, some of them lead to forever death. Portions of us will perish, and portions will continue to live and flourish with the source of life. Who knows, maybe some time in the uncountable infinity God will create another universe, or perhaps just another culture in another part of this universe, and we will get to see how it unfolds. For me, there is the knowledge that this life is already very short, which makes me not want to hurry it further, but also the excitement to learn and see all the accomplishments of mankind (and possibly play a role in it) during the time I have. Being able to make the life easier or happier to others is one of the best motivators for me.

[@lucabrito6155]

@@Bisqwit That’s a absolutely beautiful answer, sir. I would love to see you talking about the Bible and things like that. Merry Christimas and may God bless all of us.

[@raphaelradespiel9970]

Spooky. This is real matrix shit confirmed. You where speaking truth to power 🚨🚨🚨

[@briangatt2956]

What i hate is once your comment is deleted i retaliate in anger and the comment is kept.

[@MarquisDeSang]

I am shadowbanned everywhere : KZbin, Patreon, Facebook, Steam, Boardgame Geek...

[@Bisqwit]

Don’t know, but your comment is visible here.

[@MarquisDeSang]

@@Bisqwit But I would say that 25% of my post will be invisible. I never know. I have a comment on my own channel video that is shadowbanned. I was giving more technical details about the game in my comment.

[@Bisqwit]

Shadowbanning refers to a different thing though… But you can quickly check if KZbin is doing this to your comments by attempting to edit it ~20 seconds after you posted it. The editing button will work, but the Save button will produce an error message.