I interviewed Marc Giró and, as always, it was a party: headlines, wit, argumentative coherence and that touch of cabaret show that he masters perfectly, especially when the camera is on (because the part of the conversation without video was equally exuberant in words, but more restrained in physical expressions). Talking about how the far-right immediately attacks the body, and to explain that he meant it literally, he slapped himself in the face hard enough to leave a mark. It was a surprising clip, so we uploaded it to YouTube as a "short" and we discovered, to our surprise, that the platform applied one of its forms of censorship: it doesn't allow the video to be monetized, presumably because it interprets that it includes violence, even if it's mild and against oneself. There's no problem, because obviously our business model isn't based on getting guests to self-harm on screen in exchange for seventeen euro cents in the form of digital advertising, but I mention it because of the hypocrisy that arises from this Google service. Videos of Joe Rogan interviewing doctors who are against vaccines appear with ads without a problem, and I would say that the public health implications of one video and the other are quite different.
In reality, Google doesn't apply the criterion of responsibility. Its algorithm analyzes clips and discriminates against those it believes advertisers will reject, because they don't want their products to appear next to certain content. In this case, it's obvious that the automation has failed, because Giró's slap was an emphatic performative act, nothing more. The case illustrates the problem of leaving these small acts of subtle censorship in non-human hands. The criteria end up being arbitrary, biases are created, and those who study the loopholes to exploit their deficiencies are favored.
