Post a Pokemon video to YouTube and get your Google account deleted

This is why I don’t trust Google with anything important if I don’t have to

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-47278362

A bunch of YouTubers posted Pokemon videos and Google decided that they had posted child porn (presumambly because the titles contained the term “CP” for Control Points in them) and promptly deleted thier Google accounts.

If something like this happened to me, I don’t have the social media clout to get Google to have a human take a look.

Conversation 25 comments

  • coeus89

    19 February, 2019 - 8:17 am

    <p>It seems like an honest mistake. They can't let child porn on their platforms. Period. So I just can't get mad at them for something like this. I will agree there needs to be a robust contesting/review system. Users need some recourse for things like this. But in this particular case i'd cut them a little slack. They might not be living up to their "don't be evil" slogan in all instances, but this is pretty benign.</p>

    • wright_is

      Premium Member
      19 February, 2019 - 8:33 am

      <blockquote><em><a href="#405850">In reply to coeus89:</a></em></blockquote><p>On the other hand, Matt Watson put out a report yesterday stating that child porn is easy to find on YouTube, a couple of clicks and you land in a "wormhole" of child porn or videos sexualising children – even with comments to specific parts of the videos.</p><p>https://www.tubefilter.com/2019/02/18/youtubewakeup-comments-youtube-videos-underage/</p&gt;

    • jimchamplin

      Premium Member
      19 February, 2019 - 1:55 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#405850">In reply to coeus89:</a></em></blockquote><p>No slack should be cut. There should be actual punishment levied for false positives. That will be real incentive for the tech giants to do something that works rather than their ineffectual algorithm-based approach to everything.</p><p><br></p><p>As wright_is has been pointing out, they're fucking awful at policing because they look for obvious signals. But the bad guys are humans who are considerably smarter than a shitty algorithm.</p><p><br></p><p>Nuking an account because someone put "CP" in the description or title is as absurd as conspiracy theorists who think that a conspiracy would put obvious clues in public. "Oooh, this person is a plant because the last three letters of their name are "CIA!"</p>

      • lvthunder

        Premium Member
        19 February, 2019 - 3:59 pm

        <blockquote><em><a href="#405924">In reply to jimchamplin:</a></em></blockquote><p>Punishment like what?</p>

        • locust infested orchard inc

          19 February, 2019 - 7:30 pm

          <blockquote><a href="#405961"><em>Quote by lvthunder, "Punishment like what?"</em></a></blockquote><p>State-sanctioned capital punishment. That will teach future would-be basketcases on the mandatory requirement for the preservation of moralistic values within our increasingly wayward and decadent society.</p>

        • jimchamplin

          Premium Member
          20 February, 2019 - 12:00 pm

          <blockquote><em><a href="#405961">In reply to lvthunder:</a></em></blockquote><p>Heavy monetary fines. Screw a private citizen over, pay them $50,000.</p><p><br></p><p>No. $500,000. And it’s enshrined in law that it comes from the top and the company leadership must not cut anything from employees.</p><p><br></p><p>Make. It. Hurt.</p>

          • lvthunder

            Premium Member
            20 February, 2019 - 1:46 pm

            <blockquote><em><a href="#406120">In reply to jimchamplin:</a></em></blockquote><p>No company can afford to do business with that draconian of a fine. With fines like that businesses wouldn't have employees because they would be out of business. Especially the startups.</p>

            • wright_is

              Premium Member
              21 February, 2019 - 12:16 am

              <blockquote><em><a href="#406150">In reply to lvthunder:</a></em></blockquote><p>Not necessarily. YouTube's (and Google's) problem in general is that they have gotten away with so much for so long, that they never put such tests in when it was small enough that they could actually test it and get it right, the same for copyright infringement, they built their whole business model on copyright infringement and other forms of illegal material, knowing full well that they had a duty to get rid of it, but it is a huge source of income.</p><p>Only when they got big did it come back to hit them and then, instead of a set of checks and balances built when they were small and scaled up with the rest of their systems, suddenly they have so much data that they "can't" do it properly – well, not without investing billions, which they don't want to do, because it will weaken their stock price.</p><p>If they had put such controls in from the start, it would probably still have cost billions, but not as much as now, and it would have been a constant drain on their profits, giving a more realistic view of their worth, instead of trying to dodge the bullets now.</p>

  • StevenLayton

    19 February, 2019 - 10:42 am

    <p>Granted, it doesn't make it any less disruptive to the person having their account deleted, but weighed against what they're trying to tackle, <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">its much easier to be forgiving of large tech companies when mistakes like that occur.</span></p>

    • wright_is

      Premium Member
      19 February, 2019 - 11:38 am

      <blockquote><em><a href="#405878">In reply to StevenLayton:</a></em></blockquote><p>See below, the real and obvious offenders are being left untouched. </p><p>The uproar makes it sound like they are doing something and being overzealous. Whereas the problem seems to be going on uninterrupted. </p><p>I don't want to accuse Google of smoke and mirrors, but the timing is "funny". Yesterday a report states they are not doing enough and the next day a bunch of high profile YouTubers get their accounts deleted "by mistake" and after a bit of a stink they are reinstated and everybody forgets the real story… </p>

    • jimchamplin

      Premium Member
      19 February, 2019 - 1:52 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#405878">In reply to StevenLayton:</a></em></blockquote><p>Actually it helps nothing. Good people get screwed, the tech giant will never even grace their please for help with so much as a simple look, but the bad guys will just pop up again like the scumsucking roaches they are.</p>

  • lvthunder

    Premium Member
    19 February, 2019 - 11:37 am

    <p>They shouldn't be cancelling their Google accounts. They should turn the information over to the authorities so they can arrest these people.</p>

    • wright_is

      Premium Member
      19 February, 2019 - 12:47 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#405891">In reply to lvthunder:</a></em></blockquote><p>I know Pokemon Go is a plague on the landscape, but arrest them? :-S</p>

      • lvthunder

        Premium Member
        19 February, 2019 - 3:56 pm

        <blockquote><em><a href="#405909">In reply to wright_is:</a></em></blockquote><p>I'm talking about the actual kiddie porn dealers. Not the false positives.</p>

    • jimchamplin

      Premium Member
      19 February, 2019 - 1:50 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#405891">In reply to lvthunder:</a></em></blockquote><p>Because that would totally help the situation. Get your account nuked on a false positive? Nope. </p><p><br></p><p>PRISON! All hail Skynet and our algorithmic overlords.</p><p><br></p><p>Did you actually <em>read</em> OP?</p>

      • lvthunder

        Premium Member
        19 February, 2019 - 4:01 pm

        <blockquote><em><a href="#405918">In reply to jimchamplin:</a></em></blockquote><p>I'm talking about the actual kiddie porn uploaders. Not the false ones. If Google thought that the video contained that and all they did was cancel the account that is shameful.</p>

  • locust infested orchard inc

    19 February, 2019 - 7:04 pm

    <p>So it would appear posting an innocuous video with the letters 'CP' will trigger Adoogle's holier-than-thou algorithm.</p><p><br></p><p>Conversely, posting an authentic CP video on YouLube will bring in millions of views, and Adoogle will encourage you to post more evil content by advertisers paying out for the clicks.</p><p><br></p><p>The "don't be evil" motto used within Adoogle's corporate code is simply a convenient cover under which to hide their sinister, malign, and corrupt practices, whilst giving the impression to the billions of netizens that Adoogle is a philanthropic force of good (with the majority of its services largely free) – nothing could be further from the truth with Adoogle being the masters of subterfuge.</p><p><br></p><p>Can there be a more evil platform than Google ? (rhetorical question as the answer is evidently no)</p>

  • Polycrastinator

    20 February, 2019 - 8:54 am

    <p>You would think by now the Scunthorp problem would have been resolved. A single short text string always yields false positives, and yet tech companies keep doing this, it's kind of like they're not even trying.</p>

    • locust infested orchard inc

      20 February, 2019 - 11:03 am

      <blockquote><em><a href="#406050">In reply to Polycrastinator:</a></em></blockquote><p><br></p><p>Thanks for pointing out what the 'sCUNThorpe problem' is.</p><p><br></p><p>With capitalising the above letters, it is clear for all those who (like me) may have been previously unaware of this.</p>

    • hrlngrv

      Premium Member
      24 February, 2019 - 9:52 pm

      <p><a href="https://www.thurrott.com/forums/google/google/thread/post-a-pokemon-video-to-youtube-and-get-your-google-account-deleted#406050&quot; target="_blank"><em>In reply to Polycrastinator:</em></a></p><p>You'd think someone at Google would be familiar with <strong>\B&lt;naughty_word_here&gt;|&lt;naughty_word_here&gt;\B</strong> as an alternative to <strong>&lt;naughty_word_here&gt;</strong>. Though that may not work for separate token abbreviations. Factoring in semantic context is rather more difficult.</p>

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