The policy started right with this post and my conmiment to change them
http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php?topic=3047.0
But little to none links were changed.
I started posting videos on the "News" for every PowerPC or Mac OS9 thinking it were a safe place for them, and leaving the rest with minimum or none YT links.
Then another post that I cant find right now went more deeply on it (GaryN participated on it IIRC) and it was decided to mute/parse all YT links
I never thought embedded YouTube videos could become such a problem, but upon reading @Mat's post, now that I'm thinking about it, y'know, he's
absolutely right! Especially with regards to the
privacy bit: even on an Ultra Modern System™, no one should be subjected to the privacy creeps of embedded video content, that too from a company as demonstrably vile and dangerous as Google.
I, too, vouch for using simple URLs
only, and for this reason alone, even more so than for "Mac OS 9 compatibility", and let the forum user decide whether to click on it (and thus make the decision to harmfully render it on their own machine) or not. With the URL rather than that shortened link code, we can also use various YouTube proxy services, some of which have the ability to do away with this problem.
I would seriously suggest we
do not bring back embedded video for these security and privacy reasons. This isn't some "minor" or cosmetic thing like the "Like" button-- this is actually a SERIOUS, real-world problem. I should have noticed, and pointed out, this earlier. Also, plain URLs are pretty easy and convenient in any case, so we also don't have much of a practical nor functional need for them, to top it off.
It would be great if we could somehow fix the existing URLs into real URLs, though ,so they aren't left broken. I assume usage of such embedded videos are rather rare and exceptional, so maybe it's something mods could locate and change/edit manually, rather than this having to be done by @Knez from the side of the forum's code or database data.
