It's hard to know how to remain polite about YouTube.

They're not the brightest, and I imagine a lot of menial stuff gets subbed out to the tech equivalent of sweatshops where a decision flow chart is still being slavishly followed by people whose best asset (in the eyes of the tech company) is that they are functioning human and thus better than what machine learning can do. It's likely they still aren't allowed to think for themselves.

I uploaded a BITC copy of a recording of a medical conference, unlisted, purely to give the client something to review and give TC based footage selections back to me. Yeah, using YouTube because it's there.

Got myself a "medical misinformation" warning for my efforts.

Thought it would be fun to test for intelligence ... I mean, 'submit an appeal', and so I did.

"This was a medical conference by literally top tier medical professionals in Australia, including one that has actually developed a COVID vaccine. Of course they are going to be discussing COVID in addition to the medical regulation events in Australia of late. Your algorithmic trigger alerts have struck a false positive."

You guessed it ... appeal unsuccessful.

Not that I hadn't already uploaded to another service because we needed to get on with the job.

Bottom line is that you simply can't depend on YouTube. Yes, it's free. Yes, it's the dominant player "xerox" of the online video space. No, it's just not worth depending on it, even for non-critical stuff.

Andrew

I was only vaguely aware of this but didn’t fully understand what they were doing. For example channels covering the Johnny Dep trial would hesitate when they got to a word like “domestic violence” because I guess the word violence would get the video flagged and taken down.

So now they’ve taken it one step further by not only scanning for copyright but also policing words you are allowed to say. For commercial work I use paid services like Vimeo or free stuff like Google drive, Dropbox, etc Long ago I realized Youtube isn’t good for client work.

I decided to quit youtube completely last year. I mean, I have not uploaded anything there for over 10 years already, but now I don't even watch anything on youtube. So, if you post your videos there, I'll never see them.

I still (reluctantly) use Google for search, because I just haven't found anything else that good for highly technical things like computer code examples. But that is the extent of my use of alphabet.com services.

The nett result of what YouTube is doing is that anything truly interesting is now hosted elsewhere. Other video sites previously had a hard time competing against "free" but it would now be easier for them to complete against "free but unreliable, and not nearly as interesting".

Andrew

Lots of my output is copyright linked, but I don't usually get trouble, until I noted a copyright claim had been made on one video, by a production company I did not recognise. I submitted a claim, got the usual dire warnings of court costs and suggesting I did not go on. I chose to submit it and did. I got told my claim had not been upheld and the copyright holder was not surrendering their claim. The Copyright holder is me. I shot it, edited it, wrote the music and recorded the music. Every Google of the song name comes back to me. Nobody has contacted me, the rights holder, to inform me somebody was using it?

How this works is beyond me.

... of the vidiots, by the vidiots, and for the vidiots ...

Just wait, the US Supreme Court (and court jesters) will outlaw it, because the Constitution does not specifically guarantee a right to use youtube.

... of the vidiots, by the vidiots, and for the vidiots ...

Just wait, the US Supreme Court (and court jesters) will outlaw it, because the Constitution does not specifically guarantee a right to use youtube.
To play devils advocate, Youtube has do these automated policing because of the sheer volume of posted videos and people not respecting copyright rules, or using the platform to distribute hate or misinformation. It's a privately owned company offering a free service so they have the right to run it as they see fit and a legal obligation to follow copyright law so they aren't sued or shutdown.

I can't say I like it but if you're willing to see both sides at least you should be able to understand why they are taking those actions. If you've ever been in a moderator even for a small group of people like this forum you'll disover it's a tiresome and thankless job trying to police people. Now imagine that on a Youtube scale.

TIf you've ever been in a moderator even for a small group of people like this forum you'll disover it's a tiresome and thankless job trying to police people. Now imagine that on a Youtube scale.

Very true, I was a moderator here for a number of years but now I'm just a WINO (Wrangler-In-Name-Only). ;-)

But I'm still a moderator on a couple other sites, including one of the largest forums on the internet. It's pretty crazy, here's a sample of the feedback another moderator recently got

Ugly ********ers. you little ********. Ban me forever. Your site us ugly as ****, your YouTube videos suck ass.

Then a couple days later, he writes back all apologetic, saying he has personal issues. Anyway, I am also upset about the Supreme Court but Chris has always had a "no politics" policy here at DVinfo and I think we should respect that, especially since it has nothing to do with the current youtube discussion.

Indeed - I'm still a mod on a UK tech forum, but after doing it for 20 years got an amazing tirade of abuse when some milleniums really disagreed with my opinion. I decided to avoid the forum and I now rarely post there. Their comments were taken as within the rules........ hmmm.