- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.ml
- degoogle@lemmy.ml
- hackernews@lemmy.bestiver.se
- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.ml
- degoogle@lemmy.ml
- hackernews@lemmy.bestiver.se
YouTube pulled a popular tutorial video from tech creator Jeff Geerling this week, claiming his guide to installing LibreELEC on a Raspberry Pi 5 violated policies against “harmful content.” The video, which showed viewers how to set up their own home media servers, had been live for over a year and racked up more than 500,000 views. YouTube’s automated systems flagged the content for allegedly teaching people “how to get unauthorized or free access to audio or audiovisual content.”
Geerling says his tutorial covered only legal self-hosting of media people already own – no piracy tools or copyright workarounds. He said he goes out of his way to avoid mentioning popular piracy software in his videos. It’s the second time YouTube has pulled a self-hosting content video from Geerling. Last October, YouTube removed his Jellyfin tutorial, though that decision was quickly reversed after appeal. This time, his appeal was denied.
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Everyone who is capable of hosting a peertube instance should do so, even if it’s just to host your own content. I know, “it will never replace youtube” but if as many people as possible use it and share bandwidth between each other we will at least have SOMETHING in terms of a youtube alternative.
Notably, Youtube does not consider exploiting children for profit harmful.
Harmful is just code for “threatens the bottom line of multibillion dollar companies”. There is no relation to anything that matters to real people.
I made a very similar joke like this on Reddit, except it was about Waymo, and Reddit issued a warning against my account threatening a permanent ban.
Let them. Trust me, you’ll feel much better
Maybe stop relying on fucking youtube?
Who, Jeff? He made a whole video a while back about how he doesn’t rely on YouTube, and is also on Floatplane. However, he acknowledges that a lot of viewers can’t afford a subscription service, and YT has a massive reach, so he still uploads there, too.
Gotta preach where the choir is.
Are you suggesting that a guide on how to leave youtube should be elsewhere?
Thats like requiring to pass an exam to get access to the textbook.
JG can also be found on Floatplane.
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What about Peertube?
I’m a fan of PeerTube, but it’s… rough. Discoverability is subpar and many instances are bandwidth constrained. Video streaming is still a bulk-hosting game unfortunately.
Not to mention if you primarily watch videos on your TV you’re out of luck.
This kind of crap is driving popular creators, like Geerling, to move to other places. YT / Alphabet has lost the plot.
I tried a couple of other platforms but I keep running into a moderation issue where the other platforms market to the sort of people who would be permanently banned from YouTube.
Yep. Most of my favorite creators are on Nebula now.
The ones that aren’t get watched on SmartTube or in Brave Browser.
Nebula
Closed source, centralized and not even free…
Hypocritical Lemmy… Preaching (F) OSS and then using Brave… LoL!
Brave is open source and using MPL license which is the same license Firefox is using. I am not using or recommending Brave to anyone.
I will flat out shut down any Brave user simply because it tried to push crypto.
No thanks :)Not just crypto, they were diverting ad revenue from websites to themselves, collecting unsolicited donations for content creators without their consent, suggesting affiliate links in the address bar and installing a paid VPN service without the user’s consent. Don’t forget they had a “bug” in Tor which sent all DNS queries to your ISP instead of routing it through tor and also weak fingerprint protection. Not to mention the political affiliation of the CEO. But it IS open source.
Still fuck them (openly). From the source of my heart :)
No one is forcing brave on you lol
you say in the video that you use this setup to watch YouTube. I love watching YouTube with Kodi as it shows no ads. I guess they don’t love that.
I’m not saying that justifies the strike, but it might be connected
I love watching YouTube with Kodi as it shows no ads. I guess they don’t love that.
This scene from A Clockwork Orange is how I view Google’s attitude of entitlement when it comes to exposing people to ads.
No sir, you don’t have the freedom to decide what gets displayed on your screens and even if you don’t block ads, you must not ignore them or put the volume on mute while they play.
Are those ads promoting scams? Are those ads delivering malware to your computer? Stiff shit buddy! You must view the ads.
The problem is that LibreELEC is piracy-adjacent. So you get these bogus take-downs because different people draw the line differently, and fighting a legal battle is 1000x as expensive as the outcome is worth to most people.
Using the Internet is piracy adjacent, by your hypothesis.
That’s just bullshit.
Not my hypothesis. And it is just bullshit, but if you pay attention, they have made similar runs at taxing and controlling the internet periodically since the 1990s.
Didn’t they recently greenlight adblocker advertising?
The video is up again:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3hFas54xFtg
But at some point, he shows he’s moving some files to LibreELEC, and he has a folder called “Chernobyl” - how can that possibly be legal, if the folder actually contains files with the HBO show of the same name? Just asking because I’m curious 😊
It is probably just a video he’s making about how to self-host a 3GW nuclear power station, so that you can self-host a hundred million raspberry pi cluster.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_(miniseries)
It was released on DVD and Blu-ray, if he purchased the disc and ripped it to his media, and hasn’t shared those files with anyone, then it is legal, as an exception to copyright in the US, where Jeff and Google are both based.
Jeff has stated on multiple occasions that he purchases and rips his media, and does not use piracy.
Ripping is illegal as well. DVD and BlueRay decoders are highly illegal.
This is incorrect in the US. Ripping DVD and Blu-ray media for personal use has been part of the fair use doctrine since 2015.
Breathing is illegal, citizen.
Also like… you can legally just name your file wtf ever you want, I can make a folder full of pics of my dogs and name it “Chernobyl” it’s not illegal to use a word to name a file
Ah - didn’t know it had been released on physical media.
You don’t know the exact content of the files. He did not show those vidoeclips. I dont know if you can buy that or not. Sure it can be indication but in general you dont know as it varies between video to video if it is possible to buy.
They are so pissed that we dare own anything. Fuck corpos.
Sue YouTube. They won’t change meaningfully until forced to.
Sue for defamation that Youtube are alleging he is promoting criminal activity of piracy.
I mean maybe if YT said that? The only thing they said is that it’s “harmful” somehow. And they won’t elaborate anymore than that.
If harmful isn’t defined in the ToS, then the Merriam Webster definition will likely be construed to mean to be harmful to YouTube’s business or to users. Although YouTube has been selective in this enforcement, ie not banning all videos pertaining to martial arts or fighting clips, drug use, or ad block tutorials.
That just answers a question that no one is asking. This is not an issue of defining words, it’s an issue of what the words are referring to, exactly.
Exactly, I haven’t read the ToS to see if it is defined or references anything in there. I usually default to the standard definition of a word unless explicitly stated otherwise. For example, Sony changed the definition of purchase to remove any notion of ownership when buying content on their streaming platform.
What? LOL no, not “exactly”. Again the definition is not in question. The question is what the word is referring to.
if they haven’t defined it, then legally it is meant in the broadest sense, isn’t it?
Just did a cursory search for harm on the YouTube ToS. There is no definition that I saw, but it does say “may cause harm”. So my suspicion that anything could be construed to be harmful to YouTube’s business is likely correct. Quoted sections of the YouTube ToS containing the word “harm” as of 2025-06-06 17:20 GMT.
Removal of Content By YouTube
If any of your Content (1) is in breach of this Agreement or (2) may cause harm to YouTube, our users, or third parties, we reserve the right to remove or take down some or all of such Content in our discretion. We will notify you with the reason for our action unless we reasonably believe that to do so: (a) would breach the law or the direction of a legal enforcement authority or would otherwise risk legal liability for YouTube or our Affiliates; (b) would compromise an investigation or the integrity or operation of the Service; or © would cause harm to any user, other third party, YouTube or our Affiliates. You can learn more about reporting and enforcement, including how to appeal on the Troubleshooting page of our Help Center.
Terminations and Suspensions by YouTube
YouTube reserves the right to suspend or terminate your Google account or your access to all or part of the Service if (a) you materially or repeatedly breach this Agreement; (b) we are required to do so to comply with a legal requirement or a court order; or © we reasonably believe that there has been conduct that creates (or could create) liability or harm to any user, other third party, YouTube or our Affiliates.
Notice for Termination or Suspension
We will notify you with the reason for termination or suspension by YouTube unless we reasonably believe that to do so: (a) would violate the law or the direction of a legal enforcement authority; (b) would compromise an investigation; © would compromise the integrity, operation or security of the Service; or (d) would cause harm to any user, other third party, YouTube or our Affiliates.
About this Agreement
Changing this Agreement We may change this Agreement, for example, (1) to reflect changes to our Service or how we do business - for example, when we add new products or features or remove old ones, (2) for legal, regulatory, or security reasons, or (3) to prevent abuse or harm.
If we materially change this Agreement, we’ll provide you with reasonable advance notice and the opportunity to review the changes, except (1) when we launch a new product or feature, or (2) in urgent situations, such as preventing ongoing abuse or responding to legal requirements. If you don’t agree to the new terms, you should remove any Content you uploaded and stop using the Service.
YouTube didn’t publicly make that claim though, so they haven’t done any defamation.
Like google, I’m sure Jeff has a near unlimited supply of money to pay lawyers.
But being a pushover is not the answer, so…
It absolutely is on an individual level in a system where capital decides who writes the laws and who gets justice. The way you push back is by organizing as a class or at least a group.
Neither is throwing money away on a lawsuit with no chance of success.
I think what you mean to say is that we should be pressuring public officials to try to bust up Google’s monopoly on many things. And we are doing that, and it is showing some progress. But there is much more work to be done.
People are quick to burn Youtube here when its clearly the american copyright reach that causes this.
Youtube (under Google)'s implementation of US copyright considerations is a huge problem above and beyond the abomination that is the copyright law itself.
YouTube took down the video because of its own policies, not because of copyright law. So we should be blaming YouTube.
I think it’s easy to see exactly why if you consider how YouTube treats small content creators. If I post a video and companies claim copyright on it, the video gets demonetized and I might lose my account. I can respond and contest the claim and maybe I can win but I still lost money in the meantime, and perhaps more significantly, the companies that made their copyright claims will never face a consequence for attempting to burn my channel. In other words, if I get things wrong a few times I’ll lose my channel and my income source, but if they get things wrong a million times, they face zero consequence.
And you might be inclined to blame the media companies. But again, this is YouTube doing what YouTube wants to do of its own volition, and not something that’s required by law. If YouTube valued small-scale content creators and end users, it would create different policies.
I think it’s both, a dumb system enforced in a somehow dumber way
Google should have been broken up years ago.
Because self hosting is getting cheaper and easier while average internet upload speeds are crazy high for the home user. Of course Google is scared.
Cries in single digit upload speeds
Single digit??? Let me guess spectrum?
Just use another unit. It’s an easy fix.
I think ripping DVDs is still technically illegal, even though CSS has long since been broken. It is still illegal to circumvent encryption in a copy protection scheme, even if it’s for your own personal use and the encryption scheme has been pwned.
I bet if he didn’t mention that his videos were ripped from DVD, they might have left it up.
Iirc, you are entitled to have/create a backup of your physical media, as long as it is for your personal use.
But if I remember from back in the day, the DMCA doesn’t have any exception for that. This is why CD ripping was legal, while DVD ripping was not. It had nothing to do with fair use or backups, but rather that DVDs have encryption, and CDs do not. Circumventing that encryption for any reason was illegal.
I don’t think it has changed, but it’s been a hot minute since the Cypherpunks all wore DeCSS T-Shirts…
I believe you’re (of you’re American) now allowed to rip DVD but not anything newer. DMCA protection was removed from CSS
And beyond the law it depends also on enforcement
The US doesn’t give a right to break Bluray copy protection and make a personal backup or access it on a device that otherwise couldn’t play it. But the only enforcement is on people sharing copies, no one is prosecuted for format shifting their collection to play over their LAN
The use of “self-hosting” is a little confusing here. To be clear, he wasn’t self-hosting his video. It was published on YouTube, and the guidelines and procedures in question are Google’s.
Edit: I’m not defending Google’s actions. It’s just that the title gave the impression that a video he had self-hosted was somehow subject to “community guidelines”, which didn’t make sense.
Edit 2: Ten downvotes in less than an hour, on a clarification comment? Wow. I’m disappointed to see that level of targeted negativity here. What rotten behavior. :(
You’re being downvoted for being factually wrong about the title. It’s not targeted negativity.
To add on, the video is about self hosting, it was not self hosted itself.
Its just confusing to you.
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