YouTube has denied censoring comments critical of the Chinese Communist Party’s internet propaganda army.
Comments mentioning the phrase “communist bandit” (共匪), a derogatory phrase toward Chinese communists that originated before Mao Tse-tung took power in 1949, and “wumao” (五毛), which describes the CCP’s “50 Cent Army,” were removed from YouTube’s comment section within 30 seconds of posting.
YouTube uses algorithms to delete comments automatically that violate posting guidelines and user policies. A YouTube spokesperson told the Washington Examiner that the comment deletion “appears to be an error in our enforcement systems and we are investigating.”
#YouTube “automatically” deletes a comment in Chinese, “Gongfei”, which means “communist bandit”, in 15 seconds.
This person tested 3 times, same result. #油管 15秒內自動刪除「共匪」留言，網友連試三次皆如此。
他們找了個比李飛飛更厲害的AI專家？ pic.twitter.com/MLCeko0SIY— Jennifer Zeng 曾錚 (@jenniferatntd) May 13, 2020
A comment posted by the Washington Examiner reading, “Curious what will happen if I say 五毛 are terrible,” was deleted within 30 seconds of posting. Comments that used the Pinyin phrase “wumao” were not deleted.
The “50 Cent Army” is made up of low-level government bureaucrats posting positive comments about the Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese government, and the posters are “devoted primarily to cheerleading for the state, symbols of the regime, or the revolutionary history of the Communist Party,” according to a Harvard University study.
Positive posts populate Western social media sites such as YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter, channels that Chinese citizens are largely blocked from accessing by China’s “Great Internet Firewall,” along with Chinese social networking sites and China’s government websites.
An estimated 450 million comments from Chinese government employees are posted every year, with a “large proportion of government web site comments, and about one of every 178 social media posts on commercial sites, are fabricated by the government.”
Google has been previously criticized for its efforts to aid the Chinese government with censorship. The company was developing a censored version of its popular search engine nicknamed “Project Dragonfly.” The project was abandoned last year.
