Talk:YouTube/Archive 16

Italian privacy ruling
In today's news, there are reports that three Google executives were given a suspended sentence by a court in Italy over an online video which showed a boy being bullied. What is notable is that some mainstream media sources have got a key aspect of the story wrong. The video was not posted on YouTube, as this Wall Street Journal story reports. It was posted on Google Videos in September 2006, at a time when Google did not own YouTube. The Daily Telegraph gets it right here. Please bear this in mind before editing the article, as it is not strictly related to YouTube.-- ♦Ian Ma c M♦  (talk to me) 08:40, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

youtube audio
shouldn't it be mentioned how Youtube (usually) has audio and video slightly out of sync? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.174.247.58 (talk) 07:11, 1 March 2010 (UTC)


 * This would need a reliable source. YouTube videos often have every video and audio fault under the sun, but some of them may have been present in the video before it was uploaded. Here is what the YouTube help section says about audio sync problems.-- ♦Ian Ma c M♦  (talk to me) 07:23, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

History inaccuracies?
If you take a look at archive.org's set of youtube caches, you can clearly see that YouTube was up in April 2005 and apparently started as a dating site. How come this isn't mentioned? http://web.archive.org/web/20050428014715/http://www.youtube.com/ —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.242.172.60 (talk) 21:53, 6 March 2010 (UTC)


 * Thanks, somebody mentioned this before: Talk:YouTube/Archive_13. YouTube was in a trial mode during early 2005, and the dating site idea seems to have been a brief blip. It would be nice to have some more sourcing on this, as it is interesting.-- ♦Ian Ma c M♦  (talk to me) 22:02, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

Amount of content uploaded
The statement that 24 hours of content are uploaded per minute in this video at 2:40 is interesting, but it is hard to verify. Text sources are preferable, and the 20 hour figure has been widely quoted.-- ♦Ian Ma c M♦  (talk to me) 19:25, 8 March 2010 (UTC)


 * Text sources may be preferable but almost 24 hours is still the latest "official" number indicated. Only YouTube could verify the number again but I still think CNET is a very reliable source to quote. But yes, I missed that he said "almost" but that could easily be corrected.


 * You can assume that YouTube will wait for the figures to raise to maybe 25 or 30 hours a minute before they do a blog post about it or something like that. I don't think the wait would be worth the presumed inaccuracy of the old quote. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Desplow (talk • contribs) 00:28, 9 March 2010 (UTC)


 * Thanks, as the discrepancy is not great, it is probably best to wait for a text based source for this figure.-- ♦Ian Ma c M♦  (talk to me) 08:06, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Minor change
Could someone change, in the heading passage:

The company is based in San Bruno, California, and uses Adobe Flash Video technology to display a wide variety of user-generated content video content

to:

The company is based in San Bruno, California, and uses Adobe Flash Video technology to display a wide variety of user-generated video content

...because anons can't edit the page. Thanks. -- 124.171.169.189 (talk) 20:30, 26 March 2010 (UTC)


 * ✅ Not sure how this crept into the article, thanks for pointing it out.-- ♦Ian Ma c M♦  (talk to me) 21:04, 26 March 2010 (UTC)

A team of highly trained monkeys has been dispatched to deal with this situation
Does the statement "Also, please include the following information in your error report:" followed by a whole bunch of Jj_gI7VN5ba_KYN3s93vNbnUI6mIQJZuACQvjL44nuTjbqhixyO03FjDttvU frnjlQ50WWXt08ZwPvqAlRTiJHt-EgAuXMpiICxS6cJ2gLAr6_Dcak4wYR6n _4MMhzTup1QglUYrfKWJGYuOlfWTh7k2JZLSck29egvbof2uaT2PA_J8ll39 this stuff mean anything or is it a joke like the highly trained monkeys thing?

It's what you get when youtube has the 500 internal server error. Daniel Christensen (talk) 21:43, 28 March 2010 (UTC)


 * Yes, this is one of the in-jokes at YouTube. Another message on YouTube that leads to queries is "I call shenanigans" which is produced when YouTube has a server error. This is not notable enough for the article, but people often ask what these messages mean.-- ♦Ian Ma c M♦  (talk to me) 05:49, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

Other controversies
I'd say the customers also have a major issue with the copyrights and *ahem* "certain" companies doucheiness (don't mind me if I'll keep it real!) in relation to things like 29 second clips of badly recorded songs. In some cases, I understand where these companies are coming from. For instance, Viacom sucks ***. It makes sense that they'd be concerned and even a-holes about the internet "stealing" views from the crappiness that was once good television programming. Maybe if they made good stuff instead of crappy reality TV...

Sorry got off on a tangent there. Point is, some of us dislike YouTube for allowing these idiots to bully them and us, the consumer. -unsigned proudly non-TV user since 2005! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.36.161.35 (talk) 10:57, 9 March 2010 (UTC)


 * The above comment is rather WP:NOTAFORUM, but we are still waiting to see what happens in the Viacom lawsuit, which is ongoing. YouTube has changed considerably since Viacom filed suit, and the real problem for the big corporations nowadays is people downloading entire movies which are offered openly on the file sharing sites. Up against this, some of the copyright violations on YouTube look like pinpricks. Google is expected to file for summary judgment in the Viacom lawsuit on Friday 12 March 2010.-- ♦Ian Ma c M♦  (talk to me) 11:52, 9 March 2010 (UTC)


 * This story today is notable, because the Viacom/Google lawsuit has been out of the news for a long time. It says that both sides want a summary judgment, but that this is unlikely to happen for several months. Watch this space...-- ♦Ian Ma c M♦  (talk to me) 07:52, 18 March 2010 (UTC)


 * It conflicts with copyright law overall. Bullying can end with a backwards lawsuit, in this case a 512(f). My userpage features Copyright Law for "Idiots". Read it and read it good. --Gert7 (talk) 09:18, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

April Fool's Day Gag
Today, in the definition selection on YouTube videos, there is an option called "TEXTp" which changes the video to ASCII images made of coloured text. After viewing a TEXTp video a message appears saying "By using text-only mode, you are saving YouTube $1 a second in bandwidth costs. Click here to go back to regular YouTube and happy April Fools Day!" Source: http://youtubeaublog.blogspot.com/ —Preceding unsigned comment added by KevDog32 (talk • contribs) 07:57, 1 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Google and YouTube have April Fool pranks every year. Strictly speaking, this is covered by WP:RECENTISM as it goes out of date very quickly and is not of long term interest to the reader.-- ♦Ian Ma c M♦  (talk to me) 08:20, 1 April 2010 (UTC)


 * On the contrary, I believe that many readers (including myself) would find a paragraph on the various April Fools gags YouTube has undertaken over the years extremely interesting; it is precisely the type of historical information that Wikipedia excels at covering. --Albany NY (talk) 02:56, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

Many videos can be shown in "text mode" either by clicking on TEXTp in the resolution selector in the bottom right part of the video, or the string "&textp=fool" can be added to the URL. For example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkoShtVbmMw&textp=fool —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.99.233.77 (talk) 00:10, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

Reception of new design
I wonder if the somewhat mixed (to say the least) reception to the new website design by the user community should not be mentioned? If you look at Youtube's official blog announcement here and check the comments section, you'll find about 2000 people complaining about it, so I think it is significant enough for at least a small mention. --85.81.86.44 (talk) 11:51, 3 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Blogs are generally unacceptable as a self-published source. It was inevitable that some people would complain about the new design of the interface. There were huge complaints in November 2008 when YouTube changed the player to default 16:9 widescreen. So far the new slimmed down interface has had a reasonably positive reaction in the mainstream media, and bearing in mind that hundreds of millions of people use the site, the criticism is not excessive.-- ♦Ian Ma c M♦  (talk to me) 12:00, 3 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Just look at the sheer amount of "new Youtube sucks!" videos being uploaded. I'm hoping enough people hate this that it gets published in a reliable source so that we can include it. Because no reliable source means no section about it... Gatemansgc (talk) 15:20, 4 April 2010 (UTC)


 * On a slightly different note, just wait until Wikipedia's new look interface is officially launched. There will be complaints, no doubt, but this always happens with anything new.-- ♦Ian Ma c M♦  (talk to me) 15:30, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

Forgive me for being off-topic here, but the difference is that YouTube's new layout genuinely does suck. Not just because it's visually unappealing, but contrary to their claims of it being "clutter free" and "easier to use", it's actually more complicated to use than before. I'm all for change and progress, especially in technology, but this change was neither for the better nor was there any actual progress being made. On the other hand, Wikipedia's changes have been for the better all the way, and at least you have the option of skins, where you can decide how Wikipedia looks and works for you. You even have the option to use Wikipedia old-school style. YouTube gives you no options, the change is forced upon you. At least they should allow YouTubers to choose between the old and new layout, that way everyone would be a happy camper. Besides, there are some tech sites reporting the negative reaction towards the new look, it's not just YouTube's and user-run blogs. 24.189.90.68 (talk) 08:08, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

April 1 another joke is missing.
Also had the picture of deleted videos, deleted groups, replaced with a picture of a celling cat meme. 205.211.230.73 (talk) 19:34, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

Edit request
editsemiprotect Please remove the redundant See also entry for Rickrolling, as it is linked in the prior section.

Has this article really been semi-protected since August 2007? For shame. 86.45.150.20 (talk) 15:28, 13 April 2010 (UTC)


 * ✅ and thanks! Avic enna sis @ 16:25, 13 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Why, thank you. 86.45.150.20 (talk) 16:33, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

Most Watched Video
The most watched video on youtube is no longer Charlie bit my Finger. It is Lady Gaga's Bad Romance video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrO4YZeyl0I


 * YouTube is generally not accepted as a reliable source. Can you find a reliable source and post it here? Bejinhan  Talk   13:25, 14 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Vevo is a semi-detached part of YouTube, and it is rather puzzling how "Bad Romance" has acquired 179 million views since November 2009 ("Charlie" has been up since May 2007). This is reminiscent of the row over Music Is My Hot Hot Sex. Anyway, I've changed "Charlie Bit My Finger" to "one of YouTube's most viewed videos".-- ♦Ian Ma c M♦  (talk to me) 13:48, 14 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Update: This is weird, because although "Bad Romance" has more views than "Charlie", it is still showing in second position in the charts. There was a similar controversy about the view count on the video of Avril Lavigne's Girlfriend, so this is worth watching for the article.-- ♦Ian Ma c M♦  (talk to me) 06:08, 15 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Bad romance is now showing in the number 1 position in the charts. Die444die (talk) 17:05, 17 April 2010 (UTC)

April Fool stuff
April Fools

YouTube has featured April Fools on the site every year since 2008:


 * April 1, 2008: All the links to videos on the main page were redirected to Rick Astley's music video "Never Gonna Give You Up", a prank known as "Rickrolling".[108][109]
 * April 1, 2009: When clicking on a video on the main page, the whole page turned upside down. YouTube claimed that this was a new layout.[110]
 * April 1, 2010: YouTube temporarily released a "TEXTp" mode, which translated the colors in the videos to random upper case letters. YouTube claimed in a message that this was done in order to reduce bandwidth costs by $1 (1 dollar) per second.[111][112]

(emphasis mine)

I have witnessed the highlighted prank, and can say for a fact that it was not (entirely) random upper case letters. "Animated ASCII art" might be a better description. Also, the sequence 'LOL' appeared (either horizontally or vertically) far more often than would be coincidental, often numerous times in a frame. (As a side note, this perpetration received mixed reactions, with some prankees thinking it was cool and others thinking it was stupid.) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.196.20.203 (talk) 02:00, 22 April 2010 (UTC)

YouTube player
Re this edit. It looks like YouTube has tweaked the design of the seek bar and the volume control since yesterday. The seek bar now appears as a temporary pop up rather than being on screen all the time. The volume control is now a pop up on the left, instead of the right of the player. No sourcing on this at the moment, so it will be interesting to see who picks up on this. It is not as big as the relaunched interface, but is worth noting.-- ♦Ian Ma c M♦  (talk to me) 08:13, 29 April 2010 (UTC)
 * I've only noticed that on a handful videos--Daniel-Dane (talk) 14:44, 30 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Some videos seem to be different in layout than others although they all have some kind of new or revised layout (not to mention one of them causes video lag on my pc when in full screen -_-). Toxic  Waste  Grounds  21:08, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

Copyright takedown abuse
I added a few sentences about copyright takedown abuse to the criticisms > copyright section, since there was no adequate mention of this topic previously. --DebateLord (talk) 05:07, 5 May 2010 (UTC)


 * The fair use provision is mentioned, but not dwelt on in depth because there have been numerous cases where this occurred and the Electronic Frontier Foundation became involved. Lenz v. Universal Music Corp. is given as the most important example, because it clarified the law in this area and has its own article. Recently there has been a debate about whether the spoof Hitler rants from the film Downfall are fair use after a rash of takedown notices by the makers Constantin Films. For reasons of space, the article does not list all of the DMCA disputes, and Criticism of YouTube looks at this area in more depth.-- ♦Ian Ma c M♦  (talk to me) 07:57, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

Profit
Shouldn't there be a section devoted to explaining how Youtube makes profit? How much they are worth, what the history of their profit making is etc? Thepillow (talk) 16:29, 5 May 2010 (UTC)


 * As the article explains, since Google bought YouTube for $1.65 billion in November 2006, it has persistently declined to publish exact revenues and running costs for YouTube. This has led to speculation that it loses money heavily, and in April 2009 Credit Suisse published a report estimating that YouTube lost $470 million in that year. However, since this is only an estimate and could be wrong, it is not used as a source in the article. Unless Google publishes some exact figures, the profitability remains a mystery.-- ♦Ian Ma c M♦  (talk to me) 17:13, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

YouTube's Layout Changes
Quote from DrDizzle1990: "Is there any way that I can get the old layout back? The new layout is so awful that it's hurting my eyes, I can't find video description and there is way too much emphasis placed on the comments section." 71.220.213.160 (talk) 02:44, 7 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Not really article related, but the answer is that there is no way to go back to the old interface. Some of the controls are now hidden in drop down boxes with arrows.-- ♦Ian Ma c M♦  (talk to me) 07:28, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

5th year birthday
Give small note about 5th year birthday of Youtube —Preceding unsigned comment added by 114.77.209.21 (talk) 10:57, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

Pakistan blocks YouTube website
Pakistan has blocked access to the popular YouTube website because of content deemed offensive to Islam.

Its telecommunications authority ordered internet service providers to block the site until further notice.

Reports said the content included Danish cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad that have outraged many.

But one report said a trailer for a forthcoming film by Dutch lawmaker Geert Wilders, which portrays Islam in a negative light, was behind the ban. "They asked us to ban it immediately... and the order says the ban will continue until further notice," said Wahaj-us-Siraj, convener of the Association of Pakistan Internet Service Providers.

"Users are quite upset. They're screaming at ISPs which can't do anything.

"The government has valid reason for that, but they have to find a better way of doing it. If we continue blocking popular websites, people will stop using the internet."

Other countries that have temporarily blocked access to YouTube include Turkey and Thailand. Engineer online123 (talk) 11:15, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

Localization URLs
The URLs in the Localization table are incorrect and have been for some time. The subdomains such as uk.youtube.com for the UK are no longer in use, and the required regional version is selected at the bottom of a YouTube page. Since the table has become misleading on this issue, I propose to remove the URLs if no-one objects.-- ♦Ian Ma c M♦  (talk to me) 19:01, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

Inappropriate Content
the inappropriate content section should probably be changed to a controversial content section, seems a bit of a stretch to call "religion" inappropriate or even "conspiracy theories" or for that mattter to lump religion with pornography. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.198.32.36 (talk) 02:22, 2 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Thanks for pointing this out. Religion is not in itself a controversial area, but there is a history of people posting defamatory videos about religion on YouTube. Likewise, conspiracy theories are not usually offensive, although some of the wackier ones could offend.-- ♦Ian Ma c M♦  (talk to me) 07:08, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

More criticism
The article completely fails to acknowledge that YouTube actively censors videos critical of Israel. The Jews are clearly trying to keep the truth from coming out. Just as Israeli soldiers shoot unarmed Palestinians at point-blank range arbitrarily YouTube does the same to videos. --213.130.254.217 (talk) 01:31, 6 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Citation? Andy120290 (talk) 05:05, 6 June 2010 (UTC)

Privacy again
It's been brought to my attention that if you sign up to Youtube with a Gmail account, you are presented with a list of all your Gmail contacts with their corresponding Youtube usernames. This seems to be a kind of involuntary 'outing' that is a breach of privacy. Imagine the embarrassment of a chief executive when he finds out all his Gmail contacts can see his Youtube username, and all his lewd comments about TV stars, or his views on Middle East politics, or religion, or abortion or whatever. This breach of privacy must have been reported somewhere and I think we should look for the citation. Something similar happened with the Facebook/Hotmail tie-in, with private hotmail addresses being distributed among facebook 'friends'. -Chumchum7 (talk) 11:08, 12 June 2010 (UTC)


 * There does not seem to be much about this in reliable sources, so it is unsuitable for this article and Criticism of YouTube at the moment. However, someone else seems to have complained about a similar issue here.-- ♦Ian Ma c M♦  (talk to me) 11:19, 12 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Indeed. Sadly this Youtube privacy problem is self-evident to everyone with Youtube and Gmail anyway, without any obvious 2ndary source discussing it. It is a bit like trying to find 2ndary sources on the features of Wikipedia itself: there arent many, because its all on Wikipedia already. Maybe a temporary solution is to describe the Youtube-Gmail linking without adding any OR value judgements about whether the linking is a good or bad thing? -Chumchum7 (talk) 13:12, 12 June 2010 (UTC)


 * The issue here is sourcing. Recently Facebook revamped its privacy settings following widespread criticism in the media. YouTube has not faced similar criticism, although there may be some privacy concerns with logging in via a Gmail account if it gives the names of Gmail contacts. As it suggests here, it is possible to log in with only a username, and to unlink a joint Google/YouTube account.-- ♦Ian Ma c M♦  (talk to me) 13:30, 12 June 2010 (UTC)


 * I am a fellow devotee of sourcing. But in this article our first, third, fourth and last sentences of our lede aren't sourced. Why not? Because consensus is happy with the information. By that precedent, we can add the observation that Youtube accounts are linked to Gmail accounts; and that human identities behind Youtube usernames are involuntarily unmasked if one uses a combination of Gmail and Youtube. One can of course change settings if you don't like that Youtube has outed you, by not using Gmail login; but that is beside the point, especially if you have already been outed without your consent. The place for all this info would be in an paragraph about the Youtube-Google alliance. -Chumchum7 (talk) 19:01, 12 June 2010 (UTC)


 * This is more of an area for Criticism of YouTube, which looks at privacy issues in more detail. There is still an element of original research here, because it is hard to find anything about this in a reliable source. There is also the issue of notability if no mainstream source has covered it. One possibility would be to contact some tech writers to see if they could get a comment from Google or YouTube on this issue. At the moment, the coverage is somewhat too thin for Wikipedia.-- ♦Ian Ma c M♦  (talk to me) 19:13, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

I understand your point, but I would say this needn't be billed as a criticism of Youtube, but a feature of Youtube. The people at Youtube/Google clearly thought it a bright idea that Youtube accounts are linked to Gmail accounts; and that human identities behind Youtube usernames are automatically unmasked if one uses a combination of Gmail and Youtube. The linking and unmasking is simply an NPOV description of a feature of the product, as is much of the unsourced information in the lede. -Chumchum7 (talk) 19:21, 12 June 2010 (UTC) I spotted a couple of sentences dealing with registration, in the lede in fact. This appears to be the logical place for a further aspect of registration. I've added the following as per discussion above: 'Registered users who also use Gmail, and choose to log in with their Gmail username and password, are automatically 'outed' to everyone on their Gmail contacts list who have Youtube accounts.' If you feel 'outed' is a loaded word, please go ahead and change it to a more neutral word. I could only think of 'unmasked' as an alternative, but that sounded less neutral to me than 'outed'. Thanks, -Chumchum7 (talk) 13:47, 13 June 2010 (UTC)


 * It would be WP:UNDUE to mention in the lede something that has not been covered by any reliable source. True or not, there are still issues with WP:NOTHOWTO and notability here.-- ♦Ian Ma c M♦  (talk to me) 13:52, 13 June 2010 (UTC)