Tag Archives: censorship

YouTube removed your content

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I got an email from YouTube (links removed):

“What we found

We think your content violated our violent or graphic content policy.

Violent or graphic content that’s intended to shock or disgust viewers isn’t allowed on YouTube. This may include footage, audio, or imagery involving war, terrorist attack aftermath, or other similar scenarios. We may make limited exceptions for content with educational, documentary, scientific, or artistic context. Read policy

You can see an example around 00:01:47, although there could be other instances.

How this impacts you

We removed this content from YouTube.

What to do next

Review your content and the policy. Then you can optionally:
• Appeal if you think we got it wrong
• Edit the video and submit for another review

Learn about your resolution options.”

It was for a video on the muscular system done by my daughter in Grade 7. It’s a great video where my daughter scripted an entire song on the topic, to the beat of a French song.

I went to the spot in the video the violation claimed was graphic.

It has a clip of a hand that is indeed graphic, the skin is peeled back in an operation and the muscles and tendons are revealed, moving in a short gif file as the patient moves their fingers. That said this should NOT be a violation when there are a multitude of videos up on YouTube right now, sharing much more graphic details of the same topic.

I appealed and it was rejected. I was given a chance to appeal again, but there is nowhere to defend my reasoning within the process. So, rather than face a second and possibly final decision, I decided to complain directly to YouTube. I shared a link to my video and 4 very graphic links to videos I found by searching “hand tendon operations” inside of my YouTube app.

I can’t imagine who would have complained about this video? Furthermore, why didn’t it pass an appeal? There are so many videos that are not educational and far more graphic.

I’ll update this if and when I get a response from YouTube.

Morality police

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I have regularly created AI images to go with my blog posts since June, 2022. I try not to spend too much time creating them because I’d rather be writing blog posts than image prompts. But sometimes I try to create images and they just don’t convey what I want them to, or they come across as a bit too much in the uncanny valley, feeling unnatural. That happened with my post image 4 days ago, and I used the image anyway, because I was pressed for time.

(Look carefully at this image and you’ll see a lot wrong with it.)

I made 5 or 6 attempts to adjust my prompt, but still kept getting bad results, so I made do with the only one that resembled what I wanted.

And then for the past couple days I had a different challenge. I don’t know if it’s because of using the version of Bing’s Copilot that is associated with my school account, but my attempts to create images were blocked.

And:

However, Grok 3, a much less restricted AI, had no problem creating these images for me:

And:

I’m a little bothered by the idea that I am being limited by an AI in using these image prompts. The first one is social commentary, the second one, while a ‘hot topic’, certainly isn’t worthy of being restricted.

It begs the question, who are the morality police deciding what we can and cannot use AI to draw? the reality is that there are tools out there that have no filters and can create any image you want, no matter how tasteless or inappropriate they are, and I’m not sure that’s ideal… but neither is being prevented from making images like the ones I requested. What is it about these images requests that make them inappropriate?

I get that this is a small issue in comparison to what’s happening in the US right now. The morality police are in full force there with one group, the Christian far right, using the influence they have in the White House to impose their morality on others. This is a far greater concern than restrictions to image prompts in AI… but these are both concerns on the same continuum.

Who decides? Why do they get to decide? What are the justifications for their decisions?

It seems to me that the moral decisions being made recently have not been made by the right people asking the right questions… and it concerns me greatly that people are imposing their morals on others in ways that limit our choices and our freedoms.

Who gets to be the morality police? And why?