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Incident 311: YouTube Auto-Moderation Mistakenly Banned Women of Sex Tech Conference

Description: YouTube’s automated content moderation tool erroneously removed The Women of Sex Tech conference’s live-streamed event and banned the conference from the platform, despite not violating the platform’s sexual content policies.

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Alleged: YouTube developed and deployed an AI system, which harmed Women of Sex Tech conference attendants and Women of Sex Tech conference organizers.

Incident Stats

Incident ID
311
Report Count
2
Incident Date
2020-05-02
Editors
Khoa Lam
Applied Taxonomies
MIT

MIT Taxonomy Classifications

Machine-Classified
Taxonomy Details

Risk Subdomain

A further 23 subdomains create an accessible and understandable classification of hazards and harms associated with AI
 

7.3. Lack of capability or robustness

Risk Domain

The Domain Taxonomy of AI Risks classifies risks into seven AI risk domains: (1) Discrimination & toxicity, (2) Privacy & security, (3) Misinformation, (4) Malicious actors & misuse, (5) Human-computer interaction, (6) Socioeconomic & environmental harms, and (7) AI system safety, failures & limitations.
 
  1. AI system safety, failures, and limitations

Entity

Which, if any, entity is presented as the main cause of the risk
 

AI

Timing

The stage in the AI lifecycle at which the risk is presented as occurring
 

Post-deployment

Intent

Whether the risk is presented as occurring as an expected or unexpected outcome from pursuing a goal
 

Unintentional

Incident Reports

Reports Timeline

Incident Occurrence+1
YouTube says ban of women's sex tech live show was algorithm's fault
YouTube says ban of women's sex tech live show was algorithm's fault

YouTube says ban of women's sex tech live show was algorithm's fault

dailymail.co.uk

YouTube Automatically Banned a Sex Tech Conference

YouTube Automatically Banned a Sex Tech Conference

insidehook.com

YouTube says ban of women's sex tech live show was algorithm's fault
dailymail.co.uk · 2020

YouTube is blaming its auto-moderation tool for removing a live-stream of a women's sex conference.

According to a report from the Daily Dot, the conference, called Women of Sex Tech, had its live feed auto-banned from YouTube just four min…

YouTube Automatically Banned a Sex Tech Conference
insidehook.com · 2020

The Women of Sex Tech conference went virtual for the first time in its five-year history last weekend, no thanks to YouTube.

The platform’s automated moderation controls automatically banned the sex tech conference the night before the eve…

Variants

A "variant" is an incident that shares the same causative factors, produces similar harms, and involves the same intelligent systems as a known AI incident. Rather than index variants as entirely separate incidents, we list variations of incidents under the first similar incident submitted to the database. Unlike other submission types to the incident database, variants are not required to have reporting in evidence external to the Incident Database. Learn more from the research paper.

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