Linus gets video removed from Youtube and a first strike warning

[Saracen999]

I suspect most of you are already aware of the removed video (part 2 of LTT's De-Gioogle your life series), but he's uploaded a "why" video, without repeating the bits that YT (apparently) objected to.

It seems that the offending bit was "instructions" on how tp access YT content without going through YT. I have some thoughts on that.

It seems to me, FAR more broadly than just YT (or even google, which is pretty wide) there's a general mindset that content on t'internet is "free". Hmmm.

As a former (now retired) journalist, initially print-only but then 'print-and-online', my view is clearly going to be that content isn't "free". It's going to be paid for one way or another, not least because creating, hosting and serving it has actual real costs associated, and not small ones if you operate at scale.

Paid for how? well, maybe :-

- subscription
- tracking you and targeted advertising
- selling data and 'profiles' of us all
- the new 'cookie paywalls' (i.e. either you accept cookies or pay to not have them). No 'reject' without payment.
- sponsorships
- the worst, IMHO maybe, is "reviews" created by "creators" being paid by the seller of the product (i.e. hidden adverts).

And so on.

To be honest, I find that latter one to be the most offensive, by miles. People pretending to review a producy and actually shilling for the manufacturer. One such creator I saw boasting that he never accepts "payments" (meaning money), but gets to keep (and sell if he wishes) products worth thosands of £/$ etc.

So what about LTT's video?

On the one hand, despite how much I detest Google (and no, I don't EVER watch YT signed in, and yes, I use ad-blockers or, better yet, a browser that does it pretty effectively anyway, I can see YT's point - advising people how to download YT content without going via YT is directly harming their business model, so doing it on Yt is a bit cheeky, to say the least.

HOWEVER .... neither that it can be done, or the methods and tools to do it, are either exactly secret, or hard to find .... ironically, Google search (or an alternative) being a good way to find them.

So by deleting this video, YT pretty much guaranteed that the advice would get FAR more views than it would have if they'd just kept schtum. It's been uploaded on several non-YT platforms I'm aware of (including in China, and good luck getting that taken down, Google) and even on a series of other YT channels.

Streisand effect, anyone?


Nice going, Google. Couldn't happen to a nicer bunch of as..... <signal lost>

[Rob_B]

...and at least one person who reposted it (with LTT blessing) has had their account terminated.

[Saracen999]

...and at least one person who responded it (with LTT blessings) has had their account terminated.

Seems a bit extreme, but I guess it's not too surprising. Maybe a smaller channel doesn't get quite the consideration LTT might, thought LTT is still a pimple compared to Google's behemoth.

There's another way to look at it too. With LTT, it could have been a mistake or oversight, but by someone else republishing ater it's been taken down once, that's pretty much directly poking a stick in outubes eye. There was nothing of a mistake or oversight in that. So I guess YT are making an example of them.

The sad thing is it's up elsewhere, completely outside YT/Google's purview, so re-upping it on YT is a bit of an empty gesture.

[Rob_B]

It's certainly brought it more attention. Reminds me I really need to try and get revanced working again..

[AGTDenton]

The way LTT addressed this in the past has been recommending you pay for YouTube Premium if you don't want ads on YT, they usually bypass the topic after that so the video they've now removed felt a bit hypocritical from that standpoint.

I wonder if it's on floatplane still? Assuming it was put up there.
Perhaps they are becoming a bit cocky now that they have a competing platform.

[Output]

I wonder if it's on floatplane still? Assuming it was put up there.

It was indeed put up on Floatplane too, and it is still there.

[Saracen999]

The way LTT addressed this in the past has been recommending you pay for YouTube Premium if you don't want ads on YT, they usually bypass the topic after that so the video they've now removed felt a bit hypocritical from that standpoint.

I wonder if it's on floatplane still? Assuming it was put up there.
Perhaps they are becoming a bit cocky now that they have a competing platform.

I'm not so sure about the hypocrisy, or that Floatplane is exactly a competitor to YT. An alternative, for sure, but a rather different business model. Certainly, in terms of scale, Youtube will barely notice Floatplane exists. Also, it's more about a more stable platform (and revenue stream) for their creators. And IIRC, no free tier. Join, yes, but success content, no.

On the hypocrisy thing, Linus has certainly explained the YT ad model before, and referred to Ad-blocking as "piracy", which I have to say I don't go along with. He's right, though, in that serving content costs money and the idea is you pay for premium, or you pay by getting ad's. But, my argument would be that it isn't only ad-blockers that bypass that model. For a start, there are browsers that are almost as effectve as the best ad-blockers in default form. Librewolf is pretty close to a pre-hardened version of Firefox, and Mullvad is pretty effective a ad-blocking too.

If YT really wanted to stop 'freeloading', which is probably a fairer term than piracy, they could just put everything behind a paywall .... like Floatplane does. However, it does suit them, does it Because their paywall would be locking out exactly the people they want to market to .... and track/profile, of course.

My perspective is tat running an ad-blocker on YT is more like the equivalent, for old-fashioned TV, of hitting the mute button the moment the ad's ome on, then going and making a cuppa.

An even more accurate analagy might be to be using a digital recorder to 'timeshift' programs, and skip past the ads. The wife and I watch, fr instance, some quiz programs but never as they're shown. We record a few in advance, and when the ad's come on, hit the 30-sec advance button, or fast wind. I haven't watched more than a handful of adverts on 'proper' TV in a couple of decades or more. I certainly can't see how that is in any way 'piracy', though obviously, neither advertisers nor TV channels are going to be very happy about it.

I'm sure Linus doesn't much like ad-blockers .... but as he's said countless times, he just filters ad's out in his head. He just doesn't 'see' them. Sadly, I do .... if I permit them to stay on-screen. And they totally destroy my enjoyment of whatever it is I'm trying to watch. So, whatever it takes, personally, I avoid adverts with much the same fervour that I avoid catching an STD. I don't really regard Linus as particularly hypocritical over his view .... just wrong. But I also really don't care a hoot what he thinks.

[ik9000]

I don't mind ads in youtube until they started randomly shoving them into the middle of videos. it completely breaks the flow of a lecture/ruins a music tutorial/product review where you're trying to listen to differences in A vs B. Do I pay for premium? No I just close the video and do something else instead. So well done youtube. You get less viewing from me. I can live without those vids.

[Saracen999]

I don't mind ads in youtube until they started randomly shoving them into the middle of videos. it completely breaks the flow of a lecture/ruins a music tutorial/product review where you're trying to listen to differences in A vs B. Do I pay for premium? No I just close the video and do something else instead. So well done youtube. You get less viewing from me. I can live without those vids.

That's pretty much my .... 'philosophy' on adverts, too. Maybe I take it a bit further, though.

If I think back, say, 20-25 years, I was getting more and more irritated with adverts, primarily the 'mid-program' adverts, that destroyed my concentration, and enjoyment, of whatever I was watching. Wthether it's a book, or a TV-show or film, I can (if it's good) get kinda lost in the story. What's going on around me fades to background, and I'm 'immersed'.

THEN, AN ADVERT!!!

It breaks the immersion, bursts the bubble, or whatever analogy works for you. It breaks the flow, disrupts the experience and utterly ruins my enjoyment.

It wasn't adverts between programs that wound me up, but the ones inserted into the program that ruined the enjoyment of the program.

Which is why I bought a video recorder ... though that was way before 25 years ago. More like mid/late '70s. Then, I'd record (time-shift) the program, and fast wind past the ead's. But, while it reducedd the break in te immersion, it didn't remove it. It was just the best option available at the time.

Then, about 20-25 years ago, I first experienced a 'magic' device - an HDD video recorder that included the ability to edit the program, pretty close to frame-accurately, too. I bought one (a Pioneer). At that point, my process was :-

- record the TV transmission,
- once complete, edit out the adverts, then
- when it suited me, watch the program, sans adverts entirely.

In other words, a slightly labour-intensive early form of manual ad-blocking. And one that cost me about £400-ish. And then tthe same again for another Pioneer, and a Panasonic equivalent.

The whole thing, from fast-forwarding the video tape, to £1000+ on HDD recorders, to UBlock Origin et.al., is about not getting my enjoyment, or concentration, disrupted.

If the advertisers hadn't got greedy and tried to force their garbage into my enjoyment of <whatever>, I very much doubt I'd be anywhere near so anti-advert now. I wouldn't care about ad's between programs, for instance. But they did get greedy for my (and everybody's) time and my reaction, perhaps unsurprisingly, is a no longer put up with any adverts, anywhere I can conceivably do anything about it, any chance I get EVEN if I have to go to some extremes to avoid it.

And THAT is why I so detest the likes of Google/Facebook etc, and ANYONE (including MS) trying to track, analyse and profile everybody, because they're doing it to serve us adverts.

It's a loathing of ad's that's .... developed, grown, evolved, over a long period. And it has grown to utterly zero tolerance.

There seems to be noises from Google about measures to prevent ad-blockers working, being on the way. Okayyyy, but it's a bit of an arms race. As fast as they block one method, the other side come up with a new way round it. Anyone remember the old software copy-protection game (that led to Steam, and intrusive and offendive DRM), because that was an arms race for years, too. A new method of copy protection was followed by a new method of cracking it. I ended up going from an avid buyer (yes, buyer) of games to not buying one for, probably 15 years. Why? Because of the intrusive nature of DRM, that did exactly the same thing as advertisers did, which was go to the extent that, as a genuine BUYER of games, that made themselves too much of a PITA to put up with it. It took our very own Ferral, here, pointing me to GOG before I bought a game again. What upset me so much? THe need to get some sort of online validation, not only on installation (which I could put up with, much though I disliked it) to every time you started the game up. i.e., Steam, etc.

Prior to that, well, put it this way, I once stacked my collection of perfectly genuine, legit, BOXED games up, one on top of the other. It stretched from floor to ceiling. TWICE! Yet, I stopped buying games entirely when it got to be too hard, and too tim-consuming, to work out, pre-purchase, which game had such online demans built-in, and which didn't. So I stopped buying at all.

And that, to come full circle, is where I am today with adverts.

If I can bypass them with blockers, or in extremis, with a viable amount of time to record, then edit out adverys like I used to for TV time-shifting, then I will. But video editing seems to be a very time and resource-intensive process these days, unlike with those HDD recorders. If Youtube do ever get to the point where I can block in-video ads, I'll simply stop watching Youtube at all. Similarly, despite their much-announced extra charge for Amazon Prime video if you wanted zero ads, i have STILL neither paid the extra, nor watched a single advert. The day that changes is te day I cancel Prime. I promised myselff that when they announced it, and I still have Prime because I have still yet to see an advert. Why don't I? Dunno, but my guess would be either ad-blocker working, or my browser choice doing it.

So, yeah IK, I have much the sme advert 'philosophy', but have perhapsd taken it a bit further. Obsessive? Perhaps. Rational? Maybe not entirely, but if anyone gets me annoyed enough, I can (and do) develop a VERY substantial stubborn streak. Neither donkeys, nor camels, nor mountain goats hold a candle to me if I get stubborn about something.

There is one situation where I can be out-stubborned though. And I married her.