HellsBelle

YouTube Quietly Erased More Than 700 Videos Documenting Israeli Human Rights Violations

https://sh.itjust.works/post/49255864

YouTube Quietly Erased More Than 700 Videos Documenting Israeli Human Rights Violations - sh.itjust.works

A DOCUMENTARY FEATURING mothers surviving Israel’s genocide in Gaza. A video investigation uncovering Israel’s role in the killing of a Palestinian American journalist. Another video revealing Israel’s destruction of Palestinian homes in the occupied West Bank. YouTube surreptitiously deleted all these videos in early October by wiping the accounts that posted them from its website, along with their channels’ archives. The accounts belonged to three prominent Palestinian human rights groups: Al-Haq, Al Mezan Center for Human Rights, and the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights. The move came in response to a U.S. government campaign to stifle accountability for alleged Israeli war crimes against Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.

Nov 5 at 4:19pmWeb
Show threadNuXCOM_90PercentNov 5

Skimmed the article (yay for reader view) but it doesn’t really say WHY the channel was deleted?

I am not in the slightest bit shocked by google bending over backwards to pleasure trump and netanyahu. But this also doesn’t seem like their MO. They are usually “good” about explaining what new rule they invented and why that suddenly gave a channel 40 strikes retroactively and I am not seeing that here?

Whereas there are a few mid-size channels that have allegedly been flagged “by AI” as being other bad channels? Which… actually seems more likely since it is less youtube taking an actual stand on anything and more just deciding the ai slop channels that stole footage are the originators and to ban everyone involved.

Show threadZagorathNov 5
It’s also possible, not having seen the videos in question, that they simply did violate YouTube’s rules regarding graphic content. YouTube has had a terrible record of banning important content despite its societal value because of rigid adherence to ill-thought-out content policies. AI takes that problem and turns it up to 11.
Show threadSkaveRatNov 5

that they simply did violate YouTube’s rules regarding graphic content

I’m 99% sure this is the actual reason

Show threadDevolutionNov 5
Is there another alternative to YouTube? One that isn’t a right wing hellscape?
Show threadsloppysolNov 5
Peer tube?
Show threadarcterusNov 5

Problem with PeerTube is the content is pretty scattered and there’s frankly just not that much normal content. There’s relatively a lot for like Linux stuff, but other than that there’s not a ton. Also, there’s no way to compensate people, so hard to attract content creators (this is both a plus and a negative tbh).

Other problem is that, like pretty much all fediverse stuff, it’s possible to wind up on an instance with a bunch of Nazi content federated to it. Of course, since YouTube has Nazi content, this isn’t really much different.

Show threadGary GhostNov 6
YouTube is one of the platforms that started at just the right time. People only know about it because it popped off in about 2005/6 . The creators didn’t get paid, at least I don’t think they did, it was just a lot of fun. Correct me if I’m wrong, maybe the first content creators did get paid.
Show threadoopsgodisdeadmybadNov 6

Video content creation wasn’t a thing that far back.

YouTube was (in my experience) the first site at all where you could click a video and not wait 3 years for it to load, plus having a UI around it.

Most people’s Internet speeds weren’t even close to being fast enough to consistently load them fast enough to want to watch more than a few in a session. Decent waits and buffers throughout still made it painful. Just less painful than it was before.

Most other videos back then were scattered around on separate sites, and related to the content on the site, and they usually had to download completely before even starting to play. (Kinda like pirating a movie these days)

So given that most people couldn’t use other sites and tolerate it for long, YouTube created a market that didn’t exist before, and there wasn’t a content creation machine in place ready to go.

That kinda took off as more and more people got broadband connections and started being able to watch almost as soon as they clicked a link.

I don’t have hard dates for this, just an impression from memory of the era.

So the “creators” were just random people filming slightly less random things. There weren’t well known channels, or filters for different genes or topics. You could choose from “dude filming an animal do something funny” or “something unlikely to be caught on camera being caught on camera”.

And most of it was shot on terrible cameras (since digital cameras were still going from “looks like objects filmed through 4 layers of plastic” to “really tiny footage of decent quality”, there wasn’t much that existed to draw a lot of people other than a feeling of hoping to stumble on the newest really cool clip.

But, since capitalism exists to make everything worse, the market got its act together shortly after. But not immediately. It took a whole new kind of infrastructure to get it moving.

People needed better digital cameras (unless you thought transferring from analog tapes was a fun weekend), better Internet, and the site itself has to start figuring out how to run things to make a better experience.

Google buying it was both a great infusion of capital to help it as well as being a cancer injection that would poison it.

I like the concept of peertube, but it’s not gonna take off in its current state. I don’t think anything takes off without capitalism happening to it these days. If something takes off, it’s probably fruit of a poisonous tree. Can’t have any good new popular technology without it being tampered with by billionaires

Show threadZagorathNov 7

Kinda like pirating a movie these days

Not really. More like pirating a movie in 2012. These days, there are excellent-quality pirate streaming services, there’s the ability to stream videos over bittorrent (if there are enough seeds), and probably other options I’m not thinking of that make pirated video more accessible than ever.

Show threadoopsgodisdeadmybadNov 7
Do they prioritize the data at the beginning now? I haven’t done it in years but last time I did it just downloaded little pieces of the files until it has them all assembled, meaning that playback would be impossible if you try until it’s finished.
Show threadZagorathNov 7

Do they prioritize the data at the beginning now?

I remember my bittorrent client having an option to do that even back in like 2010, though I never used it to actually stream, because my Internet wasn’t good enough.

Show threadmagguzuNov 6

Nebula is the only thing remotely comparable.

I’m loving it. But its not a “search what you want and you’ll find it” like YouTube is. You can’t search for a video to DIY your bathroom tile.

That alternative simply doesn’t exist.

If you treat it like podcasts i.e. follow creators you like (just about all of them are also YouTubers) theres some excellent content there. And the creators are all stakeholders so no daddy capitalist screwing with algorithms.

PeerTube is the open source federated one. But discovery is next to impossible on it.

Show threadZagorathNov 7

Yeah Nebula is for sure the best with the volume and variety of content they have. But there are also many creators/groups creating their own independent platforms. The NZ-based videogame sketch creators Viva la Dirt League have Viva+, the ancient tech podcast/vodcast company This Week in Tech has Club TWiT, and probably most successfully the former CollegeHumor is now focusing on improv comedy as Dropout, among others.

I assume many of these are probably white labelled Patreon (or similar) services, or possibly a front-end site with white-labelled Vimeo for serving videos, rather than building their own infrastructure from scratch. But as far as the viewer is concerned those technical details don’t matter.

Show threadZagorathNov 7

As others have said, Nebula is pretty great. Much more limited in content, since creators are invite-only, and they curate for high quality creators. But it’s growing quite quickly and has a wide variety of content from leftist cultural video essays, to music analysis, to urbanism, film criticism, science, original films, game shows, and more.

There are a couple of centrist creators on there that I personally avoid, but most creators are centre-left to leftist, and I don’t think there’s anyone I would explicitly describe as right-wing.

It’s subscription only, but extremely affordable at $36/year or $6/month if you sign up through a creator’s invite code, and I think they promised grandfathered pricing if they raise the price in the future. You can see their library without an account at nebula.tv/explore/videos. Or ask any more questions you might have at [email protected].

Videos

Nebula is smart, thoughtful videos, podcasts, and classes from your favorite creators.

Nebula
Show threadqarboneNov 5

I feel like aiding war criminals in deleting evidence should get your company destroyed.

Maybe not all of Alphabet unless we can prove this was an initiative started from the top, but Youtube should be diassembled for one-sidedly purging evidence. Hopefully, those accounts kept offline copies.

Show threadHurricaneLizNov 6
I moved to NewPipe - no ads, and you can import your yt playlists and subscriptions so you don’t have to start from scratch. Plus it plays in the background and if the phone screen is off
Show threadproleNov 6
It’s still youtube though. The videos are still being hosted by yt
Show thread1985MustangCobraNov 5
nice censorship youtube.
Show threadGary GhostNov 5
It does make me think twice about ever purchasing a google pixel. What another android phone that has good spam call protection or app?
Show thread100_kg_90_de_belinNov 6
Buy a refurbished Pixel and slap GrapheneOS on it
Show threadFlashMobOfOneNov 6
This just tells me that Israel has pedo videos of the decision makers at Google.
Show thread100_kg_90_de_belinNov 6
It isn’t even like that, Alphabet is humoring Trump and the global far right because it’s more profitable, just like being “woke” was more profitable for them in the past.
Show threadmycodesucksNov 6
That can’t be. Every time I point out that youtube is a HORRIBLE place for people to make the source of record for movements, history, and general archival, and that blogging and text are more durable and necessary for these exact reasons, I get downvoted into oblivion. It must be a problem with reality because video good and video is the future and only reach matters.
Show threadsupersquirrelNov 6
I just want to say, I share your specific species of frustration here and understand it well. Ughhh.
Show threadreddifugeNov 6
But they allow far right extremist content.
Show threadsupersquirrelNov 6
They actively encourage it in fact.
Show threadArmchairAce1944Nov 6

People say that the internet never forgets… but they didnt take into account the centralization of the internet and the control they have over the content.

It might be crazy to think this… but imagine in a few years all videos and posts and articles on various sites documenting the genocide were fully purged. Leaving only people’s frail memory of events. Even the IDF and Israeli civilians incredibly incriminating videos would be removed, and anyone caught with an archive on a personal device could be criminally charged or have it taken from them for destruction.

Basically this shit is beyond 1984. And I don’t use 1984 that often as a metaphor.

Show threadWarl0k3Nov 6

The internet never forgets, but only for those things the internet wants to remember.

Forreal though, the internet isn’t so centralized that records could be purged like this. Made less easily publicly accessible? Sure. But I doubt rumble or bitleaks or the thousand other sites that popped up and mirrored LiveLeaks after it shut down are going to all cooperate with that idea.

Show threadGreenKnight23Nov 7
just a friendly reminder that peer.tube exists.
Show threadfoggianismNov 7
so what does it do?