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.
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The comment is straight up gone when viewing with a logged out tab. I’m definitely 100% shadow banned right now.
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TIL people take commenting on YouTube seriously.
I take supporting creators with engagements seriously.
Commenting isn’t support. Not sure if you know that. see, I’m commenting on your post- this is not support.
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.
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.
Yeah I’ve blocked the comments section with uBlock. Most of the time it’s just garbage in there.
Me: watching a car repair video
Some asshat: dId YoU kNoW bIdEn eAtS bAbBy’S?!
More generally, it’s an important reminder for content creators that their entire youtube career is built on quick sand.
You can be earning a decent living one day, the next day youtube can block your account or remove monetisation for no valid reason, and you’re shit out of luck.
I mean, if you’re making a lot of money on youtube, power to you. But you should be saving as much as possible for that day and have a back-up plan. It may never come, it may come tomorrow.
I cringed when one creator mentioned giving up on her degree to focus on youtube. I mean, sure she’s making bank right now. But who knows how long that’ll last.
IMO at least the educational content of YouTube shouldn’t be in private have entirely, too important today.
