I know this might not be a popular opinion.
But showing people how to hack systems... that seems like an OK thing to ban. It's a crime. Teaching people how to commit a crime has always been not OK.
But showing people how to hack systems... that seems like an OK thing to ban. It's a crime. Teaching people how to commit a crime has always been not OK.
You don't see courses on "ethical painting" like the person teaching it has to qualify that they're teaching the legal type of painting. You don't hear people talking about "white hack" and "black hat" painters.
I assume you know hacking has a huge illegal component such that it always has to be qualified as good or bad when talking about it.
This might be a better analogy for my feelings on the topic. Abortions are determined to be legal or illegal based on the time you have one. This is the dichotomy that we as a society have created. The method to abort a child at 1 month, and 1 month and 1 day will be exactly the same, but the legallity might be the opposite. Does that mean we need to ban all information on how to have a safe abortion? No, it means we need to enfore the laws already on the books for those having unsafe/ illegal abortions.
The fact that knowledge is abused does not mean it should be censored. And on top of that maybe I want to know how to craft a pair of brass knuckles, or how to program a guidance system for a missle just because I'm curious.
"It shall be unlawful for any person... to teach or demonstrate the making or use of an explosive, a destructive device, or a weapon of mass destruction..."[1]
Teaching bomb making is not legal. Passed the senate 94-0, no objections. There are things you can't teach.
I challenge you on that last point. If you tried teaching bomb making in the United States, you would likely have be visited by a couple of ATF folks to have a talk.
They would advise you strongly not to teach that.
Anyways, best of luck. :)
I am a Google employee though not in Cloud. I am not really sure what commenting is going to accomplish here?
I don't agree with this and many other things Google does, whether it be in my org or elsewhere. I am sure this is the case for many employees just from internal communications.
Google is a huge company so I suppose this is just natural, and frankly I don't think the people who make these decisions really care what I or other Googlers think. After all, as the population increases it becomes increasingly difficult to make everyone happy.
Is it a crime to teach people how to pick a lock?
I imagine that depends entirely on where the viewer lives, it wouldn't surprise me if some countries had laws that made it so.
Mere possession of lock picks themselves, according to this site https://tihk.co/blogs/news/116232133-lock-pick-legality , appear to be enough to get you arrested for intent to commit a crime in 5 states.
Given that laws vary wildly from county to county, city to city, state to state, country to country, sometimes stuff like this is simply CYA for YouTube.
You also have to keep in mind that YouTube is not a webhosting service or content delivery network, they exist to sell adspace for 99% of their income, if advertisers don't want to appear around guns/pornographic material/material of questionable legality/etc then it's well within YouTube's right to prohibit such content whether or not is legal to distribute.
People always rush to scream YouTube/Google is censoring them when they aren't. YouTube is not a government, YouTube is a business that sells ad space.
So that means it's still legal to possess such tools in those states. But if prosecuted for criminal possession you basically lose the presumption of innocence and must prove you had no criminal intent rather than the state being required to prove that you did.
They censored away voices that were fully covered under free speech. To be honest I can sympathize with your 'crime tutorial' argument even slightly more than banning hate mongers. Hate is not a crime.
I'm Pro 2a but YouTube was demonetizing, and even removing some, many firearm videos 1-2 years ago and it had everyone in the firearm community in an uproar and the people screaming the most were the uploaders that had videos along the lines of:
"what happens if I shoot a barbie doll with a 50 cal"
"what happens if I shoot a watermelon full of tanerite"
"what happens if I microwave ammunition" (Demolition Ranch has an entire series of these)
"what happens if I microwave a full ak mag" (Demolition Ranch has an entire series of these)
"what happens if I put the wrong caliber ammunition in a firearm" (Demolition Ranch, also I believe King of Everything did this as well he also was in the news for at least two of his videos and had legal action taken against him for making explosives around the same time)
Like, you aren't teaching people how to safely shoot or reviewing firearms, you're doing stupid stuff that is extremely dangerous and absolutely should not be replicated by viewers at home.
Similarly Cody's Lab was losing it last year or the year before when his account was suspended... after he literally rushed through an airport talking to his phone animatedly about making explosives and --- blowing himself up --- in a previously uploaded prank video, and this year he's been griping about how his videos are being demonetized again... well... yeah... you poured liquid mercury into your mouth and were squirting it through your teeth... and you previously almost blew your finger off when you were whacking home-brew nitro glycerine with a steak knife... and you had the federal agents visit your house in response to when you talked about how to make yellow cake at home and were showing your incredibly poor storage methods for radioactive dust. You aren't being persecuted, Google and/or the authorities are trying to make sure you aren't going to do harm to others or instruct others how to do harm.
I imagine the spirit behind this is more to ban videos like
"hack your girlfriend's phone to install secret tracking apps"
and
"how to hack our neighbors WiFi"
instead of "how to assess vulnerabilities in your network"
I seem to recall Mythbusters baking a loaded .44 Magnum in an oven, and that was on corporate broadcast TV.
I can't speak for the average person, but if I find myself curious about the results of something obviously dangerous, I like to look up a video of someone else doing it so I can find out with no risk. I don't find myself wanting to replicate dangerous experiments once I've watched a video.
If this did happen in an episode they likely had firefighters and EMTs on hand, an entire safety crew, ballistic glass and/or a proper bunker, etc.
Demolition Ranch though... he's a veterinarian that had a microwave in his field in Texas with some cinder blocks around the sides. Likely with one other person on hand in case he injured himself.
I agree. We should only publish videos of things that are safe for viewers to replicate.
In my elementary school, That Favorite Science Teacher made gunpowder as an in-class demonstration, as well as hydrogen balloons.
Should that content be allowed on YouTube? There are plenty of college-level chemistry demonstrations which have serious safety concerns; if not in the performance, then in the safe and ethical disposal.
Cody's views on elemental mercury being vilified push me over the edge to wanting that type of speech protected on the platform, lest fears of dihydrogen monoxide rule.
Channels like NileRed discuss that this is dangerous, that is dangerous, I'm properly venting and wearing a respirator, I have to do these steps so this is safe to dispose of etc. That is safe, channels like this are commendable.
Channels like BackyardScientist and Cody's Lab where you are making your own nitro and whacking it with a steak knife or making weapons firing rather fast moving (and heavy) projectiles in your backayrd in the suburbs... yeahhh not so much (or worse, the time DemolitionRanch fired a proper firearm inside his HOUSE).
Channels like TheSlowMoGuys and Hydraulic Press Channel/Beyond the Press are the grey area. They both use some safety precautions and both often stress "don't try this yourself" or some such, but they also do stuff that is still pretty dangerous and questionable at best like getting inside giant water balloons for Slow and making rocket engines out of "play doo" for Beyond.
The biggest problem for me in this train of thought is whether the danger lies in the danger (if emulated), the attractiveness, or the availability.
At what point do you start banning extreme sports videos from the platform? There are some activities which simply aren't safe, and are clear outliers. (Say, free soloing vs typical rock climbing.)