Emperor G built a beautiful walled city, inviting everyone in, encouraging them to paint their houses whatever color they like. A year later, Big G banned blue houses. If you didn't like the rules, you were more than welcome to build your house outside the city and paint it whatever color you like.<p>Only most people don't leave - blue is just one color and they weren't very interested in it anyway. Besides, the city is so beautiful and provides for their every need. In the coming years, people who want to paint their house blue badly enough to leave paradise are heavily scrutinized and eventually considered outcasts.<p>Over the years, more and more colors are slowly banned, one by one. People start to notice and complain once their favorite color is outlawed. But decades have passed since Emperor G's generous invitation. Entire generations have lived, died, and raised children inside the city. No one knows how to navigate the wilderness anymore. And even if they could, why would they want to? Thorns and weeds have overgrown the wasteland; it's much safer to stay inside the city walls. Besides, it's cozy and we have everything we need in here.<p><i>In theory you are correct. In practice, if 97% of society exclusvely uses said aggregator/community to find videos - 97% of your potential audience will never know the video exists - is that not still censorship?</i>
One effective way to protest this would be to report videos by high-profile companies such as Microsoft, Amazon, and Google itself.<p>Take a few minutes to look for a video about Azure or AWS or GCP, or a video of a presentation at a conference around such things, and report it as Inappropriate content citing the relevant terms of service.<p>Be very careful only to report content that conforms to the above description — the point here is to show YouTube where they're wrong by forcing them into direct confrontation with their own vested interests.<p>Bonus irony points will be conceded to correctly flagging a Google Project Zero video, or a YouTube security team video, as in violation of the terms of service as stated.<p>Again, please do not do this indiscriminately. Use your judgement on how to create the maximum exposure of stupidity through honest and careful judgement of what obviously should be permitted and yet does not comply with the rules as stated today.<p>EDIT: Per commenters below — if you behave improperly and report a ton of videos inappropriately, you very well could get your account banned. If you're worried about this, report <i>one</i> video only. Be selective, use your single vote, and then move on.
There's a lot of bad content on the Internet, and a lot of people wanted to ban it. And the free speech absolutists said, that's a slippery slope. Once you start restricting speech beyond whatever is illegal, there will be no end to the demands to ban certain content.<p>And a lot of us said, slippery slopes are silly arguments. All we're asking is to ban overt racism and calls to violence. We can evaluate these things individually on their own terms.<p>It may turn out the absolutists had a point.
Does this mean that all the reverse engineering videos, con talks, prof of exploit demos, CTF walkthroughs', and fuzzing tutorials will be removed? What about videos showing me how to use tools like Twistlock? Will they be exempt, but videos about burp be banned?
What constitutes a "secure" computer system?<p>Side note, I guess its time to fire up youtube-dl. Are there any channels that need to be archived? I normally just watch what comes up in a search, not anyone in particular.
I've been trying to argue for awhile that if the major public venues become privately moderated that it would have a chilling effect on free speech. I continually get the rhetoric that free speech only applies to the government (it doesn't; the First Amendment only applies to the government but the ideal of free speech is a universal human right) and that censorship is something only the government can do (also not true for the same reason).<p>This is not a new concept. In 1859, John Stuart Mill argued in On Liberty that the tyranny of the majority and the de facto censorship that they can create is just as if not far more dangerous to actual liberty than government control.<p>If we have laws for common carriers, and laws like network neutrality, then there must also be laws protecting the right of the people to participate in public discourse <i>even when the venue is privately held</i>. It is vital to the existence of a free state!
There are thousands of hours of excellent cybersecurity content hosted on YouTube. The possibility of losing this wealth of information and history is shocking to me.<p>Time to start the archive effort. And to finally appreciate what so many other communities have gone through when they've found themselves on the wrong side of one of the internet behemoths. I feel naive.
The "solution" is choosing your priorities and being willing to make sacrifices, which, in my experience, many people are not willing to do.<p>"I don't want to be on a censorious megacorporate platform." Great! You can do this, you'll just have to be on the #2 platform rather than the #1 platform, and there won't be as many "free" tools & services. "What?? How can you suggest I abandon the #1 platform? I <i>need</i> all those free tools and services + the exposure of the #1 platform!" :shrug: OK, in that case "free tools and services" & "exposure" are <i>higher priorities</i> to you than user respect, privacy, free expression etc., and you're making the right choice to stay on youtube.<p>It feels a lot like people want to have their cake and eat it too.<p>Our (as users) only negotiating leverage with a provider like google is <i>willingness to leave their platforms</i>. If you're are not willing to do that, all this hand-wringing and complaining is just wasted breath as google has ~0 incentive to take your complaints seriously.
Youtube updating its policy to ban videos they have already monetized from, while the creators get nothing. Youtube is a monopoly. Creators need to get off YT, and onto something else if it exists.
I bought a book on defeating burglar alarms because I wanted to install a burglar alarm that wasn't easily defeated.<p>I read up on what causes cancer so I can avoid those things.<p>I read up on security breaches because I'm interested in designing the D programming language so D programs are less susceptible to hacking attacks.
And here's the resolution:<p>> In a subsequent comment, a YouTube spokesperson confirmed to The Verge that Cyber Weapons Lab’s channel was flagged by mistake and the videos have since been reinstated. “With the massive volume of videos on our site, sometimes we make the wrong call,” the spokesperson said. “We have an appeals process in place for users, and when it’s brought to our attention that a video has been removed mistakenly, we act quickly to reinstate it.”<p><a href="https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/3/20681586/youtube-ban-instructional-hacking-phishing-videos-cyber-weapons-lab-strike" rel="nofollow">https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/3/20681586/youtube-ban-instr...</a>
This was a mistimed move by their leadership.<p>Most in silicon valley have no issue with Youtube banning political speech they disagree with, but if immediately afterwards they start banning education material dear to the hearts of most in the valley (who started as white/black hat hackers in middle/high school), then you highlight the obvious slippery slope.<p>Youtube is transitioning from a platform to a curator. That is a huge risk for them if the govt. realizes this.
Lets keep in mind that YouTube has been around for 14 years... In societal terms that's a relatively short amount of time to have a free platform where anyone can post their ideas, no matter how crazy or toxic.<p>Before that, you could blog.<p>Before that, you could stand on a street corner and yell, or maybe use a megaphone.<p>The platforms for broadcasting your message to a large audience were mostly gated, often by large corporations. TV, Newspaper, Radio, etc.<p>It seems to me that what we are seeing is more like reversion to the mean.<p>It was great in the early days of the internet, because the communities were small, and often self policing. But once they get large enough it's very easy for the noise to overwhelm the signal. This idea of absolute free speech didn't scale once the population got large enough.<p>I don't even use Facebook and Twitter anymore because of this. (I also generally opt out of ad supported anything)<p>I'm really not convinced that providing a cheap / free platform for anyone to amplify their message was actually a net good. Not anymore at least. Like I said, it doesn't scale.<p>Before, the crazy and toxic could yell on the street corner. Now they have Twitter, Facebook and YouTube to shout their conspiracy theories etc.<p>IMO, we're overdue for scaling some of that back.<p>There is the right to say and think whatever you want. That does not imply the right to have your message amplified to millions.
I can't wait for all the videos showing you how to repair your own stuff gets outlawed.<p>Right now it's 'hacking' or possibly circumventing proprietary systems that are trying to get you to purchase a new device or contact them directly rather than fix it yourself if you have the technical know how.<p>Today it's Software/Hardware and computer systems.<p>How long until looking up a you-tube video on how to repair your John Deer tractor or iOS device gets banned.<p>Take it further and how long until all repair/tear down/fix videos get banned from their platform.<p>Everyone is yelling, just repeal their platform status like it is going to change anything. They've used that status to grow to the size they are now and even if they are forced to go publisher it wouldn't change anything other than them being more brazen at the censorship in my opinion.
You want YouTube to be one way, but it's the other way.<p>Protest.
Boycott.
Build alternatives.<p>This is how you fight corrupt corporations. It makes no sense to force YouTube to host all content for free. YouTube is a video entertainment business, it's not insulin or a house. Again, it's a video entertainment site. It is wholly unimportant in reality.<p>The only power YouTube has is the power society willingly gives it by visiting the website. Society needs to take responsibility for its own browser history.<p>Upload your video somewhere else on the internet.
Remember this next time Alphabet execs claim YouTube is a neutral platform and that they can't be held responsible for what's posted.<p>Radicalization and harassment is ok because it makes them money.<p>Cyber-security education is a threat to rich and powerful interests, so it is taken down.<p>They've had their finger on the scale for a long time.
This is as good a time as any to start archiving your favorite channels, you can point youtube-dl at a video URL, a playlist, or a username.<p><pre><code> brew install youtube-dl
youtube-dl https://www.youtube.com/user/DEFCONConference/
</code></pre>
Showing 2460 videos, I'll have to grab a few harddrives.
Many of Google's actions can be explained by internal disarray, the way promotions are doled out, and lack of leadership. This cannot.<p>-No longer proud to have been a Googler
I've increasingly become of the opinion that we need actual regulation for any SV app/co that calls itself a platform.<p>Nearly everyone acknowledges that a platform by definition needs to be either the only co in its industry or part of a duopoly but generally with a 50%+ market share. The gov should acknowledge the benefits of having such platforms but should also recognize the pitfalls and regulate akin to common carrier.<p>Google wants to be the only search engine, fine. everyone benefits when search is consolidated, but it needs to be regulated like a monopoly even if there are 1000 other smaller competitors because it still has a controlling share of the market.<p>I hate regulation as I'm describing it here, but I cannot see another way out.... if trump doesn't pass something like the S-ATA in the next 2 (- 6?) years the next prez almost def will, we're really hitting that tipping point.
I suspect the issue isn't YouTube per se but society.
While they bear responsibility for their decisions any big entity which becomes the "mainstream" will receive the same pressure. With advertiser backing based on what they /think/ is good for their image regardless of what people other than the many noisy minorities (like every yellow journalist seeking a new moral panic) of all sorts think.<p>And rather than anyone involved learning they will push hard to be "more like TV" which we have been seeing for years on YouTube with every adpocalyose. If we cannot fix the underlying problem we are doomed to reoccurrence.
Or thinkspot becomes the youtube killer and we all continue on<p><a href="https://www.ts.today/" rel="nofollow">https://www.ts.today/</a><p>edit: I have no idea how thinkspot is going to play out. But if I know one thing about the internet it's that it's really hard to stop people from using it however they please. Attempts to squash mostly just result a shift of where it occurs, not the fact that it occurs.
A good reminder that NYC decided that viewing adult content on computers at city libraries was protected by freedom of speech and is therefore allowed:<p><a href="https://newyork.cbslocal.com/2011/04/25/watching-porn-at-nyc-libraries-is-ok-officials-say/" rel="nofollow">https://newyork.cbslocal.com/2011/04/25/watching-porn-at-nyc...</a>
My guess is that a tech player with a big ad spend is unhappy about YouTube tutorials teaching users to de-DRM their content or jailbreak their consumer devices.
This comment thread says a lot about hacker news.<p>a) the flagged videos have already been unbanned, with YT saying it was a mistake and b) YT's policy exempts educational videos, which is why it was a mistake, and why e.g LiveOverflow et al should be fine.
Devil's advocate: There's a very thin line between e.g. the Lockpicking Lawyer doing reviews of different padlock brands and e.g. an instructional video about how to break into someone's house. YouTube knows that if someone posts home invasion instructions, and then someone else watches those instructions and commits a crime, the news media will absolutely 100% blame YouTube, and politicians will jump on them to score points with the voters. Since it's essentially impossible to define a simple, objective difference between the Lockpicking Lawyer and instructional videos for actual crimes, YouTube needs to write broad policies that potentially cover both, and then rely on their discretion in individual cases.<p>Does this suck for everyone involved? Yes. Does YouTube have a choice about this? No.
This is good news. Censorship should've been something with wide bipartisan opposition, but due to the way Google and others cynically (or accidentally) used partisan tricks to make half the populace clamor for their rights to be violated, like they did with Alex Jones and others, they've gotten away with their censorship to grand applause.<p>Moves like this are a great opportunity to finally develop bipartisan opposition to these corporations. People who've been wearing tribalistic blinders will say, "hey wait a minute, that's <i>my</i> voice you're shutting down, and <i>I'm</i> not a bad person." Even if they don't come to their senses from first principles, at least more of the burden of defending common liberties will now be shared on the shoulders of more people.
Here comes an argument familiar from other domains (drugs, guns, censorship in general) but still valid:<p>This will serve to drive that content further out of sight and underground, into the realm of people whose hats are statistically more likely to be of a darker shade as it were.
They day Youtube decides to ban the LockpickingLawyer Channel for "showing users how to bypass secure doors" will be the day I uninstall and block Youtube on all my devices.
Google is going to regret this in a few years, when it needs security experts and they are in short supply (or rather shorter; they are already in short supply). Maybe we should be commoditizing security knowledge, which is what a platform such as you tube is capable of. Besides, there's a whole internet full of resources, and this isn't going to stop the script kiddies. The real issue is the nation state hackers from Iran, N. Korea, China, Russia. They are the problem.<p>Companies I know of and that people I know work with have been the victim of ransomware many times. It is almost always Iran or N. Korea, and companies I know of have even been victimized twice (they took a look while inside and found another vector; the second time, they knew they had insurance and would pay again). Then there's the espionage - if you're bigger or have something China or Russia wants, they'll go after you.<p>The FBI classifies this as terrorism, and yet does nothing. These are acts of war, and we keep getting stepped on because our government does nothing. Most of us know fully well that our three-letter agencies have exploits capable of disabling just about any thing; it's time they start knocking Iranian, North Korean, Chinese, and Russian infrastructure offline as a retaliatory measure. Each time we trace another attack to one of them, a power plant goes down (or something alike). This is the only solution I can see.
The stigma IT gets from society with regards to security is abundant.<p>The term hacker for a geek is not the definition the media uses - I often correct people and ask - should Burglars be called Locksmiths? Which is absurd, but then the term hacker has been subverted to mean a computer thief, vandal, burglar or any form of digital crime.<p>As for showing how to break into a compter - the legal and valid reasons outway the criminal ones and yet this is a blanket ban mentality taking the edge cases and projecting them.<p>Forget your password - well thanks youtube for banning all valid digital locksmith usage.<p>So by doing this, it is akin to closing down a road because somebody got caught speeding, or banning anybody learning to drive because somebody got caught speeding. An extreme comparison, but is it?<p>Bigger issue is such digital rules are automated in action, so less due process, more so with some companies whose support due process depends upon you knowing somebody at the company to `actually` look into the automated oversights.<p>So what next, p2p and the darkweb have already been demonised by the media. So any attempt to offer an alternative will get negatively associated, and deemed guilty of a crime they did not commit. Which is nice for the establishments in our digital age, as it protects their effective monopoly.
Youtube is making the case for IPFS. I didn't think it would happen so soon but here we are.<p>This is great news for the project and should drive more work on the convenience layers that need to be built above the IPFS layer.
Saw this the other day:<p>Why Everyone's Leaving YouTube[1]<p>[1] <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQuE0wfjzf0" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQuE0wfjzf0</a><p>EDIT: I've submitted a separate post:<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20347870" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20347870</a>
"showing how to bypass secure computer systems" reminds me of the DCMA debate, where "circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a [copyrighted] work." is forbidden.<p>If it was a "secure" computer system, it shouldn't be breakable by anybody after watching a how to youtube video.
I agree with others here, YT and it's like are de facto monopolies by their size and market share.<p>PeerTube [1] is a Mastodon [2] offshoot project that might allow users to get off YT, no idea where it's at though.<p>"One project, Peertube, does exactly this. A federated, decentralized video sharing platform using the same back end as Mastodon, but around the sharing of video clips."[3]<p>[1] <a href="https://joinpeertube.org/" rel="nofollow">https://joinpeertube.org/</a>
[2] <a href="https://joinmastodon.org/" rel="nofollow">https://joinmastodon.org/</a>
[2] <a href="https://medium.com/tootsuite/replacing-the-pillars-of-the-internet-235836580a0e" rel="nofollow">https://medium.com/tootsuite/replacing-the-pillars-of-the-in...</a>
Meanwhile, YouTube is flooded with pseudo-humoristic content from "artists" such as Paul Logan. Hopefully we will be able to transfer knowledge with short Instagram stories and accelerated video posts. Until it get censored and a new unregulated plateform appears
Offensive security Youtube videos doesn't help the world to make computer systems more secure. The offensive security subculture deals more about fame, fun and profit. Therefore I'm a little happy on the reaction of some offensive/black hat security people, although I agree that the policy is to ambiguous to be fair. The obvious intention of the policy is obviously the removal script-kiddy like videos which are showing either "how to hack Facebook" bullshit videos or videos which are concretely showing how to harm one concrete business. The boundaries between immature script-kiddy videos and offensive/blackhat security videos are not very clear.
Just thinking out loud here: it seems like Youtube has been restricting or pulling videos for a variety of reasons. Alternatives are great, but could still succumb to the same outcome. Personal hosting is an option, but not a solution for everyone. Maybe this could lead to a fun weekend project. Imagine something like MediaGoblin paired with git-annex. I really haven't given it any more thought than what I've just written, but could be a fun project!
If true that sounds silly. If the videos aren't breaking the law or found offensive by your advertisers, why would you (as a business) want to stop that kind of content?
I'm super concerned about this. I head up hacker education at HackerOne and the biggest part of that is Hacker101, which hosts all its videos on YouTube. I have the master files and could host them elsewhere, of course, but there's huge value in discoverability, which YouTube completely owns compared to any other platform. Definitely something that I'm going to have to keep an eye on, and be ready to adapt to if they end up enforcing this.
Not entirely unexpected now that YouTube has grown up and can't be seen hanging out with certain folks by the other grownups in the room. Another example of this trend of getting popular on the backs of the same nerd/geek/hacker/counter-culture/ people who are then deemed unfit to be part of the community, one they become the minority (and hence wont affect your bottom line).
They should just ban all interesting content already so creators finally move to better platforms some of which are probably yet to be created. Watching YouTube these days without adblocker is just painful, not to mention the broken copyright claim system which has to be the way it is partly because YouTube is just too big.
Now, the editing has progressed from (legitimately) weeding out violent and often clearly illegal material (e.g., child porn), to material that some people find objectionable, in this case corporate sponsors.<p>They are now unquestionably editing the content on their site. Soon (as mentioned by others), it is likely to be 'how to repair' videos and the like that end up on the proverbial cutting room floor.<p>It is far past the time for YouTube, FaceBook, etc. to be stripped of their now demonstrably farcical "platform" status and recognized as publishers of content, and reqauired to operate with that set of rights & responsibilities.<p>It won't solve all problems, partly because this has gone on for far too long, but at least they'll need to take on some responsibility for their decisions. It is obvious why they've worked so mightily for so long to avoid exactly this responsibility.
I guess we'll have to go back to BBS' and reading 2600 again.<p>Really though, this is ridiculously bad. A video on how to install Lineageos? Ubuntu on a Chromebook? DD-WRT? All Ostensibly banned. Hell, is showing how to use a VPN to get around geographic restrictions banned now too? Using TOR to escape the great firewall?
Oh wow, that is so lame... I wonder how this will affect LiveOverflow ( <a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UClcE-kVhqyiHCcjYwcpfj9w" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/channel/UClcE-kVhqyiHCcjYwcpfj9w</a> ) and all the DefCon video's, etc.
Below the original comment in a reply is YouTube's full list. One of the items bans videos about "hard drugs" which it defines as any drug that causes a physical addiction. Is there an incoming wave of coffee- and tea-related takedowns? Because I'm pretty sure that headache you get when you don't drink caffeine for a day is not your brain longing for the rich aroma of freshly-ground beans. It's a physical addiction to ... a drug!<p>They should just make the rules say "We don't know what our standards are. If someone flags your video and whoever happens to be reviewing things doesn't like you, you're gone. Buh bye." At least people couldn't complain, as every takedown would comply with their written policy.
From the wayback machine... looks like it changed sometime between Feb 3rd and April 5th...<p>It wasn't there on the Feb 3rd crawl... <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20190203030524/https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2801964?hl=en" rel="nofollow">https://web.archive.org/web/20190203030524/https://support.g...</a><p>Pops up on the April 5th crawl.
<a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20190405094852/https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2801964?hl=en" rel="nofollow">https://web.archive.org/web/20190405094852/https://support.g...</a>
Some Hacker communities already have their own video platforms - I only know of CCC so far but I bet there are others: <a href="https://media.ccc.de/" rel="nofollow">https://media.ccc.de/</a><p>This knowledge will become even more isolated and harder to find for beginners.<p>But these communities have so much content already, together with banned 'security bypass'-videos it could be combined (or cross-referenced somehow) to an impressive collection.<p>Aggregators and links to similar platforms play an important role whith 'illicit' content. Porn is not allowed on YouTube as well, it is hosted on different platforms and yet people still manage to find it somehow.
I didn't catch the video: was it for a specific system they didn't own/have permission for, or was it their own device that launched fireworks?<p>I hope IppSec doesn't lose his uploads. And all of the computer security conference videos.
Once you buy into the premise that mere words cause "harm", there's no limit to what you'll censor. It's important to take a hard line against speech restrictions in general: once you start, you can't stop.
So only for computer systems? LockPickingLawyer is still safe for now?<p>That said, are they just going to push these people out to less annoying formats like a blog or a wiki instead of overly long video presentations?
So more random bullshit YouTube censorship, but what are people going to do?<p>Hosting videos in 2019 is easy. Getting your content discovered is the hard bit.<p>We need a decentralised and/or federated alternative for video-content publishing. The sooner, the better.<p>YouTube has been taken over by big business and lawyers, and it seems they are gradually trying to “dumb” it down and take away any risky (read: useful/interesting) content to the point it might as well be cable tv.<p>We could use a viable, alternate and free platform this very instant.
Google's own bug bounty program (Vulnerability Reward Program) allows you to submit YouTube videos and even has a tutorial on how best to make one:<p><a href="https://sites.google.com/site/bughunteruniversity/improve/how-to-record-an-effective-proof-of-concept-video" rel="nofollow">https://sites.google.com/site/bughunteruniversity/improve/ho...</a>
A government is an organization that governs. Any organization that polices it's customers/users beyond what the law requires them to is acting as a government. YouTube crossed that line a long time ago. Like home owners associations, YouTube is a government and should be forced by courts to recognize constitutional protections of civil liberties.
A lot of people (especially here) would like to see more competition from non-Google platforms like Vimeo or others (currently they're so obscure, I can't even name any others), so not making too big a fuss about this and not getting it reverted might be a good thing because it forces people to go somewhere else with kids or IT security videos.
So apparently the video was about how to light fireworks using WiFi, could it then be the case that it might fall under a 'dangerous handling of explosives' guideline instead of the 'showing users how to bypass secure computer systems'. The Google support pages says there are other guidelines not listed there.
"Don't trust the cloud. Don't trust YouTube. Download. Download. Download. UbuWeb is the backup for the internet." [0]<p>[0] <a href="https://mobile.twitter.com/ubuweb/status/1020549542503231488" rel="nofollow">https://mobile.twitter.com/ubuweb/status/1020549542503231488</a>
Ultimately the solution is to remove the allure and income YouTube presides over.<p>Imagine if the top 5% of YT channels deleted all their videos, leaving only one describing why.<p>Nothing short of this will actually stop them from forever widening the scope of what is disallowed.<p>If the channel owner doesn't get income, then YT doesn't deserve it either.
Not anymore a conspiracy theory. This is the actual big brother modeling our futures, a group of people powerful enough, with their own interests and their own agenda with access to most peoples minds/lives, and who already publicly explained how they plan to influence on global geopolitics and society building.<p>I find it disturbing this level of censorship. At first, it was pedophiles, murders and violent criminal acts, then terrorism and copyright... even without the need of a lawsuit or proper request from a court it is hard to argue against this sort of censorship. But now they started banning and censoring everything they find immoral and the definition of morals is subjective and not even philosophers could argue that there is any common moral, not even among the most uniform society. Good luck to everyone, sooner than later they will change their definition of morality and we all gonna pay with our freedom. I think it is a better win for everyone to defend individual rights over the supposed benefit of collectives as history proved because no one is authorized or qualified enough to decide our collective destiny. But many are the ones who feel entitled to do it.
I wonder why YouTube has to be the go-to source for useful video in the first place. Seems steps like this drive important content to other, hopefully more privacy-conscious platforms.<p>This is a bigger loss for YouTube than the security community.
I hope they leave my favorite YouTube channel alone<p>The Lockpicking Lawyer<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCm9K6rby98W8JigLoZOh6FQ" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCm9K6rby98W8JigLoZOh6FQ</a>
Nothing to see here, cat videos are safe. /s<p>edit: what I'm trying to say is: people don't care about freedom; they won't care until stupid, useless things like cat videos are threatened
It's interesting that Google had an issue with Pixie Dust. This makes no sense: more people should know this type of attack exists as many of not most home routers are vulnerable.
Hey , it lowers their security costs, that s very reasonable. Next they ll ban videos that teach how to install an ad blocker. It lowers their advertising loss, thats reasonable.
Oh, thank goodness.<p>I consume a relatively large amount of such content, and I can read twenty good articles in the time it takes to watch one video.<p>Do you think I can get them to ban video game walkthroughs?
YouTube has network effects which are hard to beat; the uploader can use a YouTube alternative but will take a hit in discoverability. Is d.tube still a viable option?
Time to plug MeansTV: <a href="http://means.tv/" rel="nofollow">http://means.tv/</a><p>Hardly politically neutral but also not owned by a giant corporation!
I bet that this new policy incorrectly flagged this video, it will be restored, and none of the apocalyptic descriptions in the other comments will come to fruition.
It feels weird to think that this kind of content might be safe on PornHub. To teach people how to secure things, they need to appreciate attack vectors.
Maybe they just figured they have enough of how to bypass their android factory reset protection and someone who wrote new rule stated too general policy?
<a href="https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2801964?hl=en" rel="nofollow">https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2801964?hl=en</a><p>Instructional hacking and phishing: Showing users how to bypass secure computer systems or steal user credentials and personal data.
Well, this is dumb as hell. Basically, YouTube (i.e. Google) is unwilling to close the holes in their security systems, so they hope to keep everyone in the dark about them??? Any sane person would want people to find and report these vulnerabilities so they could be repaired...
There's a fine line between pentesting education and "how to break into a computer", and it's sad that instructional videos are now being banned due to this policy.
The question is why? Is this something G decided to do or is it required by a government? If it's the first, it's just G being idiotic. The second would worry me very much.
A move that will achieve little other than to damage Google's image further.<p>There are other prevalent video upload/streaming websites who will not as actively enforce their content restrictions. The impact of YouTube's aggressively purging cybersecurity content will be minimal in a practical sense.<p>In a philosophical sense, the internet has no intrinsic governing body, and as such content restrictions are placed in the hands of content hosts.<p>It is when the content hosts are so massive that they are effectively dictating law (not to say that YouTube is forcing a precedent on other hosts, but rather by placing restrictions on such a massive traffic volume) that the "Big Brother" scenario is unsurprisingly brought up.<p>I think if Google tracked everyone who uploaded and/or watched said content and then transmitted their information to the authorities, this would be Big Brother level. And they may very well do this already, I lack the knowledge on the topic to say.<p>But content restrictions are theirs to impose. I think most of us will judge them by the execution of the prohibition of said content.<p>If they successfully keep their filters narrow enough to remove content that is uploaded for the purposes of causing damage/harm to others, I do not think many of us would judge. There are those who speak of freedom of speech, but if I had a list of user credentials for an internet banking website or GMail, I do not think my transmission of them to the masses would be a responsible thing to do, and neither would I think that freedom of speech obstruction would be a valid defence of my actions were I to transmit everybody's user credentials to the masses for anyone to play with.<p>People are not simply recruited as pentesters or similar straight out of school, they are typically required to have qualifications or at least core competencies and I imagine an attitude appropriate to the sensitive work and material involved.<p>It's not as simple as many contend. Many are content with videos about murder, child abuse etc. being prohibited. They talk of their content options being dictated, but look at prior mediums. Television never included these things, because it was considered improper and/or illegal to disseminate material instructing or capable of instructing people to commit or get away with committing acts of crime. The internet had no such restrictions because people are the content producers, not studios.<p>However, the internet has not changed. If you desire freedom of speech, put your own website up as we all did in the beginning, rather than relying on a mainstream host whose legal obligations are proportionate to its mass and its media presence. If you use YouTube, you sacrifice your freedom for convenience and access to traffic volume, just as you would if you were to broadcast on TV or Netflix.
Regular reminder that Hacker News automatically removes content the community doesn't like. Think about that before complaining on Hacker News about YouTube removing videos.
I'd bet that some employees at Google got their interest and possibly initial exposure to infosec by watching, or reading similar (like Phrack 'zine back in the late 80s). Perhaps they're even doing very important things, like working for Project Zero. It would be interesting to know how many people who work in infosec started "on the dark side." I don't think it would be rare, at all. The few actual whitehats I've met sure didn't start out as white hats, and got their start with info publicly available.
I know this might not be a popular opinion.<p>But showing people how to hack systems... that seems like an OK thing to ban. It's a crime. Teaching people how to commit a crime has always been not OK.