YouTube pulled a popular tutorial video from tech creator Jeff Geerling this week, claiming his guide to installing LibreELEC on a Raspberry Pi 5 violated policies against “harmful content.” The video, which showed viewers how to set up their own home media servers, had been live for over a year and racked up more than 500,000 views. YouTube’s automated systems flagged the content for allegedly teaching people “how to get unauthorized or free access to audio or audiovisual content.”

Geerling says his tutorial covered only legal self-hosting of media people already own – no piracy tools or copyright workarounds. He said he goes out of his way to avoid mentioning popular piracy software in his videos. It’s the second time YouTube has pulled a self-hosting content video from Geerling. Last October, YouTube removed his Jellyfin tutorial, though that decision was quickly reversed after appeal. This time, his appeal was denied.

  • who
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    30 days ago

    The use of “self-hosting” is a little confusing here. To be clear, he wasn’t self-hosting his video. It was published on YouTube, and the guidelines and procedures in question are Google’s.

    Edit: I’m not defending Google’s actions. It’s just that the title gave the impression that a video he had self-hosted was somehow subject to “community guidelines”, which didn’t make sense.

    Edit 2: Ten downvotes in less than an hour, on a clarification comment? Wow. I’m disappointed to see that level of targeted negativity here. What rotten behavior. :(

  • Dr. Moose
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    030 days ago

    People are quick to burn Youtube here when its clearly the american copyright reach that causes this.

    • @[email protected]
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      129 days ago

      YouTube took down the video because of its own policies, not because of copyright law. So we should be blaming YouTube.

      I think it’s easy to see exactly why if you consider how YouTube treats small content creators. If I post a video and companies claim copyright on it, the video gets demonetized and I might lose my account. I can respond and contest the claim and maybe I can win but I still lost money in the meantime, and perhaps more significantly, the companies that made their copyright claims will never face a consequence for attempting to burn my channel. In other words, if I get things wrong a few times I’ll lose my channel and my income source, but if they get things wrong a million times, they face zero consequence.

      And you might be inclined to blame the media companies. But again, this is YouTube doing what YouTube wants to do of its own volition, and not something that’s required by law. If YouTube valued small-scale content creators and end users, it would create different policies.

  • @[email protected]
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    30 days ago

    “how to get unauthorized or free access to audio or audiovisual content.”

    In the future, public domain media will be banned for harming corporate profits.

    • @[email protected]
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      129 days ago

      In the 1970s/80s, the corporations just taxed blank media - because it was obviously used to pirate their warez.

      • @[email protected]
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        28 days ago

        70s? My government the private for-profit corporation tasked by my government to manage copyrights, every year still steals from everyone millions of euro “because that phone can be used to watch pirated content”

        We pay 7 euro on each smartphone, 7.50 on each USB drive, up to 18 euro on each internal drive (sata or name, but under 160gb is free) and products are castrated with regional firmware because if it’s just a TV then it’s 4 euro tax, but if it allows recording it’s the 5% of MSRP

    • partial_accumen
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      01 month ago

      Sue for defamation that Youtube are alleging he is promoting criminal activity of piracy.

  • @[email protected]
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    029 days ago

    you say in the video that you use this setup to watch YouTube. I love watching YouTube with Kodi as it shows no ads. I guess they don’t love that.

    I’m not saying that justifies the strike, but it might be connected

    • @[email protected]
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      029 days ago

      The problem is that LibreELEC is piracy-adjacent. So you get these bogus take-downs because different people draw the line differently, and fighting a legal battle is 1000x as expensive as the outcome is worth to most people.

    • @[email protected]
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      229 days ago

      Are you suggesting that a guide on how to leave youtube should be elsewhere?

      Thats like requiring to pass an exam to get access to the textbook.

    • @[email protected]
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      428 days ago

      Who, Jeff? He made a whole video a while back about how he doesn’t rely on YouTube, and is also on Floatplane. However, he acknowledges that a lot of viewers can’t afford a subscription service, and YT has a massive reach, so he still uploads there, too.

    • @[email protected]
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      28 days ago

      I made a very similar joke like this on Reddit, except it was about Waymo, and Reddit issued a warning against my account threatening a permanent ban.

      • qevlarr
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        128 days ago

        Let them. Trust me, you’ll feel much better

    • DefederateLemmyMl
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      328 days ago

      Harmful is just code for “threatens the bottom line of multibillion dollar companies”. There is no relation to anything that matters to real people.

  • Green Wizard
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    228 days ago

    Everyone who is capable of hosting a peertube instance should do so, even if it’s just to host your own content. I know, “it will never replace youtube” but if as many people as possible use it and share bandwidth between each other we will at least have SOMETHING in terms of a youtube alternative.

  • @[email protected]
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    029 days ago

    The video is up again:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3hFas54xFtg

    But at some point, he shows he’s moving some files to LibreELEC, and he has a folder called “Chernobyl” - how can that possibly be legal, if the folder actually contains files with the HBO show of the same name? Just asking because I’m curious 😊

    • @[email protected]
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      029 days ago

      https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_(miniseries)

      It was released on DVD and Blu-ray, if he purchased the disc and ripped it to his media, and hasn’t shared those files with anyone, then it is legal, as an exception to copyright in the US, where Jeff and Google are both based.

      Jeff has stated on multiple occasions that he purchases and rips his media, and does not use piracy.

        • @[email protected]
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          128 days ago

          This is incorrect in the US. Ripping DVD and Blu-ray media for personal use has been part of the fair use doctrine since 2015.

  • Buelldozer
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    41 month ago

    This kind of crap is driving popular creators, like Geerling, to move to other places. YT / Alphabet has lost the plot.

    • @[email protected]
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      129 days ago

      I tried a couple of other platforms but I keep running into a moderation issue where the other platforms market to the sort of people who would be permanently banned from YouTube.

    • @[email protected]
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      41 month ago

      Yep. Most of my favorite creators are on Nebula now.

      The ones that aren’t get watched on SmartTube or in Brave Browser.

      • @[email protected]
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        21 month ago

        I love Nebula. I go there to watch Nebula Exclusives but it’s not great for browsing or discovering new channels…I found everyone I subscribe to on YouTube first

        • @[email protected]
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          130 days ago

          Brave is open source and using MPL license which is the same license Firefox is using. I am not using or recommending Brave to anyone.

          • @[email protected]
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            130 days ago

            I will flat out shut down any Brave user simply because it tried to push crypto.
            No thanks :)

            • @[email protected]
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              330 days ago

              Not just crypto, they were diverting ad revenue from websites to themselves, collecting unsolicited donations for content creators without their consent, suggesting affiliate links in the address bar and installing a paid VPN service without the user’s consent. Don’t forget they had a “bug” in Tor which sent all DNS queries to your ISP instead of routing it through tor and also weak fingerprint protection. Not to mention the political affiliation of the CEO. But it IS open source.