we've had our share of controversies on this channel getting hacked uploading
April Fool's pranks that were too believable that time Colton issued
copyright strikes against ourselves twice we've also removed plenty of
videos from our Channel sometimes due to typos or other errors that needed to be
corrected or disagreements with sponsors but you know what's never happened in 15
years we have never had a video on our Channel taken down by YouTube without
our consent is what I used to say that
is until last Tuesday when I received a notification that our video titled
degoogle your life part two ad free YouTube was removed from the platform
and I was issued a community guidelines strike warning a warning that turns into
a full strike if I repeat the offense
except what exactly did I even do how is
it that a video about open maps and ad
blocking can fall under harmful or
dangerous content I've done more dangerous things for a DE Grand sponsor
spot and those are all still up speaking of obviously those guys weren't going to
miss an opportunity to insert themselves into an LTT controversy so they
sponsored this video and we'll talk about them more a bit
later first let's go through what happened on August 20th we published
degoogle your life part two and after about 2 weeks and 1.4 million views
YouTube Took the video down and gave us a warning for violating their terms of
service or TOS but why I mean we've
uploaded numerous other videos that cover topics like ad blocking vpns and
alternative YouTube clients what is it that made this video specifically
harmful or dangerous we get part of the answer in this explainer paragraph that
says that this category applies to videos which violate YouTube's terms of
service or emphasis here encourage
enourage other users to do so which includes content that provides
instructions on how to download YouTube videos in an unauthorized manner there's
a lot to unpack here starting with that I don't understand how that is harmful
or dangerous except maybe to Google's bottom line they want you to pay for
premium for the privilege of downloading videos which is well within their rights
but I don't think you can make the argument that downloading video is
harming the community in any way unless we've Dimension hopped and gone back 40
years and viewing that content could cause the thought police to cart you
away for reprogramming but let's put that aside
because the arbitrary categorization isn't really the point the video was
removed because for several of its 23-minute runtime we discussed a number
of ways of accessing all of the content on YouTube without interfacing with
YouTube directly including by downloading videos now to avoid this
video getting removed I'm not going to repeat what we said and I'm not going to
link L to the re-uploads that other users have graciously provided for your
convenience what I am going to do though is not issue copyright strikes against
those guys and I'll give you the one
adree YouTube hack that I actually thought was the coolest one uh for
whatever reason if you copy the URL of a YouTube video into Bing you should get
to enjoy an adree experience now saying
that shouldn't violate any TOs and if Google doesn't like it they can hash
that out with Microsoft I I recommend an MMA match between satian Adella and
sunar Pai other than that I don't know
if there's a path to us making this video available again on YouTube because
if we re-uploaded it that would be violating the to again netting our
Channel a strike which is a pretty big deal YouTube has a pretty clear three
strikes and you're out policy with strike one stopping us from posting for
a week strike two stopping us for two weeks and strike three permanently
removing the Channel alog together not posting for even just one week would
result in significant damage to our business and with around 100 people
working here supporting their families that just isn't a risk that we're
willing to take no matter how cheeky I'm personally feeling about the whole
situation and besides if we're being honest we probably should have known
this was coming we aren't the first channel that this has happened to
because of discussions around downloading videos and even channels
that are on the larger side like Lewis rossman's have gotten struck for
promoting a particular desaturated Corvette app that includes just such
functionality now obviously he didn't end up getting banned forever
considering that his channel is still around but they were clearly Furious
that he'd been so Brazen and I mean it's pretty obvious Why YouTube is upset
about this at the end of the day we both knowingly violated the TOs and in a
manner that has a clear impact on the long-term viability of the platform as
much as I hate to say it they're kind of right here I mean imagine if you created
a restaurant let's call it nacho gong
then someone punched a hole in the back of the restaurant giving everybody
direct access to the kitchen and then started giving out the food for free
food that you paid for now obviously the
bandwidth and storage costs of serving a video are not the same as the Food
Supplies and prep costs of serving a meal but they are real costs that the
platform does have to bear and the payment for them is ads and tracking on
YouTube you don't have to like those things and
you can continue to circumvent YouTube's payment system as long as you're able
I'm not going to judge you but what you can't do is sit there and say well I
have no idea what they're mad about and
you shouldn't be surprised if YouTube does someday patch the undocumented API
exploits that third party platforms are taking advantage of so when that
inevitably happens then what do we do
well I can't speak for every Creator but what we did is we made our own own video
platform with float planes and exclusives so if you like our content
please consider subscribing over at lm. g/f flat plane where you will still be
able to find degoogle your life part 2 with no ads or sponsor Integrations
along with plenty of behind the scenes and exclusive content that was in many
cases deemed to be too hot for YouTube or in most cases actually not algorithm
friendly and I mean I hate that it's come to this nobody wants more
subscriptions but we aren't the only one on who see the writing on the wall and
want to reduce our Reliance on Google's fat tee plenty of other creators have
also set themselves up on Alternatives like patreon to offer their fans
something more that doesn't come with intrusive ads and tracking as for the
future of our content here on YouTube well we're definitely going to keep
uploading but we're also definitely going to play it a little safer with
respect to thirdparty YouTube clients and tools with that said though we
haven't dawned our tricorn hat for the last time and in fact we've got a video
coming very soon on the various ways that you can activate Windows 11 ranging
from buying it for $200 to activating it
for a lot less than $200 so make sure you're subscribed and I will see you
over there just like dbrand sees us through difficult times like this those
guys are always there helping reduce our dependence on Google tube and other Tech
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YouTube thanks dbrand you're always there for us if you guys enjoyed this
video maybe check out the one about our Channel getting hacked last year those
guys man do they have any allies in the industry is Burning Bridges just their
pastime