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Comment by alva | Hacker News Reader

I am almost certain another factor is clickthrough from "undesirable" referral links. ReviewBrah [0] (The Report of The Week) is the most family friendly channel with high subscribers that I can think of. He reviews fast food and has a unique fashion style and personality. Very clean.

He has become a popular meme and is regularly linked to from 4chan. I struggle to find a single thing that could warrant demonetisation (having looked through the youtube guidance), yet a large chunk of his videos are automatically demonetised.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeR0n8d3ShTn_yrMhpwyE1Q

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Of course, this would mean that YT has handed 4chan a laser cannon to demonetize videos at their discretion.

Someone will read these comments and it will be posted on 4chan within a few minutes, if it hasn't been already.

We might as well start posting suggestions for targets right away.

So you're telling me there's a way we might demonetize "kinder playtime", "hailey's magical playhouse", "funtoys", and "toys unlimited"?

THAT is a noble cause! Gimme the sixty-five. I'm on the job!

Could you elaborate on what these channels are and why you would want them demonetized? Are their videos actually sponsored by Disney et.al.?

https://gizmodo.com/youtubes-creepy-kid-problem-was-worse-th...

Basically, it ranges from use of copyrighted characters, attempts to game the autofill system, said characters doing weird and non-child-friendly shit, and actual exploitation of children.

MK ultra training.

There's a community here talking about this issue: https://www.reddit.com/r/ElsaGate/

The only other factor I can think of with ReviewBrah is that he's often negatively reviewing products from huge companies (fast food chains) that might advertise on YouTube. Would Burger King want to run an ad before he reviews chicken fries or whatever?

There are a huge number of other food reviewers that don't have the same issues with demonitization, even if they have slightly less ad-friendly content. That said, it's a good suggestion; it's much easier to find a way to shoot down your suggestion than it is to think of it.

> it's much easier to find a way to shoot down your suggestion than it is to think of it.

words of wisdom, I would do well to remember them.

Criticising products is totally fine, otherwise all video game or movie reviewers would be demonized. Demonetization is for "upsetting" content from a brand perspective (terrorism, catastrophe, sex, violence, ...), but the models get it wrong from time to time.

If it were the case, would it be an anti-trust issue?

I think you're over-generalizing from one example. I follow a few differnt channels that are totally harmless and boring, and they all complain about demonitization.

It seems like the algorithm just defaults strongly towards demonitization. Maybe it will learn and get better, but at the moment lots of things are getting demonitized.

To me, it sounds like what's really happening is that the amount of content has vastly outstripped the amount of available, ahem, monetization.

I want to believe, but then compare it with actual TV...

Or it's possible that people from those sources report his videos.

But my own videos get demonetized almost instantly and none of mine have weird referral links as far as I can tell.

Good point, it very well could be. However, I'm inclined to think that this isn't the case, solely from how much positive feedback he gets, as well as how little negative comments he gets. I mean, finding a negative comment about ReviewBrah on any of the Chans is nigh impossible.

Predicting the behavior of 4chan seems nigh impossible to me.

Another hypothesis I've heard that would explain the same effect is that youtube groups uploaders with the preferences of their viewers. If someone has lots of viewers who also watch videos of undesirable topics, that uploader will be considered undesirable as well.

Is there a name for this type of "guilty by association" algorithm?

K-means clustering.

This is one popular clustering algorithm. I think "clustering algorithms in general" would be a more accurate answer.

I didn't know there were others. I heard about this from a journal entry somewhere on DeviantArt about 10 years ago.

The algorithm does not have viewer's other watched videos as an input. Perhaps it should, but it does not.

I became familiar with ReviewBrah a couple weeks ago when browsing broadcasts on my shortwave radio and found his radio show. He sounded like an old-timey broadcaster and I imagined him to be a Jewish gentlemen and in his 50s.

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