YouTube faces creator backlash - <AUTHOR> https://www.axios.com/youtube-faces-creator-backlash-30b7e425-ec93-4f02-aec3-6f418e009b56.html <comment><USER5> YouTube's problem is their allergy towards using humans. AI technology isn't advanced enough to replace empathy yet. They simply need to add more humans into their processes.

Copyright claims is a perfect example. That system is abused by large companies who know how to exploit their algorithms and they know it is worth it because there will be no humans in the loop to stop them.

If YouTube wants to remain viable, they just need to bite the bullet and hire a whole bunch of people.

<comment><USER6> > Copyright claims is a perfect example.

Yep.

One of my favorite subscribers to watch is some guy (Harald Baldr[0]) who travels around remote areas of the world and vlogs it.

But he's said a number of times how even 10 seconds of background music can cause his video to get demonetized and then all ad revenue for the video goes to the record label who owns the copyright and there's absolutely nothing he can do to combat it.

This happens even if his video is 30 minutes long and has nothing to do with the music at all -- it just so happens he's walking past a store or hotel lobby that has music on.

[0]: [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKr68ZJ4vv6VloNdnS2hjhA/vid...](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKr68ZJ4vv6VloNdnS2hjhA/videos)

<comment><USER7> Why blame YouTube? They're doing it at the request of the right holders, who would otherwise have a claim to pull the whole video down. They also provide an automated tool to scrub claimed music from already-uploaded videos ([https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2902117?hl=en](https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2902117?hl=en)) You might say the music rights holders lack empathy though...

<comment><USER8> Issuing a real legally binding DMCA takedown holds legal liability. Youtube id claims are _not_ dmca takedown claims, and youtube is very clear on this distinction. You can not counter-sue a company for issuing a false id claim.

Issuing a DMCA takedown that is both false and meant in bad faith is an act of perjury. In theory the copyright holder could get jail time.

A interesting case is the video of a toddler dancing on youtube, 29s long, to a song. The Ninth Circuit held that copyright owners must consider fair use before issuing take-down notices. The case got settled afterwards.

This difference between DMCA takedown and ID claim is often discussed by youtube creators as both a boon and a curse. The good thing is that id claim does not impact any future standing with google or legal punishment beyond the loss of revenue from the video that get claimed. The bad side is that they get abused.

<comment><USER9> > Issuing a real legally binding DMCA takedown holds legal liability.

I've seen several documented cases of DMCA abuse but I haven't seen a single case where a major company was punished for it, and I doubt they'd face any consequences substantial enough to overshadow the profits they've made abusing the process. If you've got examples though I'd love to see them.

<comment><USER10> There can be a lot fewer cases if they don't have to go through the process!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> YouTube faces no competition for creators.

There's Vimeo, but you either keep paying a monthly fee, or they drop your content due to the 5 GB maximum limit for free accounts. So if you want to publish stuff and no longer worry about it, you need to make sure that you have a subscription going with a valid credit card.

Vimeo is only worth it if you're looking to host video content behind a paywall.

Also for website owners Vimeo drops tracking cookies with no way to turn the behavior off, whereas YouTube has a -nocookies mode that doesn't drop any cookies. On the other hand YouTube has started to serve ads on embedded content as well and in the -nocookies mode they can't notice Premium accounts either.

These are technical issues that could be solved by alternatives, but aren't. We aren't even talking about the lockin effect of YouTube having the huge audience that it has. Nowadays it's more lucrative to host videos on YouTube even if they are meant for embedding it on your website.

Also TikTok is cool, but it's very niche and it's in no way competition for YouTube. There's also the issue that if you're worried about privacy and ads, the fact that TikTok is free (and therefore ads or data driven) and owned by a Chinese company ... is a problem.

<comment><USER12> > _So if you want to publish stuff and no longer worry about it, you need to > make sure that you have a subscription going with a valid credit card._

Also known as "paying for hosting". Seems pretty reasonable. If creators want to upload and broadcast unlimited hours of HD video onto the internet for free they need to accept the consequences of this arrangement (i.e. they aren't entitled to anything). The rest of us have to invest capital into our projects so that we can ensure a stable digital foundation in-line with our own prerogatives.

<comment><USER11> I understand the rationale, the problem is that I don't want to pay for video hosting indefinitely, unless it's a service that's included in a package for something else I'm paying for.

So if the solution is Vimeo versus not hosting video at all, I might go for the later. Therefore free to host services like YouTube win.

<comment><USER12> > _the problem is that I don 't want to pay for video hosting indefinitely_

That's fine, YouTube offers the service for free, but it's not reasonable to have any particular expectations of quality or service from a free offering.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> TikTok is a mobile-only vertical video platform consisting of memes and kids dancing to popular music. YouTube is a platform where long-form, high definition, well produced content is becoming increasingly more prevalent. I genuinely don't see how the two are even remotely alike.

I appreciate that TikTok is the "new hotness" but I don't see its relevance to this conversation about YouTube or why the author felt the need to shoehorn it into every paragraph.

<comment><USER14> A lot of the most popular content is "long-form" for no other reson than Youtube's 10-minute minimum length requirement for monetizing via ads. Video makers have responded to this arbitrary requirement in exactly how you would expect, by padding out the video length with dull filler material.

Think of the amount of writing that goes into a single 20-minute TV sitcom episode. The most popular ones have 24 episodes a year. Youtubers are expected to come up with 10-minute episodes 1x/week if not more frequently. The quality of the videos take a nosedive, the creators burn out, and subscriptions and views fall as a result.

TikTok's shorter videos can arguably be more entertaining as there's no arbitrary length requirement that incentivizes filler.

<comment><USER15> >Youtube's 10-minute minimum length requirement for monetizing via ads.

This is inaccurate. It is suspected, but not confirmed, that the YouTube recommendation algorithm favors videos longer than 10 minutes because they increase the amount of time users spend on the platform. Videos need not be 10 minutes long to be monetized.

<comment><USER16> The distinction is largely irrelevant, since creators generally believe such a thing to exist, which raises more questions of algorithm transparency.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It's obvious youtube is for mainstream media now, with content creators being a leftover wart, minuscule on youtube's radar.

Content creators deal with an opaque algorithm that demonetizes videos based on how the wind is blowing, or it would appear. Weeks or months of work can be wiped out by an arbitrary demonetization preventing content creators from getting paid for their video's views.

JonTron discusses this [1]. It's very easy to violate the "advertiser- friendly" guidelines. They're vague: "violence", "harmful content", "controversial or sensitive issues". Under profanity: "strong profanity used in video _even if bleeped for comedy, documentary, news, or educational purposes_ ". ??!

It has been obvious for a long time that daily content uploads are better for the algorithm than longer, quality videos uploaded less frequently. If you look at the LinusTechTips network of channels, they produce at least 5-7 videos per week.

[0]: An analysis of 7 months worth of trending tab videos, or roughly ~40k videos that reached the trending tab. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDqBeXJ8Zx8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDqBeXJ8Zx8)

[1]: [https://youtu.be/TZ31u3vI934?t=364](https://youtu.be/TZ31u3vI934?t=364)

<comment><USER18> >So yeah, now R. Kelly somehow owns the rights to JonTron's Buying Things Online

Wow, the whole Youtube system is a mess. I had no idea it was that bad

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I have compiled a few videos from youtuber music educators that I follow. The current situation is worse than most of us think. One of them, Paul Davis, even had a copyright strike for playing HIS OWN music. LOL! So ludicrous!

\- Craziest COPYRIGHT STRIKE from YouTube ever?! (Paul Davis) \- [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YvH77m_3MVU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YvH77m_3MVU)

\- What I want to teach, but can't, thanks to Universal Music Group. (Adam Neely) \- [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nryFmUjtwEY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nryFmUjtwEY)

\- Why Record Labels STILL Suck! (Rick Beato) \- [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QoTl9V8cjH0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QoTl9V8cjH0)

<comment><USER20> More recently than Adam's October 2017 video, he had another copyright strike for, presumably, showing a repeating clip of the _Single Ladies_ music video _without playing even one second of the music itself_. He recreated the song with a chintzy MIDI soundfont.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rRKBXQotnA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rRKBXQotnA)

His comments:

[https://twitter.com/adamneelybass/status/1124722129495306240](https://twitter.com/adamneelybass/status/1124722129495306240)

[https://twitter.com/adamneelybass/status/1124840588543713285](https://twitter.com/adamneelybass/status/1124840588543713285)

<comment><USER21> "To learn more about copyright, you may visit..." It must be nice to have such a dominant position that you can patronize your "partners" in such a way.

I'm constantly amazed that this company does not invest more in human copyright legal reviews when their product is pretty much just obtaining rights to share copies of other people's work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Here's why YouTube can go fuck itself:

I have a YouTube channel. My first video will be five years old on September 14. I kept putting out content for a number of years, content which I thought was funny and would surely be well-received.

But people never watched my videos! I get 20ish views per video. They never get recommended to anyone because I'm a smaller channel, and then I never become big for that reason. (Or maybe my videos just suck. Some of them definitely do, but I've made some that I'm proud of.)

I joined TikTok, YouTube's 60-second-max competitor. Out of boredom I made a video synced to one of those songs. Fifty views on my first one. Eventually I started making more content. I've clocked around 150K views on my videos combined, 40K likes, and 1200 followers. I made my first video around February and my second around June.

While YouTube discourages small creators, non-celebrities, and those that don't have massive amounts of cash to throw around on sets, TikTok lets whoever's talented become at least relatively popular.

TikTok's algorithm is pretty well-documented by its community: When you post a video, TikTok shows it to a certain amount of people. If enough people who see it "like" it, it moves to a larger amount of people, and so on until everyone on the app sees it. This is easy, straightforward, and transparent (for the most part, there are special cases and such).

YouTube's algorithm is: [redacted]. It's amusing to me that a Chinese company would be more transparent about this. YouTube doesn't understand its community and it's probably too late to save it, it got a monopoly and stagnated. My story is one of many others.

<comment><USER23> Doesn't this have more to do with the fact that YouTube content is far more diverse with thousands of niches of varying sizes? YouTube's algorithmic recommendations are terrible but TikTok's model if applied to YouTube would just make it completely useless. I don't want to be shown a video that's generally popular, I want to be shown a video that is related to my interests.

Off Topic but from what little I saw, the content on TikTok is pure cancer.

<comment><USER24> Agreed:for all its faults, I can't see the Tiktok algorithm working for YouTube style content. For instance, I like watching long-form electronics & machining videos. I have no interest in gaming channels, but they are incredibly popular. And by the same token, most average people would be incredibly annoyed to get reccomended a video from 'thesignalpath'.

That is understandable, but the diversity of content makes it so that YouTube can't just reccomend videos to everyone. I just hope that a place remains online for the weird niche stuff that is avaliable there, but Tiktok definitely isn't a place for that. It's fine for memes, but that's about it.

<comment><USER25> The idea is that their presumably clever AI/machine learning whatever should be able to show you some interesting video about game mechanics. But it's never the case, everyone sees very shallow selections.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Imagine you work hard editing for a day / days, and put out a video and go to bed. You wake up the next morning and find that after the first 3,000 views, the video was de-monetized and the remaining 500,000 views went generated no revenue. You complain to YouTube, they manually review it, and your video is re-monetized. Your views for that video barely increase for the rest of eternity. That bug just cost you X revenue. Multiply for the entire month.

At the very least, YouTube can offer a service your video can go into limbo before it's sent out to your subscribers, where all of these "mistakes" can be ironed out.

Perhaps the platform is de-monetizing video based on mass reporting - <USER2> the system open to be gamed by anyone who is okay with the ethics of brigading/report bombing. This is a VERY common thing these days.

The other possibility is that the AI is generating false positives and de- monetizing as a result of it.

Whichever the case may be, it ought to be possible for content creators to publish a video that is not mistakenly de-monetized for the vast majority of their viewers.

<comment><USER27> I think de-monetizing is part of Google's profit plan. They provide content for no cost, but can still show ads and earn revenues. It's a giant scam.

<comment><USER28> This is a little too cynical for my taste. Google isn't exactly a monument of ethical business, but I seriously doubt that Google would intentionally demonetize videos for the purpose of stealing from content creators.

<comment><USER29> Often used to hear the same accusations when adsense was a bigger thing. Accounts with expected big payouts would always get banned a few days before payout. They would accept all traffic you send them for the month, then just before paying out, banned.

Perhaps a coincidence sure, but when accusations keep getting made about underhanded tactics, maybe there is somethig there

<takes_off_hat_made_of_tinfoil>

<comment><USER30> Except demonetized channel videos don't show ads.

This whole conspiracy falls flat when Google doesn't generate revenue off of demonetized video ads.

<comment><USER31> The hypothesis is that the channel was only demonetized after a long period during which it generated ad revenue. Flipping the demonetization switch doesn't make that revenue disappear. Rather, that causes the revenue to stay in Google's pocket instead of being distributed to the channel owner.

<comment><USER30> The channel still gets the previous revenue leading up to the demonitization switch, so no, Google doesn't gain anything. In fact, they lose because they're now hosting videos that no longer generate revenue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I think one of the problems that YouTube has is their three-strikes policy and how they interact with said offending user.

When a video gets flagged, it supposedly is queued up for manual review. Upon manual review, if the YouTube employee deems that the video has broken one of its rules, it will take the video down and it will notify the uploader that they have received a strike.

That's all fine, but the problem is really in how they handle this interaction. They tell the user which "set of rules" they've broken (e.g. "Hate speech, discrimination or other forms of bigotry based on race, gender or religion"), but they get no more specific than that. They do not offer a timestamp for the exact moment in which you violated their rules. The result is as you'd expect. I'm sure many terrible videos are rightly taken down this way, but there are plenty of people who don't believe their video violated any rules and are seeking clarification on what they did wrong.

It would also be beneficial for the relationship between YouTube and its creators if there was an opportunity for restitution. For example, maybe YouTube informs the user that their video has violated a rule and if they don't take it down within some period of time, they will receive a strike and it will be taken down automatically (of course, with the knowledge that some types of videos should be taken down immediately). Maybe when YouTube takes a video down, they could timestamp it and tell the user that they can re-upload the video without that specific part.

As it is now, there are people who make their livings on YouTube, and these somewhat vague rules and the nebulous enforcement of them does not instill creators (I'm talking about creators who post about divisive or controversial things - could be something as simple as viewpoints on modern political news) with a feeling of security and the end-result may be that they simply move to a different platform.

If YouTube listens to the complaints of this 'FairTube' group and engages them, I think that'd be best for everyone.

<comment><USER33> Not to mention the stories of creators losing money to false claims. YouTube should should the money is escrow until copyright strikes are resolved one way or another because, as it stands, creators don't have the resources to fight the rampant safe harbor fraud.

<comment><USER34> It's even worse than that. Sure, a chunk of the video's initial ad revenue will be lost over illegitimate claims but if the video is restricted, the video is basically dead. Most videos get the lion share of their views in the time immediately after they're uploaded (i.e. the first day or week). If the video gets stuck in limbo, not only isn't the creator making any money but also the video will underperform and any cost of producing that video will have virtually no return on investment.

So in other words, smaller channels can easily get stuck producing worse content because the risk of investing significant amounts of time into a single video is too great. And even when channels don't rely on monetisation, lost exposure can limit their reach and harm their growth.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Disney, Sony and their many tentacles randomly steal from youtubers ALL THE TIME, then are expected to review claims of wrongdoing by themselves on good faith, and this is about as "creator friendly" Google will ever get. Those rules suck. It's time to leave for greener pastures.

<comment><USER36> YouTubers are getting flagged by big media companies because YouTubers are using their music or other media without getting a media license. This is not a mystery unknown rule. YouTubers know to not use music they don't have the rights to.

<comment><USER37> They are also getting flagged for things that are obviously _fair use_. The idea that a travel vlogger loses their entire video's monetization because they walked by a restaurant playing music is absurd. The music isn't even a substantial part of the video.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Youtube is kinda like Ebay.

Ebay used to be a great garage sale / thrift-store place where individuals could sell their stuff, no hassle. Then they started catering to Ebay stores, and then finally they wanted to become Amazon 2.0, almost pushing individual sellers away. They're now basically geared toward large stores that act and operate like any big amazon store - you're pretty much expected to eat any losses that may come up, and write it off as "cost of doing business".

Same with Youtube. Used to be a great place for small individual creators, but now it's basically just a stream of memes and high-production vids that are the equivalent to visual fast-food.

Sure, you can still post as a small-timer, but there will be no help, and you're at the mercy of the big companies and their relentless search for copyrighted material. Or if you're not in the creative space, there's still a chance you'll get screwed by arbitrary tripping the controversial content- wire.

All that kinda narrows down the scope of what one can create, and thus we see the rise of low-effort content farms .

(It's not that there's no good content - there's a ton of good high-quality content, but as we've seen the past years, even the good channels with a decent amount of followers can get demonetized at the drop of a hat)

<comment><USER39> > Same with Youtube. Used to be a great place for small individual creators, > but now it's basically just a stream of memes and high-production vids that > are the equivalent to visual fast-food.

What are you talking about? Youtube is full of great high quality content from individual creators. So much so, I'd wager youtube gives "real tv" a serious run for their money. Almost all my video-based content consumption is youtube these days.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> TikTok is popular because of the insane decision to shut down Vine. Other apps are filling in that void, now.

<comment><USER41> I still can't believe they shut that app down. It was so massively popular. Was it just because it wasn't making any money?

<comment><USER42> This might have had played a role.

[https://www.mic.com/articles/157977/inside-the-secret- meetin...](https://www.mic.com/articles/157977/inside-the-secret-meeting-that- changed-the-fate-of-vine-forever)

<comment><USER41> This is why I like tiktok more, I rarely see the same people twice. Kills the whole "celebrity" aspect entirely for casual users like me. It's comfy to sit just before bed for about 15 and laugh a bit with tiktok.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> It's been absolutely fascinating to watch the YouTube v. community drama play out. I think many forget the _exact_ same situation has been and continues to play out for Alphabets other major community, website owners.

The difference of course is we don't really have active and vocal "followers" in the way YouTube creators do, so for the most part, when a website owner like myself gets penalized for some abstract and out of my hand reason, or a algorithm change destroys your business overnight, it happens silently, beyond the headlines.

I can't stress this enough -- Google has been a powerful, often positive force for the wider Internet. But they're also a cruel, heartless, and often maniacal source of pain and sorrow.

</comment><comment> Max-q On YouTube, if you make a 10 minutes long video, but include 10 seconds of copyrighted material, the copyright owner gets 100% of the revenue, the creator 0%. I think this is YouTube creators main objection to the plattform.

</comment><comment><USER44> 2 years back, i uploaded a wildlife video which surprisingly became popular. A year back i noticed im now eligible for monetization as i had crossed the minimum required numbers for Subscribers and Views. One month after applying i got rejected saying the content was duplicate. I thought it was a mistake and applied again and again to no avail. My guess is, someone has content-ID'd the video and monetizing it. The video now sits at 7M+ views and it occassionaly irks me knowing somewhere someone is making money out of that video.

<comment><USER45> I am surprised there isn't any way similar to Google reverse image search or TinyEye which can do the reverse search for videos. Have you looked into it if that's possible?

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Why is this surprising? Youtube has become the gatekeeper, not the facilitator of new and exciting video tech.

<comment><USER47> I'm glad to see backlash – we need neutral platforms where controversial content will not be punished because of advertiser driven guidelines.

<comment><USER48> I am pretty sure you can upload a video to your favorite web host and publish as much controversial content as you want.

People want YouTube's captive audience of billions and the pre-existing monetization network. But they are upset that there are arbitrary rules for accessing that audience/money. I am pretty sure that 99.9% of Youtubers wouldn't exist if there were no possibility of ever making money from their videos.

Wherever YouTube stands right now, it's still better than the situation 20 years ago where a few network executives controlled what sort of video programming would be produced. It might not be perfect, but there are plenty of people who started from nothing that are making money from their creative work; something that wouldn't have even been possible just a few years ago. So maybe it's not all bad.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> The amount of advertisements youtube forces upon viewers is also insane. Sometimes they force 2 consecutive ads for one 5 minute video.

<comment><USER50> The uploader chooses the amount of ads.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> Youtube is a monumental money-making machine for Google because of the large amount of ads. Creative content is only incidental, it is not the primary purpose of Youtube to foster creation, only to gather ad revenue. It shows in the way they treat creators and viewers vs advertisers and rights holding companies. So this backlash is justified, but for what, TikTok, another closed garden controlled by another media comany ?

I'd personally want to see rise an alternative made of peertube and micro donations, where users would chose to pay for infrastructure and content creation, but I don't know how to make this happen.

<comment><USER52> We have to all make it happen. You won't get it done on your own, and neither will I. But collectively we can.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> I'm working on a side project right now that tries to address the issues we have with monetizing content and creatives at the moment. Ad revenue as we've seen with Youtube and countless other platforms simply isn't viable at scale. You have to play too safe to not associate your brand with any controversy, it degrades the user experience, and it means creatives have to walk on a tightrope not to get demonetized.

Patreon is probably the best current system that's out there, but it doesn't provide a good way to get eyes on the content. I'm trying to create an open source reddit meets patreon system, with the model described by this interactive prototype: [https://syd.jjcm.org/soci/](https://syd.jjcm.org/soci/)

I've got the frontend sorted, an API fully specced out, and some rough backend code created, but I'll be honest in that I'm not a backend guy so I could use some help. If anyone is interested in trying to solve the problem send me a message at email@example.com. I've got an active job ad in the who's hiring page with more details: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20331491](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20331491)

I'd also be open to just paying someone remote to help out. At the end of the day I just want there to be a better system available for creatives.

</comment><comment><USER54> Google's decision to be the arbiter of acceptable speech will be its undoing.

<comment><USER50> How exactly is that scenario going to play out?

<comment><USER37> Generate enough outrage and laws can change. While current law recognizes the difference between a publisher and a platform, recent activities could very well cause pressure for publisher-like liability when these platforms begin exercising a high degree of editorial control.

The social media giants' problem is that they want to have their cake and eat it too. They want the editorial control, _and_ they want to be absolved of any liability when they host terrorist propaganda (think ISIL), pedo bait, and other garbage.

There's also the recent court decisions regarding politicians' usage of blocking. That ruling creeps right up to the line of recognizing "private" social media providers as a public square of sorts. The situation we're in is not tenable for much longer.

<comment><USER55> That wouldn't work how you want it to and wouldn't be a good idea - <USER3> if expecting outrage to be in your service.

The end result would be a choice between a troll and spam storm or precurated everything.

<comment><USER37> I always thought a great idea for stepping over this whole problem is a robust tagging/categorizing system, and then make certain tags opt-in to view. That would be the least amount of work and least likely to be upsetting to reasonable people.

That aside, the one worry I share is that the outrage is going to drive a legislative solution that ends up splitting the baby and sucking for all parties concerned. I was entirely serious when I said this situation wasn't tenable, though. Too much emotion/polarization/etc for something to not give soon.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> Long, long overdue, but it seems like Vimeo is starting to pick up steam in response. I'm really not sure if their policies around DMCA claims are (or would be) any better, but I've noticed folks gravitating toward it as an alternative.

</comment><comment><USER57> Youtube creator here. I am running a Youtube channel for the last few years and it is my full-time job. About a year back I criticized youtube on twitter. Soon afterward my views started dropping. Though it cannot be concluded that my tweets were responsible it is difficult to explain how a channel which was very popular in its niche will suddenly fall off the cliff?

I am over 40 years old and I am unable to find regular employment. For the last 6 months, I am learning to program and trying developing 3 web apps. I am hoping that one of them will reach ramen profitability.

<comment><USER45> What is your channel? What type of web apps are you working on?

<comment><USER57> Directory apps. My self-education is still underway. I hope to build a SaaS product soon.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> YouTube is always facing creator backlash. I don't see anything new in this article.

For example, I'm not a fan of how the algorithm seems to prioritize clickbait (clickbait is the cancer of the internet) and longer videos. This leads people to load up their videos with filler to hit that 10 minutes length, and then sensationalize their titles, often into "questions" that the video will then fail to subsequently answer. I've had a video get a false copyright claim - <USER4> sucked, and it steered me away from making the kind of political videos that use news clips.

But there are no viable competitors, I guess because hosting video content is expensive and network effects. Facebook is probably the closest competitor, but there's too much noise and it's not really much of a search engine for videos. Tik-Tok is not a competitor - it serves an entirely different market (the one formerly served by Vine and Music.ly) of short mobile clips.

Until Youtube starts shadowbanning channels and playing a "Big Brother" censorship role, I'll continue to post there. (I've heard rumours of Youtube shadowbanning channels, but I'm not convinced that they're legitimate, though I haven't really looked into it)

</comment><comment><USER59> One of my favorite youtube channel by 'Indy Neidell' on WW2 has been demonetized. He and his team cover WW2 week by week, one video with historical analysis/story for every week. They recently completed a series for WW1 and it was amazing.

Even as a semi serious history buff, I learn new stuff. But they have been demonetized, seriously hurting their ability to put up videos.

He put up an extensive view on this and states there is no rhythm or rhyme on what gets restricted or not.

</comment><comment><USER60> I am a big fan of machining and metal working videos. Whatever changes YouTube did last year basically gutted that niche, with many channels simply abruptly giving up mid project.

I have no idea what exactly they changed but from my perspective as a casual viewer it had a large and negative impact.

<comment><USER61> According to anecdotes I've seen online (so take this with a _massive_ grain of salt), some videos showing how to use tools like drill presses and CNC machines have been demonetized due to youtube's policy against educational gunsmithing videos ([https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/6162278?hl=en](https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/6162278?hl=en))

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> I ageee that YouTube sucks for many reasons. They have a weird undocumented algorithm that defines what gets popular and as a result creators are constantly playing games to bait it. Their monetization/demonetization policies are just bonkers. Their copyright enforcement system is Kafkaesque. Plus, as a consumer they seem to be going down the facebook route of trying to curate my viewing choices in a way that suits them.

But they can do that as they are a private company. They don't owe anyone anything. If you rely on YouTube for a living without a backup plan then you are dumb.

YouTube is no longer the only player in online video. If you don't like what YouTube is doing then look at alternative platforms.

</comment><comment><USER63> There is definitely a wave that is happening on other video sharing platforms but I suspect that it won't be a big sea change as the content on YouTube is deep and embedded so the YouTube still casts the widest net. Tik Tok and Astronaut.io are interesting but as I type this post word from a 15 year old teenager says that the alternatives are boring so the attention span required is short. The alternatives are entertaining but will really only be a threat when learning takes place on them. The demographic is different and learning will need to take place it 15 seconds or less. It might also be interesting to note that there are approx 200 variables Google looks for when deciding who rides the wave or not.

</comment><comment><USER64> I hate that the YouTube ads aren't at all targeted to the video that you're watching, or even your profile. Google has like every bit of data they could possibly want on me... and I literally have never seen an ad for anything I would care about.

Worse, like I'm trying to sleep, and I turn on some ASMR or meditation video, and if I forget to turn off the "auto play" feature (it's annoying to turn off from the TV interface), then I'm hit with what can only be described as used- car-guy-volume ads. "BUY NOW! LOW LOW PRICES!"

Now I just use a video scraper to download the videos I like so I can watch them while I sleep. Nobody wins when they don't tie ads to content, or ads to users.

</comment><comment><USER65> Unpopular opinion, but this whole career choice of "YouTube content creator" seems like a frightful gamble in the first place. You've intrinsically tied yourself into a particular company's product. I guess I don't see YouTube's website as a public space and I don't see how anyone is "entitled" to monetization.

But to be more sympathetic, in this case it just sounds like YouTube should have done most of its automated content scans before posting the video in the first place.

<comment><USER66> The Platform vs Publisher debate.

[https://www.city-journal.org/html/platform-or- publisher-1588...](https://www.city-journal.org/html/platform-or- publisher-15888.html)

Note this article is more about speech but you get the idea.

I don't think it's entitlement but the creators want to know the "rules".

<comment><USER67> > The Platform vs Publisher debate.

Not really. If the discussion was about weather a video should be allowed to exist, or be taken down, then yes it would be publisher vs platform. But this is a case of monetization vs non-monetization. I think YouTube, Twitter, ect. should be treated as "Platforms" and that nothing should ever be deleted/banned/taken down unless it is strictly illegal. That said, monetization is entirely a different beast, YouTube as a business can pick and choose which videos to monetize and which ones not to. Restricting content is a violation of the 1st amendment, refusing to pay creators is a business decision.

<comment><USER26> Let's say YouTube's parent company invests in a new cosmetics company that's doing make-up tutorials on YouTube. Is it fair for YouTube to then de-monetize the independent content creators who are creating make-up tutorials and therefore hurt their revenue stream? Let's say their algorithm does it by "mistake" all the time, what can be done about it?

Over time, the independent creators have less YouTube ad revenue share. Their competitor (in which Alphabet has a stake), is "coincidentally" given higher search ranking and more visibility in the recommendations as well.

What happens to the independent content creators over time?

What is the legal remedy for the above scenario?

How would one even prove this case in court?

<comment><USER67> >Is it fair for YouTube to then de-monetize the independent content creators who are creating make-up tutorials

Fair, no. Legal? Yes.

> Over time, the independent creators have less YouTube ad revenue share.

OK, and? There is no fundamental right to YouTube monetization.

>Their competitor (in which Alphabet has a stake), is "coincidentally" given higher search ranking and more visibility in the recommendations as well.

Ranking is a problem, if you are platform then everyone has equal voice then the ranking system needs to be 100% equal and transparent, which it is current neither.

> What happens to the independent content creators over time?

They find other ways to make $$ or they find another career. Lots of YT's are now pushing things like pateron membership. There is also nothing stopping any YT from going out and securing their own advertisers and doing their own ads in their videos.

>What is the legal remedy for the above scenario?

Legal remedy is simple, YT can't ban/restrict/bury content. YT can decide who, if anyone, they want to monetize.

>How would one even prove this case in court?

It is obvious when a video is taken down, and if the ranking system was 100% transparent it would also be easy to verify if there was tampering ("My video had 1mil views in the first 24 hours, this other video had 200k views the first 24 hours, the other video was trending, mine wasn't.")

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> Sounds like a symptom of centralized silo services, period. This wouldn't be a problem if each of those creators had a website with their content on it. The copyright holders would have to issue a DMCA to for that 10 second of radio music, which, while not perfect, is better than this YouTube content claim garbage completely controlled by claimants.

Then maybe copyright law would be molded into a better system. Which is exactly what these copyright cartels DON'T want. They want to avoid any judicial review whatsoever of their actions.

</comment><comment><USER69> The one thing I dislike about Youtube and no one talks about is their aggresive lossy compression.

My monitor is only 1080p but I set the quality to 1440p or 4K if the video supports it, as those resolutions allow a higher bitrate and I can enjoy videos without noticeable distortion. I prefer my computer to downscale the image instead of Youtube butchering the whole thing by limiting the bitrate to an extreme.

I understand that Youtube has to optimize their storage and bandwidth, but still, if I see a video with too many compression artifacts I just close it.

<comment><USER70> If you close a video with too many compression artifacts, then you'll miss out on internet history. For example, Numa Numa:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cqd1Gvq- RBY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cqd1Gvq-RBY)

</comment></comment><comment><USER71> YouTube has been facing some form of creator backlash for years now.

</comment><comment><USER72> is the youtube trending page algorithmically generated or human-curated? Its complete garbage. If the first 20 videos are really what most people want to watch... god help us lol

</comment><comment><USER73> I want to make programming/data science/AI videos again on YouTube, but given the current state of YouTube I'm _very_ unmotivated to do so.

<comment><USER74> I wish every content creator was aware of the importance of having a backup plan. It's sad to read so many stories about creators losing not only the audience and revenue, but alse the content itself after YT shut them down.

<comment><USER75> Having a backup plan to YT is kinda like my backup plan if my house burns down: a rough time.

It's not insta-death, but it's not going to be like it was for a while.

<comment><USER76> The backup plan defines how long "for a while" will last. Anywhere between a few months and the rest of your life.

<comment><USER75> > the rest of your life

Hey, I wouldn't have drawn Mickey Mouse if I didn't care about the success of my heirs I never met

-Wally D.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> a0-prw Unless Youtube enters into a serious dialog concerning Fairtube's demands, IG metal's lawyers will be challenging Youtube in court over "false self employment". Could get _very_ expensive for YT:

[https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&v=oZZ5Kouj_hQ](https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&v=oZZ5Kouj_hQ)

</comment><comment><USER77> Wonder if the creators will get organized enough to create a co-op company to run a video sharing site where they get all the pie.

<comment><USER78> Narrator: No, they will not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER79> The whole ContentID/de-monetization thing sucks. YouTube made a video about it themselves to explain how it works, which is pretty informative: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYurafmTwcw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYurafmTwcw)

</comment><comment><USER80> Does YouTube mistreat and exploit its creators in a myriad of ways? Absolutely. Is it a fair platform and does it behave in reasonable ways? Absolutely not.

That said, I feel that a reminder about the nature of YouTube monetization, AKA the YouTube Partner Program is in order. The YPP puts ads in and around your video and gives you part of the profit from running those ads, but what does that mean? It means YouTube is: >Finding advertisers >Persuading them it can pick content (yours) that is profitable to advertise on >Handling the entire negotiation and payment work behind implementing that advertising >Handling the entire technical aspect of adding those advertisements to your video

That is an enormous amount of work YouTube is doing for its content creators for free. You are not in any way entitled to YouTube doing that work for you. Having your videos categorized as not eligible for the YPP is not in any way depriving you of the ability to make money from them, just the ability to automatically make money from them with no effort on your part. Without access to the YPP, you are still free to find sponsors, find advertisers and run your own ads, receive donations, or rely on patronage services like Patreon. That means you have every single avenue of revenue generation (aside from paywalling your content) available to you that you'd have if you were hosting the videos yourself on a personal server. Hell you can even do that if you want to set up some kind of script that uploads your videos as Private and only adds viewer usernames to the whitelist after they pay you.

It would be a terrible idea, but YouTube would be entirely within its rights to charge content creators for the bandwidth consumed by their viewers and offer no assistance at all for making money off your content. YouTube owes you nothing.

</comment><comment><USER81> Youtube's copyright claims system is absolutely abysmal. I didn't know that TikTok is owned by a Chinese company, so I assume that they are much more resistant to copyright trolls?

</comment><comment><USER82> The copystriking system is totally ridiculous. The person who claimed the video should not be the one to decide appeals if they incorrectly claimed your video.

</comment><comment><USER83> Can we also fix the recommended videos so it's actually related to what you're watching and not the most reactionary garbage?

<comment><USER80> I miss the days when you could watch "Bill Cooking Chicken part 1" and the related videos would be "Bill Cooking Chicken part 2" and "Bill Cooking fish part 1" instead of "I wasted $200 on Wish.com" and "More Adventures in Replying to Spam" and "Ten Flaws of the Borg Collective".

</comment></comment><comment><USER84> I welcome someone at axios to make a dynamic mind map of all their compilations. It would make for an interesting journey.

</comment><comment><USER85> It's not gonna be much of a backlash when content creators have so little leverage.

</comment><comment><USER86> I hope Floatplane succeeds and we have a nice subscription-based platform for creators

</comment><comment><USER87> Although Youtube sucks in many regards (namely handling copyright claims and deleting/demonetizing videos for wrongthink), one thing I really like about it is their terms of use. I come very rarely upon so creator right friendly service.

You give rights to your content to Youtube only for purposes of operating and promoting Youtube, which means that it won't eventually become remixed by third party and put behind paywall without you having anything to say about it. And this license which you grant to Youtube ends if you remove your videos. Also it doesn't have indemnification clause. Compare it to virtually all other services which request irrevocable right to do pretty much anything with your content and also demand indemnification.

</comment><comment><USER88> Do what ally law did and make your own site.

</comment><comment><USER89> well when you attack good channels like mark dice, sargon of akkad etc then there will be backlash</comment>


Jonathan Rosenberg: Rules to Success - <AUTHOR> https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=P1T-1FqUBVY <comment><AUTHOR> The talk is better than the title.

<comment><AUTHOR> TL;DW [https://arpitonline.com/2010/04/03/notes-from-jonathan- rosen...](https://arpitonline.com/2010/04/03/notes-from-jonathan-rosenbergs- talk-on-rules-to-success/)</comment></comment>


Time to Give Up on Identity Politics: It's Dragging the Progressive Agenda Down - <AUTHOR> https://www.salon.com/2017/09/02/time-to-give-up-on-identity-politics-its-dragging-the-progressive-agenda-down/ <comment><USER3> The author makes some good points, but what he doesn't delve deeply enough into is that the leadership of the Democratic party - those at the DNC, the Clintonites, and other centers of neo-liberal power who push identity politics the hardest have absolutely no interest in a "progressive agenda". They want to gain power and wealth. Winning elections is only a piece of that dynamic. Above all else, their allegiance is to their Wall Street paymasters to whom they will depend on for a paycheck long after their political careers are over. They would much rather lose an election with Wall Street backing, then reject their Wall Street funders and win. For this crowd - grifters - <USER2> would defeat the whole purpose of entering politics. How does one run as a "Progressive" Democrat with a Wall Street agenda? Identity politics! As long as the focus is on race, and gender, and "identity", the focus is not on economics, privacy, or endless war. The DNC crowd thought they could have it both ways if they just hammered identity politics hard enough and tried to shame people into voting for them. They ended up losing to Trump - a half- retarded, corrupt, boorish clown - literally the worst candidate you can imagine. The Democratic party is rotten from the head down. Unless and until we cut off the neo-liberal head of the snake and purge the party of identity politics zealots the Democrats are destined to be the Washington Generals.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'd believe anything that Salon had to say on the matter of identity politics, if their editorial stance couldn't be clearly summed up as "white men are bad" [1].

Here are a few of the choice articles they've published:

* White men must be stopped: The very future of mankind depends on it [2]

* Mass shooters: Part of a larger epidemic of white male rage [3]

* Is male fragility to blame for Charlottesville violence? [4]

If racial identity or gender identity are such an important facets of life, it was only a matter of time before people started strongly identifying and collectivising openly as "white" or "male". When you start a dialogue with "you have too much privilege and you can't talk on certain topics" you are closing discussions before they begin and are fracturing groups so they can collectivise based on more important line such as "class" or "wealth"... which is probably the intended goal of those fanning the flames identity politics to begin with.

[1] [https://www.salon.com/topic/white_men](https://www.salon.com/topic/white_men) [2] [https://www.salon.com/2015/12/22/white_men_must_be_stopped_t...](https://www.salon.com/2015/12/22/white_men_must_be_stopped_the_very_future_of_the_planet_depends_on_it_partner/) [3] [https://www.salon.com/2018/03/07/mass-shooters-part-of-a- lar...](https://www.salon.com/2018/03/07/mass-shooters-part-of-a-larger- epidemic-of-white-male-rage/) [4] [https://www.salon.com/2017/08/18/is-male- fragility-to-blame-...](https://www.salon.com/2017/08/18/is-male-fragility-to- blame-for-charlottesville-violence/)

<comment><USER5> Are you not engaging in identity politics yourself, at this moment, if you choose to dismiss an idea because it is published by x? How is that any different from the root sentiment that breeds the types of articles you're denouncing in this comment?

<comment><USER6> The amount of mental trickery you have put yourself through to believe that a magazine's ideology is the same as an individual's identity is astounding.

<comment><USER5> I think you misunderstood what I meant by "x" \- (x - publication).

legostormtroopr says:

-> I'd believe anything that Salon had to say on the matter of identity politics, if their editorial stance couldn't be clearly summed up as "white men are bad"

 _Because_ a magazine is not an individual, and is instead comprised of individuals, it is possible to honestly engage with an idea published by an individual in said publication even if you have qualms with that publication's ideology. So it is not fair for legostormtroopr here to dismiss the article because of Salon's editorial stance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Identity politics isn't even a progressive idea. It's one of the central tenets of fascism.

</comment><comment><USER8> You know it's going bad for them when Salon.com starts realizing how wrong they are.

</comment><comment><USER9> "When racism is blamed, capitalism is exonerated".

Identity politics has been INCREDIBLY supportive of the global rich / elite. They don't have to give up any of their money or assets.</comment>


Ask HN: What is an innovative, exciting medical device company? - <AUTHOR>

I will be looking for a job in a year and I'm looking for some ideas of exciting medical device companies I should eventually apply to. I am interested in companies that are doing really exciting hardware projects and possibly pushing the limits of technology. Some examples that I have in mind right now are: Intuitive Surgical, Alfred Mann Foundation, and Google Life Sciences. Thanks for the ideas! <comment><USER2> ReSchedule Med ([https://reschedulemed.com](https://reschedulemed.com)) is not devices, but we're tackling the problems caused by the ever increasing cost of healthcare administration.

I see healthcare growing in two directions- better healthcare (through new techniques, medicines, and devices) and more available healthcare (through cheaper administration, new laws, and promoting social responsibility). Growth in either direction means people are getting better care than they could have otherwise; personally I'm interested in the second because we have the care exists, but we don't have the right capabilities to deliver it to everyone who needs it.

Drop me a line if you're interested, my email's in my profile.

<comment><USER3> May you briefly describe what the product does and what the stack looks like? Thanks

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Definitely check out Theranos ([https://www.theranos.com](https://www.theranos.com)). As someone who wants the kind of data that comes with blood analysis and is semi phobic regarding needles, I love what they're doing.

<comment><AUTHOR> Very interesting technology! I'll definitely keep an eye out for them. Thanks!</comment></comment>


Greenwald responds on Wired/Lamo/Poulsen/Manning affair - <AUTHOR> http://www.salon.com/news/wikileaks/index.html?story=/opinion/greenwald/2010/12/29/wired_1

<comment><AUTHOR> Actually not a dupe; Greenwald's response was in two parts, and this is the other (and somewhat more relevant) part.

<comment><USER2> You're right. It's not a dupe. I hadn't realized that Greenwald responded twice in the same day, on the same news website, and with two very similar URLs. Actually checking the content convinced me they were two different responses.

Just for the sake of completeness, here's a link to the other one:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2049072>

<comment><AUTHOR> Glenn probably should have done us a favor and just made one giant post, like he so often does. Thanks for the correction!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> >Back in June -- once Poulsen's claims that they were withholding only private information and national security secrets was proven false by The Washington Post's subsequent publication of chat excerpts that fell into neither category -- this is what I called on Wired to do:

This is where I disagree with Greenwald. I spent some time looking over a combined version of the logs that have been released by various sources to date[1], and didn't come to the same conclusion at all.

Looking at what Wired _did_ release, I think two criteria stand out -- it's all about either leaks that were already public knowledge or directly related to Manning's role in leaking the documents.

If you look at what Wired omitted, it's most of the transcript we have for May 22. The parts that Wired chose to omit are almost entirely either about leaks that weren't yet public at the time Wired published in June or Manning talking about his mental and emotional state. This aligns fairly well with Wired's claim that the portions they chose to withhold were sensitive to either national security or of a personal nature. Looking directly at the primary source _bolsters_ Wired's argument, if anything, in my opinion.

[1] <http://firedoglake.com/merged-manning-lamo-chat-logs/>

<comment><USER2> Even if that's the case, why can't Wired just come out and either confirm or deny that the withheld chat logs substantiate Lamo's claims?

And if portions of the chat logs do in fact substantiate Lamo's claims, why can't just those portions be released?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> One heuristic that can be used in a situation like this (Greenwald vs Wired) is to measure the amount of psychological trickery leaking from each side's statement.

One classic trick is to get righteously indignant. People act that way to persuade others (emotionally, not logically) that they are right. It's a classic trick of psychological manipulation.

The Wired guys have level 10 indignation, while Glenn has about a level 1.

<comment><USER2> That's an interesting approach.

An alternative one is to actually look in to the substance of their respective arguments, analyze the evidence they offer, and judge them by that.

<comment><USER4> True, the heuristic I mentioned should only be used as part of a more complete analysis.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Let's keep in mind:

Manning, who has variously been reported to have had 'adjustment issues', gender identity issues and/or been grappling with his sexual identity reaches out to someone _openly queer_ , out of the blue, as a like-minded person to talk to.

I fail to see the massive conspiracy here, aside from a refusal to air (more) of Manning's private life.

The latest salvo in this journalist internet mudslinging (from both parties) is not at all HN worthy.

<comment><AUTHOR> Straw man. Nobody has alleged a "massive conspiracy". What's being alleged is quite limited and can be substantiated.</comment></comment>


Qualcomm blocked Samsung from selling Exynos chips: KFTC - <AUTHOR> http://www.zdnet.com/article/qualcomm-blocked-samsung-from-selling-exynos-chips-kftc/ <comment><AUTHOR> I always felt Samsung staying with Qualcomm in the US had some arm twisting involved as some of Samsung processors were simply put better or at least equal. So why wouldn't a Samsung use it's own chips.</comment>


Hacker News feeds - <AUTHOR> http://ycfeeds.com/

<comment><USER2> I would also add <http://feeds.feedburner.com/HNWatrcoolr>

It is the last 30 HN stories that made it to the top of the front page.

</comment><comment><USER3> Cool stuff! Also recommending Feedity - <http://feedity.com> (shameless plug). Just give it the webpage and build a custom RSS feed on-the-fly.

</comment><comment><USER4> Alright, brilliant. Now which users are the must follows?

<comment><USER5> See this is the good thing about hacker news IMHO. You don't follow _users_. You follow intelligent discussion and argument.

I think it'd be a sad day if everyone started following particular users. Just my 2c.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm in complete agrement with you. That was the premise for building this tool. This is the first draft and will focus on giving more details about comments and discussions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> _"... Hacker News feeds ..."_

Hey twism, this works a charm with wget (fails loading for Fox3 for some reason). The ability to get comments the process them later makes this a very useful tool extract your own data. Thanks for this neat hack.

</comment><comment><USER7> I can now import my News.YC comments into Friendfeed, thank you.

</comment><comment><USER8> Feature Requests:

1\. Points! (how many each comment has)

2\. Can you do the stories on the front page with points too?

<comment><AUTHOR> Points added... Stories on the front page, coming right up.

<comment><USER8> Awesome, Can you email me when you get it done? I would like to personally thank you plus get your permission to use these...

aus (ton) . bunsen [at] geemail

<comment><AUTHOR> done.

<http://ycfeeds.com/feed/popular-submissions>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Excellent. I can now have a feed to keep track of all replies to my comments. Thank you!

<comment><AUTHOR> You're welcome... not entirely all your replies, just replies starting from yesterday and not more than 3 days old (can be adjusted).

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Very cool. I always love a good, simple solution for a simple problem.

</comment><comment><USER11> Do these feeds respect the 'Delay' feature announced yesterday?

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=231024>

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, it does.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Beautiful. I just added the feed to my Snackr feed reader. The result is pretty nice.

</comment><comment><USER8> THANK YOU!

<comment><AUTHOR> not a problem... feedback or feature requests will be appreciated

<comment><USER13> I just tried

        http://ycfeeds.com/feed/replies-to-user?user=jamesbritt

and got

        500 Application Exception

        Java heap space

        Stack trace:

        java.lang.OutOfMemoryError: Java heap space

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry... still working out a few kinks.

<comment><USER13> Cool; I will try it again. This looks very promising.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


RIAA: Someone Else Is Pirating Through Our IP-Addresses - <AUTHOR> https://torrentfreak.com/riaa-someone-else-is-pirating-through-out-ip-addresses-111221/

<comment><USER2> Previously posted here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3377641></comment>


What's this xfinitywifi network and why do I keep connecting? (2016) - <AUTHOR> http://jimmymacsupport.com/whats-xfinitywifi-network-keep-connecting/ <comment><USER2> Nothing I hate more than devices auto-connecting to "partner wifi".

One day my phone browsing was interrupted by a starbucks terms-and-conditions webpage. wtf? Turns out my phone had auto-connected to an attwifi access point in range.

What's more disturbing is that companies work with "smart device" manufacturers so they can connect this way without you ever knowing.

What if your smart tv, only ever plugged into HDMI, was connecting to your neighbor's xfinitywifi without you knowing it?

<comment><USER3> In iOS 11+ you can disable this behavior.

<comment><USER4> How? By manually ignoring the Network or by deactivating WiFi in Control Center? Or is there an option I'm missing?

<comment><USER5> The only way I've managed to avoid my iPhone connecting to random wifi is to go to settings:wifi and set "ask to join" to true. And now it just bugs me with prompts a hundred times every train ride.

Ifaik there's no other way to stop autoconnecting to wifi that matches certain conditions, and it drives me up the wall.

<comment><USER6> Have you tried leaving "ask to join" off, and forgetting the problematic network? If you rarely if ever need to connect to it, it's better that you don't save it to your list of known networks.

The other way I see from the other comment is to view that SSID in your wifi menu, click the (i) button next to it, and toggle "auto-join".

<comment><USER5> I tried this initially but new wifi networks kept springing up with such frequency that the whole thing became a game of whack-a-mole. Maybe they rotate names frequently here? I might give it another shot though. There can't be _that_ many wifi networks between here and Roppongi...

<comment><USER6> My iPhone only ever connects to networks I've used -- never unknown open networks. I know it's possible to enable automatic asking (I think, via "ask to join network"?), but that seems like an annoying feature.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, I think it's trying to connect to networks that are somehow "partners" with my provider, and for some reason there seems to be hundreds of these scattered around Tokyo.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Comcast piggybacked an xfinitywifi hotspot on the Comcast Business router they installed for me.

When I asked Comcast to turn off the hotspot, they told me to disable xfinitywifi using the Comcast Business web-based administration page. However, toggling the options on the page failed to disable their hotspot.

Comcast said that I had discovered a bug, and that as a workaround they could disable the hotspot manually from their end. This also failed to work.

In the end, I had them replace the router with a much older wired-only model.

<comment><USER8> Seriously had the same experience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is especially annoying when it hops onto a 1 bar xfinity WiFi that barely works at all, or one that I just passed by at 60 mph, instead of just using 4G. I could never get my S6 to stop connecting to them, even after doing "forget this network". Thankfully I've replaced it.

I understand what they're going for, but I'd rather have some kind of app manage it in such a way that it requires a certain strength and for me to be in the vicinity for more than a microsecond.

</comment><comment><USER10> Note for comcast customers: the default on your setup is devote one fifth of your modem capacity to general xfinity wifi. So the general public can surf porn at your expense. Xfinity has settings to turn this off. However like Facebook privacy, comcast continuously turns this back on.

<comment><USER11> Does this apply if you're using your own modem/router?

<comment><USER12> No. (Source: I've used my own modem & router with Comcast. There's no physical way they can force your router to host an xfinitywifi SSID.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Answer: Free WLAN for Comcast customers (USA cable telco).

Just like KPN Fon, Ziggo, EMS Hotspot, and Wifi in de trein in The Netherlands, and very likely a plethora of other countries and businesses have such a feature as well.

Use with a VPN, and you can make it secure. With Wireguard, you can make it reliable. Other than that, I'd be careful for MITM attacks.

</comment><comment><USER14> One of the main reasons I bought my own modem rather than using the one Comcast provides is to avoid broadcasting this terrible xfinitywifi network. It's not worth the liability.

</comment><comment><USER15> xfinitywifi is free for anyone who already have xfinity at home. its extemely useful when you have a local internet outage.

they are great because they authenticate with login/password only once and then remember the mac addr, you dont have to log in ever again.

hope they wont start charging for this.

<comment><USER16> So, someone can just spoof that mac address and have their activity logged as yours? What could possibly go wrong?

<comment><USER17> I feel like it could also have bad legal consequences to have your MAC associated with an xfinity account. What if somebody spoofs your MAC and does sketchy illegal things? Similar to anecdotal stories I heard about people running TOR relays and subsequently hearing from law enforcement.

<comment><USER16> Thinking about this again, there's a bit of difference: most people running a Tor exit node probably made a conscious decision to take this risk.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> >Users aren't reducing your internet speed any more than a new neighbor signing up for Comcast. The technical capability of their cable network is far faster than the speed Comcast doles out to you, since you pay for a throttled speed tier. The xfinitywifi network users aren't included in your throttled speed.

Is this actually true? I mean sure, DOCSIS 3.1 is capable of gigabit speeds in theory. But are the CPU and other resources on the modem/router actually _fully_ isolated? And coaxial cables that were laid decades ago, are they actually capable of reaching speeds fast enough to totally isolate you from bandwidth issues? Some people fail to hit their advertised speeds as is.

My guess is that the reality is, you do lose some performance and gain some latency if there's a lot of xfinitywifi traffic going through your router.

I am a Comcast customer, reluctantly, as pretty much any other Comcast customer, but I use my own hardware always. I don't like what Comcast is doing here, especially because they're not really telling you about it. Of course, as you would expect, you don't get any discount for what you are doing for them either, it's just part of life if you rent equipment, which eventually costs more than it saves anyways.

But even if you buy your own hardware, trying to feel in control can be very hard. I used to use a MikroTik hAPlite as a router, but it got hacked a couple of times, and many more vulnerabilities eventually turned me off of MikroTik products despite how nice they were to use. Then I moved to one of the actually-kinda-expensive Linksys AC2600 and boy did that stuff piss me off royally. On top of the annoying 'smart' features, including a click through EULA and requiring online registration to access my own router's configuration menu, it honestly performed terribly. Being in an apartment, I connect my desktop via WiFi, and this thing couldn't even keep a stable connection for that. Some devices wouldn't connect at all, and I never figured out why, after hours of looking through logs and troubleshooting; the hAPlite had no such issues.

So... I gave in. Surfboard SB82000 modem, Ubiquity Unifi AC and USG, and Cisco switches. It isn't cheap, and frankly it's completely ridiculous overkill. It's gotta be like, $500 worth of crap new, and it does require some additional setup, like having a machine setup to act as the controller. But, I rest a lot easier, and I have literally not had a single issue since configuring everything. Which is definitely more than I can say for any Comcast-installed equipment I've had to deal with. Good riddance.

I hope some day there's a 'sane' option for people who just want good performance, good security for home use cases, but right now I'm wondering if there will ever be anything aimed at consumers that isn't trying super hard to exploit the crap out of them. The situation with consumer internet equipment has left me very jaded, especially because I remember running DD-WRT on a WRT54G and having a great time.

Edit: It is worth noting that I never tried any of the whole home mesh WiFi solutions. I've heard good things, but apartments seem like unideal places to install them.

<comment><USER19> > Is this actually true?

Yes, it is actually true. The speed of WiFi relative to coax is puny. There's no way WiFi can come close to taxing it.

I suppose you are using a bit more WiFi spectrum, but your neighbors do that too.

<comment><USER18> Oh of course, WiFi alone isn't enough, at least probably not until the next generation of WiFi. Consider also wired traffic, though. The xfinitywifi hotspot is hosted on modem/router devices of all sorts, including Comcast Business devices.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20>
      iOS:
      While in range of the xfinitywifi network, tap Settings > Wi-Fi.
      Tap the (i) to the right of the xfinitywifi network.
      Tap "Forget this network"

Is it still the case that you can't 'Forget' a Wifi network on iPhone devices unless you're in range of the network?

I recall this being a fact when I had an iPhone some time ago.

<comment><USER21> > _Is it still the case that you can 't 'Forget' a Wifi network on iPhone > devices unless you're in range of the network?_

AFAIK, yes. The only exception is if you have a Mac logged into the same iCloud account, you can forget it on the Mac which does have a full list (and WiFi credentials are synced)</comment></comment>


Vista and MS Office 2007 will transform the way people work and play(2007) - <AUTHOR> http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2007/jan07/01-29vistalaunchpr.mspx

<comment><USER2> Are you new to marketing-speak hyperbole?

Anyway I think Office 2007 is a pretty good piece of software. The UI is leaps and bounds ahead of any other ofice application.</comment>


KernelMemorySanitizer: detector of uninitialized memory uses in the Linux kernel - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/google/kmsan <comment><USER2> Google is putting quite some effort to get Clang to build the linux kernel. Once it is at that stage, they can stop depending on gcc in AOSP. They already use clang for everything but the kernel.</comment>


Facing long odds, Donald Trump rewrote the political playbook - <AUTHOR> http://www.city-journal.org/html/winner-14837.html <comment><AUTHOR> An interesting read. Some tech-related points to highlight:

> Trump also understood that his massive brand and social-media > presence—particularly on Twitter, which he mastered and where he had built > up a huge following years in advance—allowed him to be his own media > platform and bypass the gatekeepers. He could go directly to the public. "I > love Twitter," he tweeted in 2012. "It's like owning your own > newspaper—without the losses."

> Anyone having the temerity to support Trump felt the backlash. Activists > tried to get firms to cut ties with gay tech entrepreneur Peter Thiel, who > spoke at the Republican convention in favor of Trump. They likewise attacked > Palmer Lucky, founder of the virtual-reality firm, Oculus, which was > acquired for $2 billion by Facebook, when it emerged that he was financing > pro-Trump activism. NPR commentator Cokie Roberts labeled Trump supporters > "morally tainted." Trump staffers faced the threat of being blacklisted for > working for him.</comment>


Your Design Is Wrong (And Here's Why) - <AUTHOR> http://flyosity.com/application-design/your-design-is-wrong-and-heres-why.php <comment><USER2> Real title: Sometimes designers don't align things correctly and it's handy to have someone else's eyes on it as you might miss it.

Other titles from this rather trite titling strategy include:

      Your code is wrong (but thats OK).
      You are a bad programmer (it's better to know it).
      Your Tshirt is inside out (stop being a hobo).

</comment><comment><USER3> > 1px off is wrong.

But if you have to judge by a (scaled) screenshot of 300x400 pixels, you can't even be sure of what you see.

</comment><comment><USER4> What's funny is that the kerning example is the only one where I can tell the difference between the 'good' and the 'bad' example. Now, perhaps I have atypically poor taste... actually, knowing myself, that's not at all unlikely. However, it is also possible that I'm the normal one and 'wrong' design isn't as big of a deal as you think?

<comment><USER5> If presented with a design full of these errors, and presented with an otherwise-identical design that has these errors corrected side-by-side, you will almost certainly prefer the one with the errors corrected, even if you can't put your finger on why.

I'm not very good at design, I'm especially terrible with colors, but if you study these mechanics a little you can significantly improve the look of your websites just by mechanically following these rules. It does work; a startup I worked at created a report of vulnerabilities on your website and by blindly following the principles of good design actually produced a very good looking report, better than the competition that could afford designers (but apparently didn't). It was a subtle thing, but putting our report next to the competition's report really made it look as if _we_ were the ones with years of experience and knew what we were talking about, instead of the upstart newcomer. It failed, ultimately, but not because of our report format :)

<comment><USER4> So you think it's a subconscious thing that even I have, rather than something like color vision, that some have and some do not have?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> All of the authors examples of "valid" critics are not of design decisions. They are examples of quality control issues AKA "sloppiness".

</comment><comment><USER7> Interesting to note that designs can be just flat out wrong. Like a visual syntax error.</comment>


How We Got 1,000+ Subscribers from a Single Blog Post in 24 Hours - <AUTHOR> http://www.groovehq.com/blog/1000-subscribers

<comment><USER2> Seems to me this glosses over a central part of the pitch: they tell influencers they have rapidly gone from zero to 28k in revenue. Sounds like they are starting with meaningful traction & momentum, not from zero?

<comment><USER3> I think he is referring to the blog having zero readers (or nearly).

But yes it's easier to pitch your blog's content if it refers to a business that is already getting some traction.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "No I don't want to learn how to grow my business". I lol'd.

Your 'customer case study' guy gives me the willies. Hopefully he's not one of you.</comment>


ASP.NET MVC 4 Roadmap - <AUTHOR> http://haacked.com/archive/2011/07/13/asp-net-mvc-4-roadmap.aspx

<comment><USER2> Code-generation has always been a major annoyance for real (ya, I said it) developers using MS tools. It'll be interesting to see if recipes are able to do what decades of similar promises from MS have failed to deliver.

The mention of a recipe for an AJAX grid is frightening though...like we are heading back into server-control world. Despite all the talk, MS never really bought into jQuery.

Also, I worry when the 2nd feature listed is that the default CSS/theme (which no one uses and is pretty ugly) supports mobile devices.

They mention deployment as a theme, but no feature to accompany it. It'll be interesting to see what they manage to do here. It's certainly a major pain point right now.

Of course, none of this addresses the primary issues with ASP.NET MVC: it's much, much, slower to develop in than Rails or Django.

<comment><USER3> _Of course, none of this addresses the primary issues with ASP.NET MVC: it's much, much, slower to develop in than Rails or Django._

I'd say just the opposite. Things like deployment and things like gems are the big issues. Actually day to day dev work though, I think MVC is probably at least as productive as Rails or Django, if not moreso. But I think its personal taste more than anything else.

 _Code-generation has always been a major annoyance for real (ya, I said it) developers using MS tools. It'll be interesting to see if recipes are able to do what decades of similar promises from MS have failed to deliver._

I don't think Recipes are really meant to address codegen. It sounds like a simpler way to build Wizards, not much more than that. MS's solution to general codegen are things such as CCI (<http://ccimetadata.codeplex.com/>).

<comment><USER4> I disagree. MVC is quite good, but as both a Django and MVC developer I'm still more productive with Django. Certain niceties of MVC break down once your project falls outside of the mold of a cookie-cutter CRUD app interfacing with a 100% Microsoft ecosystem. People have levied a similar criticism against Django (once you color too far outside the lines, things get hard fast) but with MVC it can creep up on you much faster.

MVC shines if you treat it like a lightweight MVC framework and don't get caught up in doing things the "Microsoft" way -- this is massively counter- intuitive to anyone coming from a Python or Ruby background, who prefer to code in an idiomatic way by default. You can take advantage of its powerful routing system, various helper functions, and a decent templating language: Razor - which I hope Microsoft keeps and doesn't replace like it did to the 2 or 3 other templating syntax systems that proceeded it.

<comment><USER3> _Certain niceties of MVC break down once your project falls outside of the mold of a cookie-cutter CRUD app interfacing with a 100% Microsoft ecosystem._

I guess my question would be, what's an example of this. I find MVC with Razor extremely productive. I rarely even think of a framework when I'm using it -- I'm just typing what I'd like to make happen (for the most part).

And for me the tooling makes my life much easier. I know this is controversial statement for Django/Rails devs who are pretty much vi/emacs devs, but simple things like being to jump between quickly seeing all defs/uses/implementations of a method/property/class/assembly is extremely useful. But I hacked away on vi for almost 20 years, so I realize its allure.

<comment><USER4> > I guess my question would be, what's an example of this.

One example that stands out to me in the whole concept of strongly typed views. Nice in theory, but ultimately tightly coupling your view to your model (or your model to your view, depending on your perspective) is very Webforms- ish. You can tell they put in place these practices to ease adoption among the current crop of vanilla ASP.NET developers.

Another example is being able to quickly bake-in full-text-search into your application. With Python/Django you can use something like Haystack. Ruby has equivalents. With MVC, what are your options? Do it by hand with Lucene.NET? Get there a bit faster with .NET connector for Solr? This is more of a .NET ecosystem complaint, but ecosystems matter.

> And for me the tooling makes my life much easier.

I agree. Working with Visual Studio is great. With that said, I missed being able to "edit on the fly" my Python code and immediately pop into the browser to check, so now I just have a build script that builds and stages my projects automatically on an IIS server so I can accomplish what I got for free in Python/Django.

<comment><USER5> I think strongly typed views are an area where things fall down due to lack of guidance rather than design. I don't think a view model is the same thing as the model in MVC.

In my MVC apps, I use them pretty much exclusively, but they exist completely independently from my application model (they represent compositions thereof). This really only makes sense in apps of a certain scale, though, so having the option not to use them, or to use dynamic views (not sure if they count as strongly typed, but they are a weird middle ground) is definitely useful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> MVC3 has always been extensible enough so you could add most of the major new features in the MVC4 roadmap. The "extra mile" polish you would normally add to MVC3 applications look like they will be in MVC4 as standard:

      * jQuery Mobile templates
      * Mobile/Desktop view switch API
      * EF Code First DB Migrations (finally, without having to rely on third party libraries such as MigratorDotNet)
      * Built-in JavaScript and CSS minimization

Can't wait!

<comment><USER5> I wonder if this is going to push the NH guys to do an official migrations package. You can already come pretty close to it just using the schema migration APIs, so they have a lot of the pieces. I'd love to see some competition in what I think is historically an under-addressed part of development on any given Microsoft stack.

<comment><USER7> Our LightSpeed ORM product does schema migrations between a whole pile of databases and includes Visual Studio 2008 & 2010 integration for seeing the migrations, executing them, generating the SQL files etc.

I haven't seen anyone else really pushing Migrations that hard yet in the .NET space. Would be nice to see others trying to improve this space.

<comment><USER5> Interesting, I've never heard of LightSpeed. I'll be honest that I have a near-zero level of trust for this type of software from vendors in the .NET space, but I'll definitely give it a look.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The focus on mobile, HTML5 support, and cloud deployment all sounds very handy. Does anyone care to predict when the beta will ship?

<comment><AUTHOR> My guess is somewhere between sept 13-16. That's PDC 2011.

<comment><USER9> I thought it had been re-branded as BUILD this year (and was going to have a massive Windows 8 focus). I've seen some reports of "PDC 2011" but then the dates and location are the same as build....unless they're going to run to conferences concurrently, which I doubt.

<comment><USER10> Correct. There is no separate PDC this year. The focus of Build at least in the promotion is definitely on Windows 8, who knows to what extent that reflects the content.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> God, I'm wrapping up a MVC3 app, I can't wait to sprint away and never, ever, ever come back. During this project I've, installed Visual Studio 3 times and my current installation leaves me still unable to debug Azure deployments and Microsoft has no fix for me but to reinstall Windows and start over.

.NET and csharp are a joy, but I'll never touch a pure-Microsoft stack or anything I can't (easily) run in Mono ever again.

<comment><USER9> What's the culprit do you think? Azure stuff? I've never seen problems like that with MVC3 (but given the gamut of all the crazy things I've seen I don't doubt you)

<comment><USER11> It's undoubtedly the Azure stuff. They had bad mirrors and redirects up for quite a while for VS SP1. Twitter revealed others with the same problem. That ruined the first install. The second install was okay with debugging a MVC project but the Azure emulator caused an uncaught exception in the .NET runtime. There was no indication of where the error was occurring, and like I said, no real troubleshooting steps available. I wish I could remember the error message. It was as if the runtime was just mocking me with it's complete lack of help.</comment></comment></comment>


How LEGOs are made - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnRRDIFNxoM <comment><USER2> That robotic factory is pretty neat.</comment>


Stop StopBadware.org and Google from UNFAIRLY blocking websites - <AUTHOR> Google (via StopBadware.org) has blocked our website. The blocking started immediately: before allowing us to respond to their accusations and even before we realized any accusations had been laid. Should Google (and StopBadware.org) have the power to effectively banish websites from the web without any due process? Your business or organizations is also at risk of summary conviction and immediate punishment (blocked!) without any due process. What do you think about that?!?
Note that websites are blocked for Chrome and Firefox users, since both of these use StopBadware.org.
See "DETAILS" in a reply below (it wouldn't fit in Hackernews' 2000 char limit).
Our website is not some click-bait shady website. We are the national governing body for a sport. Our members need our website to find out about tournaments. Our tournament organizers need our website to lookup info about players to run their tournaments. So there is real economic and reputational damage to us as a result of Google deciding to block us without any due process. The punishment remains in effect while we wait for another review.
Should Google have this power? Should Google be allowed to inflict immediate punishment (blocking)? Should Google give at least 5 business days notice before they inflict punishment? Or should it be more like the criminal justice system, innocent until proven guilty including after an appeal.
This is important as there can be real economic and reputational damage resulting from these autocratic actions. <comment><AUTHOR> UPDATE: For anyone else running into this problem. Of course, Google never clearly stated this reason, I (and you) have to guess until you get it right. Each guess takes more and more time. My last (and successful) attempt, I had to wait 16 hours for Google to do its review and unblock our site.

Turns out sites are guilty by association. If Google finds malware on "old.chess.ca" it will bock every website ending in "chess.ca". Including "www.chess.ca" even though that website is on different servers (different IP) and contains zero links to the other bad website. Removing the server from DNS, plus disabling with .htaccess rules that redirect all requests, ... plus waiting 16 hours for Google to do another review ... is what got us back up & running.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> DETAILS: On July 3, our website was blocked the 1st time. This was justified (although I disagree with the immediate punishment): it was an old Drupal 7 site that was installed in 2011 and, because of budget constraints, rarely received security patches. For years, it had the Drupageddon and Drupalgeddon exposures. Not surprising it was infested with malware. This is when I got involved (volunteering my time & skills). The website was rewritten as a static site (virtually unhackable) using Hugo on Netlify. On July 26, we were unblocked.

At 1am ET this morning (Aug 1), we were blocked by Google again! The new (Hugo) website had one link to the old (Drupal) website (now with a different subdomain) so users could access content we had not yet migrated to the new website. This link was the reason Google gave for blocking us. I read Google's notification at 6am and immediately removed the links and requested a review via Google's Search Console. At 9am, Google said the review had failed, our website was still blocked, without any additional information. Search Console still says the bad link is to the old website's subdomain. I verified my Hugo source files: there is zero instances of the old website's subdomain name. At 10:30 I submitted another request for review and am still waiting for a response. Their request pop-up says "Warning! Requesting a review of issues that weren't fixed will result in longer review cycles" so I may be waiting a longer time.

(BTW, anyone with inside Google connections, help would be appreciated)

<comment><USER2> So, it's your complaint isn't, as you initially presented it, that you were unfairly listed as a badware site, but instead that you were rightly listed once, asked to be delisted after incompletely dealing with the problem, rightly failed the subsequent review, but this time you really did deal with it?

<comment><AUTHOR> Huh? The key point here is I don't think Google should block any website without providing some warning an an opportunity to fix the issue before imposing an immediate punishment. What if google.com search engine linked to a badware website? Should it be immediately blocked until fixed pending a review? No, of course not. Do onto others as you would have others do onto you.

<comment><USER2> > The key point here is I don't think Google should block any website without > providing some warning an an opportunity to fix the issue before imposing an > immediate punishment.

This isn't punishment, it's end-user protection of the same type as other anti-malware tools. And the protection fundamentally cannot work if operated in the way you suggest.

To use your criminal justice analogue you've not only confessed to the crime, but confessed to continuing the crime while seeking pre-trial release, after an evolving series of denials.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is a very scary situation. It means Google could block your website, not for something bad on your website, but for something bad on another website that you just happen to link to. That's beyond your control! Imagine this happening to a website like wikipedia.org, which as millions of links to external websites. If one of those millions of websites gets hacked, will Google block wikipedia.org? This is like being charged with a crime you didn't commit and being punished immediately without even an initial hearing to respond to the charges! Google and StopBadware.org should not have this power on the internet!

</comment><comment><USER2> > Or should it be more like the criminal justice system, innocent until proven > guilty including after an appeal.

In the criminal justice system, jail or restrictive bail conditions pending outcome of trial is common.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, when the accused is a threat to society or a flight risk. Our website is neither.

<comment><USER2> Yes, a site that you admit was infested with malware due to extended neglect _is_ a threat to society.

And you recent admission that, contrary to your second description, it still deliberately links to the old site but with a warning page makes your whole claim of improper listing clearly baseless.

<comment><AUTHOR> (oh dear)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> > _We are the national governing body for a sport._

Link?

<comment><AUTHOR> I hesitated to include it: didn't want HN to mess with our analytics and free hosting limits (or our review at the mercy of Google). What the hell, here it is: [https://www.chess.ca/](https://www.chess.ca/)

<comment><USER3> We used to have Matt Cutts [1] here, and he used to take a look at somewhat similar problem. I just guess that if someone is going to give e hand, s/he needs the link to take an unofficial look.

There is still a link to the old site in [https://www.chess.ca/en/ws/under- construction/](https://www.chess.ca/en/ws/under-construction/)

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matt_Cutts](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matt_Cutts)

<comment><AUTHOR> The /en/ws/under-construction link is to [http://www.chess.ca/en/ws/old-chess- ca/](http://www.chess.ca/en/ws/old-chess-ca/) which is a page on the new website that explains the dangers before you click a button to actually go to the old site. The link on the explanation page is what I removed.

<comment><USER2> > which is a page on the new website that explains the dangers before you > click a button to actually go to the old site.

So the new site still _intentionally_ (contrary to your prior claim that all links were removed and that you verified this in your source) links to the old site, and you don't understand why the appeal of the badware listing due to that link failed?

<comment><AUTHOR> > The link on the explanation page is what I removed

<comment><USER3> I still see the link in the link in the English version [https://imgur.com/a/GqrwNkc](https://imgur.com/a/GqrwNkc) Perhaps you fixed the French version?

<comment><AUTHOR> In your imgur, you see "LINK" will take you to "chess.ca/en/ws/old-chess-ca/". You've nicely pointed this out with red arrows. "/en/ws/old-chess-ca/" is _NOT_ the old website. It is a page on the new website. It has an explanation of the situation. Previously, this explanation page had the link to the old website (at [http://old.chess.ca/](http://old.chess.ca/)), but I removed that (English and French) this morning before requesting a review by Google. Even though these links are now gone, they failed my review.

<comment><USER3> I thought it was weird to put the old site as a subdirectory of the new one, but I think it is possible with some trick in Apache or whatever you are using. It make more sense to use another subdomain, and as yuo noted in the sibling comment it may be what is causing the problem. I really don't know. Good luck.

(How much info is in the old server? Is it possible to put the old server behind a proxy that rewrite all the pages and remove the malware or whatever is the problem? Perhaps remove all the links to external sites and to executable files or something like that. I'm 80% sure this is a bad idea, but perhaps it is possible with enough technical knowledge.)

<comment><AUTHOR> Many ways to do it, but another subdomain was easiest. The two websites are on different hosts.

There is still a lot of info on the old website. When we decided to go with an "emergency" rewrite of our website, instead of trying to cleanse Drupal, we rewrote only the core functions needed to run tournaments. To keep users from complaining, I kept old.chess.ca available. Now, they'll just have to wait. I do not want to risk anything that might provoke the Google monster into banishing the new website again.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>