Tag: youtube

Police are Still Weaponizing Copyright to Prevent Transparency

YouTube and other social media websites have strict rules on playing copyrighted content. Police have been using that to prevent embarrassing videos from being posted on the platforms.

Residents in Santa Ana, California were woken up by blasting music around 11pm on April 4, a Monday. But the music was not a bass bumping rap song or a heavy metal piece with screaming vocals, it was “We Don’t Talk about Bruno” from the animated Disney film “Encanto.” And it was not being played by a teenage house party or an inconsiderate driver with a loud sound system, but a police vehicle.

Police responded to a stolen vehicle call in the neighborhood when an observer who runs the YouTube channel Santa Ana Audits started recording the activity. That’s when officers started blasting the Disney owned track, in an apparent attempt to prevent the video from being posted on YouTube and Instagram. Thanks to those platform’s algorithmic copyright enforcement, any video that includes a copyrighted song is susceptible to being removed. Its channel owners are also subject to warnings and even getting banned from the platform.

Unfortunately for Santa Ana Police, they happened to be in the neighborhood of city councilman David Penaloza who, like many of his neighbors, was awakened by the ruckus caused by the city’s police department.

Penaloza came outside and confronted the officer, who admitted that what he was doing was intended to prevent the video captured by Santa Ana Audits making its way onto YouTube.

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YouTube deletes entire back catalog of Pulitzer-winning journalist Chris Hedges

YouTube is at it again, this time setting its sights on Pulitzer-winning journalist Chris Hedges, whose entire video archive for the On Contact program published on Google’s platform has been deleted.

Hedges announced this in a blog post, saying that the show, which was broadcast for six years on RT America and RT International and even received Emmy nominations, is now gone from YouTube.

Hedges goes on to list some of the high profile people he spoke with over the years and explains that those interviews are now gone: Noam Chomsky, Naomi Wolf, Slavoj Zizek, Glenn Greenwald, Matt Taibbi, among dozens of others.

Hedges has been treated by YouTube like so many other creators over the years of stepped-up censorship that has little time, and sees little reason to explain itself: namely, there has been no explanation.

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YouTubers help find body of Pennsylvania man missing for nearly 20 years

A YouTube group reportedly helped find the body of a Pennsylvania man who was missing for almost 20 years. 

“It’s my brother,” the victim’s brother Stephen Amabile told The Philadelphia Inquirer when remains were found inside a car in a body of water Saturday. “They found him.”

The victim’s brother says a family member reached out to a group called Adventures with Purpose leading up to Saturday’s discovery. 

Adventures With Purpose runs a YouTube channel with over 2 million subscribers and is renowned for their ability to solve missing-person cases in bodies of water. They reportedly discovered a car at Darby’s Creek in Pennsylvania Saturday evening believed to be James Amabile’s. 

“I’ve gotten used to not expecting anything, and I tuned a lot of things out,” Stephen Amabile told The Philadelphia Inquirer. “But it didn’t take them very long to figure out there was an SUV down there.”

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YouTube Flags Tulsi Gabbard’s Criticism of “War Machine” as “Offensive” Content

YouTube flagged a Fox News interview in which former Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard said war in Ukraine was good for the military industrial complex as “offensive” content.

Yes, really.

Apparently, upsetting war profiteering defense contractors is now grounds for censorship.

During the interview, host Laura Ingraham asked Gabbard why people were still demanding no fly zones, something that would likely cause World War III, when President Zelensky was “stepping back from his earlier NATO wishes and even demands?”

Gabbard responded by pointing out that Zelensky has said he’s willing to negotiate with Putin and “set this NATO membership thing aside.”

According to YouTube, such advocacy for peace is borderline content and needs to be hidden behind a warning screen. The video is also age-restricted.

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YouTube bans “denying, minimizing or trivializing well-documented violent events” about Russia-Ukraine war

YouTube has started removing content about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine that violates its rules around “denying, minimizing or trivializing well-documented violent events.”

As part of this expanded enforcement of these rules, which were first introduced in February 2019, YouTube said it’s also “blocking access to YouTube channels associated with Russian state-funded media globally.”

Additionally, YouTube reported that it has censored over 1,000 channels and over 15,000 videos since March 1 for violating policies such as its “hate speech,” “misinformation,” and “graphic content” policies.

Not only has YouTube censored more than 15,000 videos in less than two weeks but it has also boosted “trusted sources” and its “breaking news and top news shelves” on its homepage have received more than 17 million views in Ukraine.

“Our teams continue to closely monitor the situation, and are ready to take further action,” YouTube tweeted. “We will continue to share updates as they become available.”

The ban follows YouTube blocking two Russian state-controlled media outlets, RT (Russia Today) and Sputnik, in Europe earlier this month after an order from the European Union (EU).

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YouTube to censor “new misinformation” preemptively

YouTube, the world’s dominant video sharing platform, has already removed over one million videos for violating its strict and controversial “misinformation” rules. But in a new announcement, the tech giant has revealed that it’s going to be getting even stricter and suppressing “new misinformation” preemptively before it has the chance to gain traction.

YouTube’s Chief Product Officer Neal Mohan described how the video-sharing platform will start “catching new misinformation before it goes viral” in a blog post. The process will involve continuously training YouTube’s machine learning systems with “an even more targeted mix of classifiers, keywords in additional languages, and information from regional analysts” to identify “narratives” that YouTube’s main classifier doesn’t catch.

Mohan added: “Over time, this will make us faster and more accurate at catching these viral misinfo narratives.”

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YouTube CEO wants governments pass laws to “have more control over online speech”

Susan Wojcicki, the CEO of YouTube, has acknowledged that the platform’s policy of censoring legal content that it deems to be “harmful” is controversial and urged governments to step in and pass stronger speech laws.

Wojcicki made the comments in an interview with the Hamburg-based independent broadcaster TIDETVhamburg where she was asked about how the platform navigates the “minefield” or complying with national laws while also keeping advertisers happy and users interested.

“We work around the globe, and you’re right, certainly there are many different laws and many different jurisdictions, and we…enforce the laws of the various jurisdictions around speech or what’s considered safe or not safe,” Wojcicki said.

She added that there’s been little controversy when YouTube enforces these laws. Instead, the controversy arises when YouTube decides to censor speech that it deems to be “harmful” but “not illegal,” particularly in relation to COVID.

“What has been the controversial part is when there is content that would be deemed as harmful but yet is not illegal,” Wojcicki said. “An example of that, for example, would be COVID. I’m not aware of there being laws by governments saying around COVID in terms of not being able to debate the efficacy of masks or where the virus came from or the right treatment or proposal but yet there was a lot of pressure and concern about us distributing misinformation that went against what was the standard and accepted medical knowledge. And so this category of harmful but…legal has been, I think, where most of the discussion has been.”

Despite admitting that the way YouTube censors legal content is controversial, Wojcicki pushed for stronger speech laws that would accommodate this censorship.

“Our recommendation, if governments want to have more control over online speech is to pass laws to have that be very cleanly and clearly defined so that we can implement it,” Wojcicki said.

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YouTube’s new censorship tactic is to limit streams that are too popular

YouTube has a brand new censorship tactic that appears to be affecting small creators – and one that, on the face of it, makes no sense.

Several livestreams posted on Google’s platform last weekend by truckers protesting in Canada have had their audience limited. The reason given to viewers trying to access the videos? They were too popular.

“Video unavailable: This video is popular! Due to limited creator history, we’re limiting the number of viewers,” YouTube’s message reads, and then advises visitors to subscribe to the channel “to help this creator reach a broader audience.”

No word, though, on whether that would make the videos available to that broader audience, or if YouTube would come up with yet more “censorship gymnastics” while trying to suppress content it might not approve of.

Some incredulous Twitter users reacted by saying they were waiting for confirmation that the message was “a thing and not a meme.”

However, it definitely is a thing – and it’s not hard to see how YouTube would disapprove of the particular streams from the Ottawa protests, since they were organized by truckers opposed to Covid vaccine mandates. Reports mention that the giant platform limited viewership of at least two creators both livestreaming from the “Trucker Freedom Convoy” events.

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YouTube Censors Bombshell Joe Rogan Interview With Cardiologist Peter McCullough

In a move that will come as a shock to absolutely no one, YouTube is censoring clips of Joe Rogan’s interview with cardiologist Peter McCullough wherein the doctor laid out how early treatment of COVID is being actively suppressed by governments and big-pharma in favour of a blind pursuit to vaccinate everyone.

Texas-based McCullough urged that treatments including ivermectin and monoclonal antibodies are being sidelined in order to “create acceptance for, and then promote, mass vaccination.”

During the three hour long exchange, McCullough also spoke at length about vaccine side effects, including myocarditis in young people.

McCullough tweeted out a link to a YouTube video of the interview, which has since been pulled down.

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Climate scientist asks YouTube to censor climate “misinformation”

A climate change scientist has complained to YouTube for appearing to promote what he suggests is climate change denial content. The scientist told the platform that it should treat climate change “misinformation” the same way it has been treating COVID-19 “misinformation.”

Prof. Michael Mann, the director of the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University, tweeted: “Hey @Youtube. It’s good you’re taking down COVID denial videos. Now it’s time for you to remove climate denial videos. They pose an even greater threat to humanity in the long term.”

His tweet was in response to another user who tweeted that he has been getting recommendation of a 2013 climate change denial video too often.

The video, titled “Why has Global Warming Paused? – William Happer,” featuresPrinceton University physics professor and Trump appointee to the National Security Council William Happer.

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