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"this morning, as I was finishing up work on a video about a new mini Pi cluster, I got a cheerful email from YouTube saying my video on LibreELEC on the Pi 5 was removed because it promoted:

Dangerous or Harmful Content Content that describes how to get unauthorized or free access to audio or audiovisual content, software, subscription services, or games that usually require payment isn’t allowed on YouTube.

I never described any of that stuff, only how to self-host your own media library.

This wasn’t my first rodeo—in October last year, I got a strike for showing people how to install Jellyfin!

In that case, I was happy to see my appeal granted within an hour of the strike being placed on the channel. (Nevermind the fact the video had been live for over two years at that point, with nary a problem!)

So I thought, this case will be similar:

  • The video’s been up for over a year, without issue
  • The video’s had over half a million views
  • The video doesn’t promote or highlight any tools used to circumvent copyright, get around paid subscriptions, or reproduce any content illegally

Slam-dunk, right? Well, not according to whomever reviewed my appeal. Apparently self-hosted open source media library management is harmful.

Who knew open source software could be so subversive?"

  • Cris@lemmy.worldEnglish
    26·
    1 day ago

    Yeah, this is definitely a broken corporate system issue rather than a nefarious plot. Google takes down, demonitizes, and issues trikes for all kinds of bogus shit, their system is so incapable of nuance that “nuance” isn’t even the right word anymore. There’s no evil scheme to silence self hosting, just a horrible, miserably dysfunctional content moderation system that regularly trashes peoples livelihoods if it comes anywhere near prohibited topics.

    If the mistake causes a big enough problem they cares about, like bad publicity via a large channel complaining, they’ll probably fix it after a whole protracted mess of a situation. But if it doesn’t cause a problem for them it doesn’t get fixed. They just really suck at handling the scale of content they host.

    And I might empathize that it’s a hard thing to do, if they weren’t an effective monopoly and a horrible company.