YouTube bans comments on all videos of children - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-47408969 <comment><USER3> Chris Ulmer, who runs the popular YouTube channel Special Books for Special Kids, said that comments were removed from his channel despite no evidence of unacceptable comments, and YouTube told him that if he turned comments back on, he risked his channel being deleted. [EDIT: Turns out, this is not actually the case. See child comments.]

[https://twitter.com/chrisulmer/status/1099366622329036801](https://twitter.com/chrisulmer/status/1099366622329036801)

"Last night I realized all of the comments on SBSK's YouTube channel were disabled. I saw I could manually turn them back on so I did. Then I read a post by YT saying that by turning comments on I risk our channel being deleted. I love and respect YT but IDK what to do.

"The beauty of SBSK is the love and acceptance in the comment section. It shows families and individuals across the world that their [sic] are people who accept them. Many people I interview have been socially isolated. Comments can change their self perception."

So it sounds as if YouTube content creators are now in the unenviable position where they need to actively moderate the comments section for videos featuring children, and if they don't do so to YouTube's satisfaction, they could have their entire channel nuked. Even if you're pretty darn sure that your commenters will behave themselves, that doesn't sound like a good deal.

Seems like YouTube will need to come up with some sort of "trusted subscriber" designation, and allow content creators to permit comments only from those subscribers, so that any random bad actor can't swoop in and destroy a channel.

<comment><USER4> I might be in the minority here but I enjoy the low quality youtube comments. Most people dismiss them as cancer but the reality is a lot of people think in patterns that drive these comments.

I would rather be in touch with and exposed to this rather than try to pretend it doesn't exist. It won't ever go away, it will just be hidden.

<comment><USER5> I think that there's an element of validation and indoctrination that is a serious concern here. In addition to an overall significant lowering of the discourse around things by allowing garbage quality trolls and other horrible comments, and in addition to bullying, aggressive behavior, stalking, and other things that are broadly considered unpleasant, this kind of behavior breeds more of this behavior.

Consider someone growing up on the internet. The more they're exposed to this sort of content, the more it will be normalized in their mind. The more they're exposed to this sort of content, the more likely susceptible people are to be radicalized by it, and to grow into the same sort of troll. Hiding or suppressing low-quality content creates a herd immunity effect. It prevents a shift of the Overton Window to where "generally allowable discourse" suddenly includes timestamping the most "salacious" parts of a child's video, or telling people to actually kill themselves, or sharing their purely racist, hate-filled viewpoints.

While you may rather be exposed to it because you have the strength and capability to view it as a curiosity and a sociological study, the impressionable among us maybe deserve to not be bombarded with garbage, and we may have a moral duty to at least make some effort to minimize indoctrination and radicalization on these platforms.

<comment><USER6> This is one of the reasons I think anonymity on the Internet is a bad thing. Not that I am saying it should be banned, but it should not be the norm. Much of the toxicity simply would not happen, could be prosecuted, or could be filtered if a "real person" attribute was widely available.

<comment><USER7> Toxic comments can be just as common in non-anonymous forums and venues. Facebook produces a lot of toxicity, for example. Further consider; the Internet is much less anonymous then twenty years ago and that hasn't stopped the overall level of toxicity imo. The type of person who spontaneously makes toxic comments spontaneously will still make them when forced to use their real name (they'll just suffer more from it). The provocateur, those who calculatedly elicit toxicity, is always going to be here too - no matter many Russians Facebook filters.

One factor is that once one person begins attack another person, both using real names, both people have a hard time backing down, especially if they know each in real life or if they are semi-public figures. For a lot of people, admitting that they are wrong is a huge hurdle - and these tend to be the people who engage in toxicity in the first place.

<comment><USER6> ...and people have been jerks since there were people, I am not implying that people being unpleasant was created by anonymous commenting.

However there would be quite a bit of backpressure against certain kinds of Internet toxicity if people were less anonymous.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The fact that Google is ceding the fight against toxic comments on YouTube is actually pretty shocking.

In a company that knows more about you than you can possibly imagine, and more about automated sentiment analysis than anyone in the world, they couldn't algorithmically determine who should be allowed to post on certain subsets of videos, or devise a system they thought was worth deploying to ensure comments meet a basic level of decency.

<comment><AUTHOR> The ramifications of this are profound, at least:

\- shake the money stick at them and they will dance (thanks, of all people, Nestle!)

\- they've admitted a serious problem exists that they were unwilling to deal with until external pressure forced them to (i.e. they can't be trusted to self regulate)

\- they've all but admitted they can't fix this in reasonable time, if at all

This is the first time I can think of where there has been a seriously material chink in Google's.. cultural armour? Turns out the advertisers are in control, and turns out they don't have a technical cure all. It'll be interesting to see how they attempt to reintroduce comments in the long term, no doubt more ML. Of course, this says nothing about a recommendation system that continues to blindly cluster videos of lithe toddlers together. I wonder if any advertisers are making a stink about that

Favourite summary: kids are safer on YouTube today because of Disney and Nestle, not because of Google. Let that sink in. The subtext here of course is that Nestle and Disney are some of the most evil companies around, and yet they're the ones that were forced to strong-arm Google. The irony of this defies words, and the reality of the only mechanism at play here to protect children is almost as disturbing - these companies don't "care about children", they were only forced into action to maintain their reputation.

(gentle reminder: HN punishes highly commented 'controversial' stories. If you care about this issue being more widely understood, try to limit your commenting)

<comment><USER9> I, for one, do not want Google deciding what is true.

<comment><USER10> God forbid they put a link to Wikipedia under flat earth videos, huh?

<comment><USER11> You only think that's a good idea because you don't believe in flat earth. They could equally put a link to flat earth sites under NASA/SpaceX videos. Do you really want to decree that whatever they link is "true" just because you agree with them in this particular instance?

<comment><USER12> When I am objectively wrong, I want my mind to be changed. I expect this to be the case for around 10% of my 'knowledge', even on topics I care to educate myself about, and much worse on other issues.

Putting a link under the videos isn't likely to achieve that, but that's a separate issue.

The only problem I have with Google doing this, is that I trust corporations and government about the same — i.e. that both will lie and dissemble as much as they are allowed to get away with for their own or their leader's benefit, without regard for my interests.

<comment><USER13> You're missing the point. Most things in life aren't settled as easily as the flat Earth debate. Google could also do this on something that's far more controversial (eg political) and justify it in the same manner. Imagine if Google were against climate change and every video about climate change gets a link to some website that says it's not true. That wouldn't be acceptable, would it? But being okay with Google doing this for flat-earth also makes it more acceptable for Google to do it for climate change.

<comment><USER14> _> But being okay with Google doing this for flat-earth also makes it more acceptable for Google to do it for climate change._

Sounds great, I'm all for it.

Sure the truth can be complicated, but I fail to see how implementing software that auto-links to a relevant article on Wikipedia causes Google to be the arbiter of truth.

<comment><USER13> > _Sounds great, I 'm all for it._

Even if Google thinks climate change isn't man-made and links to sources backing that up?

<comment><USER15> Do you think YouTube should have censored videos about government surveillance programs before the Snowden documents came out?

<comment><USER14> That sounds like a leading question for rhetorical purposes - is this something Google actually did, or are we speaking purely of hypotheticals here?

Note the solution I posed is something which Google _already does_ on its search engine without calamity. Therefore I don't see a reason why it would fail for YouTube. In contrast the example you're giving seems pretty hard to just link to an authoritative source.

Put another way, I'm not advocating for Google to arbitrate the truth on a case by case basis. I'm advocating for Google to identify _ahead of time_ which sources are well-researched and trustworthy, then _outsource_ its fact- linking system to those sources.

If Google were to supply facts on a case by case basis that would be suspect. But that's not how the company operates, so I'm deeply skeptical they would become some kind of arbiter of truth.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Official statement: [https://youtube-creators.googleblog.com/2019/02/more- updates...](https://youtube-creators.googleblog.com/2019/02/more-updates-on- our-actions-related-to.html)

It's not "all".

> _A small number of creators will be able to keep comments enabled on these > types of videos._ These channels will be required to actively moderate their > comments, beyond just using our moderation tools, and demonstrate a low risk > of predatory behavior. We will work with them directly and our goal is to > grow this number over time as our ability to catch violative comments > continues to improve.

<comment><USER17> YouTube steadily moves toward the TV station model.

<comment><USER18> Honestly is it so bad if most videos end up turning off comments in the future?

I use a blocker to hide comments and don't seem to miss much. Let people discuss videos on other sites like twitter or reddit.

<comment><USER19> > Let people discuss videos on other sites like twitter or reddit.

Yes, exactly. I've never understood why content-host sites seem to think attaching first-party comment hosting directly to hosted content is a good idea.

Why not just host what you host, and then let aggregator/discussion sites (various subreddits, various private forums, Usenet, Slack/Discord groups, etc.†) link to your thing-that-you host and host comments? You can have RSS feeds to ensure those aggregator sites can—if they want—automatically generate their own link-posts when your site has a new post.

And, best of all (from my perspective, at least), it doesn't force people who are consuming your content for different _reasons_ into the same room where they will inevitably shout over one-another due to competing access needs. Each community can have their own conversation about your content, and can feel morally justified in kicking out uncivil people, since they can just go find a _different_ conversation about the same thing in a _different_ community. Rather than there being one "canonical" conversation that they feel shut out of.

† I exclude Twitter from this list because Twitter has no concept of partitioned subcommunities, and so inevitably, if there's a conversation about something on Twitter, it becomes the "canonical" conversation. That's kind of the point of Twitter, for some use-cases (e.g. celebrities arguing with other celebrities where other celebrities can watch and get pulled in), but it's bad for the use-case of regular people trying to have a regular discussion.

<comment><USER20> There's been a video on yt about a real airline pilot reviewing the sully movie [0]. The comment section is filled with people from the field, pilots, turbine technicians, etc. Even Sully's Co-pilot Jeff Skiles HIMSELF commented on the video. While there are usually tons of low quality "upvote this comment if watching in 2019" things, this thread was wonderful. And I think if the comments were hosted on a different site e.g. some pilot specific website (there are probably such), or even twitter, I think I wouldn't have found those comments.

[0]: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXfWU_ER3Mg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXfWU_ER3Mg)

<comment><USER19> Were there any valuable comments that weren't root-level (or that wouldn't have been made as root-level comments if it were impossible to reply to comments)?

I ask because I feel like you're describing the same sort of system I am in my sibling reply below:

> But really, if content creators want to get "feedback", they just need a > thing that's essentially like email—a separate private channel between them > and each audience-member—but where you can easily forward a whole email > thread, after the fact, to the content host, and it'll appear below the > content in an FAQs section. Sort of like how reviews work in some digital > storefronts.

If all such comments were submitted knowing they'd just be treated as "private feedback" by default, with the moderator having the _option_ to promote such feedback to appearing as a public "comment" [which, yes, isn't that different from "comments with pre-moderation", except for different _expectations_ on commentors' parts], do you think that (valuable!) thread still could have happened?

<comment><USER20> Yeah, Jeff Skiles's comment got a lot of replies and he replied to some of them. This spontaneous AMA thing was definitely valuable, made the guy even more approachable!

Cramming everything into one flat thread has already been done in phpbb and works for small threads but big threads get into issues when you are not interested in every part of the discussion but only some.

<comment><USER19> How about a modification of my proposal:

1\. the creator has their own private forum (e.g. a Discord group);

2\. you, as a potenial commenter, can easily join said group as a guest, with your YouTube credentials used to identify you in the group;

3\. _or_ you can also just post "into" the group _without_ joining it, using the form below the video;

4\. the community itself can be deputized to moderate such comments;

5\. the community can have all sorts of thought-provoking discussions in response to such comments, visible to one-another in the (private) group;

6\. the content-creator would have an easy interface to "highlight" any given thread/subtree of conversation from the group, making it into a visible comment thread appearing below the video.

Essentially, this proposal would just take each YouTube channel, and make its comments section into a private forum under the content-creator's control; and then, separately, make the "comments section" below the video into a sort of moderated "best of" version of that forum's discussion of the given post.

<comment><USER21> just promotes a "goto reddit/discord" mentality which hurts discussion once reddit/discord cracks down on your interests.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> What a ham fisted reaction to the controversy. Now all content creators have to ensure that no kids are ever in their videos, which includes background footage and movie clips.

I think this is a major problem with our current centralized model of the internet where giant corporations make all the rules. Large corporations have no ability to rationally judge situations or inject nuance into discussions. They simply take the easiest and most expedient pathway to make the problem go away regardless of the long term consequences. This is not behavior we want from the few major building blocks of our modern life.

<comment><USER13> I disagree that this is a problem with giant corporations. I think the problem lies in the public that demands blood on everything. There is no solution to the problem that youtube is being asked to solve other than simply banning all videos with kids in them.

<comment><USER23> "public that demands blood on everything"

public = Small, vocal minority.

<comment><USER24> Not even the public, it's the small group of news outlets which are trying to discredit youtube as a source of news and entertainment. Youtube is a direct competitor to cable news and the networks that host them, so being able to say, "Look! There's bad stuff that they didn't know about!" is a great way to push that narrative and reclaim some advertising dollars.

This isn't even in retaliation to the Verge and the other news articles that originally covered the story, it's due to the advertisers that pulled out of Youtube. There's very little chance the advertisers decided to pull ads because they have the 'moral high ground' \- big corps like ATT and Disney are simply doing this so that, after the issue has passed, they can negotiate lower ad rates with Youtube. If there were no ads whatsoever for "Avengers: End Game" on youtube, the movie would still be popular, but it wouldn't nearly generate the same amount of buzz or 'hype' as the first one did.

<comment><USER25> This sort of stuff and the fake news hysteria in general seem like an attempt to discredit all alternative media sources, and the internet/blogging/free speech in general. For them, competing with thousands of people writing/making videos for free means their business model doesn't work any more.

Fact is, they won't stop with these articles and attack pieces and hysteria till the internet is basically like cable TV.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> As a Father of very young kids, I think this is nothing short of emergency. Not only commenting on kids videos should be banned, also youtube should heavily vet and tag all their kids related videos -- these days kids are hooked on watching cartoons and poems on youtube and a lot of times, there are really garbage videos targeting kids just showing little girls buying and playing with make ups, cleaning houses and learning about shopping.

<comment><USER27> People said the same about the chat rooms we used when we were kids. You could argue that those had much more potential than Youtube comments to lead to actual physical harm. In some cases, bad things really happened. Chris Hansen made a show about it, and police used chat rooms to find pedophiles. But were internet chat rooms ever an "emergency"? Where do we draw the line with bans?

There are family-friendly content creators who diligently police their comments sections who now have their livelihoods severely impacted.

<comment><USER28> I'm mostly playing Devil's Advocate here, but consider that Youtube is _much_ more widely used than IRC chatrooms ever were.

<comment><USER29> In addition, Coca Cola never ran ads on IRC spliced into channels (as far as I know ;)).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> This seems like a ham-fisted solution does it not? Channels like ChadTronic play on the nostalgia of being a kid back in the '80s and '90s, yet AFAIK has been unable to enable comments on any of his videos. The weird, funny comments are a big part of the experience in those kinds of videos. Some tropes of the show itself have been built around the comment section.

Would it make more sense to instead target the patterns used by predatory commentators rather than shutting down the system completely? This is Google, the company of bringing meaning out of arbitrary data, is it not possible to build social graphs of what people like, scour, and activate these time codes? Couldn't you restrict the features that enforce those patterns?

Lastly, does forcing these comments off negatively impact the rankings of these creators? Comments have traditionally played into the engagement of any said video and had an (understood) impact on how a video ranks on release. Are these channels now just permanently stunted in their future growth?

<comment><USER31> >Lastly, does forcing these comments off negatively impact the rankings of these creators? Comments have traditionally played into the engagement of any said video and had an (understood) impact on how a video ranks on release. Are these channels now just permanently stunted in their future growth?

1) Yes. 2) Yes.

Youtube has taken this action without an overall plan. One of the Youtube creators was told as much in a chat with youtube support. ([https://youtu.be/oeI0-ijIotk?t=504](https://youtu.be/oeI0-ijIotk?t=504)) They indicated to him that some creators will be negatively impacted until everything is worked out. The program is working just like they planned. lol

<comment><USER32> > The program is working just like they planned.

Or like they didn't plan

<comment><USER33> Or ya know they thought the situation was sufficiently urgent that they needed to do something immediately without thinking through every possible eventuality. Have you never dealt with a PR emergency before? Often, the "let's take two months to game this out" approach is not the most effective way to address the problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Man people are depressing. I'm guessing the scum bags will have to post scummy things on other forums and link to videos. At least the consumers on youtube wont be subjected to such.

Incoming new challenges for reddit. Maybe its an opportunity to get rid of some more scummy communities.

<comment><USER35> You are depressing. You are validating blanked "solutions" that harm the creative content and at what cost?

This obsession with regulating and controlling everything that happens on the internet is just hysterical. Also "Think of the kids" is the most common of the "appeal to feelings" falacies that keeps on getting hammered and hammered and it's _depressing_ to see people fall for it.

<comment><USER34> It would actually be more optimal if they simply removed youtubes comments feature. Have you ever tried to interact with youtube comments?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I think the time is ripe for a YouTube competitor to take chunk of its market share. YouTube has an impossible task of making a video hosting platform for everybody. Kids definitely need a particularly safe space to upload and to have supervision of some sort. Even adults don't necessarily want to be subject to the weirdness of the internet. Others really want a completely free, wild and weird platform. It doesn't make since for one platform to try to cater all these groups.

<comment><USER9> My conclusion, after writing and thinking about this a lot lately, is that the three mega platforms are unwise, but unavoidable, due to network effects.

We are going to have to make a concerted effort to somehow fix this. Hyper- niched communities, like Hacker News, work so well because we are united around shared passions and goals.

Mega platforms contain many ideologies which are at odds with each other, constantly battling for their truth.

Never before in history have competing tribes had to share the same space like this. It doesn't work.

<comment><USER37> Facebook et al go out of their way to silo its users into small cliques of influence. On Youtube if you watch gaming videos you get ads for gaming, get recommended gaming, and aren't going to see ads for makeup or power tools.

Any open access community will attract hostile actors seeking to usurp it. The problem with Facebook / Youtube / et al is that these corporations are more interested in trying to find a technical way to automate moderation than to actually moderate and police their platforms to weed out of the bad actors.

It isn't something that is inevitable or even made worse by scale, its just these companies are operating to maximize profit, and needing human faces at screens to moderate public comments is a substantial expense.

<comment><USER38> I bet it's more psychologically-based than that. From collegiate safe spaces to news media bubbles, to the social networking accounts themselves where nobody honestly follows people or ideas they themselves object to, everybody wants their own gated community/echo chamber.

Personally, as big as I am on free speech and anti-censorship, I don't believe that anybody should be allowed to post pix of minors online under any circumstances, even parents harmlessly to their personal FB profiles. UNLESS it's posting old pix of one's self. Otherwise I feel it betrays the privacy rights of those minors. They may well feel differently when they come of legal age, and by all means they can post whatever they like of themselves after the fact, but in the meantime privacy should be the autoset.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Does YouTube even need comments? I can't remember any meaningful discussion happening in the comments, it's mostly meme type stuff. Long term I can see this being the final resolution for toxic comments.

<comment><USER31> The most useful comments I've found on youtube are for home improvement or repair. People chime in with other ideas or better ways of doing things.

<comment><USER40> Exactly, on a lot of technical/tutorial videos you'll see helpful discussion, like people asking questions that weren't covered, pointing out flaws, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Legitimate question, does this apply to any video in which a minor appears for even a very brief period? If you're recording an hour-long video podcast, and a child of one of the hosts runs through the room in the background for one second, does that entire video get comments removed?

<comment><USER35> It doesn't matter.

Youtube videos are a business to some people so anything that has _potential_ to harm revenue will go straight out of the window.

"Is it worth to include this kid in my skit if it will reduce the revenue by 10%?"

Combine this with 10s of other already existing hypotheticals and you have yourself a neutered vlog machine that is today's youtube.

<comment><USER28> > "Is it worth to include this kid in my skit if it will reduce the revenue by > 10%?"

Yeah, that answer is easy—it's not worth it. I'm more interested in what happens if it's accidental.

You mention vlogs. If a "vlogger" is recording themselves walking down the street, and a kid passes into the frame, what do they do? Do they need to scrap the clip and start over? Do they attempt to edit out the kid? Do you just never record in public anymore? Actually, that last option seems the most practical, but it robs the whole piece of its intimacy.

If Youtube elects to take the stricter approach to this, it's going to have unintended consequences that I'm not seeing anyone else talk about right now. I almost wonder if it would be better to remove public commenting entirely.

<comment><USER35> My vlogger example was rather lazy. I'm not really sure how to define the current meta youtube content but "creative" is definitely not a word would be using for majority of it.

I mean every youtuber thinks about how to avoid being demotized or just in general reduced profits.

I think your point about public filming is very valid as well. Even if the risk that your video will get caught in the filter is <5% it's still not a risk worth taking.

I watch a lot of skating videos and un-surprisingly enough they feature kids, sometimes as main subjects but often in the background. Filming at skatepark is suddenly a considerable risk because a falling kid might evoke some sexual conotation in extreme minority.

This is a lazy solution that unfortunately just be adapted into the collosal folder of other lazy youtube solutions until this medium loses the last bits of creativity it had.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> 1\. YT has problem that generates a lot of bad press and loses money/face.

2\. YT develops either easily-gameable or far-too-heavy-handed automated solution to said problem, because they can't afford to actually police their content.

3\. Passionate creators (that don't get struck down mistakenly) have to jump through ever more hoops, while ad $ flocks back to YT.

4\. Repeat steps 1-3.

Granted, I don't really see a solution, as their's just straight up too much content and it's ever growing as the barrier for entry is just an internet connection.

</comment><comment><USER42> When we were young, we had the Internet and we'd share source code and run our tiny BBSes and then our geocities pages and enjoy sharing. We told each other how when we were older and in charge we'd have such free expression. As 11 year olds we discovered goatse and survived bypassing the 18+ porn warning. We're adults now and we go on all right but we made one big mistake.

We let you censorbots take over. Good job. You took this beautiful thing we had and you ruined it.

And now you're coming for everything under the guise of taking care of the children. It took so much work to get you guys to leave video games alone and now you're here for everything else.

How did we let you do this?

</comment><comment><USER43> I would love to see a solution for this in the browser. If there was a tag, or some metadata attribute that indicated where each part of the document originally came from, you could just configure your browser to not render parts you don't trust. So in this case, YouTube could just flag the comment section as being provided by other users, and you can choose to block it if you don't trust other users to provide appropriate content. I would love to say that websites would flag ads as coming from a 3rd party ad company, and we could choose to block those too, but of course they wouldn't.

<comment><USER44> Other than the logo on top, the menu, the footer, and your own text in the search bar, what content on YouTube would _not_ be covered by that tag?

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> I wonder how long before they totally disable all comments. I mean I mostly watch all my YouTube on my smart TV, and as far as I know, I can't read any comments on the TV. Additionally, I can't even read the description of the video, or the tags, or even the number of likes/dislikes. So I guess that is the direction YouTube is headed to.

<comment><USER18> Same thing if you're watching on a phone, at least outside the app. I can either watch the video OR read the comments.

Guess which one interests me more.

Between that and watching on my TV comments barely exist for me anyway.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> It seems to me that yt could've implemented the perfect honey trap for pedos.

Make an inappropriate remark on children and (being Google), track you down using a variety of fingerprinting techniques and report you directly to the appropriate authorities of that country. The latter part could probably even be automated.

And yet, they've taken this stance: one that puts the onus on the content creators themselves to moderate the comments. Unfortunately, the pedos are still out there, being predators.

<comment><USER47> They already do this and so does Microsoft. Many companies have shared image finger-prints (hashes of images that can deal with resizing) and special people granted permission by the Dept of Justice to report such images. It's a small number of people, leading to at least one Microsoft employee filing a lawsuit for the PTSD he got having to verify and report illegal images.

As far as these YouTube videos, Google does get rid of all content with clear abuse and reports it to the authorities in the US and possibly the origin country. For this particular case, none of these videos have illegal content. Most of them are videos of teens filming themselves. It's others who go through and place them into a creepy context by grouping all of them together in playlists and via comment-chain links.

Creating any type of honeypot is most likely unethical and illegal. Just look at what happened to the FBI in the Playpen case.

<comment><USER28> > It's others who go through and place them into a creepy context by grouping > all of them together in playlists and via comment-chain links.

Wanted to pull this out as (IMO) the most important part of your comment. There's nothing for the police to go after, because nothing illegal was happening here. The videos themselves were 100% benign, and while the comments were creepy and awful, they were also free speech.

<comment><USER44> So they cannot be censored, sure. But can they not be probable cause for a temporary tap on their internet connection? And if that reveals stuff like https connections to unpopular sites whose content can't be viewed publicly, Tor traffic, maybe torrent traffic, then that might be suspicious enough to bust the door while the connections are going on.

I'm against dragnet surveillance and all, but comments that are clearly predatory is a red enough flag that even I start to think it warranted to escalate step by step, and continue depending on what is found in each step.

Of course, this entirely depends on whether the comments are "oh look at that sweetie, probably has a nice puss" or just "oh look at that sweetie" interpreted the wrong way. I'm on the second page of HN comments and read three linked articles about it, and nobody mentioned what it's all about other than "predatory comments on videos involving minors".

Edit: As expected, Dutch news coverage is more explicit than prudish American. Example comment is: "$time $camel_emoji toe... Then again at $time". Another example: "Hi honey baby where r u from??". Last example is just "Love you" with a bunch of emojis like hearts and presents. Another website mentions the kids were called "godess" or "barbie". This sounds like it would be extraordinarily easy to just build a blacklist of words that trigger new comments to land in a moderation queue (processed either by youtube itself or by the video owner)... not sure what the difficulty is exactly. It seems harder to detect kids in videos than to build a blacklist of these comments, except that the former can be automated and the latter is ongoing moderation (probably too simple for Google: "if you can't automate it, it can never scale, so it can never be a solution").

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> I'd like them to take a look at predatory selling of merchandise to children next.

<comment><USER49> You know they're an advertising company? Unless you're offering ways to improve their predation on consumers I can't imagine they'd care to hear what you have to say.

<comment><USER48> No I'm talking about Jake Paul and the likes telling kids they literally won't be cool unless they buy his merch or attend his "events".

<comment><USER50> That is where parents should do their job.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> > "better protect children and families"

They're not protecting anyone, they're just sweeping the problem under the carpet. The real problem is naive/ignorant/reckless parents allowing kids to upload their stuff for the world to watch.

<comment><USER52> I'm pretty sure many don't even know; after a certain age, kids can be pretty sneaky if they want. We only had a single home computer, on the living room, yet I still accessed plenty of shit my parents have no idea. And nowadays, there's always those school friends with smartphones...

<comment><USER13> And do you consider that you turned out in some particularly bad way?

<comment><USER52> Well, certainly not due to anything I might have seen online.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> Just ban all the comments. The world would be a better place.

<comment><USER54> That's the easily solution, but the easy solution is hardly ever the right one. There are plenty of reasons why commenting on videos can be useful. Lectures and other educational content typically have errors and other useful information as the top comments. Those are useful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> > YouTube told the BBC it would use algorithms to detect which videos > contained children.

I guess we will have to see how well this works out. I can foresee someone's legitimate video having its comments suddenly removed causing uproar…

<comment><USER56> Man this is going to kill Michael Reeves' channel.

<comment><USER57> That child does things that are far too dangerous for not having parental supervision.

<comment><USER37> That "child" is 21 this year.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I think this should be the original source, instead of the BBC? [https://youtube-creators.googleblog.com/2019/02/more- updates...](https://youtube-creators.googleblog.com/2019/02/more-updates-on- our-actions-related-to.html)

</comment><comment><USER58> I'm going to say something that will likely get me downvoted like crazy here on HN, to salvage some karma let me first say that I love the first amendment and free speech.

Now, as a parent I am absolutely disgusted that there was recently discovered a YouTube "gang" pushing comments that were promoting pedophilia, in plain sight, tagging comments so algorithms could pick them up and other folks could easily find them.

Secondly I am disgusted by the fact that there are videos embedded within Peppa pig videos on YouTube, in the middle, pushing kids to harm themselves and it is impossible to detect them. Google these things they are all real.

Look I get it, I'm a parent, I'm responsible for my child so the YouTube app is gone, she will not get access to it until she's old enough. That still does not make this stuff ok, these are terrible human beings creating this stuff. I applaud YouTube for stepping in but I still won't install their app anymore, this does not mean it is ok for their platform to become a great place for that sort of stuff no platform should ever serve that.

When folks on here comment and say one parents voice outnumbers 100 others, why the hell not if this content is targeted at our kids?

Edit:

Exhibit A:

(This one is apperantly fake news, sorry. I was fooled myself a few days ago.)

Exhibit B: [https://medium.com/@jamesbridle/something-is-wrong-on-the- in...](https://medium.com/@jamesbridle/something-is-wrong-on-the- internet-c39c471271d2)

<comment><USER59> Why is Exhibit A a hoax that never harmed any children?

[https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-47393510](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-47393510)

I'm not sure what point you're trying to make here.

<comment><USER58> While "momo" May be a hoax there are videos with adults in them embedded within these cartoon videos.. that was just the first result I got when I googled, while there may be a ton of fake news these days these mashups I have seen myself .. sorry if I hurt my own point with that first link, but the point is very valid.

[https://medium.com/@jamesbridle/something-is-wrong-on-the- in...](https://medium.com/@jamesbridle/something-is-wrong-on-the- internet-c39c471271d2)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> Unsurprising, lazy & coward reaction from Google.

That said, not that comments will be missed. Been using the extension "Distraction Free for YouTube" for the last couple of weeks which includes an option to remove all comments on all videos. Plus every other distraction. Been enjoying my YouTube time a lot more since i started using it. Amazingly clean & refreshing experience. Now I am on the hunt for similar extension for other parts of the web.

</comment><comment><USER61> Is this something that can be put on the shoulders of the video uploader? Make it incumbent on the uploader to moderate their comment sections instead of just yanking the comment sections altogether?

I understand YT's concern. The Feds find child porn discussions on your website, they're not gonna simply ignore it, any more than they ignored "escorts" on craigslist and backpage. I get that part. But instead of going down this road where you just delete it for everyone, tell people that they are now responsible for the content on their videos. We find these child porn talks on your videos we yank your channel, and report it to the Feds. Simple as that.

I don't know? That probably has some drawbacks too, I don't know? I'm just trying to find _anything_ that can be done to protect us, not necessarily from the douchebags, but from the worsening consequences that the douchebags seem to have on everyone else in the community.

</comment><comment><USER62> Here's another signal their abuse team could be looking into: On videos where a lot of people are following links to a specific timestamp, grab a couple frames starting at that point and run them through the AI to see if they contain children, and if so, put them on a review queue that's sorted by "popularity".

</comment><comment><USER63> Google manages to impose the Google Death Penalty on people for supposedly violating AdSense terms or having an unpaid Google Cloud account or any number of other reasons.

Is there some reason they can't require a verified account to comment and nuke any account found to be making inappropriate comments? That sure would put a stop to it.

</comment><comment><USER64> I am reminded that we are still doing a distributed web all wrong. We don't need comments sections

Bear with me for a moment - but PageRank is the start of the problem. It's basically measuring link distance from Stanford University web site - <USER2> closer you are the more juice you get. But it assumes that a single domain is a single publisher (and so all articles on a given site should get the same google juice - the same rising tide)

But facebook (and many many other sites) _lend_ their domains google juice to all comers - so that if you rationally want greatest reach (ie highest rank in search engine) you publish not on your domain but on facebooks (or medium etc).

But this leads to many unintended consequences- the facebook moderation problem being one.

it if we see facebook not as a monolith but as firstly a web space provider, then a indexer over that webspace and then a algorithmic feed provider, we see dramatically different ways of dealing with the problem - if we should give people webspace to put their kids pictures and share them (facebooks main use case arguably) then "normally" that space would be under the users own domain.

So why not have a more granular pagerank? Why not have google assign juice to facebook.com/paulbrian seperate to juice assigned to facebook.com/paulgraham.

Then we see no reason to host the webpages under facebook.com - if I need to "earn" my google juice just as i would on a normal domain it's no benefit

I see comments sections in a similar vein - having my comments stored on youtube es pages / domain is just not how it should be - they are my comments so they go on my server / web space and they link up to the video

That way google juice tells us which people are worth reading and which are hate filled garbage - based on their reputation.

I need to flesh this out some more but we do seem to have gone wrong

</comment><comment><USER65> This is true, as it doesn't need to be a matter regarding only the creeps. I was thinking sociopolitically, where adults related or not make the decision to use minors as props, whether for a thing as big as ad campaigns or as small as for social brownie points. As a grownup, if someone were to post my image without my express permission I could pull some legality in my favor. Children generally don't have the same resources, lacking their own guardianship. I'm just saying that until they can legally make such decisions for themselves, privacy should be the standard, to save them from embarrassment or abuse. We must all decide for ourselves what to share of ourselves. [http://www.samadhantutors.com/](http://www.samadhantutors.com/)

</comment><comment><USER66> If not a good idea then it seems to me to be a very practical one (despite it being censorship).

As nowadays no matter how carefully one chooses one's words or how innocent one's thoughts are about such matters, someone somewhere will misconstrue them and take offense.

Shame, but that's the way of the world these days.

</comment><comment><USER67> Another example of a big corporation trying to be the world's parent. Censoring does more harm than good.

</comment><comment><USER68> ... yet they are still perfectly willing to allow content from children to generate revenue off of them!

</comment><comment><USER69> This is just idiotic. Rather than removing videos that creeps are into, or in any way addressing the situation where their platform is being used by creeps, they are just removing the evidence that creeps are there so we won't be able to embarrass them by pointing out the creeps using their platform to be perverted creeps.

So the creeps will keep creeping on kids, and nobody will know except Youtube, since they have all the logs. Nobody will be able to screencap an advertisement on a video with some pedophile's comments anymore, so the problem is solved as far as Youtube is concerned.

<comment><USER70> Just how would you solve this if you were in their position?

<comment><USER71> Why not just prevent the use of timestamps on videos that contain children?

Why not say "you cannot view this video if you are over 18" unless the watcher is specifically added to a list of allowed viewers?

Why not require the watcher to enable a webcam & mic while watching videos containing children and create an algorithm to detect wanking?

There are lots of solutions.

relevant xkcd: [https://xkcd.com/2106/](https://xkcd.com/2106/)

<comment><USER70> > Why not require the watcher to enable a webcam & mic while watching videos > containing children and create an algorithm to detect wanking?

Just how far are we willing to go to make our selves feel safer?! If you think that recording viewers is an acceptable and proportional solution to this issue, then your sicker than the creeps who get off videos of children.

I sincerely hope you're joking.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER72> I feel this is unfair to content creators and to the subset of viewers who comment decently (which I think is actually the majority of viewers).

I know of innocent content creators who have faced this, although their content was not child-oriented and showed their own children for barely 10-15 minutes across their total content time of 500+ videos. Banning comments has consequences such as viewers not being able to express sympathy or appreciation when it might help. As a viewer, comments introduced me to many new channels and concepts and cultures - all that is lost now.

This is not the right way IMO.

</comment><comment><USER73> Now noone will be able to verify for themselves the scale/severity of a comment problem anymore, or learn from it. The evidence is gone.

Might have been an interesting thing to dive into for a while, look dispassionately at, think about, and to learn something. But no.

All you can get now is some dramatized version of reality from third parties, who can barely distinguish between crime, pedophilia, child abuse, and inapropriate comments online, or be bothered to investigate the problem in any depth. Perhaps it's too soon for that.

Meanwhile, outrage won again.

</comment><comment><USER74> This is leading for some to crazy situation: I am following this guy who lived in china and make video about culture shock:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeI0-ijIotk&ab_channel=laowh...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeI0-ijIotk&ab_channel=laowhy86)

He happened to be married and have children. Youtube disabled all comments on all of his video because like one or two feature his kids ... But 99% of his content doesn't feature them

</comment><comment><USER75> It seems YouTube is doing a lot these days to the detriment of creators and vloggers. YouTube is by far the best platform out there for posting videos, but are there any viable alternatives? I think we need another YouTube. Vimeo comes to mind but it's a bit fringe (mostly weird videos), and I'm specifically looking for creator videos. Maybe this is a startup opportunity for an eager HN-er, although I suspect running a video site is insanely expensive.

</comment><comment><USER76> Are they going to require an ID system so the age of everyone in the entire video can be verified? I guess 2/3 of YT vids will have comments disabled? What about all those super popular channels featuring family vacations? Not even documentaries can have comments?

I honestly don't believe that this headline is true, but if it is... Good opportunity for a YT competitor to spring up.

</comment><comment><USER77> Just remove children altogether from Youtube and be done with it. Fallout 1 was better without kids (stealing from you in Arroyo), so will Youtube.

</comment><comment><USER78> I don't have the stats to back this up but I imagine there would be a significant portion of unsavory comments that appear from people/bots that didn't actually watch a large portion of the video. I think it would work in YouTube's and creator's favor to disable adding a comment until you watch a large portion of the video or you load all the ads.

</comment><comment><USER79> Seems to me requiring the uploader to approve all messages would work just as well without cutting video creators off from their audience.

<comment><USER80> You think giving the attention-seeking 13 year old uploader the ability to approve comments that praise her ability to lick a popsicle is a solution? These kids don't understand what is going on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER76> If only they could develop some kind of machine learning AI tech that could make highly suspicious comments require approval.

I guess they just aren't sophisticated enough to do that... But I guess they must have AI that can identify kids in videos accurately (even 17 1/2 year olds).

</comment><comment><USER81> Ah yes, halting conversation for our own good. We see this on reddit all the time. The conversation gets hot so the moderator locks the thread.

How does this help anything? I've actually asked. And I never got a straight answer. I figure it's some kind of moderator-loss-of-control-anxiety-reaction.

</comment><comment><USER9> We are in the midst of an ideological battle. Network effects combined with tribal conflict are unleashing something insane.

I've been writing a longform article about this since Monday, and it seems like twice a day something new comes out like this. Hard to keep up.

</comment><comment><USER82> Have their been any studies on comment quality at free vs subscribed (for money) sites?

Perhaps Patreon should just add comments and subscribers can comment there. Content creators could link to it and it would be read-only unless you pay.

Most edgelords aren't going to pay to play.

<comment><USER83> Patreon has comments already, fwiw.

</comment></comment><comment><USER84> This doesn't seem to be getting a lot of play, but isn't it important to note that YouTube has been generating ad revenue by serving this content to this audience? It seems like they are only stopping this practice because the amount of revenue that they will lose from Nestle, Disney, etc. exceeds whatever amount of revenue they had been generating by aggregating these videos and serving them to this specific audience.

Preventing the aggregation and serving of this class of content seems like the larger problem.

It's also not clear to me if the removal of the comments will prevent the aggregation of these videos. My suspicion is that even with the comments removed, these videos will still be grouped together and will still garner the same undesirable audience. I don't see any talk of somehow clearing whatever history Google has collected that has caused them to be clumped together in the sidebar.

</comment><comment><USER85> How is it possible that it's easier for YouTube to identify children (people under the age of 18) in videos, compared to identifying certain types of comments and automatically moderate those?

Or is it some law regarding censorship that's the issue?

<comment><USER86> Children's appearance is not likely to change, in ever more sophisticated ways, so as to still appear like children to humans but not to the algorithm. Thus, while not intrinsically harder than text analysis, it could very easily be the case that it is easier to flag videos as having children (and thus turn off comments) than it is to automatically police comments.

Note that they said it won't apply to videos of teenagers; my guess is that this is because it would be more difficult to automatically distinguish between teenagers and young (or just young-looking) adults.

</comment></comment><comment><USER87> Everyone seems to be blaming Google, but can we acknowledge that this wouldn't even be a problem if people weren't jerks? The only reason Google even has to do anything is because people are posting predatory comments.

</comment><comment><USER88> They've missed a trick: Make adding a comment only available to subscribers.

</comment><comment><USER89> Stupid question: why doesn't reporting and flagging comments work?

</comment><comment><USER90> And while at it, add a forced moderation for the comments for the rest of the videos where channel owner needs to approve of, and be responsible of for any comments shown on the videos. And Facebook too.

</comment><comment><USER91> I've watched numerous videos on YouTube, complaining about how YouTube treats its creators.

How long is it going to be before we get comments turned off on videos (channels?) for no identifiable reason?

</comment><comment><USER92> Back when Facebook came out, everyone thought it was the best business model ever. You provide a framework, and users provide the content.

Turns out user-generated content can be bad for business.

</comment><comment><USER93> Am i on crazy pills, but aren't YouTube comments trash in general?

Isn't it better to have the creator link to a discussion page with actual moderation and moderation tools?

</comment><comment><USER94> Here's a crazy idea, why not only let children comment on children videos? This way, kids that want to still express themselves and connect to their peers can do so on YT.

<comment><USER95> Great. Tell me a way to determine which accounts are being used by kids in a way that scales to hundreds of millions of active users...

</comment></comment><comment><USER96> I don't know how to feel about this. The concept of "commenting on web page" is old, but with so much people connected to internet, do we really need a comment section on all pages ? From my point of view, comments are most of the time irrelevant, especially on Youtube. HN would be the exception.

Comments involves a lots of energy to moderate for no value most of the time. I know it's nice to have feedback when you create something and share it whit the world, but maybe we don't need a comment system to have user feedback !

<comment><USER97> My thoughts were along the same lines. Why exactly are comments allowed on YouTube at all? Literally all humans are aware that YouTube comments are a cesspool.

<comment><USER98> Really depends on the channel. There are many technical channels that have interesting and useful comments without many problem posts at all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER99> I watched the original expose video of this and I found the comments be disturbing, but I don't expect any platform to perfectly prevent comments. The more damning part for YouTube was how the recommendation engine was clustering the videos based on pedo preferences and automatically creating little pedo playlists. To me, that is their bigger fault as a platform is that they are built on automatically giving people more of what they like. Even pedos.

</comment><comment><USER100> Here's hoping YouTube will see the wisdom in just removing the comments feature.

</comment><comment><USER101> Just adblock everything but the player element. It's the only way to use YouTube.

<comment><USER102> I like to use 'Reddit on YouTube' on Firefox, which shows relevant reddit discussion in place of the YouTube comment section.

<comment><USER103> Implying that Reddit comments are any less of a cesspool. Reddit hosts a lot of quality discussion from small niche communities but the same is true for YT.

If anyone can figure out how to maintain quality discussion at the scale of thousands of speakers they'll be a billionaire overnight.

<comment><USER104> Comment voting has been the major solution thus far. Any scaled or NLP automated solution is just an arms race with bad actors.

<comment><USER101> And it's no solution.

<comment><USER104> I remember the days before Digg, Reddit, and Youtube voting. It's magnitudes better than that garbage.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER105> Alright, cool. Now all the pedophiles can lurk in secrecy and collect all the recordings and repost them on pedophile websites, and YouTube can pretend it has nothing to do with it because none of the offending comments are under the videos making it abundantly obvious who views these videos.

</comment><comment><USER106> YouTube algorithms. How effective are they at this sort of deal?

</comment><comment><USER107> I wonder why Youtube has this problem, and not say Instagram?

</comment><comment><USER108> Good call they should remove them on all videos.

</comment><comment><USER109> This the time for someone to make alternative platform that have different policy.

<comment><USER110> Oh yes, I imagine that a video site whose raison d'être is "we allow comments on videos of children" will be a real bastion of high-level discourse.

<comment><USER109> They don't have to stated it out blatantly.

Beside making other platform, what are other alternative though?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER111> Or, you know, maybe the kids/parents could turn off the comments themselves?

<comment><USER61> YT isn't really worried about the kids/parents.

They're worried about the Feds in the same way that craigslist was worried about the Feds when they scrapped their "escorts" section. (And the same way that Backpage _should have_ been worried about the Feds when they hosted their "escorts" section.) If the Feds find that pedophilia stuff on your servers, you better have a good lawyer. Which I assume YT does, and just like craigslist, they have concluded that the nuclear option is the one that will keep the maximum number of executives out of federal court.

My question is this, is there a better way? Is there a way to prevent these undesirable comments other than just taking comments down for _everyone_?

I understand YT's position. They have to make money, and their executives would just as soon not receive the Backpage treatment. That said, is there a better way?

<comment><USER111> Fair enough. And I know companies need to act in the best interests of their shareholders. But shouldn't a backpage exist? We need companies to provide services that the government (which is still stuck in the dark) doesn't approve of: prostitution, drugs, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER112> Youtube comments tend to be cancer anyway. Won't miss them.

</comment><comment><USER113> The march to make the world a safe, sanitised place has so many bumps and slippery slopes on the road that it's hard to gauge whether we're making progress or not. Internet is hard to tame and so is human nature, both in good and bad.

The trigger for this was some big companies pulling ads. I suppose that in the context of "predatory and obscene" comments regarding children it's well understandable. The problem with that is what happens next time when the advertisers pull ads because there is something else they don't like? Eventually, it leads down to political correctness and self-censorship as there is always someone who gets offended, and even the possibility of getting kicked out of Youtube or the service losing ad revenue keeps everyone on their toes.

Further, disabling comments fails to address another issue: pictures and videos of children freely available on the internet. That cat is out of the bag for good. The technical response would be to have a separate (private or public) paedophile forums where they just link to Youtube videos and make comments on the videos. That's outside of Youtube's business and keeps BigCos from having bad PR but would still matter to any underage person shown on an internet video.

So the real enabler to this is the proliferation of user-published content. Especially when people seem to like to share stuff online, inevitably also with strangers, it is even conceptually pretty hard to limit the audience of that sort of material. Fighting that process is like the war on drugs: it will just claim casualties one after another, left and right, whereas nothing really changes. While trying to make things nice and clean for everyone, babies get thrown out with the bath water.

Dirt on internet is like a law of nature. There has always been dirt, sometimes more and sometimes less. While paedophilia is the true hot potato nobody really feels comfortable with, the _other_ dirt is a valuable cross- section into the scale on which people are. Bad (Youtube) comments can be so revealing at times, and they really pull you out of your bubble.

I don't like the general process of eliminating dirt and trying to set a political correct and business-approved bar for quality because what remains after that is shallow reflections of actual persons and human psyche.

I don't know what Youtube should do either. The concept of brand companies disliking that their advertisements are shown next to offensive _third-party comments_ is very much absurd in the first place, so how can you deal with that?

I can understand that companies want to whitelist or blacklist specific categories and channels where they want (or don't want) their ads but getting pissed by comments complete unrelated to the advertisements is where things get hard. That's like pulling ads from a magazine because the magazine happened to have pictures of children and a group of molesters happened to sit in a pub making predatory comments of those pictures next to the advertisement. What has previously been unimaginable apparently turns into reality when you do it on the internet.

</comment><comment><USER114> Social media scandals like this one are a reminder that there are larger numbers of closet pedophiles, racists, Nazi sympathizers, and conspiracy theorists in our societies than many people realized.

Social media gives them a means to discover each other and collaborate, but they were always there.

I agree with Youtube's move here, but the root cause of the problem is that our societies are worse than we thought they were. Fixing that is going to take more than policing comments on websites.

<comment><USER115> Did you look into the scandal? It seemed pretty overblown to me.

<comment><USER116> Paedophiles were making sexualised comments to children in Youtube comments. Advertisers were unhappy. That doesn't seem particularly overblown.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER117> To ban comments is an important step IMHO, but how about putting the people making the comments behind bars? They will keep watching these videos.

<comment><USER118> There's no law making creepy comments like these illegal, at least not in the US. (I can't speak for other countries, and US law is what's relevant here.)

<comment><USER117> That doesn't mean they can't or shouldn't be investigated.

<comment><USER118> I doubt a creepy comment is sufficient probable cause to open an investigation, barring other indicators.

<comment><USER117> A google search has been sufficient before. Remember the pressure cooker and backpacks search from a family in New York?

<comment><USER118> A Google search was _not_ sufficient in that case. The guy's employer tipped them off after firing him - it wasn't some sort of automated keyword monitoring at Google.

[https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/08/governm...](https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/08/government- knocking-doors-because-google-searches/312599/)

<comment><USER117> The search alone wasn't sufficient, but was enough to start it all. In YouTube's cases, there are plenty of comments that demonstrate someone is a sexual predator. In my view, if someone "tipped them off", it would be the exact same scenario.

<comment><USER118> "A random person on the internet is posting creepy comments" is likely not probable cause, especially as you'd have to convince someone national like the FBI to care without a specific location.

"Someone I know personally is posting creepy comments, and I've always gotten a bad vibe about their interactions with kids" is probably enough to get _local_ cops interested enough to knock on a door.

<comment><USER119> I hope not. Unless there is evidence of a crime that has occurred or evidence that a crime is planned, they have no business (constitutionally) bothering a citizen based on that kind of tip. This is how lives are ruined when there are no victims.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER120> Youtube comments...

Ultimately, YT comments are fairly horrible. Apart from an occasionally decent joke or even more occasional comment from the video's subject, youtube comments are either nasty or banal... with a high % of nasty. Racism, nasty politics, sexual harassment, other kinds of harassment... The median _top_ comment is a troll.

Of all the major social media, I can't think of a worse commenting culture.

Banning comments on children sounds like a decent decision from "the suits" to curb the most harmful effects but... where are the product people?

Surely, someone, at some point, has had ideas for how to improve this travesty of a discussion feature. It's not like you're risking much. Even if changes kill commenting entirely...

How could google let this be so terrible for so long?

<comment> oaw-bct-ar-bamf If you think YouTube comments are bad, I recommend you to visit the Twitch (Gaming) stream chats.

It will change your perception of 'horrible comments'

</comment></comment><comment><USER121> YouTube would be better if they banned all comments on all platforms.

I use the HerpDerp plugin. It converts all comments to herps and derps. A+++++ would recommend.

[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/herp-derp-for- yout...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/herp-derp-for- youtube/ioomnmgjblnnolpdgdhebainmfbipjoh?hl=en-US)

</comment><comment><USER122> Theres something called a parental control and last i checked they were pretty effective for concerned parents.

Google does not need to be in the business of trying to provide parental oversight over creators who just so happen to be minors.

Plus dont we want to retain the ability to profile people who are showing a concerning level of indication that they may be somebody who is willing to act on an impulse to commit paedophilia.

IMHO i think the best course of action to deal with pedophiles on youtube who think they are protected by the annomity of the internet, is to try and develop a way that makes it possible for authorities to obtain enough solid evidence that enables a federal prosecutor to bring up validatably just charges against youtube users who knowingly attempt to proposition a minor into an act of sex.

Also i need explicitly throw out an IANAL disclaimer right now and point out—— !!! I am NOT a lawyer nor a student of law !!!——before I delve into this more.

But theoretically speaking I think from a prosecutorial point of view (which again i stress that IANAL) it shouldn't be hard to prove a logically sound legal case that a sexually provactive comment that is targeted at a minor subject in a video's public forum (regardless of how vague, indirect, or seriously intended said comment may or may not be composed) this should all be considered knowingly propositioning a minor.</comment>


San Francisco airport bans sale of plastic bottles - <AUTHOR> https://www.france24.com/en/20190803-san-francisco-airport-bans-sale-plastic-bottles <comment><USER2> Of all the places to ban plastic bottles this makes the lease sense.

People are traveling. Glass is not really a option.

But good job SF. Flavored water. The most useless water is still sold.

Any other place in SF and this sort of ban would be fine. But not a Airport.

<comment><USER3> They're not banning plastic bottles they're banning the sale of single-use plastic bottles.

I think this is going to drive the sale of soda and sugar water more than it will drive the use of the water stations but the intent is at least there.

I really wish they would take the next step and have people fill up their reusable bottles with soda from the fountains but there are a bunch of drinks that only exist canned or bottled so I understand the exception.

</comment></comment><comment> kube-system There will undoubtably be many thousands of travelers who show up unaware or unprepared for this. Do these people now have to purchase a reusable bottle if they'd like to carry around a water with them? I sure hope this doesn't end up backfiring and creating _more_ waste.

Reusable bottles can consist of an order of magnitude or more plastic than a disposable water bottle, and if people aren't reusing that bottle after they leave the airport, this might not actually lead to a reduction in waste.

</comment><comment><USER4> I travel a lot, and one thing I always carry with me is a disposable plastic bottle. Good sturdy ones (SmartWater is the best one) that have a good cap (i.e. sturdy threads, not a sport cap) can be reused many times, and are lightweight. I have reused the same bottle for over a year sometimes.

You have the option to throw it out if you really need to, like if there's a clueless security agent, you forget to drain it before security, or in airports where they don't understand the security difference between an empty and a full bottle. In those situations, being able to replace it as soon as I go through security is a big help, otherwise you're at the mercy of the flight attendants to decide to serve drinks.

Given the options of "reduce", "reuse", and "recycle", they would be better off promoting "reuse" instead of "reduce" in this situation.

I don't want to be forced to have to buy a Yeti when I'm traveling.

<comment><USER5> The tall skinny 1L smartwater bottles are perfect for backpacking, haven't carried a nalgene in several years now

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> No bottles is a minor inconvenience, at worst. I have taken to loading up my carryon bag with thousands of free syringes that I charge with Gatorade, so I can directly inject electrolytes whenever I feel feint. Disposal of used syringes is a no-brainer: I just carelessly fling them in any random direction. As a hydration addict, I'm a marginalized person, so my needs come first.

</comment><comment><USER7> > Filtered water is provided for free at 100 "hydration stations," where > flyers can top up glass or metal bottles.

I'm glad to see this. My local (large, international) airport still hasn't upgraded its water fountains yet, forcing me to awkwardly refill my big water bottle from a tiny spout emitting a variable trickle.

</comment><comment><USER8> There are not enough easily accessible refill faucets at SFO. They could sell cheapo reusable flasks and donate the money to charity. The flavored water exemption is flat out wrong imo

<comment><USER9> Flavored water is exempt? That's flat out hilarious.

<comment><USER10> It is misleading (actually a total lie...), here's the list:

[https://sfoconnect.com/sites/default/files/SFO%20Approved%20...](https://sfoconnect.com/sites/default/files/SFO%20Approved%20Water%20Bottle%20List_071819.pdf)

As you see, it is not about flavored water or brands, it's just about plastic- free container. [https://sfoconnect.com/zero-waste- concessions](https://sfoconnect.com/zero-waste-concessions)

<comment><USER9> I don't see how that list refutes or confirms the claim that nominally flavored water in plastic bottles is still allowed.

The second link says "Drinking water includes purified water, mineral water, carbonated or sparkling water, and electrolyte-enhanced water." which isn't extremely specific, but doesn't sound like it includes soda, so it might not include flavored water.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > It exempts brands of flavored water.

Does "flavored with electrolytes" count?

<comment><USER12> Isn't soda technically just flavored water too? It is after all, mostly water.

<comment><USER9> Seltzer water, ostensibly fruit flavored but with no sugar, sweetener, or color is increasingly popular. The only thing it has over water is a slight fizz, a little sour/bitter taste, and probably better profit margins.

What do you think is the point of forcing people to purchase that rather than plain water?</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to deal with interviews when English isn't my native language? - <AUTHOR> I'm from a non-english speaking country. Although I have a fairly good command over written English, my vocabulary isn't good enough when it comes to spontaneously speaking English. I'm working on this, but haven't gotten there yet.
That said, I want to work with global companies - likely companies outside the country I live in. During interviews, I find myself mind-blocked often because of my poor vocabulary. And this builds up, affecting my interview performance too.
Is there any concrete way to get around this problem? I tried  casually conversing in English more often, but during interviews, the spontaneity with which the person in the other end talks, makes me feel inferior about my command over the language. <comment><USER2> Stuff I've tried and it worked for me:

1\. Watch English movies with English subtitles (no dubbing) or Japanese Anime with English subtitles (or dubbing)

2\. Sing English songs

3\. Play English RPGs (I think I've learned +50% of my total English vocabulary thanks to Final Fantasy series in my teen times)

4\. Take English lessons (I did it before exams in school).

Stuff I haven't tried but it might be worth:

5\. Practice discussion with someone (e.g. via public video chat services with strangers or something)

6\. Try audio-blogging (say something about topic you're interested in, best if it's related to your work), record yourself, listen, review yourself (what was good, what not), repeat.

Side notes from me:

\- it takes time and practice (so also patience) to get really better in such stuff (like weeks/months, not days)

\- practice using simple sentences/words while talking. If you're talking with someone remotely (e.g. via videochat) have a google translate opened so you can search quickly for the words you're trying to say but forget

\- prepare before each meeting, write down some sentences/words that you think you often forget and keep it nearby to feel less stressed

</comment><comment><USER3> While I'm not the kind of person who usually heeds their own advice but here I go:

1\. Keep practicing speaking frequently, ideally with native speakers. I bet your writing skills are so good because you've unknowingly perfected them over the years of reading and writing comments, posts, etc on the Internet. Therefore, the same goes with speaking, you gotta tough it out and give it time until yours can improve.

2\. Try dubber ducking to yourself out loud new concepts/things (in English) you've learned, even better if you could find someone to listen to/explain to.

3\. Have mock interviews, ideally with somebody who's in the industry so they could come up with interesting questions on the spot, which would force you to have to learn to come up with suitable answers.

4\. (I don't see myself ever doing this but worth suggesting nevertheless) Start a podcast or vlog discussing technical topics (without scripts.)

<comment><AUTHOR> > Try dubber ducking to yourself out loud new concepts/things (in English) > you've learned, even better if you could find someone to listen to/explain > to.

This is something I occasionally do. I'll better do it a bit more often.

> (I don't see myself ever doing this but worth suggesting nevertheless) Start > a podcast or vlog discussing technical topics (without scripts.)

This could be something that wouldn't need another person to perfect my language. I'll see if this helps. Thanks a lot!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Are there any global companies that use the language you speak natively? Ideally where English is a bonus not a requirement?

Myself I used to get flustered on interviews until I found a book of questions in my field. Now I never memorized answers, as that is bad. But having read them I had a good feel for what types of questions to expect, and I could think about the answer long before the interview.

</comment><comment><USER5> Can you try:

find some foreign guys who speak English in your country?

</comment><comment><USER6> Show your code! Take a portfolio project that that youve written from scratch, other programmers can read your code and evaluate you that way

</comment><comment><USER7> Listen to English audiobooks on your way to work.

</comment><comment><USER8> Be straight about it.

Focus on listening as much as speaking.</comment>


Google Inbox "happy" hour - <AUTHOR>

Delivery to the following recipient failed permanently:

     firstname.lastname@example.com
 Technical details of permanent failure: Google tried to deliver your message, but it was rejected by the server for the recipient domain google.com by aspmx.l.google.com. [2a00:1450:4010:c08::1b].
The error that the other server returned was: 550-5.2.1 The user you are trying to contact is receiving mail at a rate that 550-5.2.1 prevents additional messages from being delivered. For more 550-5.2.1 information, please visit 550 5.2.1 http://support.google.com/mail/bin/answer.py?answer=6592 j9si8791583lab.13 - <USER2> <comment><USER3> In a big company such as Google with very complex systems, such a thing is likely to happen. Even with very detailed specification with rigid scrutiny, details like this will fall through the cracks. Often we anticipate every possible edge cases but haven't taken into account outside systems that plays a big role too, which leads to cases such as this.</comment>


Netflix's first two films at Cannes could be its last - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2017/5/10/15608978/netflix-cannes-film-festival-new-rule-theater-release-france <comment><AUTHOR> It's pretty remarkable that "French law requires films to be kept off of streaming services for 36 months after their theatrical release". Does anyone know if more filmmakers are skipping theatrical release in France in favor of a streaming release, or if France has theatrical releases similar to the rest of the world, just delayed VoD?

</comment><comment><USER2> This is interesting to watch the old guard fighting the very ones (Netflix et al) who can help them stay relevant.</comment>


Jennifer is a code generator for Go - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/davelondon/jennifer <comment><USER2> If it meets the guidelines, this might make a good 'Show HN'. Show HN guidelines: [https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> Hmm, it doesn't let me repost the same link...

<comment><USER2> Might be caught up in a filter. Contacting the mods using the |contact| link might be the best option. Good luck.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Jennifer helps you generate complex Go code without messy text templates. Imports are handled automatically, and your generator code is neat and organised.

<comment><AUTHOR> Check out the genjen package for a real-world example - it generates most of the boilerplate functions in the jen package: [https://github.com/davelondon/jennifer/blob/master/genjen/re...](https://github.com/davelondon/jennifer/blob/master/genjen/render.go)</comment></comment>


Sideways Dictionary - <AUTHOR> https://sidewaysdictionary.com <comment><USER2> BEWARE: on Chrome, back-navigation is disabled; back button does nothing.</comment>


Don Lancaster's "Guru's Lair" Archive - <AUTHOR> https://www.tinaja.com/glair01.shtml <comment><USER2> Don was the hardware hacker before Makers became buzz-worthy. The most influential thing he said was that a Hardware Hacker must have a library, he quantified it as at least six feet of books, documentation and literature. Once you got that much you could start weeding out the less valuable material!

</comment><comment><USER3> Few have contributed as much to understanding modern technology as Don Lancaster. Don educated a whole generation in the art of learning by doing. If you are seeing his work for the first time, it may not seem impressive. However, in their proper historical context, Don's contributions were without equal.

</comment><comment><USER4> I grew up with his books and articles and visit his site periodically. I posted this a couple of weeks ago (my first HN contribution!) and it points to free downloadable Cookbooks he offers through his site.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22354822](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22354822)

[https://www.tinaja.com/ebksamp1.shtml](https://www.tinaja.com/ebksamp1.shtml)

</comment><comment><USER5> I stil have several of his books within a few feet: the TTL Cookbook was an inspiration back in the day, followed the CMOS version and in particular "The Cheap Video Cookbook" when VT100's were mad expensive things.

The book that still get used on a moderately frequent basis is the "Active Filter Cookbook", still very relevant when some hacking with op-amps is required.

Oh, and as an oldie I like his style.

</comment><comment><USER6> I bought both the TTL and CMOS cookbooks by Don Lancaster during my 20s, still have and love them, and spent so many nights building stuff thanks to their examples. Although they might appear outdated to young electronics enthusiats, I would strongly suggest newbies to get them and learn from them; you won't regret it as the knowledge gained there will help a lot also with more modern stuff such as the Arduinos etc.

One of my builds which would have been impossible without the stuff learned on those books was an ultrasound motion sensor built around IIRC a 4070 CMOS quad XOR gates chip: one gate worked as oscillator driving a TX ultrasound transducer, one as linear amplifier driven by a RX ultrasound mike, one as phase detector with its inputs connected to the oscillator and input mike, then one as buffer driving a led when an object was moving in front of the ultrasound capsules. I miss those years!

</comment><comment><USER7> I found out that his TV Typewriter design pretty much was the basis for the Sinclair ZX80 video display. I wouldn't be surprised if even Woz took a nod in his direction with the video output on the early Apple computers.

</comment><comment><USER8> Hard to believe my first Don Lancaster book was the RTL (Resister Transistor Logic) 1975 reprint. Much of what I know about hardware logic originates in these books.

</comment><comment><USER9> His Apple II stuff was amazing back in the day.</comment>


I Published My AWS Secret Key to GitHub - <AUTHOR> https://www.dannyguo.com/blog/i-published-my-aws-secret-key-to-github/ <comment><USER2> I learned a few things from Miguel Grinberg's talk at PyCon 2018 - Oops! I Committed My Password To GitHub! [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2uaTPmNvH0I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2uaTPmNvH0I)</comment>


How to Use Math to Get Rich in the Lottery [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QtlmXoHpNyI <comment><AUTHOR> For seven years, a group of students from MIT exploited a loophole in the Massachusetts State Lottery's Cash WinFall game to win drawing after drawing, eventually pocketing more that $3 million. How did they do it? How did they get away with it? And what does this all have to do with mathematical entities like finite geometries, variance of probability distributions, and error- correcting codes?

</comment><comment><USER2> TL;DR: find a bug in the system/algorithm of _a_ lottery.

How to get rich in any lottery: be the one who runs it.</comment>


5 Infrastructure Tips for Startups - <AUTHOR> http://blog.adaptiveblue.com/?p=805 <comment><USER2> Some of these are sort of obviated by being a decent admin yourself.</comment>


Ask HN: Finding a CTO after your MVP? - <AUTHOR> Once you've released your MVP and validated user interest, what are the best approaches to finding a CTO/technical cofounder to lead development beyond the MVP? <comment><USER2> This may not be helpful, but using your network is the way that most do it. The best fits usually are recommendations from friends.

<comment><USER3> I agree. Which makes me mad that head hunters get $20k+ for a placement and companies here in Germany pay $1k if an employee recommends a friend.

<comment><USER4> Yeah that's why you make friends with a recruiter who works with your own company.

They'll happily give you $5-15k of their cut, and you get to hire your friend.

<comment><USER3> Nice hack.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> As a CTO coach I'd say get a very promising senior developer and coach him ;-)

<comment><AUTHOR> How would you approach hiring that senior developer? I am well connected for fundraising but we are still early stage enough that optimally we wouldn't be using a significant amount of money to hire lead developers.

<comment><USER3> Have you worked with one before? It's best to hire someone you've worked with in the past. If you don't have work experience it gets more difficult.

Before Corona I told people to go where developers are e.g. meetups and conferences and listen to speakers, talk to them and then hire one of them. Now it's a little bit more difficult.

When conferences start again (probably too late for you), go to meetups and conferences with a tshirt that says "Looking for a CTO, I'll hand you $10 if you have an interesting CV".

Create a coding contest, interview the top five, hire the best.

Look at your potential competitors or customers on Linkedin and hire on of their senior developers.

But I admit it's currently harder to meet developers.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. I'm wondering specifically in terms of compensation. The reason we are looking for a technical cofounder over hiring developers directly is to have someone who is a co-owner of the business, aligning their interests with ours and allowing us to budget funding for employees and marketing.

<comment><USER3> I would think there is little difference, you already want entrepreneurial developers in an early phase startup (later on when you need to hire dozens of developers at a time, there won't be enough entrepreneurial ones).

I'd wait until after an larger Angel/VC round, and not get a technical co founder before funding. After funding it's easier to get a better technical co founder for less equity.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Do you ever feel powerless in sight of a problem? - <AUTHOR> If yes, how do you deal with it?<p>I just spent the whole day trying to get a set up running (Ubuntu + CUDA) and nothing worked. I blindly followed one instruction after the other without understanding anything, which is thoroughly unsatisfying, but taking the time to really understand the problem isn't an option either, since I want to get working on the "real" problem of my thesis. Have you ever experienced something similar? How did you deal with it? <comment><USER2> Get help. No man is an island.

</comment><comment><USER3> Run 5 miles.</comment>