Those are not usernames, but auto-generated ids of the linked comments/posts. The rest of the url is just a human readable title, which you can erase and still get to the same post.
Again, simply watching or having watched live streams from Kiev might net you a ban.
> If you watched any Kiev livestream it may have been the reason for your termination. It happened to a lot of us too, it seems some Russian bots have been mass-reporting every single person that watched them
> Yes, yesterday night I watched a livestream. Im shocked
> I also watched a Livestream yesterday night. How i wish I didn't now since my account got terminated.
On the reddit thread the hypothesis is that somehow viewers got mass reported.
I wonder if their accounts were picked up for using the chat or if there's a viewer list that is being fetched via API.
So now if you watch the wrong video and you are in some list. Looks like it wasn't a good idea to have your full name visible and online identity tied to your youtube account.
Damn google for pushing for that crap, google+ was a blight.
Welcome to Google. I know it sounds like cheap answer, but yes, some people lost access to their entire google related accounts including GMAIL and DRIVE when they were banned from specific services, like adsense for instance.
It's never too late to de-google. Use it as a good excuse to switch to a password manager if you aren't using one. If you are then it is much less painful to switch.
Internet identity is too valuable to trust to a company that demonstrates they are willing to fall asleep with an armed grenade in their hand.
One great example of this is the Gumtree site[0]. The social media share buttons at the bottom only load in when you hover over them (with the placeholder being Gumtree-styled social media icons). Great for performance and privacy (although I would prefer no buttons / social media code at all). I've always been really impressed by this, I wish more sites would do it.
I don't think YT bans usually affect your google account. I got falsely flagged by a bot for copyright striking a bunch of my own videos which resulted in permanent, apparently unappealable, ban of all my YouTube accounts on that google account but the google account still works just fine.
This should be illegal. It's like a diner owner saying he's going to deny service to all terrorists and then denying service to anyone with brown skin because it's how he determines who is a terrorist.
It's really sad. I lost one channel that I had been uploading content to for years. I supplied some small communities with, in my opinion, what were high quality tutorials and guides. All gone [see note below]. On top of all that, the videos which I tried to flag are still mostly up and I don't want to risk other accounts or my whole google account by flagging them. My only hope is to one day get in contact with someone at YT and ask them to take a look (doubt this will ever happen).
Note: I think I've got the videos backed up somewhere, but losing the channel kind of ruined the appeal of re-uploading. Lost the channel url, subscribers, and most importantly all of the video links across the web are dead.
What you described in your simile is a violation of Civil Rights Act of 1964 because it is public (as in John Q can walk in) business practicing discrimination based on a protected class (race, in this case).
Even that's an overreaction. Saying as someone who has moved out everything from Google, the best bet is to own your "identity" (domains, email address, & logins - don't use Google login), and backup your data (either in another cloud or locally in a Desktop/Laptop).
I use a throwaway Google account for YouTube as well, just in case.
I got banned from this, so yes, it can happen to someone that does not comment on any video, has no videos of their own, and only makes a few comments in these Ukraine live streams.
I did not lose any other Google services during this, just access to youtube.
This is exactly the reason I am migrating away from a Gmail address to my personal domain. I don't think most people realise just how in trouble they are if they lose access to their primary email address.
Ukraine has actually discouraged people live streaming or publishing Ukranian troop movement, it's revealing their positions and capabilities to the Russians. I'm sure that's a two way street.
How much live streaming happened on Youtube - and how many accounts were terminated - during the conflicts in the middle east?
One more reason to never watch YouTube logged in or by using any of the official apps. Ideally we should switch to alternative platforms, but the amount of content on YT is unmatched. So try these instead:
I noticed something last night watching a live stream of Kyiv.
A lot of accounts were posting the comment '/cam2', with others implying something was happening on cam2. Others were saying that the cam thing was fake. I kind of thought it was a way to find out who was watching the video, since obviously youtube chat isn't going to change the video angle...And now I think that's exactly what it was, for this exact purpose.
One thing is clear, and it's very scary in light of all the NATO press conferences where people are asking if a cyber attack constitutes an act of war: There is a massive war happening on the internet right now. Reps are reluctant to respond to these questions because it's clear that total cyber war has been going on for years.
Yes, I checked and in the chat window you can get a list of participants. I'm watching the (non-Ukraine) stream but not in the participants list, so I assume you have to actually say something in chat.
> He argues that Russia invading Ukraine (and putting a pro-Russian government in its place), it is the same as USA invading Iraq.
Typical Putinist deflection. Watch some talk shows on Russian TV involving him from the past decade. Whenever people question or criticize his actions, he does not answer and instead start raving on about the US this and the west that. Even if the action has nothing to do with the US or the west. It's a simple tactic to try move focus from whatever he's doing to whatever evil he thinks the west has done. He's always doing everything to paint the west in bad light; he wants people to think the west is evil, and in doing so, he's supposed to get a free pass.
I used to watch (English) Russian propaganda channels on youtube. They're all full of this. Obviously a lot of people buy it.
The reality is that whether the war in Iraq was justified or not is a completely separate discussion, and the US going to war with Iraq (whether justified or not) is not a justification for Russia going to war with Ukraine.
You can draw parallels, but that is no justification. And vague "self-interests" is no justification. Anyone who thinks USA waged war for oil is probably also condemning that war.
For another example of self-interest, Finland (together with Nazi Germany) attacked the Soviets in Continuation War in order to regain lost territory and to annex East Karelia. You can argue that's self-interest but it does not justify invasion, and I think most people condemn that offensive.
> The reality is that whether the war in Iraq was justified or not is a completely separate discussion, and the US going to war with Iraq (whether justified or not) is not a justification for Russia going to war with Ukraine.
This. If all we do is justify our current actions with the past, then every country can find some historic argument for invading another country. So yes, US in Iraq means nothing for Russia attacking Ukraine, it is a red herring by Putin propaganda. It is just hard or impossible to convince those who believe in it.
> Objectively speaking, it's justified from Russia's point of view
That is such absurd wording. It almost sounds like you're trying to make an argument but you aren't really.
You can always put it like that. "I see Russia as a security concern. Objectively speaking from my point of view Russia is a threat and we should pre-emptively nuke Moscow. It's justified from my point of view."
> The 90s born generation like myself, mostly see Russia as neutral
Yeah, people who didn't live through the cold war and didn't suffer aggression or witness it being used against a nearby country are prone to being blue-eyed in that way.
I guarantee that a lot of the 90s kids are now having second thoughts and start to think more like the older population.
FWIW, as a Polish twenty-something, I rather expected Russia to mellow out as it becomes more democratic over time. As of approximately the time of the Crimean invasion, that opinion has shifted a great deal.
It should have, but the west still kept NATO. They could have simply been more diplomatic with Russia when it was at its weakest in the 90's after the fall of the Soviet Union, but the cynicism was still there
No doubt Russia wasn't treated how it should have been, post Cold War. But staying that's a justification of their behaviour is like saying that Germany was justified in their 1930s behaviour just because it was mistreated post WW 1.
Overall, I'm happy that Poland is a NATO member. At least it adds another deterrent (or failing that, a speed bump) in the way of a Russian invasion. Were NATO not to exist, and Russia to re-awaken it's conqueror instincts at some point, we'd be screwed yet again.
I don't think the Romanian population of the 80s cared about the cold war. In a time when leader worship propaganda was at its peak (thanks North Korea for inspiring Ceausescu), food scarcity, decaying state services/infrastructure, and dissent suppression in full force.
> or witness it being used against a nearby country are prone to being blue-eyed in that way.
I agree, awareness and proximity to direct effects give you a different perspective.
Based on my experience, I can tell you that those 90s kids are having second thoughts on the EU&West this time around. Might be Russian propaganda derived, but EU skepticism is on the rise in that same age group, especially for those that live in the country.
> those 90s kids are having second thoughts on the EU&West
Only the ones unable to succeed in modern times. Which is a quite incredible feat considering the astonishing wealth of opportunities the EU opening offered the Eastern Block.
How can you not succeed when you can move and work anywhere in the EU?! The only way I know is by being a child of ex-communist politicians, a child of Nomenklatura parents. The pain they feel is quite like the nostalgy Putin feels when remembering good old Soviet Union.
You can find small far-right groups in virtually every country, including the US and many European countries. Talk about them is mere distraction, they are not running the country.
And there's little doubt that if a country goes through a violent clash against corrupt government (see euromaidan), such groups would take the opportunity to gain standing. You can draw parallels to capitol hill events, or imagine what groups like Soldiers of Odin (the nordics) would have done had there been protests with bullets.
And when your country is invaded by a foreign nation, your army generals are not going to ask about the political opinions of those who are willing to fight for their country. A small group of nazis defending Ukraine from Russian invasion? So what. There will be nationalists standing in any country's army if they get invaded.
Talk about nazism is a mere distraction and something Putin's trolls would do. Please don't.
> Talk about nazism is a mere distraction and something Putin's trolls would do. Please don't.
It's a bit more complicated than that. Ukraine has neonazi militias that enjoy some level of government support and that have been involved in violent incidents in the past. This, of course, does not justify an invasion by a foreign power. Ukraine currently ranks very low as a functional democracy (we can give them some slack on that, since they've been essentially invaded since 2014). I'm still not sure what's the upside of this for Russia, or for Putin. As the article points out, invasions take months, if not years, of planning. While the decision to stand down can be made at any point, the decision to invade has to wait for all the pieces to be in place. Whatever the end-goal is, it's not Ukraine.
> Ukraine has neonazi militias that enjoy some level of government support and that have been involved in violent incidents in the past.
I'm trying to say that this would likely happen in any country where political unrest and corruption leads to a violent change of regime. That militia formed during Euromaidan, and they are useful to the government in so far as they are against occupation by Russia. Just as Nazi Germany was useful to my country (Finland) in the second world war.
Nazi bad, but a small group with nationalistic ideals fighting for the nation doesn't mean the nation is nazi, and it would be irrational to reject the aid of such a group in the fight against occupation. It'd be good for virtue signalling at most but you don't fight a country the size of Russia or China by thoughts and prayer and virtue signalling. And I'm pretty sure Putin would have some excuse for attacking Ukraine with or without a minuscle amount of neo-nazis in the soup.
If Ireland is invaded by a giant neighbor, the government isn't going to ask their infantry whether they're nationalists before letting them fight for your country.
If Putin thinks nazis are the reason to invade a country, he ought to invade Finland too. I'd still hope our nationalist party takes up arms and goes to the front lines to defend Finland. And they should have the Government's full support in doing so.
> I'd still hope our nationalist party takes up arms and goes to the front lines to defend Finland. And they should have the Government's full support in doing so.
As usual, the problem is how you deal with them later, after they got access to weapons and military training and, perhaps more dangerous, some political legitimacy as war heroes.
> On 11 August, Azov battalion, backed by Ukrainian paratroopers, captured Marinka from pro-Russian rebels and entered the suburbs of Donetsk clashing with Donetsk People's Republic fighters.
So, I assume, the Ukraininan Nazi are killing Donetsk People's Republic fighters? This is THE crime you are talking about?
I've taken to thinking of this sort of scaling as being the digital equivalent of race to the bottom (i.e. cheap mass-produced garbage products).