A YouTube policy banning “instructional hacking and phishing” videos sparked outrage in the infosec community on Thursday after the website gave the prominent Null Byte YouTube channel a strike, preventing a researcher with the channel from uploading an educational cybersecurity video. Various security researchers have ran into this issue since YouTube introduced its new content policy in April of this year.
Infosec professionals are critical of the policy because it can result in legitimate, educational content being blocked or removed, as happened on Thursday. YouTube eventually admitted that it made a mistake and reinstated the Null Byte video, while also removing the strike on the channel. Nevertheless, security pros are concerned about what the policy will mean for the future.
According to security researcher Chrissy Morgan, “it is concerning that the Harmful and Dangerous Community Content Policy is quite broad in its definition which means legit videos may be taken down as a result–especially when said policy uses the word ‘hacking’ in a derogatory way.” Infosec researcher Sean Wright agree that the policy “is simply too broad,” and argues that “these videos provide a great opportunity to many who otherwise could not afford the training to help them get into the industry and better their careers–as well as helping secure their organizations.”
Read more: YouTube Hacking Video Ban Sparks Outrage
