I’m having my comments I made the past few days receive zero engagements. It’s not just me losing the early bird lottery too; my replies to a highly engaged comment has zero likes, while several comments immediately after me has double digits. It’s nothing incendiary at all, just normal people’s comments. But something just tripped the enigmatic AI and thenceforth I’m shadow banned.

Why you should know this?

Because YouTube is being a thought police between creators and their communities. It feels to me like 99.999% of creators on YouTube have no idea that this is happening, that honest to goodness people’s engagements are never going to reach them on the platform; they’re being silently silenced, by an AI that is figuratively a black box.

Look at this screenshot. If that’s not damning evidence you tell me what is.

Imgur

The comment is straight up gone when viewing with a logged out tab. I’m definitely 100% shadow banned right now.
  • echo64@lemmy.world
    335·
    1 year ago

    youtube doesn’t actually care if you comment, “engagement” is through sharing, and watching. that’s all youtube cares about for engagement. how many watch hours, how many adverts, how many click throughs on those adverts.

    also literally every large social network has shadow bans, it’s the only successful way to deal with unwanted elements. if you tell the unwanted element that they are banned, then they just go make a new account.

    • zeograd@lemmy.worldEnglish
      201·
      1 year ago

      Actually, it seems like engagement is through any kind of interaction, commenting, upvoting, even downvoting, are used to boost a video visibility, because, as you say, their ultimate goal is maximizing money from ads.

      OP is right to support creators via comments.

      Note also that YouTube has automatic filters for comments, which will remain visible for its author only, but the creator can also shadowban someone from their channel.

      • echo64@lemmy.world
        2·
        1 year ago

        “actually”, no it doesn’t. that’s the old youtube logic. now youtube actively buries any kind of engagement like comments or liking, it’s not useful. youtube does not care about who is leaving comments or not, and leaving comments itself is highly susceptible to bots.

        again, all youtube cares about is about watch time, and if you share something with someone else as that leads to more watch time. people arguing in the comments has zero relevance on how many ads people see.