Articles about YouTube

YouTube has said that new moderators were to blame for the removal of some right-wing videos from the site. Just a few days ago InfoWars' Alex Jones had a video removed for violating YouTube harassment policies and following this a number of right-wing and conspiracy theory channels received warnings or were suspended.

Now the video site has admitted that some of the removals were the result of its policies being applied incorrectly -- side-stepping the claims of censorship that have been banded around. It says that any videos that were removed in error will be reinstated.

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Sadly, YouTube has a problem with cancerous content and fake news these days, but it is still a great platform for family-friendly creators too. Ultimately, Google’s video platform remains a staple on the web despite recent controversies. Thankfully, the company is working hard to fight against this deluge of negative content.

One of the best aspects of YouTube is the live streaming functionality. This allows content creators to better interact with fans by providing a live environment -- not just pre-recorded and edited videos. Today, Google announces that it is making live streaming even better, with things like IFTTT (If This, Then That) support for Super Chats and the ability to add location tags to streams.

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Alex Jones' conspiracy-theory-heavy InfoWars has been censured by YouTube for violating its policies. A video entitled "David Hogg Can't Remember His Lines In TV Interview" -- in which it was alleged that students appearing on TV talking about the Parkland, Florida shooting were "crisis actors" -- was removed from the Alex Jones Channel for breaching YouTube's rules about harassment.

Unsurprisingly, InfoWars is describing YouTube's actions as censorship, but there's a more pressing concern for The Alex Jones Channel and other InfoWars channels -- they run the risk of being closed down entirely.

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The world is currently undergoing a cord cutting revolution. Thanks to the internet, many consumers are being empowered to dump their cable provider and switch to a streaming option. This is sort of ironic, as quite often, the internet being used to stream is provided by the TV provider that is being dumped. Ultimately, the cable company becomes nothing more than an ISP. You know what? Maybe that is how it should be.

Cordcutters have many internet-based TV providers from which to choose these days, but one of the most attractive is offered by Google. The search giant’s YouTube TV service is quite intriguing thanks to its paltry $35 monthly fee (often much less than cable TV). Starting today, the service will become even more popular, as it is now available for Roku and Apple TV.

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The clandestine mining of cryptocurrency is something that we have seen in various forms over the last year or so, in website code and Android apps. A new discovery by security firm Trend Micro shows that hackers have found a way to inject Coinhive mining code into ads that appear on YouTube.

The crypto-jacking technique means that hackers have been able to profit by using other people's CPU time to mine the Monero cryptocurrency while they watch videos. Trend Micro reports that there has been a huge increase in Coinhive web miner detections in recent days, with hackers abusing Google's DoubleClick to distribute the code through big sites including YouTube.

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YouTube is to subject large numbers of videos to manual review in an attempt to ensure that they are "ad-friendly." Google says that "stricter criteria for monetization" will be introduced as it tries to avoid further controversies such as Logan Paul's video that featured a dead body.

The changes are likely to mean that some YouTubers will lose money when they are introduced in February. Google is also making changes to the requirements that need to be met to join the YouTube Partner Program.

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Google's latest update for YouTube on iOS promises 'general fixes and stability improvements', but also includes a welcome hidden extra -- a Dark Mode that looks especially amazing on iPhone X, and might even save you some battery life. However, there is a catch.

To activate this new mode, you need to be running YouTube for iOS version 13.01.4 (or later), and even then it might not be available to you. It seems Google is rolling the feature out slowly to select users. To see if you’re one of the lucky ones, here’s what you need to do.

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Google has announced plans to block its YouTube apps from Amazon's Echo Show and Fire TV as the situation between the two companies stepped up a notch. This is, of course, not the first time this has happened.

The bad feeling stems from Amazon's unwillingness to stock Google products such as Chromecast, Nest and Google Home, and refusing to make its Prime Video service available to uses of Google Cast. Amazon's use of a "hacked" version of the YouTube app on its hardware has also been a bone of contention.

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Apple's presence on YouTube is not exactly new, but the iPhone maker has not been the most prolific of posters. All this looks set to change as Apple is now pushing its dedicated channel.

Video tutorials seems to be an obvious thing for Apple to offer on the massively popular video-sharing site, and it's something it has done to a small extent already. But now, with under 50,000 subscribers at the moment, Apple is ready to make fuller use of Google's platform to reach out to its userbase.

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YouTube is an amazing place to consume media. There is great family-friendly content from people like iJustine and Rosanna Pansino, for instance. Unfortunately, there is another side of Google's video site, where people such as Pewdiepie and Leafy post racist and sexist content. For parents, it can be quite difficult to know which videos are appropriate for children. Sometimes adult content can even show up in the YouTube Kids app.

To make matters worse, some content creators have been disguising adult-themed videos as being family-friendly -- a wolf in sheep's clothing, if you will. For instance, what may appear to be a video about Spider-Man and Elsa from Disney's Frozen, can quickly morph into a video about feces and hypodermic needles. I kid you not -- there are some truly bizarre videos designed to exploit children on YouTube nowadays. It is being referred to by some as "Elsagate," and this excellent video does a great job of explaining the growing phenomenon. Sadly, these weird videos generate a lot of revenue too, leading to copycats. Thankfully, Google has apparently had enough, as it now vows to crack down on adult content that masquerades as being family friendly.

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YouTube is -- of course -- about video, but it is becoming more than that. Google has just announced that it is teaming up with Ticketmaster, giving people the opportunity to learn about concert dates and buy concert tickets while watching artists' videos.

For now, the feature is limited to the US, but there are plans to roll it out on a wider scale. With YouTube increasingly used as a marketing tool by musicians, the progression to using it as a ticket outlet is hardly surprising -- but it's not clear what sort of cut Google is planning to take, and whether this could ultimately push up tickets prices.

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There are lots of sites and tools out there that can be used to rip content from YouTube, saving them either as videos or MP3s. Predictably, this is something that the content owners -- record labels in particular -- take issue with.

YouTube-MP3 recently shut up shop following pressure from the music industry, and a number of MP3 ripping sites were lined up as the next targets. Apparently pre-empting any legal action that might be taken against them, MP3Juices.cc and YtMp3.cc have started to block traffic from the UK.

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Videos that play automatically have proved highly divisive, but it hasn’t stopped Google, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter experimenting with them. Now YouTube is testing autoplaying videos in its app.

Recognizing that not everyone is happy with the idea of videos noisily playing as soon as they appear on-screen, Google has taken a leaf out of Instagram's book and made the video play silently to start with. In addition to this, it's possible to disable autoplay altogether if you want.

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If you want to become the next YouTube star or record a thrilling podcast, content is king; you need to have interesting things to talk about so that you can develop an audience. Great content isn't enough these days, however. With so much competition, you need to have good production values too. No, you don't need fancy special effects, but exceptional audio quality is key -- no matter how good you are, people won't want to struggle to hear you.

If media creation is your goal, one of the best purchases you can make is a quality microphone. Believe it or not, you don't need to break the bank to get a respectable model. Today, Samson unveils a new professional-grade microphone, and it is rather affordable for all you get. Not only does it seem to be a good choice for vlogging or recording a podcast, but also for music creation. Heck, gamers and Twitch streamers should check it out too.

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YouTube has introduced a ban on videos that provide instructions on how to modify guns to make them fire more quickly. The move comes in the wake of the Las Vegas shooting -- the deadliest in US history -- in which Stephen Paddock used guns fitted with bump stocks to increase the firing rate of his weapons.

The Google-owned video site has been used to share instructional video showing how to adapt guns in the same way. Following the mass shooting, which left dozens dead and hundreds injured, a clamp-down has been introduced.

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