Google censors the world, together with Microsoft.
Well - it is time that the rest of the world censors these two corporation. I don't want them to restrict information.
People will find workarounds by the way. This is now a Streisand effect - as people see that Google and Microsoft try to hide information from them, they will now look at this much more closely than before, with more attention.
(Having said that, my bypass strategy is to not use Windows 11 altogether. I don't depend on it, having used Linux since 21 years now, but my machine to the left is actually using Win10, for various reasons, such as that I can fix problems of elderly relatives still using Windows. But I won't use Win11 ever with its recall-spy software. I also don't care that it can be disabled - any corporation that tries to sniff-invade on me, is evil and must be banned.)
Edit: Ok so the video was restored. That was good, but still, we need an alternative here. Google holds WAY too much power via youtube.
> This is now a Streisand effect - as people see that Google and Microsoft try to hide information from them
This comment section is wild.
The videos are up. Microsoft and Google weren't meeting in secret backrooms to censor this one channel. The most likely explanation is that a competing channel was trying to move their own videos up in the rankings by mass-reporting other videos on the topic.
It's a growing problem on social media platforms: Cutthroat channels or influencers will use alt accounts or even paid services to report their competition. They know that with enough reports in a short period of time they can get the content removed for a while, which creates a window for their own content to get more views.
The clue is the "risk of physical harm". People who abuse the report function know that the report options involving physical harm, violence, or suicide are the quickest way to get content taken down.
They have a history of removing videos that describe things they don't want under the guise of "harm", eg Linus Tech Tips video on De-Googling your life: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apdZ7xmytiQ
A tale as old as time. A long time ago I worked in DDoS prevention and the bulk of our first customers were competing gambling sites and online eyeglass retailers.
Why? Because they were all paying people to DDoS each other. Kinda silly, but good for business.
> They know that with enough reports in a short period of time they can get the content removed for a while
This can be accomplished with bogus dmca notices too. Since google gets such a high volume of notices the default action is just to shoot first and ask questions later. Alarmingly, there are 0 consequences (financial or legal) for sending bogus dmca notices
Content hosts are damned if they do and damned if they don't. If they take their time and are cautious with reports, people end up swamped with garbage that people complain about. If they try to be quick to clean up the garbage, some clean stuff get caught and people complain.
The only frequent obvious problem I see is Youtube not telling people why their videos get hidden or taken down or down ranked. Long time creators get left in the dark from random big changes to the platform that could be solved with an email.
In the olden days this would simply be solved by... having customer support befitting the size of the company. Of course nowadays that's "inneficient".
We have companies with billions of customers but smaller customer service than a mid-sized retailer from the 90s. Something is not right.
They are absolutely aware of these sorts of abuses. I'll bet my spleen that it shows up as a line item in the roadmapping docs of their content integrity/T&S teams.
The root problem is twofold: the inability to reliably automate distinguishing "good actor" and "bad actor", and a lack of will to throw serious resources at solving the problem via manual, high precision moderation.
In certain niches, the marginal value of kneecapping the competition exceeds the viable budget for counteracting gaming. It may be a quirk of this reality’s hyperparameters that a UGC media monopoly inevitably suffers from this. Or maybe at a certain point it hits their bottom line and better enforcement is contrived.
The problem I see with that attitude is that it's excusing companies with immense profits from having even the tiniest modicum of actual human review for things.
Yep. While my mom was working she needed too many Windows-only applications. But once she retired, I set her up with a Linux desktop and it's been smooth sailing.
The video was restored because of the noise the takedown created. Small creators have no voice and for every big channel that can ignite a PR backlash there are potentially thousands that would disappear without trace or chances to be restored. YouTube has been unreliable for years, but AI just makes it even more so; how could one base their business on such an unprofessional and unstable partner that appears managed by kids with too much power in their hands? An alternative is badly needed asap.
> Rich appealed both immediately. The first appeal was denied in 45 minutes. The second in just five.
> The platform claimed its "initial actions" (could be either the first takedown or appeal denial, or both) were not the result of automation.
If they claim that a non automated review occurred but then still took down/denied appeal, what caused them to change course?
What is your source that the restoration of the video was not because of the noise?
Maybe not totally related but I remember a comment from few years which lets say, was "dismissed" at the time by votes where user said that Google doesn't innovate when it comes to web standards but pushes own agenda by planted people at W3C. To ensure their browser will work for them and not for the user.
Microsoft on the other hand seems to be reheating the old Palladium/Trusted Computing concept enhanced now by Copilot. This idea was already criticized over 20 years ago as a dangerous attempt of turning desktop machines to uncontrollable appliances which would run only approved software and serve, access approved safe content rigged with DRM. And frankly, with all this play with chat control, age verification it's hard to not see some similarities. Maybe that's where this is all going.
> (Having said that, my bypass strategy is to not use Windows 11 altogether. I don't depend on it, having used Linux since 21 years now,
I'm not quite that cool, but I have been using it full time since about 2009, so I'm not too far behind :)
The only time that I have to use Windows is because I have to play tech support for my parents, because despite considerable effort on my end, I have been completely unsuccessful at convincing them to move to Linux or Mac. It's a little annoying, because when I bring up the subject they act like I should just "live and let live", but that's a really stupid argument when they're saying this while I am fixing their computer. Somehow this is lost on them.
I have complained about this a bunch of times on here, but I'll say it again: If you work on Windows Update, then you should consider any career other than software engineer. Windows Update has made the world a worse place because it disincentivizes updating your computer, leading to an increase in open. Update software isn't allowed to suck.
And if they do care they will find workarounds as you said.
Nothing will change, the frog has been sitting in boiling water for more than a generation now and the newbloods never experienced the computational freedom you hold dear; they will happily use whatever corporate surveillance technology is being forced upon them. They will even defend it to the bone if you try to take it away
Microsoft is just a video game company to me, I can live without its products and be happier. With Google though, things are bit different, they have Google Maps and YouTube, which I use nearly on daily basis. I can probably replace Google Maps with something else, even though that will probable be a downgrade in terms of user experience, however replacing YouTube is impossible, so many unique content in it.
(a big) But YouTube has grown to be such a monopoly, that they now dictate what we are going to be able to watch on the web.
This is sadly so hard to change, so many creators are now literally working "for" YouTube, and there are so many quality videos there.
I think it's only a matter of time before youtube starts injecting ads directly into the video stream, and only allow streaming it at the actual playback speed.
They might even put the ads in different places for different users to throw off things like Sponsorblock.
Mount a Windows 11 ISO. Open an administrative command window. Navigate to the new drive letter. Enter this command:
.\setup.exe /product server /auto upgrade /EULA accept /migratedrivers all /ShowOOBE none /Compat IgnoreWarning /Telemetry Disable
I've used this to upgrade 10 to 11 on non approved hardware, going back to at least 2nd gen Intel CPUs. I've used it to upgrade existing Pro, EDU and IOT that didn't want to upgrade.
I mean... documenting the details of the investigation to support the first decision and relying on the documented details the second time would easily explain that.
You can't, and this was readily apparent in 2020 with Covid. Even doctors presenting factual information got censored and de-platformed by YouTube.
The only real competing video platform that promises no censorship is Rumble ( https://rumble.com ), but it has a very right-wing slant due to conservatives flocking to it during all the Covid-era social media censorship.
Yeah the moment they started I knew it was doomed to fail. Get it wrong once and your credibility is ruined. They should have never tried to censor content outside of what is legally required and therefore defined.
I looked at the front page alone and it's full of right wing hot takes and neo-nazis. If a platform wants to accept white-supremacists that's one thing. When it's right on their front page though it's being actively promoted.
Isn't the damage done though? Like if they were down at the time when people were told that win10 reached end of support and it's time to get on 11 does it matter that they are up now?
Anyway I doubt youtube did this intentionally, but it does show how vulnerable their system is to false reports.
This happened to me when Amazon KDP's fraud prevention AI hallucinated that my Kindle version was plagiarizing my paperback (yes, it's the same book). https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40992654
Unfortunately, I'm not sure a human ever really looked at my case, or was strongly disincentivized to go against the AI. I got nothing but bland, contentless denials of my appeals that got vaguer each time. And I was never able to go viral, so I'm banned from KDP for life for complete nonsense.
Windows 11 attempts to remove local only account is the last straw. I have mostly moved away from Windows already but if they fully implement this will never recommend to anyone period. I manage 2600 computers where I work and am down to less than 150 running windows … could see this reaching 0 in just a year or two.
If anyone at YouTube Trust & Safety is reading this article, I've got a real problem for you to solve.
There are channels that exist solely to pump out AI slop seemingly designed to trick gullible seniors into identifying themselves in the comments. I suspect the scammers will go after these people later in pig-butchering or related scams.
For example, the “Senior Secrets” channel pumps out videos such as “Over 60? Add THIS Powder To Your Coffee To Walk like You’re 40 Again! | Senior Health Tips.” (I won’t link to the video, but you can easily find it with a search.) The video makes bold health claims justified by citing what appear to be scholarly research studies, such as:
> University of California, San Francisco (2023). "Mobility Enhancement Through Nutritional Supplementation in Older Adults." Journal of Gerontology: Medical Sciences, Volume 78, pp. 445-453.
However, none of the cited studies and papers are real.
The deeply concerning thing is that the video’s narrator invites the seniors who are duped by these claims to identify themselves and reveal their age and locations in the comments. From the transcript at 1m44s:
> "Before we begin, tell us in the comments now your age and where you're watching us from. We're reading and replying to every single comment, so drop your comments below."
I’ve already reported this content to YT, but I’ve seen no apparent follow-up.
Disclaimer: I used to work at Google, but not in anything YouTube related. If you’re in YT and want to reach out, my contact info is in my HN profile.
I forsee a lobby to the government for further restriction on our freedom of speech by google and others as these companies can't compete with open source and decentralized alternatives that are beginning to offer really well made alternatives.
Observations indicate we're approaching a point of inflection. We've had about three decades of Big Tech running a serfdom, unless power starts shifting back to users we'll be locked-in serfs for good.
I reckon most of us don't actually realize how much trouble we're in already.
If a company chooses to automate something that should not be a defense. They should still be held equally accountable for their actions no matter if they employ a human or an algorithm to do their censorship for them. If they know their software/automation is shit and keeps screwing up, they're still making the choice to continue using it.
Unfortunately for right now, KDE has recently released major version 6, which is also about as stable as Windows (meaning, very not). This is reminiscent of the KDE 4 transition and much worse than the KDE 5 one.
For example, half the time I try to log in or unlock the screen, it just ignores my password. Fortunately, I have discovered that pressing Escape triggers a crash, and I have to deliberately trigger a segfault by pressing Escape, in hopes that next time the password will be accepted.
Plasma 6 is nearly two years old, and is totally fine in my experience. The transition was more like 5.x to 5.y. The biggest change is Wayland by default (X11 is currently still available, so might be worth a try).
It sounds like your problem may be with SDDM (the login screen program) rather than Plasma itself. You could try an alternative: https://alternativeto.net/software/sddm/
The only issue I have on my Plasma 6 laptop is also lock-screen related: About 20% of the time keyboard input is ignored/blocked after coming back from sleep. Closing and reopening the lid usually sorts it. Haven't seen what you describe.
I did have some earlier snags which all went away after switching from Wayland session to X11 session.
Gotta be something specific to your machine - for me version 6 is way more stable than 5 was. That line would crash doing sillies things like resizing task bar or applying settings. Now I feel as good with CachyOS and Plasma 6.5.2 as I was with W2K or W7
It would help to know what it is you are not loving with Mint+Cinnamon... My picks for a beginner-friendly batteries-included Linux dist for KDE:
- You can install KDE on Mint without switching distro or reinstalling[0]
- Debian (caveat: packages can be out of date if you need the latest-greatest of something)
- Fedora (caveat: two major OS upgrades per year can feel like a chore)
- EndeavourOS (caveat: Requires a bit more expertise and grease to properly maintain)
- Aurora (caveat: Still young project and I'd still consider it a bit experimental and adventerous)
- kubuntu (caveat: snaps. Accept them or learn how to disable)
KDE Linux is a thing and something to keep an eye on but it's still in alpha/beta and probably not ready for your use just yet.
[0]: Caveat: it's possible that some DE service might not be disabled properly from your old setup and conflict with KDEs variety if you keep the cinnamon packages around
The better question would be what is the best distro for you. Personally I like Debian. But I don't know enough about you and how you use your computer to say for sure what is best for you.
Don't worry too much about distributions, they'll mostly just affect package formats and default settings, but imo Debian is the best choice for stable desktop computing, with the best overall support and community.
So why shouldn't I use the windows 11 on the other partition that I use for games that don't run on Linux or run with degraded performance?
(Yeah, it's Nvidia, no, I didn't do my homework and bought Nvidia for a Linux PC).
While it may make sense for others, I don't find system that can lock up for 11 hours for updates suitable for anything other than occasional gaming. But why shouldn't I use it for it?
I already think twice before getting any game that doesn't run on Linux and gave EA WRC Rally a downvote after they rug pulled Linux users. (A game that run on Linux on the beginning got borked with anticheat. A racing game, so you don't cheat your friends by having 1s less on that race you all compete on).
There is no worse usage of windows than the occasional one given the huge amount of updates it starts to download whenever you start it up after a long period unused.
I guess it might be useful if you only keep it offline but in that case you aren't playing games online and thus you would be fine gaming on Linux given the only downside is lack of anticheat support.
> Then came the twist. YouTube eventually restored both videos. The platform claimed its "initial actions" (could be either the first takedown or appeal denial, or both) were not the result of automation.
The videos are back. It's also possible that a group of people "brigade" reported his posts for some reason. YouTubers attract haters, too.
Perhaps someone at Microsoft threatened physical harm to a Google engineer if they didn't remove the videos... and they caved into their demands rather than reporting the threat, or perhaps did both.
You see, Windows 11 has new, improved, patented prevent-the-computer-from-physically-beating-up-the-user technology. But this technology requires an online account; you can't trust a local-only account to prevent the computer from beating you up, because it's on the computer in question (duh). So we prevent you from learning how to bypass the requirement for a remote account for your own physical safety.
You can watch the latest Hollywood movies for free on YouTube and they don't care about any copyright, but if it's for showing a genocide to the world or bypassing Windows tutorials, YouTube lost it's spirit.
Because the only mechanism to hold these mega corporations / billionaires accountable is government, and they're already powerful enough to have waged massive information wars convincing people to fight each other instead of them.
Because people like my mom don't know there is an alternative and people like my dad thinks OSS has ties to communism (really, I wish I was joking) and MacOS is for hipsters. Doesn't matter that I work for a FAANG company and we use and contribute to OSS or that my work laptop is a Mac.
Why should I care that much what Microsoft is doing? I sold my Windows 11 computer long ago and haven't looked back. In fact, more user-hostile they get the better that is for the Linux ecosystem which is better for me!
I think it will be better with a little bit higher marketshare, but once the masses come in they demand stuff like kernel-level anticheat, DRM and to never accidentally run things in a terminal and then it will become way worse. Linux is as user-friendly as it is, because it is used by professionals and power users and the masses use something else.
Can anyone provide any attempt at rationalizing their decision? Could your computer overheat and explode if you do this? Could hackers take over your computer and play a flashing light pattern that will give you an epileptic seizure?
This is meek and seems almost resigned. I don't understand how discourse and responses around these kinds of strange, bewildering, or stupid corporate decisions is always so nice. This corporate bullshit thrives in respectful environments where nobody needs to be afraid of being told how it is and publicly humiliated for their obviously disingenuous or stupid behavior.
When you're dealing with full-on idiots like that "support specialist" (AI?), all bets are off anyways. Might as well tell that clown that what he just said is the dumbest shit you've heard all week.
Take off the gloves and burn some bridges if you have to, the world will be better place for it.
Google censors the world, together with Microsoft.
Well - it is time that the rest of the world censors these two corporation. I don't want them to restrict information.
People will find workarounds by the way. This is now a Streisand effect - as people see that Google and Microsoft try to hide information from them, they will now look at this much more closely than before, with more attention.
(Having said that, my bypass strategy is to not use Windows 11 altogether. I don't depend on it, having used Linux since 21 years now, but my machine to the left is actually using Win10, for various reasons, such as that I can fix problems of elderly relatives still using Windows. But I won't use Win11 ever with its recall-spy software. I also don't care that it can be disabled - any corporation that tries to sniff-invade on me, is evil and must be banned.)
Edit: Ok so the video was restored. That was good, but still, we need an alternative here. Google holds WAY too much power via youtube.
> This is now a Streisand effect - as people see that Google and Microsoft try to hide information from them
This comment section is wild.
The videos are up. Microsoft and Google weren't meeting in secret backrooms to censor this one channel. The most likely explanation is that a competing channel was trying to move their own videos up in the rankings by mass-reporting other videos on the topic.
It's a growing problem on social media platforms: Cutthroat channels or influencers will use alt accounts or even paid services to report their competition. They know that with enough reports in a short period of time they can get the content removed for a while, which creates a window for their own content to get more views.
The clue is the "risk of physical harm". People who abuse the report function know that the report options involving physical harm, violence, or suicide are the quickest way to get content taken down.
They have a history of removing videos that describe things they don't want under the guise of "harm", eg Linus Tech Tips video on De-Googling your life: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apdZ7xmytiQ
A tale as old as time. A long time ago I worked in DDoS prevention and the bulk of our first customers were competing gambling sites and online eyeglass retailers.
Why? Because they were all paying people to DDoS each other. Kinda silly, but good for business.
> They know that with enough reports in a short period of time they can get the content removed for a while
This can be accomplished with bogus dmca notices too. Since google gets such a high volume of notices the default action is just to shoot first and ask questions later. Alarmingly, there are 0 consequences (financial or legal) for sending bogus dmca notices
Stop making so much sense
The problem here is that companies seems to not be the wiser to such tactics and creators are left holding the bag by such aggression.
Content hosts are damned if they do and damned if they don't. If they take their time and are cautious with reports, people end up swamped with garbage that people complain about. If they try to be quick to clean up the garbage, some clean stuff get caught and people complain.
The only frequent obvious problem I see is Youtube not telling people why their videos get hidden or taken down or down ranked. Long time creators get left in the dark from random big changes to the platform that could be solved with an email.
In the olden days this would simply be solved by... having customer support befitting the size of the company. Of course nowadays that's "inneficient".
We have companies with billions of customers but smaller customer service than a mid-sized retailer from the 90s. Something is not right.
They are absolutely aware of these sorts of abuses. I'll bet my spleen that it shows up as a line item in the roadmapping docs of their content integrity/T&S teams.
The root problem is twofold: the inability to reliably automate distinguishing "good actor" and "bad actor", and a lack of will to throw serious resources at solving the problem via manual, high precision moderation.
The law doesn’t allow companies to do anything other than what they are doing.
Either that or microsoft and/or google will send someone to my house to Raymond Reddington my ass if I install W11 with only a local account.
In certain niches, the marginal value of kneecapping the competition exceeds the viable budget for counteracting gaming. It may be a quirk of this reality’s hyperparameters that a UGC media monopoly inevitably suffers from this. Or maybe at a certain point it hits their bottom line and better enforcement is contrived.
The problem I see with that attitude is that it's excusing companies with immense profits from having even the tiniest modicum of actual human review for things.
As long as the bad behavior is profitable, platforms aren't going to fix it: https://www.cnbc.com/2025/11/06/meta-reportedly-projected-10...
Elderly relatives are the best candidate for switching to linux.
They need to do what? Browser, zoom, email client. They are never going to install anything.
All of these have great options on linux, and they work just as well.
Just put them on Debian stable and be done with it.
Yep. While my mom was working she needed too many Windows-only applications. But once she retired, I set her up with a Linux desktop and it's been smooth sailing.
Chromebook.
A locked in Google platform while Google is helping Microsoft implement mass data collection...
Also Visa/Mastercard are big silencers…
The video was restored because of the noise the takedown created. Small creators have no voice and for every big channel that can ignite a PR backlash there are potentially thousands that would disappear without trace or chances to be restored. YouTube has been unreliable for years, but AI just makes it even more so; how could one base their business on such an unprofessional and unstable partner that appears managed by kids with too much power in their hands? An alternative is badly needed asap.
> The video was restored because of the noise the takedown created.
Source:
> Rich appealed both immediately. The first appeal was denied in 45 minutes. The second in just five. > The platform claimed its "initial actions" (could be either the first takedown or appeal denial, or both) were not the result of automation.
If they claim that a non automated review occurred but then still took down/denied appeal, what caused them to change course?
What is your source that the restoration of the video was not because of the noise?
Maybe not totally related but I remember a comment from few years which lets say, was "dismissed" at the time by votes where user said that Google doesn't innovate when it comes to web standards but pushes own agenda by planted people at W3C. To ensure their browser will work for them and not for the user.
Microsoft on the other hand seems to be reheating the old Palladium/Trusted Computing concept enhanced now by Copilot. This idea was already criticized over 20 years ago as a dangerous attempt of turning desktop machines to uncontrollable appliances which would run only approved software and serve, access approved safe content rigged with DRM. And frankly, with all this play with chat control, age verification it's hard to not see some similarities. Maybe that's where this is all going.
It wouldn't be the first time that something gets posted on HN and then miraculously is resolved.
As the article notes, it was already resolved, and that happened five days ago.
> (Having said that, my bypass strategy is to not use Windows 11 altogether. I don't depend on it, having used Linux since 21 years now,
I'm not quite that cool, but I have been using it full time since about 2009, so I'm not too far behind :)
The only time that I have to use Windows is because I have to play tech support for my parents, because despite considerable effort on my end, I have been completely unsuccessful at convincing them to move to Linux or Mac. It's a little annoying, because when I bring up the subject they act like I should just "live and let live", but that's a really stupid argument when they're saying this while I am fixing their computer. Somehow this is lost on them.
I have complained about this a bunch of times on here, but I'll say it again: If you work on Windows Update, then you should consider any career other than software engineer. Windows Update has made the world a worse place because it disincentivizes updating your computer, leading to an increase in open. Update software isn't allowed to suck.
and what phone do you use? There's no way out from that perspective (apple included), privacy and interoperability should not be mutually exclusive.
The reality is most people don’t care about this.
And if they do care they will find workarounds as you said.
Nothing will change, the frog has been sitting in boiling water for more than a generation now and the newbloods never experienced the computational freedom you hold dear; they will happily use whatever corporate surveillance technology is being forced upon them. They will even defend it to the bone if you try to take it away
Microsoft is just a video game company to me, I can live without its products and be happier. With Google though, things are bit different, they have Google Maps and YouTube, which I use nearly on daily basis. I can probably replace Google Maps with something else, even though that will probable be a downgrade in terms of user experience, however replacing YouTube is impossible, so many unique content in it.
(a big) But YouTube has grown to be such a monopoly, that they now dictate what we are going to be able to watch on the web.
This is sadly so hard to change, so many creators are now literally working "for" YouTube, and there are so many quality videos there.
You can replace the frontent yt-dlp invidious mpv etc
I think it's only a matter of time before youtube starts injecting ads directly into the video stream, and only allow streaming it at the actual playback speed.
They might even put the ads in different places for different users to throw off things like Sponsorblock.
Mount a Windows 11 ISO. Open an administrative command window. Navigate to the new drive letter. Enter this command:
I've used this to upgrade 10 to 11 on non approved hardware, going back to at least 2nd gen Intel CPUs. I've used it to upgrade existing Pro, EDU and IOT that didn't want to upgrade.The install window will say server but it isn't.
Does this work with 25H2? I haven't tried it yet.
Yes. I've done Win10 to Win11 with a 25H2 ISO. I've also used it to push 24H2 to 25H2 when WU wasn't offering the upgrade.
Schneegans.de autounattend XML files generator
> Rich appealed both immediately. The first appeal was denied in 45 minutes. The second in just five.
> The platform claimed its "initial actions" (could be either the first takedown or appeal denial, or both) were not the result of automation.
Didn't know YouTube can improve their review time from 45 minutes to 5 minutes without automation. I bet it's pure magic.
I'm sure someone is figuring out a new version of the DMCA that prohibits circumventing data collection "in the name of preserving copyright".
I mean... documenting the details of the investigation to support the first decision and relying on the documented details the second time would easily explain that.
I would love but probably be horrified to see the documented support for "serious physical harm or death".
Unfortunately, this brings an obvious question:
If they sensor something like this, how could we trust platforms with the actually important subjects?
We can’t anymore. Simple as that.
I agree with this except for the "anymore" part. We never could trust them. It just wasn't as obvious before as it is now.
we put way too much faith in them. It's easy to fake authoritative when your substance is virtual.
lol, the evening news was always a laugh if you knew anything about the subject matter.
We can't. From COVID to wars, YouTube is like public access TV from the 80s with scam preachers. We have to take it with a bucket of salt.
*censor
You can't, and this was readily apparent in 2020 with Covid. Even doctors presenting factual information got censored and de-platformed by YouTube.
The only real competing video platform that promises no censorship is Rumble ( https://rumble.com ), but it has a very right-wing slant due to conservatives flocking to it during all the Covid-era social media censorship.
Yeah the moment they started I knew it was doomed to fail. Get it wrong once and your credibility is ruined. They should have never tried to censor content outside of what is legally required and therefore defined.
I kind of agree but laws vary from countries to countries. It's quite an hassle to know what is legal in one country and not in another.
Take freedom of speech for instance, half the thing you can say in usa would be deemed as hate speech in Europe.
If you want to avoid censorship, self-host Peertube and have peave of mind.
That's just self censorship, since no one will see your videos there
You can do both.
I looked at the front page alone and it's full of right wing hot takes and neo-nazis. If a platform wants to accept white-supremacists that's one thing. When it's right on their front page though it's being actively promoted.
Rumble isn't going to save the internet.
Right, it is explicitly a neo-Nazi platform
>Right, it is explicitly a neo-Nazi platform
We call those "free speech" platforms nowadays, because apparently the only free speech is Nazi speech.
This implies we could ever trust them.
You can’t.
like they did during COVID
Bit beside the point but Windows 11 is the first version since Windows 3.1 that I haven't used.
Nuked my Windows 10 install and put Pop OS on it + a MacBook separately.
I've dual booted since the 90's and have run Microsoft OS's somewhere since the 80's.
I had Windows 11 (kept it around for gaming), I binned it a few weeks ago.
Don't game enough to justify it any more (haven't even tried gaming on linux yet).
Juice was no longer worth the squeeze.
Gaming on Linux is quite good these days, as long as you don't need any kernel-level anticheat for multiplayer.
Proton is an impressive piece of software.
Bazzite baybeeeee
Although the reason was absurd, videos were eventually restored.
TBH the title is clickbait given the outcome.
And we see how many people here on HN don't read the article.
Isn't the damage done though? Like if they were down at the time when people were told that win10 reached end of support and it's time to get on 11 does it matter that they are up now?
Anyway I doubt youtube did this intentionally, but it does show how vulnerable their system is to false reports.
But did someone on Microsoft's pay, a Google employee with elevated access, flag it?
DMCA has always been buried in false reports. Every system gets gamed, and this is a particularly easy one to do so with.
Maybe they mixed it up with mental harm from using Windows 11 and that's why they removed Windows 11 content.
It wasn't wrong, there is no bigger harm one can do to self than using Windows!
I no longer run a Microsoft OS on any of the computers I own.
This type of behavior is the reason.
Linux is good enough for most everything I do, for the rest is MacOS.
This happened to me when Amazon KDP's fraud prevention AI hallucinated that my Kindle version was plagiarizing my paperback (yes, it's the same book). https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40992654
Unfortunately, I'm not sure a human ever really looked at my case, or was strongly disincentivized to go against the AI. I got nothing but bland, contentless denials of my appeals that got vaguer each time. And I was never able to go viral, so I'm banned from KDP for life for complete nonsense.
This is a blessing in disguise.
Now more people will be motivated to migrate AWAY from Windows since they will have no bypass.
"Now more people…."
Yes, some will but unfortunately in actual per capita/percentage terms it'll be pathetically small.
Do you really think the marketers, economists and social scientists at Microsoft haven't got that figure off to a tee aready?
It's a certainty they have and they've figured it just amounts to noise in the grand schema of things.
.
Windows 11 attempts to remove local only account is the last straw. I have mostly moved away from Windows already but if they fully implement this will never recommend to anyone period. I manage 2600 computers where I work and am down to less than 150 running windows … could see this reaching 0 in just a year or two.
If anyone at YouTube Trust & Safety is reading this article, I've got a real problem for you to solve.
There are channels that exist solely to pump out AI slop seemingly designed to trick gullible seniors into identifying themselves in the comments. I suspect the scammers will go after these people later in pig-butchering or related scams.
For example, the “Senior Secrets” channel pumps out videos such as “Over 60? Add THIS Powder To Your Coffee To Walk like You’re 40 Again! | Senior Health Tips.” (I won’t link to the video, but you can easily find it with a search.) The video makes bold health claims justified by citing what appear to be scholarly research studies, such as:
> University of California, San Francisco (2023). "Mobility Enhancement Through Nutritional Supplementation in Older Adults." Journal of Gerontology: Medical Sciences, Volume 78, pp. 445-453.
However, none of the cited studies and papers are real.
The deeply concerning thing is that the video’s narrator invites the seniors who are duped by these claims to identify themselves and reveal their age and locations in the comments. From the transcript at 1m44s:
> "Before we begin, tell us in the comments now your age and where you're watching us from. We're reading and replying to every single comment, so drop your comments below."
I’ve already reported this content to YT, but I’ve seen no apparent follow-up.
Disclaimer: I used to work at Google, but not in anything YouTube related. If you’re in YT and want to reach out, my contact info is in my HN profile.
I’m curious to hear whether any YouTubians[O] take you up on that.
0 - idk. Can’t call employees “YouTubers”
They don't care. There's a ridiculous amount of AI slop on YouTube.
Risk of Physical Harm of losing profit.
I forsee a lobby to the government for further restriction on our freedom of speech by google and others as these companies can't compete with open source and decentralized alternatives that are beginning to offer really well made alternatives.
That will only happen if we let it.
Observations indicate we're approaching a point of inflection. We've had about three decades of Big Tech running a serfdom, unless power starts shifting back to users we'll be locked-in serfs for good.
I reckon most of us don't actually realize how much trouble we're in already.
"Risk of Physical Harm" is the kind of reason Tony Soprano would say
There are a lot of videos on YouTube about things that have a “risk of physical harm” and this is what they choose to pick on??
I would think this selective action could / should open them up to litigation for all the other harmful things on their site
It’s all automated, of course there are false positives
If a company chooses to automate something that should not be a defense. They should still be held equally accountable for their actions no matter if they employ a human or an algorithm to do their censorship for them. If they know their software/automation is shit and keeps screwing up, they're still making the choice to continue using it.
The video in question does present a risk of death... to Windows.
(Nah, that wording is but a generic legalese sounding way of casting a huge net to get all sorts of fish.)
[dupe] More discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45744503
YouTube is taking down videos on performing nonstandard Windows 11 installs https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45744503 - 9 days ago, 497 comments
The videos were restored, though...
Meanwhile AI products occasionally talk kids into killing themselves and that's okay.
Once the masses discover that KDE is just as user friendly as Windows these days, ...
... and that it is relatively easy to run (most) Windows apps they love through Bottles (https://usebottles.com/), and/or WinApps (https://github.com/winapps-org/winapps)...
... oof
Unfortunately for right now, KDE has recently released major version 6, which is also about as stable as Windows (meaning, very not). This is reminiscent of the KDE 4 transition and much worse than the KDE 5 one.
For example, half the time I try to log in or unlock the screen, it just ignores my password. Fortunately, I have discovered that pressing Escape triggers a crash, and I have to deliberately trigger a segfault by pressing Escape, in hopes that next time the password will be accepted.
Plasma 6 is nearly two years old, and is totally fine in my experience. The transition was more like 5.x to 5.y. The biggest change is Wayland by default (X11 is currently still available, so might be worth a try).
It sounds like your problem may be with SDDM (the login screen program) rather than Plasma itself. You could try an alternative: https://alternativeto.net/software/sddm/
The only issue I have on my Plasma 6 laptop is also lock-screen related: About 20% of the time keyboard input is ignored/blocked after coming back from sleep. Closing and reopening the lid usually sorts it. Haven't seen what you describe.
I did have some earlier snags which all went away after switching from Wayland session to X11 session.
Gotta be something specific to your machine - for me version 6 is way more stable than 5 was. That line would crash doing sillies things like resizing task bar or applying settings. Now I feel as good with CachyOS and Plasma 6.5.2 as I was with W2K or W7
I've been doing my first journey w Linux as a daily driver and I'm not loving Mint+Cinnamon, what's the best distro for KDE?
It would help to know what it is you are not loving with Mint+Cinnamon... My picks for a beginner-friendly batteries-included Linux dist for KDE:
- You can install KDE on Mint without switching distro or reinstalling[0]
- Debian (caveat: packages can be out of date if you need the latest-greatest of something)
- Fedora (caveat: two major OS upgrades per year can feel like a chore)
- EndeavourOS (caveat: Requires a bit more expertise and grease to properly maintain)
- Aurora (caveat: Still young project and I'd still consider it a bit experimental and adventerous)
- kubuntu (caveat: snaps. Accept them or learn how to disable)
KDE Linux is a thing and something to keep an eye on but it's still in alpha/beta and probably not ready for your use just yet.
[0]: Caveat: it's possible that some DE service might not be disabled properly from your old setup and conflict with KDEs variety if you keep the cinnamon packages around
The better question would be what is the best distro for you. Personally I like Debian. But I don't know enough about you and how you use your computer to say for sure what is best for you.
Devops-heavy development, but been a Windows desktop user up until now, with linux just running on servers.
I'll probably go with Kubuntu just because I want something as vanilla as possible with the largest support-base.
Don't worry too much about distributions, they'll mostly just affect package formats and default settings, but imo Debian is the best choice for stable desktop computing, with the best overall support and community.
They cant remove all the Ubuntu installation tutorials surely?
So why shouldn't I use the windows 11 on the other partition that I use for games that don't run on Linux or run with degraded performance?
(Yeah, it's Nvidia, no, I didn't do my homework and bought Nvidia for a Linux PC).
While it may make sense for others, I don't find system that can lock up for 11 hours for updates suitable for anything other than occasional gaming. But why shouldn't I use it for it? I already think twice before getting any game that doesn't run on Linux and gave EA WRC Rally a downvote after they rug pulled Linux users. (A game that run on Linux on the beginning got borked with anticheat. A racing game, so you don't cheat your friends by having 1s less on that race you all compete on).
There is no worse usage of windows than the occasional one given the huge amount of updates it starts to download whenever you start it up after a long period unused.
I guess it might be useful if you only keep it offline but in that case you aren't playing games online and thus you would be fine gaming on Linux given the only downside is lack of anticheat support.
> Then came the twist. YouTube eventually restored both videos. The platform claimed its "initial actions" (could be either the first takedown or appeal denial, or both) were not the result of automation.
The videos are back. It's also possible that a group of people "brigade" reported his posts for some reason. YouTubers attract haters, too.
Feels like AI going wild with censorship regardless of what they say lol
I wonder if this is because Windows 11 has been used in critical systems to a certain extent?
Risk of physical harm? Should I perceive that as a… threat?
Satya Nadella will kick in your door
Perhaps someone at Microsoft threatened physical harm to a Google engineer if they didn't remove the videos... and they caved into their demands rather than reporting the threat, or perhaps did both.
The sci-fi movies warn us about evil robots. Turns out the evil entity was Microsoft and other big tech companies all along
Indeed; those who are worried about the possibility of paperclip optimizers should take a look at the profit optimizers that exist today.
You see, Windows 11 has new, improved, patented prevent-the-computer-from-physically-beating-up-the-user technology. But this technology requires an online account; you can't trust a local-only account to prevent the computer from beating you up, because it's on the computer in question (duh). So we prevent you from learning how to bypass the requirement for a remote account for your own physical safety.
/s, in case that wasn't blatantly obvious...
Perceive that as being hit in szczepionke /s
Massgrave...that is all...
Even easier, Schneegans
The whole Windows 11 saga can be titled, "Dr. Bashlove, or, how I stopped worrying and learned to love the *NIX".
Hard to believe this is the same company that made Windows 7. Coulda just ported WSL and security fixes back to that and stopped there. But nooooo.
You can watch the latest Hollywood movies for free on YouTube and they don't care about any copyright, but if it's for showing a genocide to the world or bypassing Windows tutorials, YouTube lost it's spirit.
What's next? Utilman.exe tutorials removal?
Oh this is going to get the Streisand effect.
This is what the crowd shouting misinformation and "protect X" asks for all the time.
You want nanny states and nanny corps and authoritianism through and through (remember covid policies?), you'll get this more and more.
You either start rolling back all that BS in the name of freedom (no, not freedumbs) or you can't really complain.
And now 'physical' becomes as hyperbolized as 'violence.'
A small step. Some of us have seen it weaponized in my lifetime, some think it's ridiculous until it's not.
No, "physical harm".
Why is this allowed to occur?
Why is Microsoft allowed to operate in such a user hostile way?
Why aren't people like up in arms massively tanking their stock value, boycotting, reputation harming in every legal way possible en masse?
Like are people just careless and distracted 24/7?
Like surely this should just not be a thing?
I just don't understand how inhumane hostile behavior is just so rampant and like allowed to exist in our society.
Because the only mechanism to hold these mega corporations / billionaires accountable is government, and they're already powerful enough to have waged massive information wars convincing people to fight each other instead of them.
Eventually, enough is enough.
1789.
Because people like my mom don't know there is an alternative and people like my dad thinks OSS has ties to communism (really, I wish I was joking) and MacOS is for hipsters. Doesn't matter that I work for a FAANG company and we use and contribute to OSS or that my work laptop is a Mac.
Wait... OSS doesn't have ties to communism?
Then what have I been using and supporting it for?
Why should I care that much what Microsoft is doing? I sold my Windows 11 computer long ago and haven't looked back. In fact, more user-hostile they get the better that is for the Linux ecosystem which is better for me!
I think it will be better with a little bit higher marketshare, but once the masses come in they demand stuff like kernel-level anticheat, DRM and to never accidentally run things in a terminal and then it will become way worse. Linux is as user-friendly as it is, because it is used by professionals and power users and the masses use something else.
That's why we have different distributions. Let one of the distributions cater to those who don't want control of their own computer.
Yes, and this is how a healthy OS market should look like, but a lot of distros use the same kernel.
Can anyone provide any attempt at rationalizing their decision? Could your computer overheat and explode if you do this? Could hackers take over your computer and play a flashing light pattern that will give you an epileptic seizure?
This is meek and seems almost resigned. I don't understand how discourse and responses around these kinds of strange, bewildering, or stupid corporate decisions is always so nice. This corporate bullshit thrives in respectful environments where nobody needs to be afraid of being told how it is and publicly humiliated for their obviously disingenuous or stupid behavior.
When you're dealing with full-on idiots like that "support specialist" (AI?), all bets are off anyways. Might as well tell that clown that what he just said is the dumbest shit you've heard all week.
Take off the gloves and burn some bridges if you have to, the world will be better place for it.