# Description-content mismatch Part of [The AI Tells Index](https://feedsquad.com/ai-tells). A tell signals low effort. It does not identify an author. Skilled writers produce every shape listed here, some of them daily, and automated detectors misread those writers for it at rates measured above 60 percent on non-native English prose. Nothing in this index proves that a machine wrote anything. Read an entry as one piece of evidence to weigh against the false-positive notes printed beside it. ## Facts - Id: description-content-mismatch - Category: Platform-specific (platform) - Subcategory: metadata - Also known as: promised content absent, misleading description - Status: Active. Currently signals low-effort writing. - Severity: medium - Evidence grade: primary-doc (platform policy, vendor documentation, or a model card) - Languages: en - Added: 2026-08-15 - Updated: 2026-08-15 - Page: https://feedsquad.com/ai-tells/description-content-mismatch ## Description A title, thumbnail or description that promises something the item does not contain. YouTube spam policy names this under malicious clickbait and puts descriptions in the same sentence as titles, thumbnails and imagery. The policy word is malicious, which sets the bar above ordinary headline compression. ## Why it reads as machine-written Metadata and body are usually written in separate passes, and generation makes the metadata pass cheap enough to run without rereading the body. The gap that opens is between the promise and the payload. It is the one gap a reader can verify alone, without any judgment about who wrote either half. ## Detection Type: judge (a rubric for a lightweight model judge) Rubric for a lightweight model judge: ```text Read the title, any thumbnail text and the description first, and write down every specific thing they promise: a named tool, a number, a result, a reveal, a count of items. Then go through the item and tick each promise off where it lands. Return no-tell when every promise is delivered, and also when the only gap is compression, as when a title shortens a long finding without changing it. Return tell when a promised specific never appears at all, listing each promise and the place it was supposed to land. ``` ## Examples Constructed specimens. Written for this index. Never quoted from anyone's posts. ### Specimen 1 Before, exhibiting the tell: > The one setting that doubled our conversion rate. In this video we cover conversion, funnels and why most teams get this wrong from day one. After, repaired: > Turning off automatic address validation in our checkout cut drop-off from 14 to 9 percent, because it was rejecting valid Finnish postcodes. The video shows the setting, the funnel either side of the change, and the two weeks of data behind it. Note: The repair names the setting in the title position, so there is nothing left to withhold. Figures in this repair are invented for the specimen. ## False positives Who legitimately writes this way. Editorial titles compress honestly all the time, and a good headline withholds detail so the sentence fits. Trailers, teasers and cold opens are built on managed withholding and nobody thinks they are fraud. The policy word is malicious, which reaches deception rather than imprecision. The reviewer check is whether the promised specific exists anywhere in the item: a compressed promise lands late, a fabricated one never lands. ## Model attribution No family attribution. The policy is authorship-indifferent and names no tool, and separately written metadata is an old publishing habit that predates any assistant. ## Platform notes - youtube: The spam, deceptive practices and scams policy names malicious clickbait and covers maliciously misleading titles, thumbnails, descriptions and imagery in one clause. Descriptions being named explicitly is what gives this entry a written hook rather than a folk one. The policy makes no reference to how the description was produced. ## Sources 1. YouTube spam, deceptive practices and scams policy https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2801973 (tier: primary-doc; accessed 2026-08-14) ## Status history Ids are permanent. A retired tell keeps its id and its page. - 2026-08-15, Active: YouTube names misleading descriptions in written policy and enforces them under spam, which makes this a documented platform rule rather than a taste judgment. Medium severity because the honest and the dishonest versions sit close together and the policy itself sets a high bar. ## License CC BY 4.0. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Attribution: The AI Tells Index, feedsquad.com/ai-tells Reuse the data, including commercially. Keep the attribution line. --- Dataset version 1.0.0. Schema version 1. Part of [FeedSquad](https://feedsquad.com). Built by [Herman Foundry](https://hermanfoundry.com) from Levi, Finnish Lapland.