YouTube Blocks Blender Videos Worldwide


  • area_can

    on June 15th the entire channel went black.


  • area_can

    It's their platform, so it's Google's right to force monetization if they see fit. But would it really have killed them to, y'know, communicate?



  • @bb36e
    Not sure what they expected, since they're consuming hundreds of thousands of hours of video streaming & all the hosting space, without paying YouTube for that infrastructure.

    More people need to be smacked upside the head with the motto of Web 3.0 until they figure it out themselves... "If you're not paying for the product, you are the product."



  • I saw something about this elsewhere, and apparently Blender isn't the only one hit - MIT OpenCourseWare and a few others are mentioned on Tom's HW. They also speculate/state that this may be related to new EU directives (albeit given the timeline in the Blender article, that seems a less likely).

    Google/Youtube's inability to communicate is a bit surprising. I had heard before that they suck at it, but this seems to go a bit further than just sucking.



  • @cvi said in YouTube Blocks Blender Videos Worldwide:

    Google/Youtube's inability to communicate is a bit surprising.

    I suppose it is if you're 4 years old. Not to anybody who's ever read any news about them.


  • Banned

    @izzion said in YouTube Blocks Blender Videos Worldwide:

    @bb36e
    Not sure what they expected, since they're consuming hundreds of thousands of hours of video streaming & all the hosting space, without paying YouTube for that infrastructure.

    Hmm, I don't know. Maybe they expected Google to FOLLOW THEIR OWN TERMS OF SERVICE? AFAIK there's nothing there that says "if your channel is popular, you must enable monetization or else we'll delete it."



  • @gąska
    Terms of Service 6C (emphasis mine):

    ...you hereby grant YouTube a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicenseable and transferable license to use, reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works of, display, and perform the Content in connection with the Service and YouTube's (and its successors' and affiliates') business...

    Given that YouTube's business is selling ads, you give them the right to require playing ads before displaying your content.



  • YouTube already displays ads next to unmonetized videos. I think there's a way to opt-out but most people leave it at the default setting.


  • Banned

    @izzion I don't think this interpretation would hold up in court. "Business" usually means any and all actions carried out by the organization. Also, this section is about what the user grants YouTube, not what YouTube grants the user - so even if that very weird interpretation is correct, it's not a justification to delete user's content.



  • @bb36e said in YouTube Blocks Blender Videos Worldwide:

    It's their platform, so it's Google's right to force monetization if they see fit. But would it really have killed them to, y'know, communicate?

    Ok, if that's what Google wants, then put ads on the channel.

    Instead, they blocked all the videos from the channel. Now they're getting zero monetized views because nobody can see any of the videos, and on top of that, they get a bunch of bad press for doing this.



  • @gąska
    I'm pretty sure it would, you gave them a royalty-free license to use your video within their business (which is playing ads and serving user-requested videos and "related content" to the originally requested videos).

    And even if you want to argue that doesn't explicitly say "thou must allow us to play ads next to your videos", it's a really dick move to say "hey, I want to serve hundreds of thousands of hours of streaming video every year but not charge anyone anything for viewing them and not show any ads with them... and I'm going to make someone else pay for it, rather than hosting (and paying for) the infrastructure myself." Under no circumstances should that be considered acceptable, or laughed off as "well there's nothing in YouTube's TOS that explicitly requires you to allow them to sell ads to pay your freight, LUL"



  • @ben_lubar
    Did you read the linked post? That's exactly what Google tried to do. But Blender is refusing to enable the setting that gives them permission to do so, so Google blocked the account, since Blender isn't allowing them to pay the bill.



  • @izzion said in YouTube Blocks Blender Videos Worldwide:

    @ben_lubar
    Did you read the linked post? That's exactly what Google tried to do. But Blender is refusing to enable the setting that gives them permission to do so, so Google blocked the account, since Blender isn't allowing them to pay the bill.

    Ok, but Google owns YouTube. They can force that setting to be on. Disabling the channel's videos does not give them any money. It just gives them bad press.



  • @izzion said in YouTube Blocks Blender Videos Worldwide:

    Did you read the linked post? That's exactly what Google tried to do. But Blender is refusing to enable the setting that gives them permission to do so, so Google blocked the account, since Blender isn't allowing them to pay the bill.

    Not quite. According to the Blender Foundation (BF), they had a video disabled some time ago, and when asked why that was the case, they were told to enable advertisements. The BF then asked for clarification, but were largely put on hold by Google ... for like 6 months.

    Later (apparently yesterday), they received a contract to sign and pretty much at the same time their videos went missing. You can't really expect people to sign contracts within the minute, and doubly so for foundations and other complex organizations.



  • @cvi said in YouTube Blocks Blender Videos Worldwide:

    You can't really expect people to sign contracts within the minute

    Considering Google knew what they wanted 6 months ago, wouldn't a better time to have sent the contract have been at the start of the 6 month deadline as opposed to the end?


  • area_can

    @izzion I'd be open to this interpretation if google said, "hey turn this on or else we'll disable your shit", but it looks like the last response from them was, "hold on we'll get back to you"



  • I see plenty of ads on channels that were demonetized. So what exactly does the "enable ads" setting even do?



  • @mott555 said in YouTube Blocks Blender Videos Worldwide:

    I see plenty of ads on channels that were demonetized.

    I don't know why people use the word "demonetized" when they are referring to the "not suitable for some advertisers" yellow icon.


  • Banned

    @izzion said in YouTube Blocks Blender Videos Worldwide:

    @gąska
    I'm pretty sure it would, you gave them a royalty-free license to use your video within their business (which is playing ads and serving user-requested videos and "related content" to the originally requested videos).

    In exchange, they gave me access to a platform that lets me upload and share my videos. It's a transaction, even if no money is involved. They can't just shit all over our agreement and say they don't have any obligation to hold their end of their end of the deal. At least they shouldn't be able to. Online registration is a legally binding contract, just like shopping at grocery store.

    And even if you want to argue that doesn't explicitly say "thou must allow us to play ads next to your videos", it's a really dick move to say "hey, I want to serve hundreds of thousands of hours of streaming video every year but not charge anyone anything for viewing them and not show any ads with them... and I'm going to make someone else pay for it, rather than hosting (and paying for) the infrastructure myself." Under no circumstances should that be considered acceptable, or laughed off as "well there's nothing in YouTube's TOS that explicitly requires you to allow them to sell ads to pay your freight, LUL"

    If they provide a service where I can serve hundreds of thousands of hours of streaming video every year without ads, and they advertise this service as a place where I can serve hundreds of thousands of hours of streaming video every year without ads, I see nothing wrong with serving hundreds of thousands of hours of streaming video every year without ads. I, as a user, have no obligation to make sure my service provider is compensated fairly for their hard work. They agreed to do this for free; even more - it was their own goddamn idea to do it for free! How is it MY fault if they become unprofitable because of their own idea?

    There's nothing wrong with requiring ads to be enabled as part of service agreement. But Google didn't require this. They just suspended the account without a word. They can't just suspend service for no reason, even if it's free service. At least they shouldn't be.



  • @ben_lubar said in YouTube Blocks Blender Videos Worldwide:

    Considering Google knew what they wanted 6 months ago, wouldn't a better time to have sent the contract have been at the start of the 6 month deadline as opposed to the end?

    Indeed. Perhaps they could even have stated what the problem was in the same breath as sending the contract (or before). Sending a contract willy-nilly with no explanation is IMO a pretty shitty thing to do.



  • Hackernews said they are on peertube now. Never heard of this alternative to youtube before.



  • @sockpuppet7

    From what I can tell, PeerTube is a decentralised p2p variant of YouTube. I have no idea how it's exactly supposed to work, so here's a Wikipedia page (in French, because of course it's only in French):

    And some Github repo:


  • Notification Spam Recipient

    @alexmedia said in YouTube Blocks Blender Videos Worldwide:

    a decentralised p2p variant of YouTube

    Hmm, where have I seen this idea before? I could have sworn I was doing something like this back in High School...

    Sadly, I only remember very small bits of the situation, mostly that it was part of my DIY HTPC (using a HP Presario 550? if memory serves, it had issues because I was using two RAM sticks that had differing clock speeds :mlp_yay: ).



    1. Interestingly, I can still watch the embedded video in their channel, even though it's blocked if I actually click on it.
      0_1529482853533_9170c065-c419-4044-a813-a217ee0f39fe-image.png
    2. I still don't understand why they sent them a contract. Aren't the standard Youtube ToS enough for everyone else?
    3. A lot of their videos are apparently Creative Commons. I could make a channel named "Unofficial Blender mirror" and reupload them without breaking any laws or ToS. Just putting that out there in case someone cares.


  • Looks like they've just updated their page:

    Wednesday June 20 2018, by Ton Roosendaal
    Last night the Youtube Support team contacted Francesco Siddi by phone. As we understand it now it’s a mix of coincidences, bad UIs, wrong error messages, ignorant support desk staff and our non-standard decision to not monetize a popular Youtube channel.

    I can hear blakeyrat's laugh from here.


  • area_can

    @zerosquare should've used AI



  • @zerosquare said in YouTube Blocks Blender Videos Worldwide:

    Looks like they've just updated their page:

    Wednesday June 20 2018, by Ton Roosendaal
    Last night the Youtube Support team contacted Francesco Siddi by phone. As we understand it now it’s a mix of coincidences, bad UIs, wrong error messages, ignorant support desk staff and our non-standard decision to not monetize a popular Youtube channel.

    I can hear blakeyrat's laugh from here.

    They actually called someone over the phone?

    Wonders never cease.



  • @rhywden Hey, Google is no faceless corporation. They have at least 3 people employed doing customer support.



  • @anonymous234 And their job is to explain to people that they don't control the AI that's ruining the caller's life.



  • @zerosquare said in YouTube Blocks Blender Videos Worldwide:

    I can hear blakeyrat's laugh from here.

    Yup.

    This all illustrates a point though: YouTube is a monopoly that needs to be broken as quickly as possible.



  • @rhywden said in YouTube Blocks Blender Videos Worldwide:

    They actually called someone over the phone?
    Wonders never cease.

    The standard way of getting support from Google is to get a negative story published in several news sources.

    That used to be the joke about how to get a bug fixed in Netscape: nothing will happen until it's published on Wired and C/Net, then it'll be fixed in an hour.


  • 🚽 Regular

    bad UIs

    Blender.

    Talking about bad UIs.



  • @blakeyrat BTW there's no way to directly link to it, but he's updating at the top of the blog post so it's easy to find. He goes into a lot more detail about what happened exactly:

    The thing he calls a "coincidence" isn't really. YouTube's just too fucking stupid to only ask people to agree to monetization-related terms and services when a video's actually set to be monetized. (Aka, that's simply more bad UI.)

    The "bad UI" is that when a monetized channel needs to have some new terms of service approved, it only shows that to one of the channel's logins, in this case, a login that the person who actually ran the channel didn't know about and never actually used.

    Something he doesn't mention that's also bad UI: the reason so many channels that never plan to monetize a video (like both of mine for example) have monetization turned on is that it used to be the case that super-useful YouTube features, like uploading a custom video preview image or using the scheduling feature to publish videos on a schedule, were, for some reason that's never been explained, gated behind the monetization switch. And once monetization is enabled, it can't be disabled.


  • Considered Harmful



  • @blakeyrat said in YouTube Blocks Blender Videos Worldwide:

    @zerosquare said in YouTube Blocks Blender Videos Worldwide:

    I can hear blakeyrat's laugh from here.

    Yup.

    This all illustrates a point though: YouTube is a monopoly that needs to be broken as quickly as possible.

    European laws are probably going to cause this anyway. Things like Article 13 and the GDPR are increasing liability and overhead for the major companies that cannot afford to lose the European market. But any competitors that disregard the EU (whether by unofficially operating there or blocking clients), simply don't have to worry about any of this. Of course, video hosting is infamously expensive, so it would take an extreme disadvantage to make even this practical.



  • @sumireko Also nobody gives a shit about the EU, that's also kind of a problem.

    BTW, you're literally the first person I've seen ever claiming that the GDPR would hurt large corporations and help small ones. YouTube has enough cash to deal with the overhead and liability; Bob's Discount Video Uploads doesn't, it'll close down.


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