Examples of misleading metadata – episode 2

Look at the above image. It is a misleading thumbnail in that it doesn’t tell you the video language is actually Hindi. And the channel name doesn’t hint that either. So anyone interested in technical videos may click on this thumbnail to find out that the guy is actually using Hindi in his lecturing.

So it’s a video with misleading metadata to the non Hindi speaking people. Although I watched and liked a few videos from this channel, still I think this guy should bring about some changes in his thumbnails to let people know the language of his videos.

I know another guy from my country who uses pure English in his videos’ metadata although he uses Bengali in his presentation. But it is okay in his case since his channel’s name is ‘Shohag360 (Bangla)’. At least he lets everyone know what language they might expect in his videos. So his videos don’t violate YouTube’s guidelines regarding metadata.

Even the most famous creators can’t give up the greed of misleading metadata

From the looks of it, it is obvious that even some most famous creators like Taylor Swift/Vevo can not give up the greed of using misleading thumbnail on their videos. Why don’t you take a look at the following image before justifying my statement?

The image is surely sexually provocative. Videos like this one are often removed from YouTube and community strikes are placed. Surprisingly enough, nothing happens to the big channels like Vevo, T-series. They continue to use misleading metadata. Another few examples of such videos are given below.

Clearly this particular channel has uploaded a lot of misleading videos, the thumbnails say it all. They are sexually provocative, no doubt about that. In the left image you see a girl’s exposed navel and in the right one the actor Ankush is holding a ‘bra’ while actress Faria seems to be staring at it. If these are not inappropriate videos on YouTube, then I just don’t know which are!

I have watched the right video; it contains a sexually provocative scene from a certain Bengali movie. While this might be a strong case of copyright violation, this is certainly a violation of YouTube’s community guidelines as well. If more videos like this are published on YouTube, then it will no longer remain the ‘family platform’ for entertainment that they claim to this day.

A 3 minutes erotic scene like this may be allowed in movie theaters, but not on YouTube. Surprisingly enough, the scene hasn’t been age-restricted yet. Scenes like this are called ‘cut-piece’ in my country and India. I really hope that YouTube will finally be free from these cursed videos with misleading metadata and inappropriate content some day.

Use of misleading title

Moreover both the videos whose thumbnails are shown above use misleading title. The right one contains the words ‘Shahrukh Khan’ and ‘Kajol’ in the title. Surely in the scene the actors imitate Shahrukh Khan and Kajol’s romantic scene from a famous Hindi movie, but Shahrukh and Kajol are not present in the clip themselves.

So anyone searching on YouTube with keywords ‘Shahrukh Khan’ or ‘Kajol’ may find this video and upon watching it they might simply be embarrassed. The point is that by the use of misleading metadata a wrong video is presented before a ‘right’ viewer. The uploader is surely a shrew person who knows that people often searches with keywords like ‘Shahrukh Khan’.

The left video’s title uses a Bengali phrase that means ‘put the money to watch the show’. This is ultimately provocative to make a viewer watch their creepy video. So this is another example of misleading title.

A conspiracy theory regarding the use of misleading metadata

When the viewer realizes that s/he has started viewing a wrong video (with misleading metadata), they may instantly tend to go somewhere else. They may choose to click on another video or the AdSense ad. Thus in my estimation, a video with misleading metadata has greater click through rate and a greater overall earnings.

May be unscrupulous people use misleading metadata not only to get more views in the ‘shortcut’ way, but to earn more than others as well. However, this is just a conspiracy theory by me; I don’t claim that it is 100% correct. Let me know what you guys think about this theory of mine, in the comment box.

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