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Comment by pjc50 | Hacker News Reader

The real problem is the lack of explanation. If a film is refused certification, it will usually come with a list of reasons, making it possible to recut to an acceptable version. If it's demonetised by youtube you get no explanation.

Yes, that will result in people working exactly up to the line, but at least having a line is something that people can work with.

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I'm not sure if there is a line. Here are two identical videos, and the one with "transgender" in the title was demonetized. https://twitter.com/GeekRemix/status/910942349928419328 (edited with larger sample)

That is extremely troubling. I wonder if it's because the algorithm is taking into account previous negative uses of the word in comments/commentary and flagging it as possible hate speech?

This is the point that various people such as Maciej Cegłowski have been making - if they had a policy which banned that word, we could argue about it; but if they have an algorithm that emits the same result but without explanation, it's much harder to make criticism stick. And unless people go to special effort, the algorithm will pick up the prejudices of the training data.

Maybe for most countries, but not America. The MPAA movie rating system here is a nightmare. The rating standards are private, and if they rate you NC17 or X or what have you, they'll refuse to give any reasons as to why, because that would imply they engage in censorship. The rating system is not government-run either, so it's partially controlled by clergy members, and treats gay films more harshly. "This Film Is Not Yet Rated" is a good documentary that covers the MPAA rating system.

iirc the rating standards are not actually private, but rather there are no ratings standards. It's just a few people (mostly friends) sitting in a room saying what they feel like it should be. There are some rough guidelines, but it's not particularly consistent.

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