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Comment by CydeWeys | Hacker News Reader

In light of this I'm bemused by the streamer's lack of understanding why his video was age-restricted. Censor out the fucking curse words if you want your content to be deemed suitable for a general audience; this isn't hard! TV and radio have been playing by these rules since their inception; you can figure it out too!

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The video is on YouTube and YouTube's guidance says that the following won't be age restricted:

Abbreviated, censored, or light profanity (like “hell” or “damn”) in the title, thumbnail, or video. Moderate profanity (like “shit” or “bitch”) used in the video. Infrequent usage of strong profanity (like the "f-word”) after the opening or up to twice in approx. the first 30 seconds of the video; or strong profanity in a music video.

So a video can drop an f-bomb twice in the first 30 seconds but a few times across 10 seconds of the video is frequent?

These kinds of rules are never applied strictly. Content moderation is always discretionary. If you don't want to be judged as adult content then play it safe, which includes censoring the f-bomb. It's just common sense.

I really doubt it's "discretionary".

They're probably running scripts on the content and likely not basing decisions on human review of any kind.

If they have any human review, it's probably contactors, reviewing only the 3 second clip of the 1.5 hr video, the tiny part that was flagged by the algorithm and understanding very little.

No, it's not "common sense" to go that far beyond what the rules say. The video has over an order of magnitude less swearing than the rule says is okay.

It’s one thing to suggest self censorship, but what about the other concerns in the article? Like how the manual review cleared it, then it got flagged again later? Or how the video will never recover from the hit taken from the recommendation algorithm? Or that YouTube is notoriously bad about informing uploaders of troublesome content with specificity? Let alone how bad they are about applying poorly written and nebulous standards.

This is more than a one dimensional “just don’t have any curse words or non family friendly content in your videos because it’s entirely your own fault if YouTube flags it capriciously ” kind of issue.

> manual review cleared it, then it got flagged again later

Too many times I’ve heard of this failure mode. Did humanity fundamentally lost against AI?

This got age-rated https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4Mte6z7TQI

There is not even a word spoken in it.

I wish music videos didn't get a pass here (or at least there was some setting), I prefer radio edits, in general.

Why did user choice go away?

The content guidelines specifically state profanity is okay as long as it's not excessive. 3 seconds of fuck in a 78 minute video is not excessive.

More importantly, while he could use youtube's tools to remove the profanity, it doesn't matter because they've also flagged it for Sex and Nudity.

The people who clutch their pearls over other people saying fuck are far more harmful to society and culture than anyone saying fuck.

Somehow nobody else has mentioned that was only the initial reason for the age restriction. It was later reflagged (after being un-age-restricted after review) for sex and nudity, which the video has none of.

Video and article are written as though this was the first time that issues concerning moderation and inconsistent applications of the rules have surfaced, which is absurd. Also odd to want to die on the hill of replaying a video game streamer's saying the f-word in reaction to the game. It is hard to think of anything more insignificant.

You should seek out context before forming an uninformed opinion.

https://youtu.be/qs_7crdHpbo

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