from Hacker News

YouTube algorithm weaponised to shut down Russia-Ukraine war reporting channel [video]

by rurounijones on 4/16/24, 2:04 AM with 7 comments

  • by rurounijones on 4/16/24, 2:04 AM

    The channel "Reporting From Ukraine" posts frequent videos providing updates in the Russia-Ukraine war. Supporters of Russia have long been trying to shut it down by weaponising the Report button and it seems they have finally succeeded with the channel now scheduled for deletion along with all the channels that features translated videos.

    They seem to be unable to get in contact with a human at Google with authority to investigate and evaluate things outside of the mighty algorithm so we are going to lose a valuable resource.

  • by Snippets on 4/16/24, 11:22 PM

    I sent a message to YouTube via their "Feedback" option on their home page BUT it appears the much more effective way is to publicly display the dissent on (Twitter) X. Take a look at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d4IpukQLQUw for help on how to write a posting on Twitter's YouTube site. (I am not a member of Twitter/X, so I can't help any further than this.

  • by tomalaci on 4/16/24, 11:50 AM

    Typical Google product that really has no actual customer support and is using faulty/naive algorithms to deal with things.

    Unfortunately, I have a feeling this HN topic will be flagged as well and disappear into nothingness.

  • by bdjsiqoocwk on 4/16/24, 8:43 AM

    Can anyone at Google look into this? This is serious stuff.

  • by justadolphinnn on 4/16/24, 9:05 AM

    Ukraine doesn't want their own people reporting, YouTube is good at filtering enemy states so it's unlikely to be Russian interference

  • by danmaz74 on 4/16/24, 8:56 AM

    Is it possible that Russian bots will win this battle? The channel has most often exaggerated titles for its videos, but the content is good and never NSFW.