
YouTube is taking down educational hacking videos - rahuldottech
https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/dhu0tl/its_official_youtube_is_taking_down_educational/
======
thrwn_frthr_awy
This is the consequence of monopolies. Before YouTube gobbled up the world
there were great, niche video sites ran by fans of the coolest things. They
are mostly gone now. It is sad. The web really used to be an adventure. I miss
that part of the internet. You felt like you found these secret underground
worlds where people were really into something. Now it’s different. Maybe what
we have now it what is needed for content creators to be fairly compensated,
but I will still miss it.

~~~
drdeadringer
> Before YouTube gobbled up the world there were great, niche video sites ran
> by fans of the coolest things

True Honest Question.

What were these sights? I was a teenage in the 1990s. I seriously and
literally do not know and now I want to.

~~~
spookthesunset
They didn’t exist. This person is full of it. There was no “golden age of
internet video” before YouTube. Period.

Video was all through real player and was grainy, postage stamp affairs that
constantly suffered from buffer underruns. It sucked. There was no independent
dudes exploring abondoned buildings with high quality production (the proper
people). No dudes picking locks in under 30 seconds (lock picking lawyer). No
people taking apart power tools (ave).

None of that existed before YouTube. YouTube has dramatically changed the
content landscape for the better—both for the producer and consumer. We’ve
never lived in a greater time of independent content than now.

~~~
thrwn_frthr_awy
Sigh... I've replied to a couple of your other comments, but it is getting
exhausting :( You are using quotes around something not from my comment, and
not anything that I am referring to.

And it really seems like whatever site I tell you I miss is going to be met
with reasons why YouTube is better for said content, which is completely
orthogonal to my original point.

For some reason my comment got a lot of replies and comments. Take some time
to think about why that is? Everyone is just on here full of it? Making up
feelings of missing web sites? Maybe you don't miss any web sites–that is
okay. Maybe it seems silly that someone would have strong-positive memories
and emotions tied to certain web-sites that were actual communities to many of
us–that is okay. But you shouldn't shame others. Not for this, not for
anything.

------
motohagiography
I learned security from t-files, 8lgm, phrack, and bugtraq. The people who
taught me learned it from mentorship. The only meaningful progress in security
is by people who work against it. It's a craft subculture, and the real value
of it is in securing the freedom of people to not be subjects of platforms.

YouTube is lame for doing this, but it's a net positive for innovation.

Let them have their walled suburb. Innovation happens at the edges, and the
social-sphere had made people lazy. The bar for entry to being a hacker is so
low, it's the equivalent to governments setting up programs to train people to
play punk music.

Tech giants have become like baby boomers who still think they are rebels.

I look forward to a new generation of kids who will spit upon their hands,
hoist the black flag and make hacking dangerous again.

~~~
FillardMillmore
What, if any, advice would you offer someone who would like to begin learning
about security today?

~~~
wiseleo
Start with understanding Unix file permission system and the meaning of
/etc/services. It will snowball from there. You need to be proficient in Unix
operating systems to have a knowledge base.

~~~
bamboozled
With all due respect, the question was about more modern times. I feel like
this was better advice in the 90s and early 2000s. It's not like knowing those
things is bad, I just don't know how applicable it is now.

Today the scope is far too big and there are far too many different hacking
disciplines now. The advice above was probably more suited to a time when
people used to be granted shell access to university computers. We live in a
world where people don't even run web applications in on servers anymore,
rather containers hosted in cloud platforms.

That said, you really should develop a sound understanding of how computers
work at a low level, it doesn't have to be perfect; but it helps you
understand how even modern systems can be flawed (under all the shiny cloud
marketing, they're computers after all). I would start with doing a course
like: [https://www.nand2tetris.org/](https://www.nand2tetris.org/).

Once that foundational knowledge is understood, learn how computer networks
work (IP, TCP, UDP), network stacks and then higher level protocols like HTTP,
HTTP(s) and other layer 7 protocols. Learning about databases is good too,
basic SQL skills are useful.

By this stage you will probably bee having too much fun building new things
using all the knowledge you've acquired rather than breaking other peoples
stuff; Then again I guess it can still be fun to experiment with that too.

~~~
wiseleo
The cloud is someone else's Unix computer.

Understanding permissions leads to understanding of privilege escalation,
interprocess communication, /proc, logging, avoiding logging, understanding
/etc... Yep, that's where I would start.

~~~
bamboozled
You’re also just assuming everyone is running Linux I guess ?

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kipchak
I hate how removed videos don't retain a title. It's one thing for a video to
be taken down, it's another to see a mystery box taunting me from my favorites
playlist. What forbidden knowledge (cat video) is forever lost to time?

~~~
Ruthalas
[https://youtuberecover.com/](https://youtuberecover.com/) is a project
designed to preserve the metadata of YouTube videos, searchable via original
url.

They have a decent database, and you can add videos to it!

No affiliation, I just found it recently, and it may suit your use-case.

~~~
kipchak
Thanks! Trying it on a few links it worked on a newer video from a terminated
account but no dice on old stuff. It looks like they remade their account so
that's definitely a win!

------
rvz
Well YouTube's actions is really unsurprising given that they have made it
more unclear on which videos meet their Terms of Service. If that wasn't
enough, creators also complained about 'The Algorithm' scanning their videos
to demonetize or take down videos for the same reason.

At this point, It is worth looking at other alternatives such as Bitchute,
PeerTube, etc with Patreon support to avoid this senseless behaviour that
YouTube is doing to its creators.

If they can do it to creators with crazy conspiracy theorist videos or
creators who have political opinion videos, YouTube can do it to anyone.

------
jakoblorz
That’s really sad! Censoring informative content should never be part of any
corporate strategy, especially in countries having freedom in their
constitution.

Have a look at PeerTube ([https://joinpeertube.org](https://joinpeertube.org))
if you don’t know it yet.

~~~
bitL
Self-hosting PeerTube is trivial. So is self-hosting NextCloud (DropBox
alternative). So is self-hosting PixelFed (Instagram alternative). So is self-
hosting Mastodon, RocketChat, Code-Server (VSCode) etc. Rent a $5/month VPS
and have 100% control over what you publish and federate with like-minded as
you like. At some point those services will support 90% of all monopoly
features and 99% features you care about. If you are worried about some
unwanted illegal content coming in from federated users, it's trivial to get
Deep Learning filters to remove 99% of unwanted content (e.g. porn) as well.
You can decide the rules.

~~~
Scoundreller
Now launch a search engine in front of it. What’s old is new again.

------
diodesign
Is this actually happening? Because it makes little sense when you consider
that YouTube-parent Google is _sponsoring_ security education videos. See this
GCP-sponsored LiveOverflow video:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-P9USG6kLs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-P9USG6kLs)

Maybe Google's killing off dodgy script kiddie vids, and leaving quality
content up (and I mean the rest of LiverOverflow's videos et al, not just the
paid-for stuff.)

~~~
ggggtez
I think this came up months ago and it was clarified it was just a mistake,
not an actually policy. Google didn't actually ban educational videos, but
people drew conclusions from Twitter and assumed the worst against reason.

Reddit comments seems to confirm that this is just fear mongering at this
point, and the OP should know by now what happened.

------
IIAOPSW
Last time this came up there was a tongue-in-cheek suggestion all the
penetration testers move to pornhub.

~~~
tjpnz
It's not as crazy an idea as it may sound and there's supposedly a lot of gun
related stuff there right now.

I'm surprised as to why PornHub haven't already launched a re-skin for regular
content. They've clearly got the infrastructure and knowhow to make it work.

~~~
dsfyu404ed
>I'm surprised as to why PornHub haven't already launched a re-skin for
regular content. They've clearly got the infrastructure and knowhow to make it
work.

It's outside their business model so they're not sure they can do a good job
and make a good enough profit to make it worthwhile. It's the same reason your
local heavy earth-moving contractors don't offer equipment rental and machine
moving services even though those things use the same infrastructure
(maintenance facilities and an army of low boy trailers) and workflows
(dumping machines off at various addresses and picking them back up when the
job is done) they already have.

------
jaimex2
This is great news for tutorial sites.

I wonder if channels like 'Lockpicking Lawyer' will also get targeted?

~~~
kawfey
It's only a matter of time. When LPL gets ousted, I'm going wherever he's
going.

~~~
myself248
I feel like I should youtube-dl a bunch of my favorite channels right now...

~~~
ColanR
I've been doing that for a while.

~~~
dvtrn
Storing locally or to your own private cloud? Could you share storage setup,
I'm thinking I'm going to be doing this as well

~~~
cjpb
I've been doing this for a few years now as I grew tired of video/audio
getting removed without them leaving any trace of what the content was related
to.

My current setup consists of several scripts on my personal server - basic CLI
wrappers around "youtube-dl" (supports many sites, not just YouTube) - these
scripts set my default preferences as well as the destination folder depending
on the parameters passed.

Once the download is complete, the destination folder is just one of many
paths scanned by my Plex instance. I can then pull up the video/audio on my
television, computer or mobile device as I please.

------
acoye
I saw a gold comment on YT "Live Overflow" a while back …

> guess we'll have to publish on YT all project zero's news and see how they
> react.

------
codesternews
One hand google sponsor the youtube "LiverOverflow" video to just talk about
ethical hacking and penetration testing.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-P9USG6kLs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-P9USG6kLs)

On other hand they are taking other educational videos.

------
hans_castorp
There is always the Fedivers:
[https://fediverse.party/](https://fediverse.party/)

------
freyr
Even the Redditor commenters are not falling for this.

Not sure why HN is getting hit so hard by the anti-big-tech FUD over the last
few days, or why we keep taking the bait. Maybe just because HN has start up
culture at its core.

------
ericdykstra
YouTube doesn't seem to be interested in hosting any content that isn't
manufactured from a giant media corporation or just vapid clickbait
entertainment. Just take a look at the trending tab to see what YouTube wants
to promote: [http://youtube.com/trending](http://youtube.com/trending)

It's worth noting that "Trending" is curated by YouTube itself, and is not an
algorithmically determined set of videos.

~~~
gwenzek
This is wrong. Trending is based on an actual mathematical formula based on
the number of views per hour on the last 48h. Then on top of that you have
some filtering who tries to downgrade clickbaity contents. In the US you also
have human filtering. Curators can remove a video or ask the Trending
algorithm to rate a video before it's normally rated but they can't add a
video to an arbitrary position or change the ranking.

Clickbait entertainment is probably over represented but that's also a kind of
video who receives a lot of view at the same time which what "Trending" means.

Source: used to work next to the Trend team.

------
lonelappde
3 months ago, 1500 points, 400 comments:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20350306](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20350306)

------
bouncycastle
It's like banning Karate & Judo because it teaches violence. (When it actually
improves personal security/safety)

------
kawfey
I feel like more and more educational youtubers are going to be moving to
platforms like Skillshare, Brilliant, and other next-gen educational/learning
subscription services that already sponsor them, more or less because they're
undoubtedly going to be fairly compensated for their work on those platforms
vs. YouTube, and catering to an audience that is passionate about learning and
doesn't post asinine troll comments.

YouTube is undergoing the same transformation that happened to TLC, Discovery,
and The History Channel; toy reviews, mainstream media and music, zany (yet
soulless) influencers, and good-for-all-audiences content are ruling the
platform because they bring in the most most advertising revenue, creating a
beautiful moment in time, creating a lot of value for shareholders.

~~~
leppr
The one thing YouTube has for it (maybe not for long) against these platforms
is that all content being free from paywalls encourages user exploration
(search or clicking on random thumbnails) and thus easier discovery of your
videos.

------
microcolonel
This is the safe, _nice_ YouTube you've been asking for. Hope you enjoy it.

Remember when we were saying that it was going to end badly when the
mainstream media were pressuring advertisers to have a moral stance on the
content their advertisements are shown with? Well, this is exactly what was
bound to happen. YouTube is (gradually, to reduce backlash) becoming Disney-
VEVO-Time Warner tube, and that means they're going to have to find cost-
effective ways to destroy all marginally-concerning-looking content.

~~~
ggggtez
There doesn't appear to be any evidence that educational videos are banned.
This is just the same overblown news story from a month ago that they admitted
was just a fluke of the content flagging system.

A quick search on Google shows plenty of educational content in hacking, some
from Google themselves. I'd say this borders on conspiracy theory at this
point.

~~~
microcolonel
So much educational content, particularly historic content, is now on the
continuum from delisted to removed entirely. The hacking content is just of
particular interest to this community; it's not the story.

------
swiley
On the one hand I really hate censorship.

On the other hand I feel like the sort of people that watch videos instead of
reading documentation tend to be the kind that would misuse this stuff.

------
president
Is there an official page from YouTube that lists banned categories? Even
YouTube's public policy page [1] doesn't mention anything about educational
hacking videos.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/about/policies/#community-
guidelines](https://www.youtube.com/about/policies/#community-guidelines)

~~~
ggggtez
It's there somewhere, but it doesn't say "educational hacking videos". It says
"hacking and spam/phishing".

It's just a rephrasing of their existing policy. It's the same idea of why
they don't let you show videos advocating building bombs and using them in
terrorist attacks. The videos that are banned are based on people trying to
use these techniques to commit crimes. Not banning "hacking" in general.

------
tus88
Not to be the Devil's advocate - but what's the difference between a hacking
video and an educational hacking video?

~~~
wiseleo
You tell me...

[https://youtu.be/tTl5Rl8cKy8](https://youtu.be/tTl5Rl8cKy8)

A skilled person will learn a lot. This is a devious attack. A curious viewer
will just get a glimpse but would not be able to implement.

I learned enough to replicate this attack.

------
imhoguy
Just came with an idea: IPFS shaddowing/mirroring, a browser plugin which
seeds your public browsing cache as a source. Then as more people visit the
URL and keep it cached then the resource would live the longer or forever.
That would need to be zero-setup & interaction-free tool, Firefox killer-app
ideally.

------
harlanji
Time to mirror and self host your channel. Check out my open source package
iSpooge Live on GitHub... it’s git a script to download, HLS encode for 3
playback rates, and generate a static site that’s all tuned for a CDN. Been
using it for over a year myself.

~~~
Sendotsh
You might want to reconsider the project name if you expect anyone to take it
seriously. Especially with how you add "Powered by FreshSpooge" to the sites.

[https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Spooge](https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Spooge)

------
jphelps
It almost seems that theres a business opportunity to start a site where
independent creators can publish content deemed not mainstream enough for the
major networks. Oh wait..

------
At1C
Other alternatives
[https://www.videocoin.io/learnmore/](https://www.videocoin.io/learnmore/)

------
At1C
Ask yourself who put alphabet and their sibling companies in charge of
policing and censoring internet, the users have choice find alternatives.
[https://www.thetatoken.org/](https://www.thetatoken.org/)

------
indeks
Worth setting up a video service just for that then.

------
RenRav
Is there any decent alternative to Youtube yet? This is getting ridiculous.

------
api
youtube-dl is your friend.

~~~
pixelbath
While I agree with the sentiment, that's not really what this is about.
Youtube-dl does nothing for videos already taken down, nor does it help
content creators.

~~~
aussieguy1234
The link is to a data hoarding subreddit. They could use it for archiving
purposes, before videos get taken down.

~~~
sus_007
Oh, you must be new to that subreddit then :D

------
rolltiide
well they said they would so no surprise here

