YouTube removes hundreds of the best climate science videos from the Internet
climatestate.com
climatestate.com
So, lessons learned: 1) Keep backups of everything you'd upload to YouTube. 2) Vimeo.com account 3) Petition YouTube to revamp their content policing strategies to keep humans in the loop instead of algorithms knocking content offline because a mob with pitchforks decides they don't agree with you.
And that they're using clickbait titles like "YouTube/Google shuts down largest climate science channel" to say that their channel was shut down?
Doesn't it look a bit fishy?
[1] http://climatestate.com/product/domain-spacealpha-com/
[2] http://climatestate.com/product/domain-climatestate-com/
Edit: auto-correct typo
Also fishy: they have another very large YouTube channel[1], which is still up and running. Seems like it would have been worth mentioning? It's referenced in their shop page for site sponsorship[2].
On the other hand, if a relatively small charity could get an offer of ~ $100,000 for their domain name, I guess it could be considered prudent to go ahead with selling the domain and relocating? That could pay for a lot of... somethings. Similar to how charities sometimes sell off land to interested developers and relocate, since their location isn't that important and the money can help their core mission.
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for awareness of climate change and science in general. But not everybody is in it to support that cause.
When I stopped using all things Google[1], I switched to Vimeo for any potential videos I might make. So far what I've seen is a more mature, professional, and technologically superior platform for video producers. Gone are the hordes of single-digit-IQ trolls and hate speech spewing masses, replaced with thoughtful commentary. Making money with your original content is straightforward and doesn't feel scummy like on YouTube.
The only thing I miss is the wide range of "how to" videos on YouTube; for all of its flaws, the service is a never ending fountain of hands-on knowledge.
[1] In the interest of full disclosure, I have yet to find a suitable replacement for the Nvidia Shield TV. There is simply nothing else on the market that comes close to it for our uses. I'll probably eventually replace it with a Roku 4 or similar device, but I'll keep the Shield and try to port Linux to it.
Perhaps this is because Vimeo's reach is incredibly small when compared to Youtube.
Bonus tip: install the Termux API app, and termux-tools package, and get clipboard access (along with other Android features).
Is there some terminal app that lets you create new Intents to run commands? Should be simple to tie the action "Open link to youtube.com/" to running "youtube-dl $link".
There _are_ dialog prompts and such.
I don't think I've ever updated it. It's just worked even during times when Youtube-dl required an update to start working again.
Makes it a little more convenient because it adds a download dropdown to the video page. These days, I use it to download all the good stuff because I've had too many experiences of good content disappearing forever.
NewPipe also serves as a good youtube downloader for Android.
b) Having backups and an alternate hosting service is always very good advice, especially for Google's services where they use algorithms to shut down and ban people all of the time.
c) It's not in Google or YouTube's DNA to provide actual decent human customer service. They don't even provide that for actual paying customers, let alone their free services! Sadly, I think YouTube laughs at your petition idea.
Let me point you in the direction of this quote:
> The admins accused the_donald users of “brigading” or mass downvoting comments by r/politics moderators explaining why the posts were deleted and sending them threatening personal messages.
Oh, look at this other post trying to stop The_Donald from brigading so much
> Reddit announced this week that it would tweak the algorithm on r/all, a feed of popular posts across all the site’s subreddits, to stop certain communities from promoting large numbers of their own posts into the top of that feed.
> “I cannot deny their [The_Donald] behavior hastened its deployment,”
In response to The_Donald brigading several posts about Trump to the front page in a very short amount of time.
r/The_Donald brigaded my university's subreddit en masse from a post the moderators there stickied to the top of the sub.
If only we had some tool, that no side would subvert, doctor, hijack and decry - like science and reasoning.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman
("no true Scotsman would do such a thing"; i.e., those who perform that action are not part of our group and thus criticism of that action is not criticism of the group).
Lemme guess, if I respectfully disagree with you, I'll find all of my accounts blocked and my websites DDoSed into the ground? Because the evidence that this claim is wrong is beyond staggering... Keep your Alternative Facts to yourself please.
Google's done it the way they have because it's cheap compared to paying a bunch of moderators, and mostly because they really don't give a damn as long as YouTube still generates ad revenue for them at the end of the day.
Proof, please.
I find that such opinions are valuable in addition to other opinions as far as they remain plausible in cases where all we have are other opinions.
The core infrastructure of the internet (search, social media, archives, etc.) should not be under the influence of single companies. The internet was supposed to be decentralized but we ended up with individual companies taking huge monopolies over our standard internet experiences.
I don't think there is any tech out there today that can properly replace YouTube. Especially things like the recommendation engine. But I also don't think it's that far out of reach. We should putting greater effort into decentralizing the core parts of the internet.
Money, search, email, data storage, social media, DNS, ISP, and I'm sure dozens of other things. We don't need to be vulnerable like this.
There's also the fact that people spend a lot of time, effort, and money making these videos. How would they get paid by a decentralized system?
I want to decentralize too, absolutely. But I'm at a loss as to how we'd accomplish it in a way that ultimately benefits society instead of making an inferior product.
Is something like Patreon tied to youtube? Could you fund someone on vimeo or your own website with it?
Payment is easy if the publisher has a machine online to accept micropayments through something like the lightning network. Maybe there's a way you could make micropayments work through an email-style system or through a delegation system.
I don't think these problems are 10 year problems, I think a good team with a determined attitude could design it in one or two years (coding aside).
Making a direct YouTube replacement is probably not the best use of time though. Instead improving the building blocks or creating a system where at least the data itself is decentralized is probably better. The decentralized replacement for YouTube likely won't be a clone, just as YouTube is not really a clone of traditional TV, yet still has replaced it in many ways.
We used to have web rings. We used to follow people that posted interesting stuff and weren't too annoying, either manually or by rss.
No reason it can't be done afain I think.
How would they get paid by a decentralized system?
By editing in a sponsor message in the film? By adding a few pngs with links to sponsors?
Try out a project I am working on named biddle for your distribution needs: https://github.com/prettydiff/biddle
biddle fights censorship by allowing you to put your publications anywhere. There is no central repository, and since you are required to specify your publication point you just need to find file hosting. This means private publications are free (aside from your hosting expenses) if you publish on an internal network.
As it were I'm working on a decentralized file hosting / data storage platform called Sia. We are probably not quite ready to integrate, as Sia does not yet support allowing others to download your files, but it's in our roadmap.
IPFS would probably also work here, given that the files are public and likely to be downloaded many times. It works like bittorrent in the sense that distribution is unpaid and not guaranteed, but as long as you have enough seeders the file can stay alive.
I think that's perhaps one of the most fascinating lessons of the last 1-1.5 decades. As far as anyone can tell, there was nothing to stop the initially near-fully decentralized web from flourishing --- just as there was nothing to stop increasing centralization from taking hold. No "bigly" tax incentives / subsidies for big IT conglomerates to build up and solidify strongholds etc. Just "let's see how things settle over time", and this is how. (UNLESS we're still in some kind of early railroad-like macro (not micro ala 99-01) "bubble" which inflates slowly largely unnoticed over more than a decade.) At least this whole development has been a boon to FOSS as a slight silver-lining (despite all the transient rubbish that also floats to the top intermittently --- same as ever though).
Anyway, if this centralization evolved near-organically, surely any more decentralized future will also have to evolve mostly-organically? Likely through multiple painful series of "clouds raining down" or some such..
More generally, the combination of incorporation and contract law also strongly encourages centralization: because negotiations are by mutual assent, those with better negotiating positions extract more of the added value from such agreements than those with weaker negotiating positions, and incorporation trivially allows bundling strengths with almost no downside.
Then there's the way the legal system is structured, which is extremely complicated: "red tape". That's a generalized barrier to entry; a kind of cost that doesn't scale with size. Given that legal costs are high, those that can't afford to take risks are going to be outcompeted by larger entities that can afford such gambles, assuming the merit is at least somewhat unclear. In extreme cases, even if a small company (or individual) wins a court case, they may nevertheless be the net loser because cases take long and cost of lot of attention and money - the opportunity cost of engaging is higher for small entities than it is for large entities (at least in general).
Some of those effects are probably intrinsic to any system of organization, but some of them are likely a historical quirk. I'm not sure which are which, though ;-).
I don't see why a video recommendation engine is inherently harder than a web index (which, as hard as it may have been, clearly was possible). You could probably monetize it in exactly the same way.
Video wasn't centralized before Youtube, but since they began offering free hosting for everyone (at astronical cost! they were burning through their money in record time before Google picked it up, and they have been burning money ever since) and video bandwith is probably by far the most expensive thing on your web hosting bill that's where everyone went. If anything, perhaps there should be rules regarding hwo much money you are allowed to spend undercutting your competition at a loss, but that's a polical decision. It can not be solved by technology.
I guess really the term I am looking for is 'trustless'. I don't want to have to trust Google to do the right thing, I just want it to be manifest that there is no manipulation, and no single point of failure.
This reeks of breaking a ToS and then trying to masquerade their political site as something more noble to rationalize creating a narrative of victimhood for marketing/attention.
The group/person behind climatestate.com is either deluded or trying to sell an aggrandizing message by claiming that they're the subject of a "concerted attack on climate science originating from the current U.S. Administration". There might be an attack, but no way was this on anyone's radar.
No, they did not. YouTube removed them from YouTube.
Don't trust others to host your things or provide you with access to other's things.
Sure, they could not post videos on the largest video-sharing platform on the Internet. They could pay someone to host and maintain all that content themselves and have far fewer people see them.
You're not wrong to distrust YouTube (or any such site), but this isn't all on the videomakers. They have a choice: put their stuff on YouTube and risk it being taken down, or put their stuff somewhere else and know for certain far fewer people will see it.
Keep backups. Otherwise when YouTube deletes it from YouTube, YouTube deletes it from the everywhere.
I don't really have anything to be outraged about because we don't now why they did it. Certainly one thinks of Trump's positions but this would not extent to YouTube's actions.
Notice that they don't say "our largest channel" or something less click baited.
There must be some "real" (actual) reason - and no one has even speculated as to what it is. The writeup (which you can see in the cached copy elsewhere in this thread, if the site is still down or unresponsive) makes it really clear that they haven't broken any policy and actively sought guidance on what their infraction might have been.
>This account has been terminated due to multiple or severe violations of YouTube's policy against spam, deceptive practices, and misleading content or other Terms of Service violations.
I will say that the word "ongoing" sounds like they admit they did some specific thing wrong in the past, that they rectified. It doesn't sound like "this came as a total surprise to us." I'm curious why they didn't choose to elaborate on the word "ongoing". Still, there had to be some reason for this action.
They're curious what that was. (Or are faking being curious what that was - and they're faking it well; I believe them.)
by the administration, so... I'm still waiting for the misleading part? I am sure you will agree that there is a conspiracy (two or more people in Trump's administration, conspiring.)
You're saying it doesn't affect them, but if the conspiracy doesn't aeffect them then...why did this happen?
I guess I just don't see anything misleading about their report. If I had my blog about climate change removed since Trump's administration and was told not to open any new blog, period (despite having thousands of views) I'd come to the obvious conclusion that this was the reason. I would (as they did) ask for clarification.
I mean what other reason is there? What did they do wrong exactly - and why wouldn't YouTube clarify in their human-written email on the subject which they quoted in full?
I guess I don't understand your perspective at all.
There is literally ZERO evidence that is true.
What you are saying is like saying I saw the president's dog poop on the white house lawn and today I found poop on my lawn. Then concluding it must have been the president's dog that pooped on your lawn. It's nutty false and untrue.
You are taking two completely unrelated facts and making a wild unsupported claim which most people would call misleading if not a lie.
[Edit] "government censorship seems to be becoming the norm" is perhaps too extreme. Still, the link between the article's evidence of increased censorship and the Trump administration's stance on climate change (and other issues) is concerning.
I suspect a lot of their recent "glitches" are an attempt to poison the well for public content and to drive potentially copyright infringing channels[0] away in order to eventually turn the service into an entirely subscription based, big media friendly platform. But who knows? The point is, it doesn't matter. Unless you're Sony, you might well wake up tomorrow to find your entire channel erased, and you'll never know why.
If your content is important to you, consider hosting it elsehwere, or else offering it as a torrent. It may require a bit more of a technical investment, be less convenient, and even reduce revenue, but in the long run, the more channels for distribution you have, the more you can afford to lose.
[0] infringing from the point of view of media conglomerates, who refuse to respect the legitimacy of fair use.
No business should never depend on a single third-party service
How is the US government censoring anything?
Unfortunately, it's not as simple as asking nicely. Self-hosting costs money especially with huge files like videos. If you have a cheap hosting plan with something like 500 gigabytes of bandwidth and you have a moderately popular video, the web visitors will get a "bandwidth exceeded" error message. Self-hosting videos is a huge costly leap over serving static HTML files.
Hosting videos on others' platforms like YouTube/Vimeo/etc gets past the bandwidth constraint.
My favorite comment on youtube comes from one of the founders, Jawed Karim, back when google was trying to merge all accounts and force you to use real names in google+ and then to tie google+ to youtube: "why the fuck do i need a google+ account to comment"
I whish people wouldn't deride those of us critical of google for being essentially NSA's best friend and reminding people they basically started by the CIA's venture capital firm In-Q-Tel. Please attempt to refrain from accusing those of us who do "paranoid conspiracy theorists" because I feel like over time we are being proven correct and being vindicated, as much as I would like it to be otherwise.
*Edited to take dijit's advice and be less negative/combative.
If that's the case, please don't assume it's because of a conspiracy, or that everyone loves google.
Plenty of people on HN are very critical of google and centralisation in general, myself included.
Furthermore: Could it be due to an automatic process?
Google's support has become a meme at this point, on par with Valve's support.
Of course it's automated. Algorithmic censorship is the name of the game when you want to avoid hiring an army of humans. Most companies also cut on the help desk costs by not providing a mechanism for complaints.
Only those who manage to make waves in public get handled by the PR department, but those are a very small percentage of all the victims.
I'm sure we'll learn of a far more mundane explanation in short order. My money is on some automated process mistakenly removing content (possibly triggered by trolls, but just as likely triggered by a sub-par algorithm).
There have been activists - e.g. Muslim immigrants who work against Islamism - who are targeted by complaints from hard-line Islamists and whose accounts have been suspended. So this is nothing to do with Trump administration.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_the_Uni...
> Categories blocked across the major ISPs include: Dating, Drugs, Alcohol and Tobacco, File sharing, Gambling, Games, Pornography, Nudity, Social networking, Suicide and Self-harm, Weapons and violence, Obscenity, Criminal Skills, Hate, Media Streaming, Fashion and Beauty, Gore, Cyberbullying, Hacking and Web-blocking circumvention tools
It's apparently what the British want, so that's what they're going to get, but the idea that US censorship will lead to British prosperity is ludicrous.
Also, I'll just point out that British censorship systems don't stop the content from being hosted (except where it is illegal, where I wouldn't call that censorship,) it is censored at the ISP level. So, foreign companies could reasonably host stuff in the UK more safely on that basis.
(Unfortunately the recent ban on hosting end-to-end encryption services here wipes out my argument, but that's an orthogonal to the specific case of censorship.)