Popular YouTuber’s de-Google video removed, community gets revenge
Linus Tech Tips (LTT), a popular tech channel on YouTube, just had its video “De-Google Your Life – Part 2: Ad-Free YouTube!” removed for violating Community Guidelines. The situation has seemingly backfired on Google and is quickly turning into the Barbara Streisand effect, with copies popping up everywhere.
Image by Cybernews.
Linus Tech Tips (LTT), a popular tech channel on YouTube, just had its video “De-Google Your Life – Part 2: Ad-Free YouTube!” removed for violating Community Guidelines. The situation has seemingly backfired on Google and is quickly turning into the Barbara Streisand effect, with copies popping up everywhere.
“Google is watching you. In fact, they even got sued for doing it while you were in Incognito mode,” Linus Sebastian said at the beginning of the video, which is no longer available. Visitors now see the short note: “This video has been removed for violating YouTube's Community Guidelines.”
This sparked controversy and speculation that the removal was due to the promotion of tools that directly undermine Google’s ad-driven business.
The video was the second part of a series on decreasing reliance on Google. Sebastian discussed ad-blocking tools such as Pi-hole, uBlock Origin, other browser-based ad-blockers, DNS filters, and even blocking JavaScripts on websites to avoid ads and tracking. He also offered alternatives to YouTube itself, such as Floatplane, or tools to watch YouTube’s videos without ads.
NEW VIDEO: De-Google Your Life - Part 2: Ad-Free YouTube!https://t.co/PUeoEmyYb7 pic.twitter.com/yowwbYSVrC
undefined Linus Tech Tips (@LinusTech) August 20, 2024
One of the first to highlight the situation was Louis Rossmann, a YouTuber and right-to-repair activist.
In a separate video, he criticizes Google for punishing Linus Tech Tips for promoting tools and software that protect user privacy but hurt Google’s business. Rossmann implies that the action might signal anti-competitive behavior by Google.
“Let's assume the best to Google in this instance. I'm sure that it's a coincidence that after 10 years of creating videos, the first video that Linus has removed for a community guideline strike is a video discussing how to utilize software that gets you out of Google's ecosystem, right? It's a coincidence,” Rossmann sarcastically suggested.
YouTube seems not to have learned lessons from the Streisand effect, which occurs when suppression of information inadvertently leads to even greater exposure.
Clones of the video started to pop up elsewhere on social media channels, disseminated by outraged users. Many re-uploads can be found on YouTube channels that have no association with Linus Media Group. And some users seem outraged.
“This is considered public service. Appreciate it,” one YouTube user commented on the re-upload.
Others link to a video copy on Internet Archive.
“Just how insecure can a mammoth conglomerate like Google be to try and micro-manage two billion users down to barring individual words that butt hurt YouTube,” one angry user posted on the LTT forum.
“It’s laughable, pathetic, and shows weakness through bullying and control.”
Youtube took down one of LTT's recent videos just because it was a guide on how to 'de-google' your computer. I seriously cannot wait for that platform to get some serious competition. They are just begging for tanking themselves into the ground.https://t.co/wAMtCg5pL6
undefined FirebrandX 😈 ♈️ (@FBXGargoyle) September 5, 2024
Users speculate that the removed video may have violated YouTube’s harmful or dangerous content policy. YouTube doesn’t allow “Bypassing payment for digital content or services: Content that shows viewers how to get unauthorized access to content, software, or services that usually require payment.”
Another External Links policy doesn’t allow links to websites, apps, or other sources “that give unauthorized access to audio content, audiovisual content, video games, software, or streaming services that normally require payment.”
The first part of the “De-Google Your Life” series is still available on the Linus Tech Tips channel. Here, the YouTuber suggests replacing Chrome with the Brave browser or Firefox and choosing an alternative search engine, such as DuckDuckGo, Ecosia, or Startpage.
“No one is reading your email obviously, but that doesn't mean that they won’t anonymize it and then use it to train the machine learning algorithms that power features,” said Sebastian, suggesting a switch to other email service providers.
Cybernews has contacted Linus Media Group and Google, and we’re awaiting their responses. Neither company has issued a public statement.