YouTube banned most videos from “JCS – Criminal Psychology”

https://www.youtube.com/post/UgkxhbuBNkLqEcppVITj2z8uZ5R0OzhQoMup

by racecar789 • 5 years ago

64 61 5 years ago

youtube.com

racecar789• 5 years ago

Really sad to lose so much educational content.

rvz• 5 years ago

That's YouTube for you. They will not change and it will only get worse.

macilacilove• 5 years ago

That channel had high quality psychological explanations of suspects' and police's behaviour during interrogations.

rosndo9• 5 years ago

Except it wasn’t high quality, but incredibly bad pseudoscience.

gengelbro• 5 years ago

Explain please?

anm893• 5 years ago

This channel was a flaming pile. It was some guy wildly speculating in hindsight and throwing the word "psychology" to argue that his SWAGs were some kind of scientific endeavor.

dang2• 5 years ago

Could you please stop posting unsubstantive and/or flamebait and/or name-calling comments to HN? You've been doing a lot of it lately, unfortunately. It's not what this site is for, and it destroys what it is for. And we've already had to ask you repeatedly not to do this.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

__m• 5 years ago

One of the channels for which I would bother to sign up to a different platform

rosndo9• 5 years ago

Crazy to see multiple comments treating this as legitimate content as opposed to harmful pseudoscience.

josephcsible• 5 years ago

I'm not familiar with this channel. But even if it is really "harmful pseudoscience", is that really a reason to ban it? And if so, then who's in charge of deciding what's harmful pseudoscience and what's legitimate content, and what happens when they're wrong?

dragonwriter• 5 years ago

But even if it were really "harmful pseudoscience", is that really a reason to ban it?

It is really a reason to decide not to distribute it.

And if so, then who's in charge of deciding what's harmful pseudoscience and what's legitimate content

Anyone who is asked to actively participate in the chain of distribution.

and what happens when they're wrong?

If someone disagrees with their decision not to distribute, they seek some other distribution. Except when it is a decision to distribute and the content is harmful in a way which produces liability, their decision being “wrong” in any authoritative sense isn't really an issue, only disagreement.

rosndo9• 5 years ago

It all comes down to the exact nature of the content, which you admit to not be familiar with.

Do you genuinely believe that youtube should host videos attaching various involuntary physical traits to criminal behaviour?

It’s obviously not okay to say that “this guy is black, so he’s probably guilty”. But is it okay to say “this guy is jittery under stress, he’s probably guilty”? Why should it be okay to say one or the other? Both will result in equally harmful outcomes.

inglor_cz• 5 years ago

"Harmful" is a big, big hammer. It may crush something you enjoy next.

Isn't sitting on Hacker News a harmful waste of time?

kolanos3• 5 years ago

Provide specific examples of JCS perpetuating pseudo science and maybe you'll have made a compelling argument. Until then, this reads as baseless accusation. Which, IMO, is no better than pseudo science.

egberts1• 5 years ago

“PROFILERS” are racists — YouTube, 2022.

thenanyu• 5 years ago

Feels like a tipping point of sorts. Nothing about this channel is “problematic” in any mainstream consensus. Spotify might be the landing place of choice for the time being.

rPlayer6554• 5 years ago

I see a lot of people commenting that his channel is "pseudoscience." After watching several of his videos in full, he mainly talks about the interrogation techniques officers use over the actual subject or their psychological reaction. He also does any the analysis of a subject after the case has concluded with full knowledge of what the end result is. He is more looking back, trying to explain the subject's actions based on the full knowledge that the person is found guilty or not. He also analyzes full videos and takes into consideration all the facts of the case. He doesn't make assumptions based on one small tell or the other.

He also actively shows that not everyone reacts the same. One of his videos is fully based around an innocent man who seems to react differently than the average person and is kept in jail because of it. He makes the point that cops sometimes do read too much into these tells and forget the facts.

If you think that this could somehow be problematic; after watching the channel the only conclusion you can reasonably come to is "if the police suspect me of a crime, shut the hell up and get a lawyer." He is quite clear that the police are way better at psychological games, and the absolute last thing they want you to do is get your lawyer involved. Heck, he shows a cop who murdered someone get caught to show that even cops can't keep up with their own interrogation tactics! This is actively helpful and exactly what anyone under investigation should do.

apostacy3• 5 years ago

JCS has actually spawned an entire new genre of YouTube videos. Just search for "JCS inspired" to find more. I find it really compelling, because it is much more grounded and less sensational than documentaries that would be shown on cable television.

It makes me sad that so many people have a knee-jerk reaction that anything amateurish must be fake news.

hollerith• 5 years ago

I have watched many police interrogations on Youtube including many that contain "JCS inspired" in the description.

Most of the latter simply present the interrogation unedited whereas the JCSCriminalPsychology channel edits out most of the interrogation and have a lot of talk by a narrator on the strategy being employed by the police or on the suspect's body language. My point is that the presence of the "JCS Inspired" language should not be interpreted as evidence that the channel JCSCriminalPsychology was a seminal influence on later YT creators.

BTW I found what the narrator says to be worthless and consequently have told YT to stop recommending the channel JCSCriminalPsychology to me.

This comment would be more satisfying if I could explain why "JCS Inspired" occurs so often in the descriptions of videos on YT, but alas, I cannot. (Nor can I explain why YT chose to ban most of its videos. All very mysterious.)

antman• 5 years ago

Youtube’s claims are that the channel violates “sensitive events” or “violence” themes, which I don’t really take at face value. Especially with all the actual gore promoting content of youtube this was an presentation vlog, without claiming any specific accuracy. Most likely it was maliciously flagged for presenting the simplistic methodologies of said agencies. Presenting agency methodology is absolutely free speech and has been a target of random and sometimes unrelated harassment and legal actions for many years in many cases (stop and frisk, polygraph pseudoscience, racial profiling, journalist harassment in general etc)

no_time2• 5 years ago

They could single-handedly make peertube 100x more popular by moving there. The only problem being money from ad revenue of course. Brave style micropayments are starting to make more and more sense as I think about it.

tentacleuno2• 5 years ago

I really hope he switches platforms. This serves as a valuable lesson, though: archive everything from YouTube channels you like! Treat it as totally ephemeral. YouTube seem to just take things down at the turn of a hat. I hope Jim also mirrors his content to alternative platforms, instead of just using that as a threat. He has been a huge inspiration to many, as you can clearly see from the amount of 'JCS inspired' videos popping up on the platform.

tentacleuno2• 5 years ago

This serves as a valuable lesson, though: archive everything from YouTube channels you like!

Just threw together a script to do just this, if anyone wants it:

  download () {
    local directory="/archives/YouTube Archives/$1"
    mkdir -p "$directory"
    pushd "$directory"
    # youtube-dl --download-archive https://youtube.com/$2 -o "%(title).%(ext)"
    youtube-dl --playlist-reverse -o '%(playlist_index)s - %(title)s.%(ext)s' --write-annotations --download-archive .archive --add-metadata --write-info-json --write-thumbnail -f bestvideo[ext=vp9]+bestaudio[ext=opus]/bestvideo+bestaudio --merge-output-format mkv --all-subs --embed-subs -i --embed-thumbnail "https://youtube.com/$2"
    popd
  }

  download "Jim Can't Swim" c/JCSCriminalPsychology
  # etc. etc.

Throw this into a weekly cronjob and you should be golden!

apostacy3• 5 years ago

The only thing that function does is create a directory, and you could just as well have done an mkdir output && youtube-dl -o output/ I would also advise against using the mkv container, and use mp4 instead.

mrkramer• 5 years ago

I'm interested in criminology and I found his videos really good. YouTube is no longer place suitable for free speech; they are banning everybody left and right no matter what if you are going against popular consensus and their agenda.

anm893• 5 years ago

I support this channel's right to exist but this channel is still pseudoscience garbage.

Then again, a non trivial portion of what is going on in academic psychology is pseudoscientific garbage so maybe this is state of the art?

YouTube banned most videos from “JCS – Criminal Psychology”

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