Much of the rhetoric at the link covers ground already familiar to Forum readers. What’s new is the report that “YouTube is now blocking links to the State of Virginia Legislative Information System (LIS)” whereby the texts of the various anti-gun bills are accessible.
I’m tempted to shift into Henny Penny Mode by exclaiming on the censorship. But this would only encourage essentially automated reactions. Besides, this type of censorhip is now common.
Instead, I share the story to emphasize that Virginia politics are being shaped by national even, arguably, international players. This instance of censorship is an example of that.
Tidewater News and Opinion Forum 
What laughable crybaby whining.
So typical of modern “conservatives” who love to play the victim.
It is obviously not a decision made by a human being but by some sort of AI. And, according to the screen shot provided by the crybaby, the links are NOT “blocked.” There is clearly visible a button allowing the user to proceed to ignore the warning and proceed to the link.
What is the problem, Mr. Roberts? You declare that YouTube is blocking the links in question. Did you not read the article and see the screen shot?
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Your comment is a good example of the “essentially automated reactions” I predicted.
In your compulsion to disparage, it seems not to have occurred to you that the links to Virginia’s web site were, in fact, blocked, just as the article says they were.
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@Roberts
Well, after Nancy has gone to great links to explain that this is a technical matter and not a malicious decision by YouTube to harm “conservatives” or block anybody are you ready to admit that your author’s spin was pretty silly? As was your hair-on-fire statement . . .
“Instead, I share the story to emphasize that Virginia politics are being shaped by national even, arguably, international players. This instance of censorship is an example of that.”
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Is it your diet that makes you act like such an obnoxious extremist twit? The attempt to blame others of claiming victimhood is amusing coming the party of “victims”.
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@Bobr
Yeah, insisting that our political discussion and policy decisions be based on the truth instead of “alternative facts” is so “extremist.”
In this case, it is simply false that YouTube blocked access to these documents. Anybody who uses the internet much knows that such warnings from some AI behind the curtain are not uncommon on lots of website and certainly not politically motivated.
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To be honest, considering our current political climate and the fact that blocking opposing view points is prevalent in the liberal world, I really view this a possibility that I will not say is untrue.
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@Bobr
Well, given the clear technical explanations provided by Nancy, the experience we have all had of such warnings, the fact that there was not actually a block, and the lack of any credible reason to believe that this was a political decision by a human being all I say is . . . Sad.
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Here’s the victim describing the YouTube assault.
Nancy_Naive to JGRobertson
JGR — I say, “YouTube punched me in the face. Here is the blood. I was attacked. “
A tad melodramatic even for a teenage girl.
You walked into a wall and blame the wall?
I wonder if he stops at the signs “Bridges and overpasses freeze before roads”, and waits for VDOT and August?
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Always found it easier to go to the source (in this case, LIS.virginia.gov) to read the proposed legislation for myself.
Looks like YouTube is following suit with Facebook…throw up a frustration screen rather than going directly to the linked site.
But specifically applying to YouTube? Kind of curious why they think there’s malware, phishing or disturbing content.
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It wouldn’t be the first time a .gov site had an expired certificate. I get warnings like that all of the time from federal websites. Got one from a Navy site while researching the USS Vincennes on Friday.
BTW, It’s not Youtube, it’s YOUR browser security settings. Your American Thinker is an idiot.
If you use Firefox ( paste this url about:preferences#advanced) and check your security settings.
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RE: “BTW, It’s not Youtube, it’s YOUR browser security settings.”
Nope. Look at the YouTube link. It looks normal, but it actually redirects from lis.virginia.gov to the YouTube warning page. Also, the same thing happens in other browsers, such as Tor and Safari.
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Well, you’re wrong. It does that because the link posted on the video page is “http://lis…” YouTube has recognized that the address does not redirect to “https://lis…” which is an encrypted page using secure comms.
If you open the http://lis page directly, your browser should warn you.
BTW, the links on the page in question have since all been changed to https links.
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RE: “YouTube has recognized that the address does not redirect to “https://lis…” which is an encrypted page using secure comms.”
Right. YouTube is doing everyone a favor by warning users to NOT try to escape the YouTube domain by exiting on a bad link.
So what YouTube does, beyond noticing that an exit URL begins with HTTP instead of HTTPS is actually test the certificate authentication at the destination or exit site. Apparently, YouTube has so much bandwidth to spare after serving videos that it can perform this altruistic service for the benefit of all mankind.
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Yes, they do. That’s exactly what they do.
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The Online Certificate Status Protocol (OCSP) is an Internet protocol used for obtaining the revocation status of an X. 509 digital certificate. It is described in RFC 6960 and is on the Internet standards track.
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Now that you ‘splained it, I don’t have no clue, no how, what the hell you just wrote.
Come to think of it, that sort of sums up my life and why I take (or took, really) photos rather than write technical books.
“f8 and be there” is much easier for me.
Just sayin’.
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Lemme ‘splain it.
Your browser has certain capabilities to check websites for legitimacy, but it’s up to the owners of the website to maintain their certificates, or to avoid suspicious behavior that your browser nowadays (Firefox in my case, or Chrome, or Safari, or whatever) can detect.
When this happens to an idiot, like James G. Robertson (the author), then because of their predilection for conspiracies they make up shit like “YouTube blocks links to texts of Virginia anti-gun Bills”.
Technology is difficult to understand. When a Conservative does not understand something (which happens often) then it is a conspiracy.
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If a web site can be accessed directly with the exact same browser and settings with no certificate alerts, you are blowing technical smoke.
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So you’re using the same browser and settings as the author of that blog? Have you recreated his bitch?
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The link provided on the video page is an http, and when I go there, and accept the risk, it tells me the page is NOT encrypted, and therefore not secure.
Now, visit https://lis.virginia.gov/cgi-bin/legp604.exe?201+sum+SB12 instead, and you will receive no such warning.
IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH YOUTUBE! It is all about the http://lis address. YouTube is merely warning that it is an insecure website, no SSL, no TLS.
If you copy the link location, you get a redirect. If you’re using Firefox, you can “google search” the URL and up comes all of the https locations.
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RE: “IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH YOUTUBE!”
Wrong. Visit http://lis.virginia.gov/cgi-bin/legp604.exe?201+sum+SB12 (“http” instead of “https”) and you receive no certificate warning either. The reason is that lis.virginia.gov probably has a valid certificate, just an old (pre-https) URL. Web servers running SSL typically resolve “http” to “https” automatically.
You can prove this to yourself logically, as well. The warning page that YouTube displays is on the YouTube server (it even has YouTube’s logo on it), not inside your web browser, and not on the server running lis.virginia.gov.
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Thanks.
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Digital certificates are not to blame. If they were, you’d get a browser message when surfing to lis.virginia.gov from any starting point, including this Forum. Here’s the link to the SB 12 page:
http://lis.virginia.gov/cgi-bin/legp604.exe?201+sum+SB12
Do you see a certificate error warning when you click it?
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I also don’t see a switch to https, which is the secure site. This is BROWSER behavior NOT YouTube.
Did it happen to you like it Robertson? Did you test his article?
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RE: “Did you test his article?”
Yes. I tested it in three different browsers. I also examined the link at YouTube. You can see for yourself the redirect in the URL for the SB 12 text:
https://www.youtube.com/redirect?redir_token=sCknS5HgofJ0fWQeZkq-5xTDegR8MTU3ODk1MzAxM0AxNTc4ODY2NjEz&q=http%3A%2F%2Flis.virginia.gov%2Fcgi-bin%2Flegp604.exe%3F201%2Bsum%2BSB12&v=l0tlAatSieI&event=video_description
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The YouTube video post supplied links to http://lis… They have since been changed to https://lis…
YouTube, as the host page, warned people that http is NOT secure. That’s all that was happening, but your hair-on-fire James G Robertson saw it as a malicious attempt to keep him from the sites rather than just a warning. There was a button “Go To Page” so hardly a Trumpian Wall. Oh wait, no, a Trumpian wall is $20B of “big beautiful wall” capable of being breached with a $150 battery powered Ryobi Sawsall.
https://seopressor.com/blog/http-vs-https/
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