YouTube accidentally flagged an official Google Chromebook ad as spam

Automated content moderation is hard

Now that’s something Google won’t like!

Google’s flagging algorithms for YouTube accidentally flagged a Chromebook Pixel advertisement as spam

The problem with using algorithms to flag offensive or defaulting content is that they can often trip up. And Google’s finding that out first hand on YouTube. The company’s flagging algorithms for YouTube accidentally flagged a Chromebook Pixel advertisement as spam, says a report by The Next Web. It’s of course a faux pas, but will probably get more notice from Google than usual.

The company’s flagging algorithms for YouTube accidentally flagged a Chromebook Pixel advert as spam. It’s of course a faux pas, but will probably get more notice from Google than usual.

Also, it seems Google has already fixed the issue, but this is the Internet after all and screenshots of the same can be found online. You have to see the funny side though. An advertisement for Google’s own product was found “violating YouTube’s policy on spam, deceptive practices and scams.”

It’s a known fact that Google uses machine learning algorithms to flag offensive content on YouTube. That includes content pertaining to extremism and more. The company has methods in place to reduce the amount of offensive content on YouTube. Google outlined these efforts back in June, and kicked things into a higher gear in August this year.

It’s no secret that YouTube’s algorithm for automatically flagging videos can be troublesome — recent issues have seen content creators getting their videos demonetized for seemingly no reason — but Google’s latest faux pas might hit the company a little closer to home. Google posted an ad for its new Chromebook Pixel that is getting flagged as spam, according to The Next Web. For its part, Google seems to have already fixed the issue, but screenshots and even a video still remain of the deleted video.

It’s particularly telling about whatever is happening with YouTube’s algorithm that even official Google content is getting removed “for violating YouTube’s policy on spam, deceptive practices, and scams.”

And yes, it’s fun to have a bit of a laugh at Google’s expense, and it’s entirely possible that the error was just a simple glitch, but it’s also a potentially unnerving look at how Google is moderating content on YouTube and the dangers of machine learning. It’s great that Google is building tools to automatically flag and remove deceptive videos and weed out spam, but if the end result is a black box that just arbitrarily makes decisions that even Google’s content isn’t safe from, then who is it really helping?