YouTube just deleted 2/3 of my educational project playlists

[LatakiaLover]

No warning, no reason given.

Seriously?

Hundreds of hours of work---from which I not only didn't make a cent, but that cost money to make---down the drain.

That's the end of it, then.

Behold the future of Planet Earth: all information is controlled by a handful of unaccountable people

No way anything can possibly go wrong with that, is there?

Good luck, kids

[Massis]

Contact them? Chances are something went wrong and they can restore them...
Or did they give a reason for deleting them?

[LatakiaLover]

Hm.

Fun and games.

It turns out the videos DO still exist, and DO show as belonging to a playlist, but the playlist INDEX only shows about 1/3rd of them. (the first two rows)

Functionally the same as deletion, though, the same way trying to pay for a new car with a 55 gal oil drum of mixed coins would get you laughed out of the showroom. Manually sorting through 185 videos to locate and sequence them to watch a particular PROJECT isn't something most people will bother with.

Also, probably impossible to fix because it's some sort of bug or unintended consequence of a YouTube-wide change, and channels like mine are the smallest of fish.

Attached is screenshot proof that all the videos still exist and are still assigned to a playlist.

Anyone who knows about YouTube shit feel free to chime in.

[LatakiaLover]

OK...

After several hours of Web searching---playlists have been a categorical nightmare for many people for a long time, apparently---and getting nowhere, I finally thought to check how many other channels showed only 12 playlists. The two rows shown in my previous post with the red arrow. It seemed an oddly abritrary cutoff.

The answer? A LOT of them. Statistically way too many for there NOT to have been a recent cause. i.e. Lots of people were caught in the same unannounced change that got me.

So, I messed extensively with YouTube's channel layout feature---which is UNBELIEVABLY vague, non-specific, un-helpful, contains lots of hidden controls, plus doesn't define/explain its own terms---and finally trial-and-errored my way into playlists showing horizontally as a scrolling line, instead of filling a page.

For whatever reason, the layout commands only resulted in either TWO lines or nothing. (one called "created playlists" and "all playlists") A blank page resulted when I tried to omit one or the other.

At least everything's accessible again.

As far as YT's asshole-ery regarding unannounced changes and then leaving it to their users to deal with the fallout without any instruction or help of any sort, you've been warned. It has become an absolute swamp.

Here's the new layout:

[KurtHuhn]

All social media, including YouTube, is a lost cause IMO. You're not the customer, you are the product for sale. The customer is the advertiser and the entities who pay for access to your data.

[LatakiaLover]

Exactly so. A situation that if graphed would show an exponential rise in recent years. The so-called "hockey stick" profile.

Where will it lead? Nowhere good. Today, NO ONE knows what is true concerning anything. On ANY subject. And the fun is just beginning with so-called "deep fake" technology. The old agage, "Believe none of what you hear and only half of what you see" is rapidly becoming "Believe none of what you hear and none of what you see."

As for the YouTube mess, I was never able to give the layout a logical presentation, so just brute forced it with banner-sized text. (Ugly, but nothing about the channel was ever intended to be slick/fancy/sexy/entertaining/etc. Just information.)

It should work until the next arbitrary, unannounced site change.

[oklahoma red]

YT is owned by Google. Need I say more?

[LatakiaLover]

YT is owned by Google. Need I say more?

When the handful of companies that own and control the distribution of virtually all information become so wealthy that they can either ignore the legal process, or change the legal process to favor themselves by buying off legislators and enforcers, will that lead to a better world, or a scarier-than-Hell one?

My prediction? In a few more decades the history will have been written by events, but those events will never be spoken about or referred to by anyone.

Since the Dawn of Man individuals have appeared in the population who are relentlessly driven to achieve large scale power and control over others. Since that can't be accomplished alone, their approach to obtaining help has always been to appeal to one of the two basic types of humans: 1) objectivists who have a Darwinian view of Man's place in the world and think the exploitation of lower ability individuals by those with higher ability is natural; and 2) feelings-based decision makers who think Man's intelligence should be able to create a society where an equal outcome for all is assured regardless of ability.

It was the well that never ran dry: Virtually everyone felt strongly one way or the other; virtually everyone thought their opposite number was flatly wrong; and the dispute could never be settled.

In recent times the first type have been referred to as Capitalists, and the second type as Socialists.

Because the perfect society imagined by each group runs counter to human nature, however---the first because it is devoid of empathy and compassion, and the second because it requires rules regarding "correct" thought and behavior---its implementation demands ruthlessness.

The key to successful and enduring ruthlessness is not overt brutality, though. It is cleverness. To control people behind the scenes while appearing benevolent to the masses.

Throughout history, regardless of where on the "right/left" spectrum they fell, from medieval kings and the Industrial Revolution's robber barons at one end to the 20th century's Soviet Union and North Korea at the other, the leaders relied on information to become strong, establish themselves, and remain in control.

It is no longer necessary for those who seek power to appeal to one side or the other, however. No need to have the support and help of an ideologically-driven group to collect information on their behalf. Today, they can go straight to the endgame. Controlling people with fear and coercion is simply a matter of having access to electronic records.

In 2020 it is entirely possible to know with complete accuracy what a given individual ate for breakfast, how much he spent for it, where it was purchased, the bank where the funds were kept, how much is left in his refrigerator, when it will spoil, how many hours he spent at work, where he stopped on the way there, where he stopped on the way back, how fast he drove, how much he paid for the car, how many accident claims it has been involved in, whether or not traffic laws were broken, the brand of soap he showered with before going to work, who his friends are, who he has communicated with, his political preferences, his political affiliations, his state of physical health, his hobbies, the music he prefers, and on and on and on... The deeper one dives the more connections can be found and inferences that can be made and investigated, effectively without limit, endlessly branching like the Mandelbrot set.

And the pool of stockpiled information grows both wider and deeper every day. Literally every second of every day.

The remarkable part is that most of the information wasn't extracted by force or supplied in response to an overt request. Most of the time, either knowingly or unknowingly (the "terms of service" user agreement), it was given freely by the individual himself. Often eagerly. Mother Nature made short term benefit a powerful motivator.

As the founder of Facebook famously said in 2003:

Zuck: Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard
Zuck: Just ask
Zuck: I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SSNs
[Redacted Friend's Name]: What? How'd you manage that one?
Zuck: People just submitted it.
Zuck: I don't know why.
Zuck: They "trust me"
Zuck: Dumb fucks

In short, the masses the aspiring rulers want to control are indirectly demanding to BE controlled. It's an act of simultaneous acquiescence and bestowal. No invading armies, no shots fired. There is no longer any need to inspire and recruit followers from the Left/Right well that never runs dry.

In fact, those who are relentlessly driven to achieve large scale power and control over others never did care about a particular vision of society. Their ideologies were just a recruiting tool. A way to gather crowds who would chant their name. All they ever cared about, and all they ever will care about, is being in charge.

When the social-score/credit model of society is fully implemented, voicing awareness or concern about any of this---never mind criticizing it---will be suppressed by whatever means necessary, until one day the very idea that something's badly wrong will be impossible to conceptualize, never mind articulate.

[oklahoma red]

Damn, George!
We need to get you on Tucker Carlson's show.

[LatakiaLover]

That would be dangerous.

I wish I was kidding.

Anyone who did that would be targeted by those who like where things are headed, and they'd have nowhere to hide for the reasons given. Learning enough about someone to destroy their life is child's play these days.

Besides, my cat gets pissed if I stay gone for more than an afternoon.

[DocAitch]

I am happy that these videos are again accessible.
DocAitch

[KurtHuhn]

Along the lines of George's post, some may find "The Social Dilemma" on Netflix interesting. It's nothing more than what should already be known by everyone, but it's interesting to see the folks that built social media companies actually admit to what they're doing.

[LatakiaLover]

...it's interesting to see the folks that built social media companies actually admit to what they're doing.

I suppose they can't control their pride at the enormity of their success so far.

On the same note, those same people freely admit their don't let their own children use social media. (The limbic system manipulation mechanism it employs is powerful, deliberate, and actually alters the brain growth of children.)

Scary stuff, indeed.

Though not social media per se, the following screenshots from a multi-lingual, world-spanning website show how controlling information is how you control people. You simply change it, and they will obey/accept it. In this case, long-established scientific fact is being erased before our eyes to further a political agenda.

It is as outrageously absurd as that scene in Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, when the Ministry of Truth assured Winston that Eurasia had always been at war with Eastasia:

.

[DocAitch]

Admittedly an extreme example, but check out what happened to non European populations (esp Native Americans) when small pox (a novel virus to them) was introduced.
Herd immunity by exposure did work ....sort of... There were enough left to maintain a presence, but they did not do well culturally or militarily.
Perhaps the science and medical people figured (between June and November) that a “natural course” of pandemic might disrupt our technical society a bit more than the structure could take.
DocAitch

[LatakiaLover]

Doc --

The numbers don't support that scenario at all.

The world has been through much worse before and survived without significant disruption; and the mortality of COVID is not only much lower than past global pandemics, but the vast majority of deaths are among the elderly (who no longer contribute to society as workers).

In fact, among working age people the mortality rate is actually less than routine, seasonal flu:

[Massis]

Doc --

The numbers don't support that scenario at all.

The world has been through much worse before and survived without significant disruption; and the mortality of COVID is not only much lower than past global pandemics, but the vast majority of deaths are among the elderly (who no longer contribute to society as workers).

In fact, among working age people the mortality rate is actually less than routine, seasonal flu:

Where are these numbers from?

Last I checked, there were about 85 million global cases with 1.84 million mortalities from COVID. Giving it a mortalitiy rate of 2.15%

Also if the spanish flue had 50 million deaths in 500 million cases, that's 10% mortality rate, not 1% as the chart indicates??

[LatakiaLover]

I just spent considerable time trying to find definitive numbers and methodologies for measuring and calculating COVID morbidity and mortality, and politics appears to have swamped the entire situation. Nothing reliable was found (meaning info presented that was/is not countered by someone/someplace else making significantly different claims about the same data item).

With that, I'm out. With such bullshit, patience, have, I do not.

In any event, my concerns about social media & related stand. (Using the WHO's re-definition of herd immunity unwittingly opened a can of statistical worms as much as it was a good example of Big Brother-style reality re-definition. My apologies.)

A excellent example of the sort of thing that's in store for today's kids is your credit score being based on your online activity & search history. Sound like a joke? Nope. It is being proposed in high places:

https://gizmodo.com/your-credit-score-s ... 1845912592

My guess? In 20 years (or less), cash will be gone, the vast majority of products will be sold online since B&M stores will be virtually extinct---steam engines in an electric motor world---and what you are allowed to buy (and therefore allowed to DO as well as merely consume) determined by your "Good Citizen Score" (or whatever it'll be called).

The scariest Orwell could come up with was a TV set that looked back at you, and mini-helicopters peeking through windows.

And with that, it's doubtless best to end this thread shortly. My frustration with the GoogleTubeAbet Industrial Complex certainly took off in a tangential direction. A subject more than worthy of discussion, but this isn't the place for it. (Thanks for your indulgence, Kurt)

[KurtHuhn]

Being a career infosec guy, I find discussions like this very interesting. And I will happily accept jingling silver coins and bars as payment for whatever product or service I might offer.