YouTube/Headscratchers

• Why is it that just about anything can spark a religious debate on YouTube? I can't count how many times I've seen a completely benign video, or one with very brief religious allusions, have half its comment section drowned by people bashing each other beliefs. One example that really got me thinking was a video some college kid made about how to get into Harvard. It wasn't until the last, maybe 40 seconds that he says something to the effect of "I didn't think I could make it, but I guess God had a plan for me. I followed the steps I just told you, I worked hard, and here I am. If I can do it, so can you. Good luck, and thanks for watching." Oh, and there's a slide with a quote from Psalms. Does anyone talk about his college tips that made up most of the video? No. They talk about what a retard he is for being Christian. And then the insults, the testimonials, and the "evidence" start flying back and forth (and into the poor kid's inbox, probably). When it has nothing to do with the point of the video. WHY?
  • ... Because a Vocal Minority of people are dicks? I don't see the confusion here.
  • I have a story relating to this actually. A while ago (about a year, roughly, I think) I got enbroiled in a pretty intense debate on YouTube. It started when my Muslim friend commented on a video about blue whales, saying that they were God's most magnificent creation. Next thing he knows, some militant atheist replies screaming that this infringed his rights as an atheist. I joined in, in support of my friend (I'm a Christian). The debate went on for, like, a month. At the end, we actually became friends, and we respectfully said goodbye as we departed. Anyway, my point is that people will use anything as an excuse for a fight.
• This is just me, but why do people put fan-dubs of their favourite Anime Theme Song (of them singing) just for Youtube to take them down? Is it illegal to make an English translation of a well-known Foreign song and sing it?
  • It sounds like something Avex Trax would do, especially with artists like Ayumi Hamasaki, on cover videos. Avex Trax are such dicks when it comes to copyright. May I please just hear a Japanese song on YouTube without your name flashing across my monitor with a message that reads 'This Video was deleted'?!
• You know how whenever a new episode for an anime comes out and you have to scramble to find subbed ones before they get removed? Why do they only remove the English subs and not the Spanish or German ones?
  • Simple question of popularity and probability. Between the U.S., Britain, and English being the lingua franca of the modern world, the majority of internet users (and, by extension, YouTube users) are English speakers. English subs therefore get a lot more popular than Spanish or German subs, and they are more likely to get themselves noticed by the copyright holders who will then send a letter to YouTube asking them to take them down.
• Why are there multiple copies of a popular video when the original is still intact? I can understand if the video was flagged, but if it's still available? Really?
  • Maybe they saw a copy from another site and uploaded it to YouTube without knowing the popular video was already there. Then there are the people who know, but do it any way so they will get views. A video with a lot of views brings status, even if it is in their own heads... it's kind of hard to explain. In gift economies, like YouTube (where people go through the effort of uploading videos for others to see and pretty much no gain to them at all), there are ways, such as view counts or diggs (if you go to that site) to measure your worth in some way. They are a sort of scavenger, if you will, getting some free reputation by reposting something that something that is already popular. It's part ego, part perception of self-worth, part something hard to define. Oh, and there is also redundancy, in case the original video gets taken down. That's good, too.
• What the heck is with the orange box things in the comments?
  • New tags for finding videos.
• A few months ago, my school apparently set up YouTube's Safety Mode on all computers. What exactly are the standards considered for a video to be "unwatchable"? I can understand videos containing violence, swearing, etc., but I couldn't listen to a song from a video game, a song that was purely instrumental at that! Is it (maybe) because of the comments?
  • "I can understand videos containing violence, swearing, etc." I can't. Allow a little censorship and more follows, either because "objectionable content" provides a good excuse to silence people whose opinions you don't like or (more likely in this case) because the censors have got no incentives to reduce false positives and every incentive to make sure not a single site with "controversial" content pops through, leading them to be very, very conservative in their algorithms.
    • Ah, Captain Overreaction, I'm glad you could make it. He said it was set up by his school. If they allow videos with "R-rated" material, they could get the crap sued out of them by a parent.
• There was an entire album on Youtube and ONE of them was deleted because it was owned by UMG. I'm glad the rest weren't but... what?
• Security Updates, "Please input your mobile phone number"... what?
  • More properly, first, I do not want to give Google and Youtube my mobile phone number, my Inbox is flooded with enough spam and mails that I don't give half a damn about anyway, and I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one. Second, what if I don't have a mobile phone? What about all those users that actually don't? Does Youtube really not care about the fuss they are causing to these users?
• The difficulty in posting comments on a video. I type up my comment. I click post and a green 'OK' appears next to the cancel button. What do I do next? Do I click the 'OK'? Do I let it stay that way for awhile?
  • You basically need to refresh the page, sacrificing your place in the video if you have it playing, or click 'All Comments'.
  • It's become even more difficult to post a comment on Youtube now that they now have "Comment Pending Approval".
  • I open up the "See All Comments" page in a new tab and refresh that after every comment I make.
• Why does uploading a video give you the option to not make it available on mobile devices? And more importantly why do some people use that? That's just losing views right?
  • Could be done for size options, compatibility options, software options, or just because they don't want people to distract themselves when doing something important like driving or at the dentist's office.
  • It gives you the option based on just whether or not you want to, not how big or compatible your video is. And if someone's stupid enough to be watching a video while they're driving then I doubt finding out that specific video is down will stop them, they can just move onto the next one. I'm not sure if you're understanding the question, you get the option to allow people to watch it on their mobile phones or not.
• Is there a way to set it up so you can't see any comments at all? I'm done dealing with the Fan Dumb and Hate Dumb, I'd be a genuinely happier man if I could no longer see any comments at all.
  • Firefox (or Chrome if you prefer) has the stylish add-on where you can download a style to hide them.
  • Original poster here, and I use Chrome. Could you tell me more about this add-on?
  • Here's what I use should work in Firefox and Chrome, you just need greasemonkey.
  • Alternatively, you can just not scroll down.
• How'd people get tired of the "arrow to the knee" jokes faster than the "number of dislikers/thumbs up if/Justin Bieber" jokes? They weren't around nearly as long and weren't quoted that much more than the others.
  • Well "arrow to the knee" jokes really only applied to gamers, sure other people knew about it, but Justin Bieber jokes appeal to a larger audience.
• Blocking another user. I don't know if it was different before the changes, but I blocked someone, and he still had the ability to send me a message with the blocked account. So pretty much, blocking is useless?
• Why is it that whenever a Youtuber is suspended, every single one of his/her videos get removed from the site forever, even when they don't infringe copyright, or even have anything to do with the offending video or its "proper" owner? That's just ridiculous!
  Even Deviant ART lets people view the work of a user that was banned from the site, even the stuff that got them banned to begin with! Wouldn't it be easier to just delete the offending videos, and disable the option to upload further videos under that channel? This is a serious problem, because this is how a lot of the good videos on the site get Lost Forever, not because they infringed copyright, but because the user that uploaded it got suspended over a completely unrelated video.
  • If You Tube have received multiple content violation notifications about a particular user then they probably find it easier to just delete the lot rather than go through every video and figure out which ones are legal.
• Why even bother with the copyright crap anyway? Some of the videos are unviewable here in Germany, and not just ones that contain copyright content. I never thought I'd say this, but YouTube sucks!

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