I made an alarming potential discovery today while watching The Young Turks on YouTube. Preceding the video I wished to view was an ad by a company called “Reputation.Com“, which specializes in polishing people and organization’s online footprint. If there is information on the web about you or your company that are embarrassing or that, for whatever reason, you wish not to be accessible to those who may look you up online, they will work to remove it from the Net, possibly replacing it with more favourable information. It’s online information and impression management. While this service can definitely offer many morally upstanding results, it can also offer the opposite. Hence, I attempted to post the following comment in the video comments section:
“Regarding the “Reputation.Com” ad preceding the video: that service will SO be used for dishonest, cynical purposes.”
I tried several times to post this comment, each time receiving the following message: “Error, try again“. Wanting to test whether there was a problem with YouTube commenting in general or with this particular type of comment, I attempted to post a few comments unrelated to the advertiser (e.g., “Testing” and “Romney is not to be trusted. Ever.”) Both went through without a hitch. I then tried my initial comment regarding Reputation.Com again two more times. Again, it was “Error, try again“.
Here is a screenshot of my efforts (my YouTube name is uoftron):
It would appear that YouTube is censoring comments about its advertisers.
How fitting it is that this discovery is made with regard to a company whose very service is about determining what sorts of views and information can be shared online about people and organizations in its trust.
But don’t trust me. Try it yourself. Go to YouTube and try posting comments on advertisements that immediately precede videos that you are trying to watch. Also try leaving comments unrelated to the ads. Do you get different results for the two types of comments?
Leave a comment below on your results. Don’t worry – I won’t pull a YouTube and censor your comments*.
* Privacy-invading comments excepted.
Here is the video in which I discovered this situation:
UPDATE:
Some readers offered some potential alternative explanations, e.g., that YouTube has anti-spam comment blockers that block all comments containing weblinks. Consequently, I attempted to post comments containing various links or link-like features, including:
* Nike.Com
*Bail.Com
* .Com
All of these posts were completed successfully, while Reputation.Com continues to be blocked.
Death By Trolley 
I suspect YouTube blocked you because had a website in you comment and they thought it was spam.
I posted the comment without the “.Com” and it work.
Hey Darwin. I just tried posting “.Com” and “Bail.Com” and they didn’t go through…
Oops. I meant to say that they DID go through..
I also just posted “Reputation” and it went through, but then tried “Reputation.Com” again, and again got “Error, try again”
Links in comments are usually blocked and ads are usually user specific.
Best Memes: I tested various types of messages to account for such possibilities. Here are the posts I tested and their results:
* The post specified in the present article which includes the content “Reputation.Com”. Failed post.
* Other posts that present at links, eg. “.Com”, “Bail.Com”. Successfully posted.
* Posts unrelated to Reputation.Com. Successfully posted.
I just tried “Nike.Com”. Successfully posted.
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Oh they are definitely doing it! Seems like there are buzzwords, if you are using too many of them in one comment you get the error message.
If you try pressing post repeatedly, after a while it switches to saying “The response to the letters on the image was not correct, please try again.” when you are CLEARLY entering whats in the box.
BTW, use firefox with the ‘adblockplus’ add on, hey presto – no more ads to waste your time.
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My family members every time say that I am wasting my time here at web,
but I know I am getting familiarity every day by reading such good articles.