Self-hosting your own media considered harmful according to YouTube • Hacker News Board

Re: Self-hosting your own media considered harmful according to YouTube

#211

Post by BlueTemplar » Fri, Jun 06, 2025, 9:03 AM UTC

hardwaresofton wrote: post #132

genewitch wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also, most good widely-adopted consumer products NEVER mention anonymity. Maybe security or privacy, but never anonymity. i meant anonymous as in "a user can receive a link to a video and watch it without having to log in" as well as "there's a list of content on the homepage to watch" - the same way youtube works if you go via private browsing. > OK so my thing is that all of this is just too hard. Give me ONE pro…

> i meant anonymous as in "a user can receive a link to a video and watch it without having to log in" as well as "there's a list of content on the homepage to watch" - the same way youtube works if you go via private browsing. Oh yeah this is my fault, I understood your meaning but wanted to make a separate point about the average user and their very specific. IMO the vast majority of open source projects will use t…

A reminder that it's not anonymity in the law enforcement sense because IP addresses are akin to a pseudonym and can be tracked down.

Also, for other cases you can't expect to be anonymous unless you run script blockers. And block first party scripts for the most egregious offenders (for which their websites won't work anyway at that point I guess).

Re: Self-hosting your own media considered harmful according to YouTube

#212

Post by aleph_minus_one » Fri, Jun 06, 2025, 9:07 AM UTC

babushkaboi wrote: post #103

Yeah, and it's not just YouTube's moderation that's messed up. Their whole governance model tilts hard against creators. I have a creator friend who was telling me that newswire agencies are gaming a loophole in YT’s copyright policy to extort creators. Basically, they threaten takedowns unless the creator pays up. Even when creators argue their use falls under "fair use" for reporting, YT’s 3 strike policy doesn’t c…

> Creators are stuck between losing their life's work and paying up just to stay online.

Concerning "[c]reators are [...] losing their life's work": you are telling me that these creators don't have private backups of their videos (or if they accidentally really don't wouldn't at least download their own videos from YouTube to get at least a re-encoded version of their video)?

Re: Self-hosting your own media considered harmful according to YouTube

#213

Post by p1dda » Fri, Jun 06, 2025, 9:10 AM UTC

shakna wrote: post #210

aleph_minus_one wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Whats so special about anti covid desinfo rules? - The magnitude of content involved. - The fact that there exists a significant part of the society which is vocal about not endorsing these particular deletions. - The fact that many people became aware of the moderation ("censorship") that YouTube does and its power. - The fact that these COVID information videos (despite being perhaps wrong) formed important patte…

We also suppress videos on the correct manufacturing process for plastic explosives. Not because doing it safely is a bad idea, but because proliferating bomb making materials is. Covid disinformation got people killed. It will continue to get people killed, especially with a proponent of it leading the US health service. Things likely to lead to death, are likely things you do not want on your platform.

[flagged]

Re: Self-hosting your own media considered harmful according to YouTube

#214

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Jun 06, 2025, 9:11 AM UTC

ZephyrBlu wrote: post #142

touristtam wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> has continuously curbed free speech over the past few decades mmm do you have example at hand or you are just repeating this in the hope that other with voice the same opinion? The UK has a freedom of expression law: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1998/42/schedule/1/part... 1. Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart informati…

It is a massive meme that people get arrested in the UK for saying things which would be protected in the US. https://www.economist.com/britain/2025/05/15/britains-police... https://archive.ph/vaCkJ

[deleted]

Re: Self-hosting your own media considered harmful according to YouTube

#215

Post by nkrisc » Fri, Jun 06, 2025, 9:11 AM UTC

aleph_minus_one wrote: post #200

slg wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These slippery slope comments always seem a little naive to me because they imply there is some pure way to handle moderation. In practice, you have to be an extremist to think literally no content should be removed from Youtube with the most obvious example of something nearly everyone wants to be removed being CSAM. Maybe you would respond by saying that is illegal and only illegal content should be taken down. Acc…

> In practice, you have to be an extremist to think literally no content should be removed from Youtube with the most obvious example of something nearly everyone wants to be removed being CSAM. What is extremist about this opinion? (EDIT: with the exception that we indeed remove CSAM and similar things "everybody" wants removed and will (importantly!) otherwise get YouTube into deep trouble, but (basically) nothing…

Being in favor of CSAM on YouTube would definitely be an extremist opinion in nearly all societies and cultures, I believe.

Re: Self-hosting your own media considered harmful according to YouTube

#216

Post by dragonwriter » Fri, Jun 06, 2025, 9:11 AM UTC

atemerev wrote: post #124

cookiemonsieur wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The UK may not be perfect but no one’s going to complain if you compare the Prime Minister or the King to a cartoon bear. But if you compare Zionism to another eerily similar 20th century europe ism, a lot of people will, indeed, complain.

Zionism is the notion that the state of Israel has the right to exist. Opposing Zionism is the call to destruction of the entire nation-state, and, therefore, a call to genocide. (Opposing the actions of said state is, of course, a natural right and can be freely expressed by anyone).

> Zionism is the notion that the state of Israel has the right to exist.

No state has a right to exist; people have a right to self-determination, and a state of a particular form, and territorial extent may or may not be an realization of such a right, so even in that minimal framing (which I would say is more the motte Zionists retreat to when challenged than the bailey of the actual substantive meaning of the term in practical use by them), Zionism is a flawed and problematic proposal at best.

Re: Self-hosting your own media considered harmful according to YouTube

#217

Post by Latty » Fri, Jun 06, 2025, 9:11 AM UTC

didntcheck wrote: post #191

Latty wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's always funny seeing Americans who have clearly got their news about the UK from questionable sources telling us how actually we live in a dystopian open-air prison. In the US, you have people being literally grabbed off the street and sent to foreign prisons because of their speech with no due process, but the UK is the one close to a loss of freedom of speech because checks notes you can be convicted in a court…

I also live in the UK, and I in fact care about both of these. "Things are worse in America" is a tired and harmful cliché frequently used to deflect valid complaints about affairs here. Is the Trump administration really the low bar we're happy with? And I'm afraid we're long past the point of dismissing police and state overreach into freedom of expression as an "American/right-wing myth". The Julian Foulkes case […

I explicitly said that the UK wasn't free of issues: my pointing out the US was worse wasn't defending our own, simply making the point that some Americans tend to massively exaggerate the UK's issues while pretending the US doesn't have any.

Average people from the UK are going to assume that any pushback on speech controls is nutters if the message comes with absurd exaggerations and outright lies. There are legitimate cases of overreach from our legal system, but too often the focus is on someone actively calling for violence, and those are not the same.

Re: Self-hosting your own media considered harmful according to YouTube

#218

Post by BlueTemplar » Fri, Jun 06, 2025, 9:13 AM UTC

politelemon wrote: post #33

hardwaresofton wrote: post #14

> In that case, I was happy to see my appeal granted within an hour of the strike being placed on the channel. (Nevermind the fact the video had been live for over two years at that point, with nary a problem!) Looks like some L-(5|6|whateverthefuck) just got the task to go through YT's backlog and cut down on the mention/promotion of alternative video platforms/self-hosted video serving software. Quick appeal grant…

Based on my observations over the past decade of similar stories on HN, nothing will change, the squeeze will simply continue. It's because we only hear of incidents in isolation from each other when the giants that abuse their platforms - most often the stories are from apple, google, amazon - take something down that didn't suit their revenue streams even if it's by vague interpretations AND someone with enough of…

Publicly shame people that use platforms. Especially the kind of scum that still does it professionally.

2025 has given a great opportunity to ratchet it up a notch (outside of USA) : with Trump 2 the pretense that USA is an ally of EUrope is gone, so the decade old conclusion that US laws aren't compatible with fundamental rights (Patriot Act => Schrems 2), and therefore US infocoms are illegal — is not something that ought to be ignored any more (so far it was, out of convenience).

Re: Self-hosting your own media considered harmful according to YouTube

#219

Post by sigilis » Fri, Jun 06, 2025, 9:14 AM UTC

tmtvl wrote: post #173

Lio wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don’t be silly. The UK may not be perfect but no one’s going to complain if you compare the Prime Minister or the King to a cartoon bear. Or you talk openly about a government fuck up. Or about one part of the country maybe deciding to become independent. You just can’t shout fire in a crowded cinema and you can’t say “let’s all meet at the local hotel at 3.30 and burn the immigrants to death” during a riot. I’m ok w…

> You just can’t shout fire in a crowded cinema This meme needs to die. You absolutely can shout fire in a crowded theatre. If there is a fire or some other emergency or you have a reasonable belief that there is a fire or other emergency.

The context of the scenario, the meme if you will, is that there is no fire. You're just shouting it for the fun of it, to see the crush of panicked bodies running just because you willed it. That is why it was used as an example of speech that is harmful.

Check out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shouting_fire_in_a_crowded_the...

Re: Self-hosting your own media considered harmful according to YouTube

#220

Post by ulrikrasmussen » Fri, Jun 06, 2025, 9:14 AM UTC

slg wrote: post #130

KurSix wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once you normalize vague enforcement around "problematic" content, the net just keeps widening

These slippery slope comments always seem a little naive to me because they imply there is some pure way to handle moderation. In practice, you have to be an extremist to think literally no content should be removed from Youtube with the most obvious example of something nearly everyone wants to be removed being CSAM. Maybe you would respond by saying that is illegal and only illegal content should be taken down. Acc…

The problem is the nature of YouTube, which is a platform with the main purpose of generating revenue based on advertisement while minimizing their own operational risk. YouTube does not care one bit about whether the content they show is informative, harmful or entertaining, they care about maximizing the amount of ad impressions while avoiding legal repercussions (only if the legal repercussions carry a significant cost, of course). This naturally leads them to err on the side of caution and implement draconian automated censorship controls. If the machine kills off a niche content creator then it means nothing in the grand scheme of things for YouTube. YouTube is a lawnmower, and you cannot reason with a lawnmower.

This is very different from past "platforms" such as niche phpBB boards on the old internet, book publishers or even editorial sections in newspapers who at least to some extent are driven by a genuine interest in the content itself even though they are, or were, also financed by advertisements.

The main problem here is that we allow commercial companies to provide generic and universal "free" content platforms which end up being the de facto gatekeepers if you have something to say. These platforms can only exist because the companies are allowed to intersperse generic user-generated content with advertisements. In my opinion, it is this advertisement-financed platform model that is the core problem here, and automated censorship is only one of the many negative consequences. Other problems are that it leads to winner-takes-it-all monopolies and that it strongly incentivizes ad companies such as Google to collect as much information about people as possible.