Shadow Banning: Youtube turns me off

What do the Tübingen pigeon towers and the social media platform YouTube have in common? You work with a comparably sinister strategy. One could call this a reproductive illusion. Like many historical cities, Tübingen is plagued by the city pigeons. But hunting is out of the question. Even the settlement of birds of prey was called "inhuman" by angry pigeon friends. That's why you use a trick. In said towers, the eggs of brooding pigeons are replaced by plastic imitations. The birds believe they are reproducing. In reality, their population is being gently turned around the corner.

As the author of these lines learned a few days ago, the YouTube platform uses a comparable calculation.

Comments under videos that are posted on the index for any reason known only to the company will not be redistributed.

But it does so in a subtle way.

Hidden censorship based on the plastic egg principle?

Just as the pigeon is given the feeling of sitting on a real egg, the commentary can be seen on YouTube on its own computer. But only on this one! He is invisible to everyone else. So the author himself does not sense censorship, although that is exactly what happened. This tactical finesse is called shadow banning. Once you understand the principle, you can play with it. You log off on your computer: Abracadabra - your own comment has disappeared. If you log in again, it pops up again.

If you put yourself in the role of the platform operator, then it is clear that there has to be some method of separating the hate speech that is widespread on the internet from serious arguments.

It is unlikely that this will be done manually.

It is very likely that the many comments are being scoured by an algorithm.

What was my "offense"?

The algorithm and the thought experiment

I was interested in Sarah Lee Heinrich, who is currently talking about head and neck. That doesn't even mean her adolescent tweets. One read: "I'll find you and spit on you, then poke you hang up with a knife and let it bleed." More serious is the irritating ambivalence of the now twenty-year-old young woman who pretends to put her heart and soul against racism. Unfortunately, she even uses clichés that spark off with racist ideas. That brings us to, as she puts it, “disgusting white majority society”. In her opinion, she is responsible for the fact that Fridays for Future is shaped more by boring white Greta Thunberg-like girls instead of the casual People of Color.The first question to be asked is what is preventing the People of Color from getting involved with Fridays for Future. Nothing at all.

How disparaging the term “disgusting white majority society” is becomes obvious when you do a thought experiment: Imagine a white girl growing up in a black African country. They go to school there, do their Abitur and start studying. Since his mother earned little, the family was supported by welfare. How would it sound if the young lady called the mostly black “bourgeois” a “disgusting black majority society”?

Exactly this thought experiment was not acceptable to the YouTube algorithm.

Against this background, the platform operator would be recommended to sharpen its algorithm.

Otherwise they would have to put up with the accusation of serving as a tool for ambiguous racism.

And the “trick” of lulling the incriminated author of a comment into security even though he is banned, you can leave it alone.

Marco Wehr