YouTube erased more than 700 videos documenting Israeli human rights violations • Hacker News Board

Re: YouTube erased more than 700 videos documenting Israeli human rights violations

#81

Post by konart » Wed, Nov 05, 2025, 2:15 PM UTC

Jean-Philipe wrote: post #34

konart wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It's amazing how people forgot to use the internet in exchange for "easier" UX. What's so amazing here? This a normal and expected human behaviour. >forgot to use the internet What does this even mean in this context?

From my experience, it used to be quite normal for a lot of my non-technical peers to have a personal webpage on the internet with frontpage express, wordpress or geocities. Nowadays, even a lot of businesses don't have a website, but instead an Instagram or Facebook entry. YMMV The internet is still decentralized today.

Idk, most people I know used services like wordpress.com (so not self hosted), livejournal (and its local alternatives) etc.

This if we are talking about second half of 00s. Before this? Most people barely have internet access at home. And things like BBS (for example) were for techies only with very few exceptions.

Maybe it was quite different in the US for example.

Re: YouTube erased more than 700 videos documenting Israeli human rights violations

#82

Post by tamimio » Wed, Nov 05, 2025, 2:15 PM UTC

hliyan wrote: post #33

isodev wrote: post #11

That's why we have Peertube and your personal (not hosted by a corp) website. It's amazing how people forgot to use the internet in exchange for "easier" UX.

I wonder if the future should simply be a cloud version of a personal computer. Rather than subscribing to a lot of SaaS where your data distributed across various platforms, you "purchase" a cloud computer (could be a tiny SOC + disk, or a VM), install software on it (licensed, not subscription based), and store all your data on it, as good old-fashioned files only you and your programs can access. Including your vi…

So you put all your eggs in one basket, what could go wrong?!

Re: YouTube erased more than 700 videos documenting Israeli human rights violations

#83

Post by boxed » Wed, Nov 05, 2025, 2:24 PM UTC

teddyh wrote: post #47

boxed wrote: post #45

Youtube takes down snuff. News at 11. It doesn't matter if the snuff is an Israeli shooting a Palestinian, or a jihadi beheading a cartoonist. It's all removed because YouTube doesn't accept snuff on its platform.

Technically, “snuff” is usually defined as at least being made for entertainment (I say “usually”, since commonly other requirements are added as well). But beheading videos and the like are meant to scare their enemies , not to entertain weirdos on the internet. So these are not “snuff” videos.

I would think the "for entertainment" is in the eye of the beholder, and the production part is irrelevant. In either case, YouTube has never allowed this stuff.

Re: YouTube erased more than 700 videos documenting Israeli human rights violations

#84

Post by trinsic2 » Wed, Nov 05, 2025, 2:24 PM UTC

fluoridation wrote: post #69

marcuskane2 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> your personal (not hosted by a corp) website I'm not sure that's enough. A few years ago there were some set of websites that wanted less censorship than the main corporate sites (or at least, a different set of censorship rules), I forget all their names now - voat, rumble, gab, parler, etc and people who didn't like the content they saw there just went upstream to cloud providers, app stores, registrars, payment…

>I think to maintain any sort of real open web, we're going to need some sort of new Tor network that can support billions of users anonymously accessing information which can't be deplatformed That already exists. They're called onion sites. What we really need is something that performs about as well as the current Internet, but is stronger against deplatforming: decentralized DNS. It doesn't even need to give memo…

Decentralization just puts people that run servers as middle men to further impose a censorship agenda with ActivityPub.

Whatever it is it needs to be distributed like BitTorrent.

Re: YouTube erased more than 700 videos documenting Israeli human rights violations

#85

Post by pas » Wed, Nov 05, 2025, 2:31 PM UTC

marcuskane2 wrote: post #55

isodev wrote: post #11

That's why we have Peertube and your personal (not hosted by a corp) website. It's amazing how people forgot to use the internet in exchange for "easier" UX.

> your personal (not hosted by a corp) website I'm not sure that's enough. A few years ago there were some set of websites that wanted less censorship than the main corporate sites (or at least, a different set of censorship rules), I forget all their names now - voat, rumble, gab, parler, etc and people who didn't like the content they saw there just went upstream to cloud providers, app stores, registrars, payment…

someone is hosting kiwifarms and stormfront (for 29 years and counting)

gab, voat and the others simply gave up when the convenient providers did not want to deal with their bullshit

YT is not the hosting provider of record, even if it looks like it sometimes (I guess no one is)

Re: YouTube erased more than 700 videos documenting Israeli human rights violations

#86

Post by bjoli » Wed, Nov 05, 2025, 2:43 PM UTC

xyzal wrote: post #44

Fed up by status quo? Consider donating. https://www.hindrajabfoundation.org/donate

For those not clicking random links: this foundation tries to find evidence of atrocities by people with dual citizenship so that they can be prosecuted in their other home country.

Re: YouTube erased more than 700 videos documenting Israeli human rights violations

#87

Post by skulk » Wed, Nov 05, 2025, 2:51 PM UTC

woodpanel wrote: post #64

EdiX wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where were you in the last 6 years? Ah, I see, people you didn't like were being censored so you didn't care.

Exactly, it's laughable that this is coming from the same people who cheered on auto de-monetization for even mentioning the word "Covid" in a YT-video or the countless de-platforming and de-banking of individuals. Is this still gaslighting or something else?

Google didn't censor covid-related conspiracies or whatever at the behest of the government. YouTube can censor whoever it wants but the US government cannot.

Also, do you have any actual evidence of political debanking in the US? I can't find any references to it other than the propaganda of the current administration.

Re: YouTube erased more than 700 videos documenting Israeli human rights violations

#88

Post by alwahi » Wed, Nov 05, 2025, 2:59 PM UTC

EdiX wrote: post #42

DiogenesKynikos wrote: post #2

It turns out that it's much easier than anyone thought to end freedom of speech in the United States. If no one cares about the Constitution, then it's just paper. Trump sanctions the International Criminal Court and anyone who provides evidence to it, and now pro-Palestinian groups can't post videos of Israeli abuse on YouTube. The First Amendment is nowhere to be seen.

Where were you in the last 6 years? Ah, I see, people you didn't like were being censored so you didn't care.

you must understand that your country is basically a uniparty that allows vigorous debate in a very zone of ideas (to paraphrase Chomsky), e.g Biden allowed the genocide to continue for as long as he was in office. Your country is basically subservient to Capital and the Israeli lobby.

The lesson to draw from Gaza is that if you become inconvenient to "the people in power" tomorrow, you would meet the exact same fate.

Re: YouTube erased more than 700 videos documenting Israeli human rights violations

#89

Post by alsetmusic » Wed, Nov 05, 2025, 3:01 PM UTC

There was an article yesterday about Jimmy Wales commenting on edit wars on the Wikipedia entry for Genocide in Gaza (or similar title). The article didn't indicate his taking one side or the other, but I'd prefer if people didn't use name-recognition to influence such things (yes, even if they take the same side as me because others will do the same in the other direction).

Fwiw, I downloaded a torrent of footage documenting the genocide last year. I don't think it would be considered appropriate for me to link to it here on HN, but I wanted to raise awareness that torrents such as this exist.

I'm also on a torrent full of CDC data that was taken down by the current admin plus a couple of other public-service torrents. You can find stuff like this too. I got mine from a certain federated clone of the R site.

Re: YouTube erased more than 700 videos documenting Israeli human rights violations

#90

Post by fluoridation » Wed, Nov 05, 2025, 3:04 PM UTC

trinsic2 wrote: post #84

fluoridation wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I think to maintain any sort of real open web, we're going to need some sort of new Tor network that can support billions of users anonymously accessing information which can't be deplatformed That already exists. They're called onion sites. What we really need is something that performs about as well as the current Internet, but is stronger against deplatforming: decentralized DNS. It doesn't even need to give memo…

Decentralization just puts people that run servers as middle men to further impose a censorship agenda with ActivityPub. Whatever it is it needs to be distributed like BitTorrent.

>Decentralization just puts people that run servers as middle men to further impose a censorship agenda with ActivityPub.

Name lookup is not like a social media feed. If a server is censoring, say, TPB, it's plainly obvious, because you'll go to the IP and not get the content you expected. Just move on to the next server on the list until you find one with the up-to-date information.

>Whatever it is it needs to be distributed like BitTorrent.

DNS is already a distributed system like BitTorrent. When you publish an IP update you do it to a single node, which then propagates through the network. The deplatforming problem of DNS is that name assignment is something only central authorities can grant and revoke.