Google has a secret list of YouTube videos to hide from investors

But it doesn't work too well: Big G has updated the hate speech terms on its blocklist to improve moderation and block ads for controversial content. Yet there is still some way to go

(image: The Markup) The secret blocklist that Google uses to prevent advertisements from appearing on YouTube videos with hateful, supremacist or violent content or from advertising these same topics , would not appear to be efficient with all terms considered at risk. To reveal the flaws in this safety net is an investigation conducted by The Markup, a US nonprofit journalistic association. "We tried to understand if advertisers could use hate speech terms and phrases to target ads on YouTube, which would be contrary to Google's public claims," ​​explain authors Leon Yin and Aaron Sankin on The Markup. “Our goal was to examine whether the company was limiting or facilitating the placement of ads on hateful content, rather than counting the number of hate-promoting videos that appear on the platform.”

Using a list of 86 terms related to hate speech, the investigative journalists verified how Big G uses, within its Google Ads program, a list of terms that prevent advertisers from exploiting them to create advertising campaigns for content. of controversial YouTube.

The Markup survey, however, found that 58 of the terms tested, despite being related to hate topics, were not blocked by Google and allowed the publication of controversial advertisements. Only 28 tested terms, on the other hand, were blocked from the list.

This blocklist is the same one used by YouTube's algorithms to prevent the platform from suggesting videos that are considered risky and contain violence or racism, but which somehow are not eliminated from the platform because they manage to respect its rules. As discovered by The Markup, however, this list suggested to advertisers millions of YouTube videos as possible hosts for their ads despite some of them being linked to terms like "white power, the fascist slogan" blood and soil "or the one used. from the far right to enhance its self-styled "racial holy war".

YouTube has specified that the one tested by The Markup is only the first line of defense and that the portal uses a second level of blocking to ban advertisements about certain offensive content. Furthermore, following the investigation, Google has decided to expand the terms contained in the first blocklist thus tightening the links of the control.


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Topics

Google Internet Racism Social media YouTube globalData.fldTopic = "Google, Internet, Racism, Social media, YouTube "

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