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Yahoo Messenger Blocking youtube.com URLs?
wesleyye writes, "This morning I attempted to copy and paste a youtube.com URL to two of my friends via Yahoo IM. But they kept complaining they did not see anything. Actually they saw all the text message lines except the line with the youtube URL. Is YIM blocking the competitor out?" We verified in this office that a fully formed youtube.com URL could not be passed on YIM; changing the URL to read youtubex.com caused it to go through. Any other URL we tried worked. Update 10/10/2006 20:58 GMT by SM: Additional testing shows that there is something else going on for well formatted URLs. Even search results from search.yahoo.com had trouble when included with other text on the same line. Still awaiting comment from Yahoo!.
either that or slashdot is seriously FOS
Ever heard of subtlety?
Before everyone gets to feeling sorry for Google for this grave injustice against them, you should realize that Yahoo is well within their rights to block anything they want to from going through their IM service, and once people figure out that it's broken as a result, they'll start using an alternative.
...like, say, Google talk, maybe?
(yahoo guy in the back browsing slashdot at work)
Shit! *click* Whew.
If an officer ever threatens to taze you, say you have a pacemaker.
Does this story really belong in Politics? I think it more has to do with competition then politics.
Steve
Time for the foil hats, I guess.
.. why aren't you using Jabber? I mean, really...
I know at work there were days that every URL except for fark.com would work and then it would come back. Some monkey having fun is all.
And
I'm guessing this block is happening in the YIM servers and not in the client (would be harder with all the 3rd party clients out there). So, the only option is to not use them? If they are going to filter your chat because of their Marketting departments idea of business, don't use them. There are many alternatives out there (GTalk, AIM, MSN...), why use someone that would even consider filtering their users messages?
Its not what it is, its something else.
News from the future: "Yahoo! Messenger blocks links from slashdot.org"
'Every story, if continued long enough, ends in death.' --Ernest Hemingway
... but I hate movie quotes, bring your own conclusions.
may be yahoo is not trying to take any blames due to possible copyright violations on youtube. or may be a little bug or just bad observation. beats me how does it qualify to be here. you are not thinking yahoo rolled out an invisible update to yahoo messange today morning once google bought youtube. peace.
Just tested this with a friend - the URLs get through fine when sent with Adium. So they're being blocked by the client software - not the network itself.
You should wonder the level of desperation this measure reeks of.
...just how close you might be to the truth.
posting A/C, natch.
Very strange.
I just did some Googling and there doesn't seem to be anyone else talking about it, at least that I could find -- if Yahoo really was engaging in this, you'd think it would have created more of a hue and cry.
I'm starting to suspect hoax, unless someone besides the article submitter can come up with evidence that it happened.
I can't imagine that Yahoo would want to demonstrate that it has the capability of selectively filtering messages based on content. That just opens the door to lots of problematic demands -- e.g., why don't they block links to warez sites, or porn, or gambling, or (in other countries) various political websites. If you have that sort of capability, even if you don't want to use it for evil purposes, people are going to try and make you use it. So it's better just to never develop the capability in the first place, and if it is technically possible, never reveal that it can be done on demand, so that you can maintain your plausible deniability.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
It would be more Yahoo's style if they just changed the URL to something else...
(see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medireview for the history)
Since they've done this before, and now done it again, I assume they'll keep doing it until discovered with it in the act. In which case they'll call it a temporary glitch or something. They're skilled in this work internationally too, and are building quite a reputation with all this.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Google video URLs are also blocked I guess. Isnt this antitrust?
Any thoughts that YIM is skimming the URLs you type for personal use ?
... )
Maybe Youtube's links are being tracked as they are passed via YIM service ? Nothing says the messages are confidential. What's the likelyhood of this ? You could get customer data on the popularity of your viral (youtube) marketing , or make statistics as links traverse across these (IM) networks.
We all know IMs aren't secure, but the thought of catching links with statistics drawn up by links being shared is a scary proposition. They've got your nickname, IP, who you frequently talk to and what links they/you send receive from them.
Perhaps you could figure out what kind of information you're discussing ? With the YouTube tags you could assign "tags" to conversations that people talk about in IM. I sure hope I'm wrong though, the world gets scarier. With that idea though you could say the same for flickr and other tagging websites, delicious even ? Armed with that, the black helicopters are coming and the thought police have now, by association, got you nabbed.
Who's going to invest in this new idea first ? Too bad I don't work at an IM related company or we'd already have this implemented and tracking those freeloaders !
Sounds clever, and wouldn't be *that* tricky. A fun perl regexp would be able to yank it really fast. ( Who bets it's not Perl though
Later,
Anon.
They haven't blocked http://www.pornotube.com/ yet!
Microsoft: "You've got questions. We've got dancing paperclips."
I have recently noticed that many URLs sent in IM's will disappear without a trace. It seems that often the FIRST URL sent will not get through, but subsequent ones will. For example I will open an IM window, send a URL then say "did you get that?" after they don't reply, then the person will reply "did I get what?". The ones I can recall where links to Photobucket.
I think they are basically trying to stop the IM spam where URLs are randomly sent to users.
Maybe they implemented a protection to block IM virusses that propogate by sending links, but made it too generic.
IRC. We pass links back and forth like that all day.
you could always try Tinyurl-ing them and see what happens.
Maybe due to malware, rather than Yahoo?
Wait -- there's a difference?
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
And it got rejected. Anyhow it not only was happening with youtube, but google video urls too. I hope google puts yahoo out of buisness.
I don't understand why Yahoo would do this. For heaven sake, stop already! I've had enough, the Slashdot community has had enough. We don't like it. From now on I'm not using Yahoo or Yahoo services again. Sites that conduct business like this are ruining the Internet, which, in-turn, is ruining my life. I don't want to go home. I don't like how they did this to us. I am getting ready to cancel my Yahoo mail. I hate Yahoo. I'm not going to ever use this shit again. I'm sorry for the yelling but I hate that shit. I'm done. This is my last post for now.
My recommendation: fuck commercial messengers and use Jabber.
That actually makes a certain amount of sense. There were some worms floating around that would replicate themselves by sending an infected URL out as a message to all of your AIM contacts.
There was a period of time a few years ago when I was getting 10-15 of these URL-messages a day. Didn't affect me any, because I used a Mac, but it might explain Yahoo's paranoia.
However, I would find such a limitation incredibly annoying, since I often use IM applications to send people links. For example, let's say you're looking at a web site and want to send it to somebody in the next cube over -- rather than reading them the URL, you just cut-and-paste into an IM message. I can't tell you how many times I've done that.
I knew there was a reason I never started using Yahoo Messenger.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
The internet is not anonymous. Online actions can be monitored, filtered, and traced, especially by corporations who provide free "tubes" of communication. Ask Mark Foley. News at 11.
Waiting for ad.doubleclick.net...
How is this overreacting? You're telling us everything in the article summary is correct, and even explaining why.
Developers: We can use your help.
Yahoo Mail blocks gmail invites as well.4 5-20040621AreHotmailandYahooBlockingGmailInvites.h tml
http://www.webpronews.com/news/ebusinessnews/wpn-
It is pretty incredible but they also do this with your personal passwords and others' passwords. Try it! It must be a new safety feature. You can IM your passwords and they just don't go through. It also works with Yahoo email!!!!!!11111one2
Why the hell aren't you using a free software chat client (so yahoo can't block anything client side), with encryption (so they can't block anything server side)? The are many benefits to free software and encryption beyond this particular situation. A proprietary chat client using a cleartext protocol just seams like idiocy from a security standpoint, especially in the age of Criminal/Corporate/ISP/NSA snooping.
------ Take away the right to say fuck and you take away the right to say fuck the government.
Sending URLs of any sort as Yahoo! IMs has been unreliable for me and my friends for at least a year. There seems to be no rhyme or reason to it; some URLs just don't go through. I've noticed it when both parties are using Yahoo! Messenger and also when one or both parties are using Adium, so unless the bug also exists within Adium, it may be a server-side issue.
I've found that preceeding the URL with some random text (I end up typing "click here:" or something similar) addresses the issue. It's only when the IM line consists solely of a URL that it randomly goes into the bit bucket.
Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.
...Yes, Yahoo has every right to accept or refuse stuff that works on its products. Heck, where in Yahoo messenger's licence on "Terms of Use" does it say that it [Yahoo] should accept every sh*t with its products?
Bravo to whoever thought of the idea.
"buzz buzz buzz you know youtube doesn't work in yahoo buzz buzz buzz"
"i didn't know that, lemme see if it works with xyz"
Does this mean Sergey uses Y! messenger?
liqbase
Hold on a minute. Since when did Yahoo become Yahoo-China?
Previewing comments are for sissies!
Dear Sir,
Please post your yahoo instant messanger name and yahoo email so that I may test this oddity. If you cannot see the username and password I email you send me a message to inanun@mailinator.com
Thank you and have a nice day.
Why is this on Your Rights Online?
This is a service issue, not an issue of rights.
anticompetitive behavior alert! summon teh government lawyers stat my rights are infringed!
As I know some antivir software have feature called safe IM or so (for example Zone Alarm).
Maybe that software filters links that it suspects to be unsafe? That would explain filtering of first sent link. Rest are considered safe because user is sending them once again so there needs to be a reason.
"an experienced, industrious, ambitious, and often, quite often, picturesque liar" - Mark Twain
I'm not sure that you're correct to call them a "common carrier." That term has a specific meaning under both traditional common law, and as used in U.S. law, and to my knowledge, ISPs -- much less network operators -- have been considered "common carriers" by neither. At least, so far. I think that you could come up with a very good argument for doing so, but I'm not sure it's been done by a court.
However, as "Online Service Providers" (OSPs) computer communication networks are given certain 'Safe Harbor' provisions under the DMCA and the Communications Decency Act, which I believe Yahoo Messenger probably qualifies for. The requirements are spelled out in 512(c)(1)(A)(1) of the DMCA, aka the "Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act." Wikipedia has a nice summary here.
It would seem to me anyway, that Yahoo could be eliminating their OCILLA/Safe Harbor examption, by weaking their plausible case for not having knowledge of infringing activity. It certainly doesn't seem like it's good for them to have any knowledge of what's being transmitted; just pass the bits and be done with it.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Ya well my trillian Pro install has a bias against url's in general. Any post of a URL with 32 characters or longer crashes the whole system! Must be that trillian is pushing tiny url....
CS: It is all sink or swim...oh and did I mention there are sharks in that water?
I've noticed this at my work for the past month or so. I use Trillian, and when my coworker sends me a youtube link via Yahoo Messenger, it never shows up. I thought it was just me and I was going crazy!
just make some shit up slashdot -- loser
If you try to write a message to someone a URL that contains gallery.php or download.php, the entire message will not be delivered at all.
Well that is Fubar, one reason why i dropped yahoo years ago.
I just tried this with a friend. I use Trillian. He uses Yahoo.
We could both send Youtube links back and forth with no problem. We tried about 30 different times both with youtube.com as well as deep links directly to videos. No problems whatsoever.
Is anyone else able to reproduce this? Until so, I am calling bullshit.
If true that's almost creepier, since it suggests that in addition to just scanning the message for content and looking for some simple strings ("http://", "google", "youtube") that it's actually following the link and analyzing the content at the end of it.
I guess the test would be to find a link that's blocked, and a link that's allowed; then put each one into a TinyURL and see if the same rules apply, or if they're both rejected or both accepted.
I agree with some other people though, based on other things that Yahoo has done, this seems like a provision that was probably originally implemented to stop the spread of spam and malware, not necessarily for any nefarious purpose. However, it's overly broad and IMO they'd be better without it, both for their own good and so as not to aggravate their users.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
I tried sending ***** and it went through. So did 12345.
Oh You POS
...and had to leave the office
Slashdot has an office?
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Yahoo: It's here, it's broken, get used to it.
Yahoo: It's there, it's broken, get used to something else.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
porn bot spam. I noticed yahoo started doing this with most urls and that i had to break them up for them to show up. I think this was in response to all the phishing and general scams via links posted. I dont know if youTube should feel special...it even blocks my website when I try and prove I have a job ;)
-those people who tell you not to take chances, they are all missing what lifes' all about-
I think the actual problem is Yahoo's way of line wrapping long chunks of text.
Basically, their system truncates the url when it line wraps the text. Nothing more...
DEAD DEAD DEAD DELETE ME
this has been going on for months. i convert all youtube links with tinyurl when sending via Yahoo IM.
I can totally believe this. MSN was doing something similar, for a while it was blocking the url screwfix.com (a DIY shop) - in fact, in Windows MSN Live at least this is still the case (I don't really use MSN much!)
:D
Can anyone confirm *that*?
Monkeyboi
I've had the same thing happen on MSN Messenger with trying to receive links from friends. We could exchange any link, BUT ONE would never show up -- and I believe that was youtube. All the other text would come through, just not that particular URL. Oddly, other times it works fine.
I've been facing this problem since so long..
its not just the URLs but anything that is pasted..
it sometimes doesnt get thru..
I used YM for sending code snippet to friends but it simply doesnt work sometimes..
I was thinin that there is some problem with my Yahoo Msgr and I need to install it again..
but then i had msn..
i dont think this has to do with content filtering or something..
it may be some bug in the software..
"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means" - Indigo Montoya, The Princess Bride
Just a bug. The CIA will log it and fix it. Move on and pretend it didnt happen... or else.
Get a chat client that adds an MD5 signature. It could tell you if the message was altered, unless they recompute the MD5 as well.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
I have found that an AIM chatroom will not accept certain URLs. It eats any message containing something it doesn't like. One notable example is anything from theonion.com. None of the URLs that trigger this behabior make any kind of sense to me. If you run any of the banned links through tinyurl, it is allowed through.
A direct IM of the problem link outside the chatroom will make it through just fine.
- "Well?" "Deep Subject."
Maybe the block is build into the client.
I noticed this happens on Slashdot too, for example when I try to say it gets filtered out and never appears in the post. Neither does or .
"Don't belong. Never join. Think for yourself. Peace." V.Stone, Microsoft Corporation
It was a dark and stormy night...
Now that's bullshit!
I guess I've just never seen that particular abbreviation for Yahoo Messenger, but it sort of sounds like an IM client for furries to me.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
April 1st is almost 6 months away! At least they didn't turn the damn background pink again.
Cool! Amazing Toys.
My co-worker and I can reproduce this claim. Not sure it is intentional though. I am using GAIM on Linux and he is using the Yahoo IM client on windows and any message that contains http://www.youtube.com/ either directions is not going through...Tried it with my brother who is using GAIM on Linux as well (after disabling off the record messaging) and the message went through fine both directions. Weirdness...
"All those moments, will be lost in time...like tears in rain..."
Did you even read the submission? The editor DID reproduce it even before it was posted.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
Loss of communication can mean only one thing...
... but I hate movie quotes, bring your own conclusions.
:)
Some men, you just can't reach?
Sorry.
time for tinyurl.com
They're using their grammar skills there.
AFAIK, Adium doesn't use HTML clickable links.
This in particular has to do with single line, URLs which is sent as the only text in the conversation. Thanks to this "news" article, now the spammers have got a clear analysis of what Y! blocks.
Either way, expect more grandmas getting phished.Yes I tested it and found it true. I have added myself as a friend in the yahoo when i send http://www.youtube.com/ it does not display message. All other message are being displayed
SlashFUD
I have a Jabber ID that comes out to be the same place as my email address, and I flaunt both on every web forum I'm ever on. The email address gets 30-60 spams per day (nicely filtered by BogoFilter), the Jabber ID doesn't get a single one.
I have two AIM accounts, two MSN accounts, a Jabber ID, a Google Talk account (as in, a Jabber ID @ gmail.com), and a Yahoo account.
I do occasionally pop into AIM chatrooms for a laugh, and those are completely dominated by spambots. But even there, the bots simply spam the channel in predictable ways, waiting for someone to IM them so they can reply with a URL, or tell you to look in their profile for a URL.
I also used to have some people as friends who were not too careful with their security, and were thus loaded with spyware. Their spyware sent me spam occasionally, I told them about it, they didn't care, so I blocked them.
Those are the only two places I've seen spam over IM. I mostly use Gaim on Linux and Adium on OS X, and I've also used Fire, iChat, and Yahoo natively on OS X. I only get unsolicited messages when I'm in chatrooms, or when I bother to try to make Qunu work. Neither of those are spam.
Frankly, I think either spammers haven't discovered IM networks, or a lot of effort has been made to make it hard to spam through them. The centralized approach probably helps a lot, too -- you can't exactly implement a CAPTCHA for Jabber, since anyone can set up their own server and register as many users as they want, but it's easy to implement a CAPTCHA for any of the other systems I'm on. Still, I'm never comfortable with any organization silently acting on my behalf, with no way to control that -- it smacks of ISPs putting VOIP traffic on high priority and ignoring SKYPE traffic. If you want to block messages to me, at least give me the option to unblock them, and default to off (prompt me when I sign up). Same with traffic shaping -- let me control how my own traffic is shaped, or at least let me turn off the shaping.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
First, your SF page (and link) seems to be broken.
But more importantly, if you're going to make people download software anyway, why not just have them use Jabber? Could Jabber be extended to do what you want?
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
This is nothing, Messenger has been blocking anything containing the suffix "download.php" in a URL since forever, who knows what else they're doing. (ie. http://isohunt.com/download.php?etc123) http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&q=Messenger+Cens oring+download.php&meta=
Not even Google can censor me. (Except they can, of course, because most people on Jabber think they're using a service called "gtalk", but at least the potential is there.)
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
I refuse to use yahoo services. It's almost like early catholicism lol.. the only justification for such action is purely trying to control control control.. When you start losing something you grip even tighter to try and hang on. Seriously do they have board meetings and decide.. "okay today we are going to block youtube.com" muahahahahah our users will thanks us? It's purely in yahoo's interest not their users and any customer should avoid using a service when that service isn't strictly about the consumer.
It is well within Google's rights to censor search results, even in the US. It is well within MS's rights to have Internet Explorer block the Firefox download site. It is well within my rights to block the Microsoft IP ranges from my domain.
"Within their rights" does not mean "reasonable". If my brother shows up at my door starving and shaking with cold, it is well within my rights to not do a thing for him, or maybe leave him outside and call an ambulence to prevent him from freezing. It would also be a truly sick thing to do anything other than bring him inside, warm him up by the fire, and give him a hot meal.
In this case, the danger is that it happens silently. Imagine taking a car for a test drive, being thrilled with it, taking it home, and finding that it had an onboard GPS that's programmed to cut the engine whenever you get near a rival dealership. It's well within their rights to do that, and embed it somewhere in the contract that they're allowed to do that. It's still a disgusting thing to do, and completely unheard of in the automotive world. Yes, you would switch to the rival dealership, but the problem is, you've already bought the car.
So, same problem here. All your friends are on Yahoo, you've been using it for years, and suddenly they do something asinine like this. Only it's becoming more commonplace -- I believe MSN has similar rules that filter out an entire message. But even if you can always guarantee an alternative (like gtalk) -- not always acceptible, as gtalk does't have video chat -- there's still the problem of convincing all your friends to switch. Chances are, most of them will be too lazy to care, especially if you were the one who introduced you to Yahoo in the first place, and because they'd have to tell their friends, and their friends, and so on.
It's like the problem of trying to switch away from an OS, only harder. The only thing that makes it easier is the ability to run more than one at a time, without any real disadvantage.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Yahoo blocks random stuff. I believe AIM blocks some things, though I don't remember what, and besides, it's AOL. MSN blocks download.php.
All we have left is gtalk. It would be awesome if gtalk was a viable replacement, but it's not -- it doesn't have video chat, doesn't have voice on Linux or OSX (that I know of), and there aren't enough people using it to completely boycott the others. All the same things apply to Jabber (since Gtalk is just centrallized, Google-ized Jabber).
Regardless, no matter how much it is Yahoo's right to do this, it is still asinine of them to do it.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Yahoo is stealing the URLs to beam into outer space http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/10/10/174924 5
A lot of people seem to doubt that this is true. I can confirm this. I submitted this story here a full year ago, but it never got approved. Other sites I could not link to were imageshack.us and friendster.com. Some other less famous sites were also affected. Strangely, however, such links _did_ work on random occassions. Many of my friends tested it, and observed that this behavior was independent of the client used, and that results were the same regardless of country of origin. There simply was no way to get it to happen 100% of the time, but when it did happen, it was consistent for the whole period we were logged in and all the friends we tried talking to. Nowadays, we have developed the habit of prefacing a link with "sending link..." and "link sent" just to make sure that it was received.
gallery.php and download.php are known targets for backdoor attacks, and YouTube is known to suffer from cross-site scripting vulernabilities. It doesn't make sense for them to be censoring these for any other reason.
i've had problems with this any number of times, especially recently.
it's totally random when it will show up, i've sent two links to imageshack in a row and had one not work and one work. it's not even always the first one either.
as has been mentioned already, putting "link:" before the link or any other normal text fixes it 100% of the time.
I was in Yahoo Games playong Texas Hold'em and posted my Myspace address to one of the other players, it didn't come up either. Try it1
...and they picked jabber for a reason. I think Google puts the philosophy behind Jabber best in their Google Talk FAQ. Long story short, if you all used Jabber, this wouldn't ever have been an issue to begin with...
Help us build a better map!
This kind of story gives us a flavor of the degree of vendor-locking we would have without free softwares or freewares written by non-corporate programmers.
No. AntiCompetitive? Yes. Illegall anticompetitive? Not hardly. Yahoo will just find themselves driving people away in droves from their service (GAIM FTW, now hurry up and release VV, damnit!) for other services/clients that won't allow that kind of bullshit to happen. In the end, they'll just see their network get smaller, and that only hurts them, not the competition.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
I've been seeing this for several months, but I never noticed it being limited to YouTube URLs. I had just assumed it was yet another bug in YIM.
or their office is blocking the urls, or your email or instant msgr is cutting off the http at 80 char or something. .. ....or perhaps there is an FBI agent sitting on top of your roof personally censoring all your msgs for content correctness. ... thats the most likely story... im going with that.
-Magdalene --"there are 10 types of people in the world, those who read binary, and those who don't"
I noticed the same problem with BlogSpot URLs yesterday, and I documented it here:
0 06/10/09/can-you-trust-your-chat-service/
http://www.ghostwheel.com/merlin/Personal/notes/2
-Chris
-- This sig is only a test. If this were a real sig it would say something witty. --
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Please be aware that Mr Patrick D. Greene, the owner of Global Offshore and of Research Institutehas not paid the salary of at least 15 employees since January.
Check out DieGrenzgaenger.lu and this site and go on from there. You can find references to Mr Greene's past in the internet. He is a Hungarian resident but native from the Bahamas. Also check out firms like Cambridge Global and Slender Lifeoperating in Vienna.Use the "webarchive" and the Google cache to check the past.
...they block messages if the words "download.php", "gallery.php", and others are within. It's blocked in they servers, no matter what client you are using: The message will return to you with a "Failed to send message..."
drmad
I still wouldn't give a flying fuck.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
http://www.bash.org/?244321
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
I can't say one way or another about youtube URL blocking, but I can say from long experience that yahoo chat servers (not clients) block photobucket.com URLs. I'm in a band, and I have band photos on photobucket, and every time I try to post a link to them in chat, the URLs (along with any accompanying text in the post) get eaten. I can post links to everything else I've tried with no problem, but not anything with photbucket.com.
I've tried with multiple clients across at least 4 different OSs, and every attempt is blocked. Even placing a space between the 'h' and 'ttp' in 'http' to break the link doesn't help. Only if I either misspell 'photobucket' or place a space in the name does it get through. I'm thinking Yahoo is blocking photobucket URLs because they have a competing photo sharing/hosting service (Yahoo Photos).
I find it to be quite petty, and convinces me to never ever use Yahoos' photo service, or any other Yahoo services besides IM/chat. If they are willing to go to these lengths over something so small, how do I know what else they might do to any of my data that I might send or be sent (possibly even including e-mail) with any of their other services?
There's simply too many alternatives to put up with that.
Cheers!
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
Until so, I am calling bullshit.a hoo_conspiracy/
I 2nd your nomination of bullshit. WTF, didn't an editor try out this easily reproducable item that no one can reproduce? Here's the Register making fun of Slashdot http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/10/11/youtube_y
The big story here is that a crowd of people wearing tinfoil hats are easy to rile up.
I've had this problem of links not passing on Y! for a few months now. It happens with random links, mostly the ones with request strings. It only happens when sent from gaim. Couldn't identify more details.
I believe this is competitive fallout. Google Eclipses Rivals With YouTube What Effect has the purchase had on Yahoo? Is Yahoo in Pain?