Multiple Users Report YouTube Auto-Censoring Live Stream Chats

Jorge Arenas |

Oct 18, 2018

Last night for about an hour, YouTube went dark. The popular video and streaming site came back up, but a number of users quickly discovered the platform run by Google released a brand new auto-censor for live streams.

During The Gator Gamer’s stream, users discovered just how powerful YouTube’s new censor bot was. Many believe the new censor bot was tied to YouTube’s crash yesterday.

Twitter user @zyntrax posted a screenshot of the chat being censored:

Wow. pic.twitter.com/pbMX4Ydjzi

— zyntrax (@zyntrax) October 17, 2018

That was followed by a short clip:

Here is a video of it censoring the word “Paki” in real time. pic.twitter.com/o7gdznWleI

— zyntrax (@zyntrax) October 17, 2018

It also appears the country Niger has also been banned.

Discussing the country of “Niger” is now banned in YT live chat. Try it.

— Void Jersey Games (@VoidJersey) October 18, 2018

Other users report that if your comments are deleted by the bot too many times a Google moderator is notified.

When the bot deletes your messages too many times, a Google mod is alerted, I guess they see your Live Chat history found here : https://t.co/xJ2vUBsIE0

And they limit your account. https://t.co/BoyPuqrysx

— Loki (@ParagonHope) October 17, 2018

There were also reports that entire live stream chats were disabled.

@TheRalphRetort @TheGatorGamer @Zidan_Lianciel As SOON as you went offline Ralph, the chat got nuked. pic.twitter.com/6cESnYxSKo

— ThunderThyghs (@ThunderThyghs) October 18, 2018

One user did indicate he was not experiencing issues in another live stream.

This wasn’t happening in the @Andywarski stream today tho

— Joah! (@Joahnaut) October 17, 2018

I also tested some of the words users reported that were being censored on different live streams and did not see a censor. It’s possible only certain streams were effected by this censor bot.

Social media platform Gab even commented about YouTube’s outage. They hint that the downtime might have been intentional so they could implement the censorship function.

Ah so this was what the Youtube downtime was for. Auto-censorship even if you have the feature turned off. https://t.co/mGNS2xCbvG

— Gab.com? (@getongab) October 17, 2018

They even suggested the timing of YouTube’s outage along with Twitter’s notification issues was too coincidental and believed there might be some kind of censorship plan in the works in Silicon Valley.

Prelude to mass censorship.

— Lorem Ipsum ✝??? (@LoremIp53408904) October 17, 2018

What makes YouTube’s implementation of this new auto censor bot even more interesting is that a report indicated that the U.S. Supreme Court will actually hear a case that could limit technology companies’ ability to censor their users. The case of Manhattan Community Access Corp. v. Halleck (No. 17-702) asks the question if a private operator of a public access television network could be considered a state actor. If they are, then they could be in turn sued for First Amendment violations.

Though it doesn’t seem like much this case could have much broader implications for social media platforms as it could open up the likes of Twitter, Facebook, Google, and YouTube to potential First Amendment lawsuits. It has been no secret that the social media giants are actively trying to curb and manipulate user behavior after the 2016 election that saw President Donald J. Trump elected President of the United States.

What do you make of YouTube’s new auto-censor? Do you think they are only specifically targeting certain streams? Do you think the big tech companies are working together?