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> Yesterday, Youtube froze Kody Kinzie's longrunning Cyber Weapons Lab channel Did his channel get unbanned? Kody's website links to this active channel with i
by ChrisAntaki 7y ago
> Yesterday, Youtube froze Kody Kinzie's longrunning Cyber Weapons Lab channel
Did his channel get unbanned? Kody's website links to this active channel with its first video uploaded in Oct 2017: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgTNupxATBfWmfehv21ym-g https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgTNupxATBfWmfehv21ym-g
edit: Yep looks like the ban was a mistake ️
> In a subsequent comment, a YouTube spokesperson confirmed to The Verge that Cyber Weapons Lab’s channel was flagged by mistake and the videos have since been reinstated. “With the massive volume of videos on our site, sometimes we make the wrong call,” the spokesperson said. “We have an appeals process in place for users, and when it’s brought to our attention that a video has been removed mistakenly, we act quickly to reinstate it.”
https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/3/20681586/youtube-ban-instructional-hacking-phishing-videos-cyber-weapons-lab-strike https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/3/20681586/youtube-ban-instr...
- mastazi 7y agoIt is not just this isolated case. Youtube changed their terms and conditions in such a way that affects all educational content related to infosec, more info in the other HN thread here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20346865 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20346865
- ChrisAntaki 7y agoSpeaking personally (obv) that's scary and if they don't change the ToS I can imagine reviewers will keep making similar mistakes
- class4behavior 7y agoTo be fair, it's reasonable to forbid instructions on how to attack specific online third-party systems, just that the phrasing of YT's policy is too ambiguous and can be extended to any educational infosec content.
- mastazi 7y agoYes I agree, the article that I linked above focuses on the ambiguity of the policy wording, interesting read.
- piokoch 7y agoIt is always same story. If a problem concerns someone "well known" who is able to attract attention, than Google, Facebook, etc. are stepping back. If it were some random "amateurish" hacker channel, it would be banned and nobody would give a crap. The problem is that many valuable things started as some "amateurish" stuff put together by some clever guys in a garage.
- noobermin 7y agoWell, then they kill two birds with one stone, they snuff out their potential competition.
- roblabla 7y agoNo? The content creators are not youtube's competition. If anything, they're pushing those creators off to competing platforms...
- mtgx 7y agoIt's certainly true now, but once upon a time the Google search engine was also a "neutral platform that didn't directly compete with other web properties shown on search pages." How times have changed there, haven't they?
- kiallmacinnes 7y agoTo play devils advocate.. is this really true? Or do we just only hear about bans/reinstatements from people who are "able to attract attention"?
- 0_gravitas 7y agoIt is, and it's not just YouTube, I follow alot of "niche" channels, and the distribution of enforcement is comical.
- kdbg 7y agoI'm not entirely convinced it is. I started a exploit development/security podcast with a couple friends a few months ago, we were banned on Youtube shortly after the 4th episode for a community guidelines violation. We appealed it and were reinstated pretty quickly (hours), which was a genuinely surprise to me given all I've heard about the Youtube system and the assumption that channels only got unbanned by being able to attract attention.
- bitL 7y agoMaybe if the channel was named "Kody Kinzie's Flowery Cyber Instrument Safe Space", it would have been promoted instead...