YouTube’s system for suppressing low-quality AI content mistakenly targeted Kurzgesagt, leaving the channel with its worst-performing upload since 2013.
YouTube’s system for suppressing low-quality AI content mistakenly targeted Kurzgesagt, leaving the channel with its worst-performing upload since 2013.
This makes sense. Kurzgesagt makes low quality content that’s poorly researched and has AI overdub. It’s a channel funded partly by a Bill Gates subsidiary, and has to do propaganda for them to meet its budget requirements. To say, “we established ourselves early” as an excuse is dumb. If we’re banning AI slop, then they should be banned.
I’ve seen this repeated a ton, so looked into it for myself, especially the “Bill Gates influence” angle.
I don’t buy it.
They aren’t perfect, but every Kurzgesagt video I’ve seen is above par for YouTube. And on the few topics I already knew something about, they seem to cover stuff well.
The criticism, on the other hand, was (to me) entirely unconvincing when investigated. It was mostly “I personally don’t like the agenda these facts point to.”
EDIT
And all that aside:
No one should be banned for the wrong reason.
If Kurzgesagt should be taken down, it shouldn’t be from a dysfunctional AI detection filter. It should be over whatever they actually did wrong.
Kurzgasagt makes a lot of cool science videos, but you can definitely predict when their ‘actually we can science our way into only 2c rise in temperature and be alright’ or ‘Africa is only poor because of overpopulation’ videos are going to end in a Gates Foundation disclosure.
Yeah, I’m not surprised this channel got caught in the dragnet. It always seemed very close to AI slop before AI slop was a thing.
I dislike how disenting opinions get downvoted on Lemmy/technology probably more than even on reddit.
Everything you said is factually correct.
I disagree that it means they should be banned but they take money from corporations to produce slopaganda, that’s just true, and even beyond that their videos are well animated but the moment they touch a subject you actually know about you realize they are just internet researched videos that go a little more in depth that reading the Wikipedia page but it doesn’t seem they actually understand what they are talking about, which is fine except that’s not what they present themselves as (same with CPG Greg)
I think it’s reasonable to downvote.
This for instance:
May be technically true, but the implication is conspiratorial.
This:
Is an opinion I would strongly contest. “Slopaganda” doesn’t fit my impression either, especially with what they’ve disclosed about their production process.
And this:
Sounds like advocating for a ban under false pretenses, which I am vehemently against. That’s what ultimately crosses the downvote threshold for me.
…That came out as more accusatory/singled out than I intended. I don’t mean to pile on the comment.
Is the channel perfect? No. I think they’re citation-lite in the videos, have made mistakes and had bad takes. And it’s a little oversimplified for my tastes.
But on this:
I think a downvote is a fair tool, in this case.
And unlike Reddit (at least in by browser UI), Lemmy doesn’t hide the comment when it’s heavily downvoted, which I like. The comment still gets “fair” exposure like any other comment in this thread, but that doesn’t mean people have to like it.
Other Lemmy/Piefed UIs may handle this differently, though. Not sure about that.
That almost makes it sound unfair, but the technology on Lemmy is doing exactly what each one of us tells it to do every time we cast a vote. It is, as far as I can tell, an exact representation of our own individual votes cast.
I could almost see your point on Reddit because of all the vote fuckery that goes on there, but here on Lemmy blaming a mass downvote on the tech and not on the users casting the votes is a misdirection of blame.