The IT Nerd

This Friday night is really insane.

The latest thing to come across the wire is that Steve Bannon who has a podcast on YouTube and is associated with President Donald Trump has been punted from YouTube after Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani appeared on his podcast saying that Democrats were ‘censoring and suppressing’ Trump supporters:

The YouTube account for Bannon’s War Room podcast was taken down Friday for violating the platform’s Terms of Service, according to the Washington Examiner. 

A Friday evening search for the podcast brought up an error message reading: ‘This page isn’t available. Sorry about that. Try searching for something else.’ 

Youtube had warned earlier this week that it would ban accounts that continued to spread misinformation about voter fraud. 

Clearly Trump and his supporters are under attack from social media companies not named Parler, and given the vitriol from that bunch, they deserve to be under attack. The events of this week show that things have gone too far and this needs to be addressed. And addressed now by not giving these people a voice of any sort.

This is embarrassing if you’re YouTube.

The BBC is reporting that several high-profile music videos on YouTube were mysteriously deleted early Tuesday, in what appears like the result of a security compromise. Some of the videos that have been pulled from Google’s video platform include Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee’s “Despacito” — which is also the most popular video on the platform. Users reported Tuesday that the thumbnail of the video was replaced by a masked gang holding guns, who identify themselves as “Prosox and Kuroi’sh.” Several songs from DJ Snake, Drake, Katy Perry, Selena Gomez, Shakira, and Taylor Swift have also been either deleted or altered with. On Twitter, a person who claims to be one of the hackers said this:

Google who owns YouTube has yet to acknowledge the incident. But it will be interesting to see what they say if and when they do

The Canadian Film Centre (CFC) is pleased to announce a roster of partners for the first-ever Buffer Festival Industry Day. Taking place on Thursday, October 16, 2014 at the Hyatt Regency Toronto, Buffer Festival Industry Day will bring together professionals looking to optimize YouTube as a content and development platform and a marketing and distribution channel. This one-day conference provides a unique opportunity to network with celebrity YouTube creators, Multi-Channel Networks (MCNs), advertisers, agencies and digital entertainment industry executives.

The CFC and title partner YouTube will present a number of informative sessions, from leveraging backend analytics to ensuring brand success on YouTube. Buffer Festival Industry Day Gold partners include shift2, an innovative agency that creates, manages and markets digital content targeting Generation C, and Blue Ant Media, a privately-held media company that creates and distributes content internationally in categories such as lifestyle, travel and music. shift2 will showcase the new Vampire series, Carmilla, and host Industry Day’s official closing reception.

Other industry partners include the CMPA, TWG, Stream Market, What’s Trending and a roster of supporting partners, including: Now Magazine, Stream Daily, IT Business, Cassie Stewart, Hackernest, IPF, InsideOut, Luminato Festival, Interactive Ontario, Liaison of Independent Filmmakers of Toronto, ACCT, TIFF, BlogTo, She Does The City and Tubefilter.

Produced by the CFC Media Lab in partnership with Buffer Festival, the industry day will precede three days of screenings and meetings. Presenters include top YouTube creators including Harley Morenstein of Epic Meal Time and Mitchell Moffit of ASAPScience, plus influential industry speakers Ezra Cooperstein, Chief Operating Officer, Fullscreen, Kendall Rhodes, Talent Manager & Producer, Digital Production Division, Untitled Entertainment and Ali Adab, Vice President of Content and Partnerships, BroadbandTV.

For more information about Buffer Festival Industry Day, please visit http://www.cfccreates.com/programs/63-buffer-festival-industry-day. Ticket entry is $199, and to purchase tickets, click here.

After posting my last story on YouTube, I noticed that YouTube now has an updated mobile site for iPhones and other devices. The key thing here is that this site serves h.264 video that can be played on any of Steve Jobs shiny iDevices. A blog entry notes some other changes:

• It’s really fast.
• The user interface incorporates larger, more touch-friendly elements, making it easier to access videos on the go.
• It incorporates the features and functionality you’ve come to expect from the .com site, like search query suggestions, the options to create playlists, the ability to designate “favorite,” “like” or “unlike” videos directly from your device.
• As we make improvements to Youtube.com, you’ll see them quickly follow on our mobile site, unlike native apps which are not updated as frequently.

It’s nice to see Google delivering on their web app promises. It highlights how some things are better through the browser rather than a native app locked down on the phone. Check it out and let us know what you think via the comments.