YouTube removes comments created with Pale Moon

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pm727272
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YouTube removes comments created with Pale Moon

Unread post by pm727272 » 2021-06-13, 22:42

Hope it's the right subforum for this topic.

OK, so this is this very odd, but June 8th was the last time YouTube kept any of my comments to videos, which I've been able to post for months using Pale Moon.

Today I've been testing this issue and this is what I've found:

- It's not that my comments fail to post. If I'm quick enough, I can see them on my activity history before they vanish. Also, I can see my comments just posted, on the video page, but if I edit them a few seconds later, I get an error (404 is reported by the web console) when I submit the change.

- The problem is not restricted to my session. I've logged out and in. Same result. Even removed my YT cookies and then logged in. Nothing changed. Same if I use a private tab.

- I even tried using a second Google account *and* Pale Moon Portable. Same result.

- If I switch to Chrome, everything works fine -- my comments stay up.

Interestingly enough, YouTube has no issues with the rest of my activity. Liking videos/comments and editing old comments works just fine. It's just the new comment that it's got an issue with.

Just FYI I guess.

It's just that I find especially insulting that no banner or warning prevents you from posting comments, and instead they'll actively (and silently!) remove comments they allowed you to create, basically wasting your time and giving you no reason at all.

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Re: YouTube removes comments created with Pale Moon

Unread post by Moonchild » 2021-06-14, 12:00

Can anyone else confirm this?
"Sometimes, the best way to get what you want is to be a good person." -- Louis Rossmann
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Re: YouTube removes comments created with Pale Moon

Unread post by jobbautista9 » 2021-06-14, 12:08

I can confirm, though I'm currently on 29.2.0 right now. Will test again in a fresh profile of 29.2.1.

UPDATE: Tested in a fresh profile of 29.2.1, can't reproduce.

UPDATE2: Nevermind, I can reproduce it. Reload in www.youtube.com first, then from there, click on any YouTube video. Make a top-level comment, then edit after some seconds. Commenting works when you don't come from a freshly loaded www.youtube.com, so reloading the video itself first should successfully post your comment.
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Re: YouTube removes comments created with Pale Moon

Unread post by Moonchild » 2021-06-14, 12:22

Thanks.
I filed a bug report with Google Developers. For now assuming it's a genuine bug or side effect of trying to kill botspam on their end (but somehow not analysing the contents and using other parameters). Will see what they say.
"Sometimes, the best way to get what you want is to be a good person." -- Louis Rossmann
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Re: YouTube removes comments created with Pale Moon

Unread post by pm727272 » 2021-06-14, 17:32

jobbautista9 wrote:
2021-06-14, 12:08
Commenting works when you don't come from a freshly loaded www.youtube.com, so reloading the video itself first should successfully post your comment.
Oh, that's interesting. I'll try.

Thanks for taking the time to reproduce this issue BTW.

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Re: YouTube removes comments created with Pale Moon

Unread post by Moonchild » 2021-06-14, 20:08

Well my issue tracker attempt was stomped into the ground with the response to "post in the community" (like fellow youtube users can do much about this...) or leave "feedback" from the main youtube site, which will likely never be addressed judging by my past experiences with that.
:(

Maybe if everyone running into this issue gives feedback from the site, it'll maybe do something.
Guide: https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/4347644
"Sometimes, the best way to get what you want is to be a good person." -- Louis Rossmann
"Seek wisdom, not knowledge. Knowledge is of the past; wisdom is of the future." -- Native American proverb
"Linux makes everything difficult." -- Lyceus Anubite

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Re: YouTube removes comments created with Pale Moon

Unread post by pm727272 » 2021-06-15, 10:05

It looks like today my comments stay up, but I'll recheck in a few hours.

Hopefully it was a temporary glitch in one of their many obscure algorithms, but who knows.

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Re: YouTube removes comments created with Pale Moon

Unread post by New Tobin Paradigm » 2021-06-15, 10:40

Off-topic:
Might want to request a new username as that one is lazy as hell.. Hope you didn't use a burner email either...

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Re: YouTube removes comments created with Pale Moon

Unread post by dawidi » 2021-06-15, 15:50

As discussed on IRC yesterday - I can confirm this behaviour, the last comment that YT still remembers me making was on May 26th. I can post new comments to my own videos, and they will stick. But any other comments written since that day have disappeared, both publicly and from the "My Activity" view. I can't say whether they were visible after posting a week or so ago (I didn't think I needed to check).

If I post a comment now (on someone else's video with little other activity), I can see it added to the top of the list as usual, but if I reload the video, the comments count has been incremented but my comment is not shown.
KotCzarny (from the conversation on IRC) commented on one of my videos yesterday, and this also incremented the comments counter. I can see his comments in my notifications, but not under the video.
I don't even think this is a censorship AI randomly trying to silence Pale Moon users - because there is a default UA override, PM presents itself to Youtube as Firefox 60.

It could still be seen as an API issue - the comments are stored by YT (otherwise they wouldn't appear in the notifications), but for some reason they are not returned by the API.

I just tried it again, it hasn't changed yet for me. :(

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Re: YouTube removes comments created with Pale Moon

Unread post by Moonchild » 2021-06-15, 16:39

dawidi wrote:
2021-06-15, 15:50
It could still be seen as an API issue - the comments are stored by YT (otherwise they wouldn't appear in the notifications), but for some reason they are not returned by the API.
I think the notifications aren't using the live API. they are likely one-shot generated and stored separately (at least that is how *I* would do it on a site of YT's scale).
As far as I can tell they as simply nuked by the back-end after the submission process is complete, which does reek of crippling alternative browsers' experiences on YT by Google.
"Sometimes, the best way to get what you want is to be a good person." -- Louis Rossmann
"Seek wisdom, not knowledge. Knowledge is of the past; wisdom is of the future." -- Native American proverb
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Re: YouTube removes comments created with Pale Moon

Unread post by pm727272 » 2021-06-15, 19:07

Today I've posted three comments on different videos, hours ago. Two are still up, one vanished right away.

Also interesting -- remember that I said that by switching to Chrome my comments wouldn't be removed? Well, not really. That one comment I posted using Chrome was finally removed, but not as quickly as the ones I posted using PM. But I think in that case it may have been caused by the fact that I posted the very same text on the very same video.

Looks like they're tweaking their anti-spam algorithms and somehow this browser is a variable they're checking. And if they are, the UA may not be all they're inspecting, as for some of my tests I sent a fake UA with the same result. I believe it's what current Chrome version declares:

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/91.0.4472.77 Safari/537.36

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Re: YouTube removes comments created with Pale Moon

Unread post by THX-1139 » 2021-06-15, 20:19

Yesterday I made a comment on YT, I received notifications from YT on a response to my comment from the channel author...A Heart. :)
I went to the Vid in question to see if any other reply besides the heart, and Voila! No comment of mine to be seen (their were only maybe
10 comments so I couldn't miss it) even though YT showed the comment in notifications, it was not on the vid...I don't know what they up
to, but I'm sure it's not good, as apparently the author saw my comment and am assuming others did (BIG assumption)
+10 weird
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Re: YouTube removes comments created with Pale Moon

Unread post by Dgwphotos » 2021-06-18, 06:45

Yeah, this is happening to me as well. I'll come back to a video to check up on my comments, only to find that it's not there or not visible. Regular Firefox does not seem to have this problem.

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Re: YouTube removes comments created with Pale Moon

Unread post by New Tobin Paradigm » 2021-06-18, 07:39

Dgwphotos wrote:
2021-06-18, 06:45
Regular Firefox does not seem to have this problem.
Good for regular Firefox.. How does that help us .. or you for that matter?

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Re: YouTube removes comments created with Pale Moon

Unread post by dawidi » 2021-06-18, 13:05

It doesn't help much, but it means that Youtube is looking at the browser's exact behaviour - maybe even unintentionally by some quirk of javascript - to judge the comment, not just banning us based on the UA string.
Unrelatedly, I tried overriding the UA to Safari or Chrome (or even just Firefox 68 instead of 60) for Youtube, but then the comment section (and most other parts of the video page) don't load at all.

Today, I too managed to reload a video after posting a comment and see my comment at the top again (so maybe the comment-nuking process was a bit slower?) - but on another reload 10 seconds later it was gone.

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Re: YouTube removes comments created with Pale Moon

Unread post by Moonchild » 2021-06-18, 14:42

dawidi wrote:
2021-06-18, 13:05
It doesn't help much, but it means that Youtube is looking at the browser's exact behaviour - maybe even unintentionally by some quirk of javascript - to judge the comment, not just banning us based on the UA string.
Well there clearly is no -technical- reason why comments wouldn't show up; they are obviously removed after the fact which means it is very much a deliberate server-side removal, regardless of what exact method they use to discriminate against which browser is in use. And make no mistake, this is deliberate removal of creative content based on arbitrary rules, effectively abusing their position as both browser vendor and platform operator to prevent people from participating.
"Sometimes, the best way to get what you want is to be a good person." -- Louis Rossmann
"Seek wisdom, not knowledge. Knowledge is of the past; wisdom is of the future." -- Native American proverb
"Linux makes everything difficult." -- Lyceus Anubite

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Re: YouTube removes comments created with Pale Moon

Unread post by Tharthan » 2021-06-18, 20:03

If this is deliberate, I hope that this happening gets filed away so that it could be used as evidence against Google later in a future court case.

Every behemoth eventually overplays its hand, so when it is clear that that has happened, things of this sort will serve as great demonstrations of Google's abuse of its power and dominance.
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Re: YouTube removes comments created with Pale Moon

Unread post by New Tobin Paradigm » 2021-06-18, 20:06

Off-topic:
I am gonna say this once.. There justice will never be served against Google and its allies without a kinetic bloody civil war in the US and a worldwide awaking and revolution. I simply don't think there are any options left.

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Re: YouTube removes comments created with Pale Moon

Unread post by Marcus » 2021-06-18, 21:50

New Tobin Paradigm wrote:
2021-06-18, 20:06
... without a kinetic bloody civil war in the US and a worldwide awaking and revolution. I simply don't think there are any options left.
And financial collapse dear Tobin. It's their control of fiat money that supports the whole rotten edifice.

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Re: YouTube removes comments created with Pale Moon

Unread post by KlarkKentThe3rd » 2021-06-18, 22:09

I think this is a test for an AI that will protect YT users from "harmful" comments. Mine are deleted most of the time lately, sometimes reinstated. Sometimes I have to post again for it to stick. 2 people noticed it too, how my comments keep getting auto-deleted. A social credit system may be in place to determine how "toxic" you are.

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