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Roku Yanks YouTube TV App From Their App Store

Posted in Commentary with tags , on May 1, 2021 by itnerd

You might remember that I recently wrote about Roku and YouTube getting into a fight related to what Roku calls Google’s “predatory” and “monopoly” behavior. YouTube gave the world a hint as to what was to come on Friday via Twitter:

I can now confirm Roku has yanked the YouTube TV off their store. If you have it installed, don’t uninstall it. And I should note that the standard YouTube app still is available.

Let’s see if YouTube and Roku work out their differences, or this escalates further.

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YouTube Suspends Trump’s Channel For At Least 7 Days

Posted in Commentary with tags , on January 13, 2021 by itnerd

President Donald Trump’s problems in terms of being tossed off of social media are increasing. The news is out that YouTube has joined other social networks in punting him. This was announced by YouTube via a Tweet:

YouTube has barred new videos from being uploaded to Trump’s channel for at least seven days, citing violations of its policies and “concerns about the ongoing potential for violence.”:

It’s the latest action against Trump after last week’s deadly riot at the U.S. Capitol by a pro-Trump mob. Twitter and Facebook have both also suspended or blocked the president’s accounts. YouTube issued “a strike” to Trump’s channel, and said comments would also be disabled indefinitely. The company also said it removed new content posted Tuesday.

It will be interesting to see how quickly this migrates from being a 7 day ban to a permanent ban. Because it’s clear that Trump and his followers won’t moderate their behavior. Which means that everyone has to take their voices away so that they don’t continue to be poison in the political discourse.

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BREAKING: Steve Bannon’s Podcast Punted From YouTube

Posted in Commentary with tags on January 8, 2021 by itnerd

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.

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Google Gets A Slap On The Wrist For Collecting Children’s Data On YouTube And Making Money By Doing So

Posted in Commentary with tags , on September 4, 2019 by itnerd

US regulators need to learn that the only way to alter the behavior of billion dollar companies is to serve up fines that hurt. A case in point is this report from the New York Times that has Google cutting a $170 million cheque to the FTC because it was caught collecting children’s data on YouTube and making money off that data:

Google on Wednesday agreed to pay a record $170 million fine and to make changes to protect children’s privacy on YouTube, as regulators said the video site had knowingly and illegally harvested personal information from youngsters and used that data to profit by targeting them with ads.

The measures were part of a settlement with the Federal Trade Commission and New York’s attorney general. They said YouTube had violated a federal children’s privacy law known as the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, or COPPA.

The fact is $170 million is a rounding error to a company that had revenues of almost $40 billion dollars last quarter. Meaning that this will do nothing to send a message that such behavior is unacceptable.  If the FTC and others really want to send that message, I would say fines have to be in the same range as the GDPR which really hurt companies who run afoul of it.

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YouTube Pwned… Videos Erased Or Defaced

Posted in Commentary with tags on April 10, 2018 by itnerd

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

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Google & YouTube Will Display Election Results As Soon As The Polls Close

Posted in Commentary with tags , on November 8, 2016 by itnerd

I haven’t talked about the US election at all. But now that Americans are finally going to the polls after the most divisive and caustic campaign in the history of the country, I thought I would mention that Google and YouTube have said via a blog post have announced that they will have results the second the polls close:

Starting when the polls close on Election Day, you will be able to find U.S. election results integrated right into your Google searches in over 30 languages around the world. You’ll also be able to see detailed updates and results of the Presidential, Senatorial, Congressional, Gubernatorial races as well as state-level referenda and ballot propositions.

And the same blog post has links that will help you to find your polling place as well as info on how to vote. I’m sure that this is getting the attention of the cable news channels who normally are the go to source for election results.

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YouTube Moves Away From Flash…. Flash Is Doomed?

Posted in Commentary with tags , , on January 29, 2015 by itnerd

I have to admit that I do not like Flash. It’s insecure and power hungry. And I thought that long before the late Steve Jobs said so. So the news that YouTube is moving away from Flash is something that I really, really like:

Four years ago, we wrote about YouTube’s early support for the HTML5 <video> tag and how it performed compared to Flash. At the time, there were limitations that held it back from becoming our preferred platform for video delivery. Most critically, HTML5 lacked support for Adaptive Bitrate (ABR) that lets us show you more videos with less buffering.

Over the last four years, we’ve worked with browser vendors and the broader community to close those gaps, and now, YouTube uses HTML5 <video> by default in Chrome, IE 11, Safari 8 and in beta versions of Firefox.

The benefits of HTML5 extend beyond web browsers, and it’s now also used in smart TVs and other streaming devices. 

With YouTube moving away from Flash, it means that Flash is likely doomed because others will copy YouTube’s move . And finally, I will have a reason not to have Flash on my computer which will take away one attack vector from the bad guys and make my computer perform better.

 

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Canadian Film Centre Announces Inaugural Buffer Festival Industry Day

Posted in Commentary with tags on September 28, 2014 by itnerd

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.

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North Korea Wants To Be Your Friend On Twitter And YouTube …. WTF?

Posted in Commentary with tags , , on August 22, 2010 by itnerd

The regime that everybody loves to hate wants friends. North Korea now has a Twitter account, and a YouTube Account. I guess that social networking is now a priority in that corner of the universe. The funny thing is that they’ve gained a ton of followers (10,943 as I type this) on Twitter, and a number of subscribers on YouTube (1617 as I type this). Some of the postings that are in English are funny, but some are clearly propaganda. Perhaps someone who reads Korean can tell me what the rest of the postings say.

So, here’s my question. Does the fact that this repressive regime has entered the social networking universe make you think differently about them?

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YouTube Updates Mobile Site…. Nice!

Posted in Commentary with tags on July 8, 2010 by itnerd

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.

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