I’m having my comments I made the past few days receive zero engagements. It’s not just me losing the early bird lottery too; my replies to a highly engaged comment has zero likes, while several comments immediately after me has double digits. It’s nothing incendiary at all, just normal people’s comments. But something just tripped the enigmatic AI and thenceforth I’m shadow banned.
Why you should know this?
Because YouTube is being a thought police between creators and their communities. It feels to me like 99.999% of creators on YouTube have no idea that this is happening, that honest to goodness people’s engagements are never going to reach them on the platform; they’re being silently silenced, by an AI that is figuratively a black box.
Look at this screenshot. If that’s not damning evidence you tell me what is.
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The comment is straight up gone when viewing with a logged out tab. I’m definitely 100% shadow banned right now.
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youtube doesn’t actually care if you comment, “engagement” is through sharing, and watching. that’s all youtube cares about for engagement. how many watch hours, how many adverts, how many click throughs on those adverts.
also literally every large social network has shadow bans, it’s the only successful way to deal with unwanted elements. if you tell the unwanted element that they are banned, then they just go make a new account.