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> You may have heard, last week, YouTube terminated the entire Cornell University Library account on their site. They did? Seems to still be available for me:

> You may have heard, last week, YouTube terminated the entire Cornell University Library account on their site. They did? Seems to still be available for me: https://www.youtube.com/c/cornelllibrary https://www.youtube.com/c/cornelllibrary I couldn't find any news about this "termination" with a cursory google search either. I even still see the lecture mentioned: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KM0RL8ppDmE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KM0RL8ppDmE Presumably it was some kind of automated response which was quickly overturned by a human?

obituary_latte 4y ago
I see it as well. I even see the "subject" of the ban at the top of the page. I agree it's probably something automated that was overturned (although I feel that these AI's are being too heavy-handed, there should have definitely been some human review before taking offline the entirety of the Cornell YT library).
- p_l 4y ago
  The big issue is that if it wasn't Cornell Library, which can wield considerable weight into requesting a manual review, the reinstatement would have low chance of happening - even if you did hit a human being with your request, they would be overworked and spend barely few seconds before selecting automated negative response, and that's assuming they wouldn't deliberately decide that by whatever personal or cultural mores the content is obscene and warrants destruction.
  - vanderZwan 4y ago
    She even makes an indirect point about this when mentioning her earlier experiences: > As one Google rep emailed me in the 1990s, “If you were a 10-figure net worth institution, we woudn’t bother. But you aren’t.”
- AzzieElbab 4y ago
  there is no way anything "automated" would not ban gayle rubin
- shadowgovt 4y ago
  It's complicated. Google is (for Cloud at least; couldn't say for certain regarding YouTube) already in the business of identifying certain "high-touch" customers where automatic downing of their service would be embarrassing to Google and so manual review happens. If YouTube doesn't already support that, adding it would be controversial ("Oh, they're playing favorites with content? Come and see the censorship inherent in the system! Help help I'm being repressed!"). If YouTube does support it, Cornell may simply not have made the list yet because building and maintaining that list across millions of accounts is a hell of a cat-and-mouse game. Google is rather heavily incentivized to try and automate as much as possible (and deal with the political blow-back when they stumble) instead of playing the cat-and-mouse game. (As a fun thought experiment: ask yourself "If I were to design the algorithm that wouldn't have kicked Cornell off but would still auto-enforce the TOS, how would I do it?" And then ask yourself "If I were a malicious actor and the algorithm I designed were the one implemented, what kind of content could I create that the algorithm would fail to take down?").
reaperducer 4y ago
- cecilpl2 4y ago
  I certainly wasn't claiming it didn't happen, nor do I think I know the truth of the matter. I simply don't have the time or the resources to fully investigate the issue myself, and so I provided the information I do have. I am hoping that someone who has more substantial information will chime in.
  - reaperducer 4y ago
    - jakelazaroff 4y ago
      Okay, but they also found that the allegedly "terminated" Cornell University Library account seems to be… not terminated. The point of the Google search is to find accounts corroborating the claim that it actually had been.
      - tedivm 4y ago
        And spending sixty seconds researching something before giving up does not mean that the thing didn't happen, and thus shouldn't be worthy of comment. "I did nothing and was shocked to find nothing" shouldn't be newsworthy. It also shouldn't be used to cast doubt on the blog post.
        endisneigh 4y ago
        Why shouldn't there be doubt on the post given that there's no indication it ever happened? People just believing whatever they read on the internet is the reason why such rampant misinformation is spreading. YouTube is a distributed system - many parts are eventually consistent. It's very likely they loaded the page, saw some error and made the blog post. It doesn't mean anything was ever deleted.
msbarnett 4y ago
Looks like this was published 4 days ago. Things might have been rectified since.
precisiongrind 4y ago
I wasn't privy to this particular incident, but typically: 1. Content uploader gets complaints from users, institutional service desk tickets, etc. 2. Content owner tries official channels that may be slow or nonresponsive by filing a ticket on YouTube's side. If this is something that has happened before and/or they're a large institution, they may be prioritized or have a point of contact. 3. Maybe it gets fixed I tried a cursory google search of 'cornell library youtube down' and the first result is a tweet from the 18th where someone's taken a screenshot of the content being down.
- endisneigh 4y ago
  You mean a tweet referring to a screenshot of the blog post posted here?
  - coderintherye 4y ago
    I would think they would mean this tweet which is a screenshot of the youtube channel returning a "this page isn't available": https://twitter.com/elotroalex/status/1538168994712399872 https://twitter.com/elotroalex/status/1538168994712399872
    - endisneigh 4y ago
      That happens pretty often with random channels. "This page isn't available" YouTube - search it and you'll see thousands. The other thing that can happen is if the channel is marked as private.
gpvos 4y ago
> I even still see the lecture mentioned: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KM0RL8ppDmE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KM0RL8ppDmE It's age-restricted though, so you have to give up some identifying data to Google to be able to view it.
- mgdlbp 4y ago
  Coincidentally posted 2 days ago: https://github.com/zerodytrash/Simple-YouTube-Age-Restriction-Bypass https://github.com/zerodytrash/Simple-YouTube-Age-Restrictio... > This extension uses some API tricks to access age-restricted videos from YouTube anonymously.
- pabs3 4y ago
  Not if you use yt-dlp/youtube-dl or one of its wrappers like mpv to watch it.
  - crtasm 4y ago
    Or watch on an https://redirect.invidious.io/watch?v=KM0RL8ppDmE https://redirect.invidious.io/watch?v=KM0RL8ppDmE instance.
    - gpvos 4y ago
      Thanks, that looks like a useful service.
  - mgdlbp 4y ago
    Note that youtube-dl's workaround tends to be broken due to lack of maintenance, and currently even yt-dlp doesn't work on the most severe of the 'tiers' of age restriction.[1] The less/non-anonymous method of using cookies from a logged-in browser still works on all videos.(?) [1] https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/pull/575#issuecomment-888837000 https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/pull/575#issuecomment-88883...
    - pabs3 4y ago
      That PR has been merged now, so presumably those tier issues are fixed now?

obituary_latte 4y ago

I see it as well. I even see the "subject" of the ban at the top of the page. I agree it's probably something automated that was overturned (although I feel that these AI's are being too heavy-handed, there should have definitely been some human review before taking offline the entirety of the Cornell YT library).

p_l 4y ago
The big issue is that if it wasn't Cornell Library, which can wield considerable weight into requesting a manual review, the reinstatement would have low chance of happening - even if you did hit a human being with your request, they would be overworked and spend barely few seconds before selecting automated negative response, and that's assuming they wouldn't deliberately decide that by whatever personal or cultural mores the content is obscene and warrants destruction.
- vanderZwan 4y ago
  She even makes an indirect point about this when mentioning her earlier experiences: > As one Google rep emailed me in the 1990s, “If you were a 10-figure net worth institution, we woudn’t bother. But you aren’t.”
AzzieElbab 4y ago
there is no way anything "automated" would not ban gayle rubin
shadowgovt 4y ago
It's complicated. Google is (for Cloud at least; couldn't say for certain regarding YouTube) already in the business of identifying certain "high-touch" customers where automatic downing of their service would be embarrassing to Google and so manual review happens. If YouTube doesn't already support that, adding it would be controversial ("Oh, they're playing favorites with content? Come and see the censorship inherent in the system! Help help I'm being repressed!"). If YouTube does support it, Cornell may simply not have made the list yet because building and maintaining that list across millions of accounts is a hell of a cat-and-mouse game. Google is rather heavily incentivized to try and automate as much as possible (and deal with the political blow-back when they stumble) instead of playing the cat-and-mouse game. (As a fun thought experiment: ask yourself "If I were to design the algorithm that wouldn't have kicked Cornell off but would still auto-enforce the TOS, how would I do it?" And then ask yourself "If I were a malicious actor and the algorithm I designed were the one implemented, what kind of content could I create that the algorithm would fail to take down?").

reaperducer 4y ago

cecilpl2 4y ago
I certainly wasn't claiming it didn't happen, nor do I think I know the truth of the matter. I simply don't have the time or the resources to fully investigate the issue myself, and so I provided the information I do have. I am hoping that someone who has more substantial information will chime in.
- reaperducer 4y ago
  - jakelazaroff 4y ago
    Okay, but they also found that the allegedly "terminated" Cornell University Library account seems to be… not terminated. The point of the Google search is to find accounts corroborating the claim that it actually had been.
    - tedivm 4y ago
      And spending sixty seconds researching something before giving up does not mean that the thing didn't happen, and thus shouldn't be worthy of comment. "I did nothing and was shocked to find nothing" shouldn't be newsworthy. It also shouldn't be used to cast doubt on the blog post.
      - endisneigh 4y ago
        Why shouldn't there be doubt on the post given that there's no indication it ever happened? People just believing whatever they read on the internet is the reason why such rampant misinformation is spreading. YouTube is a distributed system - many parts are eventually consistent. It's very likely they loaded the page, saw some error and made the blog post. It doesn't mean anything was ever deleted.

msbarnett 4y ago

Looks like this was published 4 days ago. Things might have been rectified since.

precisiongrind 4y ago

I wasn't privy to this particular incident, but typically: 1. Content uploader gets complaints from users, institutional service desk tickets, etc. 2. Content owner tries official channels that may be slow or nonresponsive by filing a ticket on YouTube's side. If this is something that has happened before and/or they're a large institution, they may be prioritized or have a point of contact. 3. Maybe it gets fixed I tried a cursory google search of 'cornell library youtube down' and the first result is a tweet from the 18th where someone's taken a screenshot of the content being down.

endisneigh 4y ago
You mean a tweet referring to a screenshot of the blog post posted here?
- coderintherye 4y ago
  I would think they would mean this tweet which is a screenshot of the youtube channel returning a "this page isn't available": https://twitter.com/elotroalex/status/1538168994712399872 https://twitter.com/elotroalex/status/1538168994712399872
  - endisneigh 4y ago
    That happens pretty often with random channels. "This page isn't available" YouTube - search it and you'll see thousands. The other thing that can happen is if the channel is marked as private.

gpvos 4y ago

> I even still see the lecture mentioned: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KM0RL8ppDmE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KM0RL8ppDmE It's age-restricted though, so you have to give up some identifying data to Google to be able to view it.

mgdlbp 4y ago
Coincidentally posted 2 days ago: https://github.com/zerodytrash/Simple-YouTube-Age-Restriction-Bypass https://github.com/zerodytrash/Simple-YouTube-Age-Restrictio... > This extension uses some API tricks to access age-restricted videos from YouTube anonymously.
pabs3 4y ago
Not if you use yt-dlp/youtube-dl or one of its wrappers like mpv to watch it.
- crtasm 4y ago
  Or watch on an https://redirect.invidious.io/watch?v=KM0RL8ppDmE https://redirect.invidious.io/watch?v=KM0RL8ppDmE instance.
  - gpvos 4y ago
    Thanks, that looks like a useful service.
- mgdlbp 4y ago
  Note that youtube-dl's workaround tends to be broken due to lack of maintenance, and currently even yt-dlp doesn't work on the most severe of the 'tiers' of age restriction.[1] The less/non-anonymous method of using cookies from a logged-in browser still works on all videos.(?) [1] https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/pull/575#issuecomment-888837000 https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/pull/575#issuecomment-88883...
  - pabs3 4y ago
    That PR has been merged now, so presumably those tier issues are fixed now?