YouTube has deleted comments that are deemed critical of China's communist party because of what the company said was caused by a technical glitch, reports disclosed on Tuesday.
A unit of Google's Alphabet Inc, users of the online video company said that YouTube flagged and immediately took down some comments posted below video clips that are critical of the country's ruling party.
The Google-owned company is trying to find out why slang phrases, posted in Chinese characters, were automatically deleted, used to describe a Chinese Communist Party's cyber-based propaganda arm. A YouTube representative disclosed that there appears to be an error in the system and they are now looking into the matter.
"We are always working to resolve the issues," the spokesperson disclosed, as reported by CNBC, adding that based on a review by its technical team, they have confirmed an error occurred in the so-called "enforcement systems."
The phrases "Communist Bandit" or "50 Cent Party" are automatically removed by the YouTube system, regardless of other words used along the phrases, in less than 30 seconds.
"Communist Bandit" is a term that has been used for many years, while the other is a more recent term used libelously to refer to a group of individuals paid by the Chinese government to disseminate propaganda on the internet.
The spokesperson pointed out that users can report to YouTube any suspected issues so they can fix the errors and help them make improvements on their services.
YouTube said the auto-deletion was an unintentional side-effect in its comment moderation system, which is designed to filter out spam, hate speech and other forms of offensive language. The video sharing company did not offer any further information as to how the phrases in question ended up being flagged by the site's enforcement system.
With most of the company's perssonnel in their respective homes due to lockdowns, big tech platforms have relied greatly on artificial intelligence moderation methods in the last few months, even as they are aware that reduced human control would possibly create situations of content being inadvertently deleted.
Palmer Luckey, the co-founder of Oculus Rift, was one of the first people to report YouTube's auto-deletion, sharing on Twitter his concern on Monday, as reported by The Telegraph.
Google has a record of content censorship against the Chinese communist group. For instance, its Project Dragonfly involved the creation of a censored search program that complied with state censorship. The program was said to have been scrapped after a conflict with the search giant's privacy division.
