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Comment by qwertox | Hacker News Reader

I think they didn't just remove dislike counts, but are actively suppressing negative comments.

If I watch a speech of someone from the German (right-wing) AfD party, which I very rarely do and start reading the comments, I feel like I'm visiting an echo chamber. Zero negative comments which simply can't be the truth.

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I don't think YouTube themselves are doing that. As the uploader, AfD can absolutely just remove all negative comments they don't like. And they've been able to do that since YouTube started.

My understanding is that comments with negative sentiments get held for moderation and bigger channels never go through and approve them so they’re effectively shadow banned comments

Can they filter out words automatically? Like I know that tons of people seemingly love to be moderators (for free) so maybe some channels just have enough mods to delete stuff very fast, but sometimes the whole comment section is just too clean. Do YouTube channels have more advanced moderator tools now?

The funny thing is that I started to get that impression on videos of Moroccan politics of all things. Not some western culture war topic haha.

> Can they filter out words automatically?

Yep. See "Blocked Words" https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/9483359?hl=en

There's also the option to manually approve every comment.

There is a lot of shadowbanning on Youtube!

It could be that YouTube secretly supports right-wing German political parties, and is suppressing alternative views in the comments, or it might be that YouTube just thinks the world is too cynical and suppresses any comment with a negative tone irrespective of political bent, OR—and stay with me on this—the channel itself may be moderating its own comment sections out of pure self-interest, and YouTube as an organization isn’t particularly interested in the goings on of local German politics. Who can say?

They are, but indirectly via the video recommendation algorithm.

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