Source: Google Locks Down Access to Videos of ‘TGIF’ Meetings Following Breitbart Scoop

Breitbart ^ | 9/14/2018 | Allum Bokhari

[RightGeek]

Google has locked down access to archived recordings of its weekly all-hands “TGIF” meetings after Breitbart News published a video of the company’s dismayed reaction to the defeat of Hillary Clinton. The tech giant holds weekly all-hands meetings known as “TGIF” or “Thank God It’s Friday” (although they’re actually held on Thursdays), in which company executives address questions from employees.

...

A full recording of one of these meetings, conducted just days after the election of Donald Trump in 2016, was anonymously leaked to Breitbart News and was published earlier this week. The video features CEO Sundar Pichai, co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, and VPs Kent Walker and Eileen Naughton dismayed and often emotional reactions to Donald Trump’s victory and the broader rise of populist nationalism. It can be watched in full here.

One of the consequences of Breitbart News’ scoop is that Google has now locked down general employee access to archived recordings of past TGIFs.

“The one negative is that they’ve now locked down access to past TGIF videos, which is inconvenient for a lot of us,” a Google employee told Breitbart News. “The most recent TGIF will still be available to view for a week, but there’s no access to the archive.

...

“They also used to let you livestream TGIF on your work laptops, but they stopped the livestreams after Kate Conger of The NY Times live-tweeted the first TGIF that Google held after the China story broke. Now you have to go to one of the designated rooms on campus to watch TGIF.”

[MarMema]

But uh, why would they, uh, do that?

[Pearls Before Swine]

Are those red and yellow propeller beanies for sale anywhere. They’d make a powerful “I’m a jerk” statement.

[Magnum44]

😆

[Paladin2]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9tDZ5lriIIc&feature=player_embedded

Folk Song Army - Tom Lehrer

[Liz]

......those red and yellow propeller beanies make a powerful “I’m a Google jerk” statement......

ROTFLOL........advertising you're a jerk makes the tech titans.....uuuuummmmmm......."more human."

[Wonder Warthog]

"It was a private company, and a monopoly for the service provided."

While it was a monopoly, it was HEAVILY regulated by both state and federal governments. Eventually, that monopoly status was found to impede competition, and Bell was broken up into smaller subdivisions.

[DoughtyOne]

Thanks for the mention. I do use one, so could be...

[DoughtyOne]

Thanks for the suggestion.

[DoughtyOne]

Looks like Asian privilege to me...

“:^)

[DoughtyOne]

Would that be Brian Stelter?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Stelter

If this wasn’t the guy, let me know and I’ll see what I can find.

[E. Pluribus Unum]

You can still watch the video on Breitbart:

https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2018/09/12/leaked-video-google-leaderships-dismayed-reaction-to-trump-election/

I know how to download YouTube videos, but not Breitbart videos.

[Eagles6]

Yep.

[cynwoody]

That ledger sounds like the Chinese Social Credit System. Very un-American.

[cynwoody]

I know how to download YouTube videos, but not Breitbart videos.

Some clues can be found in this snippet of JSON, which Breitbart's player (jwplayer.com) downloads as it prepares to show the flick:

"duration": 3805,
"image": "https://content.jwplatform.com/thumbs/TYgVGuSC-720.jpg",
"link": "https://content.jwplatform.com/previews/TYgVGuSC",
"mediaid": "TYgVGuSC",
"pubdate": 1536775268,
"recommendations": "https://content.jwplatform.com/v2/playlists/7StNPlvE?related_media_id=TYgVGuSC",
"sources": [
    {
        "file": "https://content.jwplatform.com/manifests/TYgVGuSC.m3u8",
        "type": "application/vnd.apple.mpegurl"
    },
    {
        "file": "https://content.jwplatform.com/videos/TYgVGuSC-25GFhifI.mp4",
        "height": 180,
        "label": "180p",
        "type": "video/mp4",
        "width": 320
    },
    {
        "file": "https://content.jwplatform.com/videos/TYgVGuSC-ilPKdA1q.mp4",
        "height": 270,
        "label": "270p",
        "type": "video/mp4",
        "width": 480
    },
    {
        "file": "https://content.jwplatform.com/videos/TYgVGuSC-TpzG6ZCv.mp4",
        "height": 406,
        "label": "406p",
        "type": "video/mp4",
        "width": 720
    },
    {
        "file": "https://content.jwplatform.com/videos/TYgVGuSC-khrfltxf.mp4",
        "height": 720,
        "label": "720p",
        "type": "video/mp4",
        "width": 1280
    },
    {
        "file": "https://content.jwplatform.com/videos/TYgVGuSC-PoBJ2M9o.m4a",
        "label": "AAC Audio",
        "type": "audio/mp4"
    }
],
"tags": "Google,2016",
"title": "Leaked Video Shows Google Leadership In Dismay At 2016 Election",
"tracks": [
    {
        "file": "https://content.jwplatform.com/strips/TYgVGuSC-120.vtt",
        "kind": "thumbnails"
    }
],
"variations": {}

Pick your resolution and download away. Or, if you want to watch at 1280x720, paste the corresponding URL into your browser's location bar and widen the window until the video box stops getting bigger.

[E. Pluribus Unum]

I viewed the source but couldn’t figure out what to do. Thanks!

[cynwoody]

As it happens, I have JavaScript disabled for Breitbart, due to its excessively busy ad-tech engine. The video player requires JS, so no video for me.

What I did was to use the Chrome Inspector to view the IFRAME element housing the video player. I grabbed the IFRAME's URL and opened it in another window to watch the show and get my ration of Schadenfreude (I don't have JS disabled for jwplatform.com, so the video plays when opened in a stand-alone tab).

When I saw your post, I decided to go back and try it again, this time watching the player's network traffic. Modern video players are designed to adapt to conditions, such as viewport size and network conditions. Bigger window, select a higher-resolution stream. Too slow buffering, downgrade the resolution. Making this work requires coordination with the server before the actual media downloading begins.

I opened the JavaScript console, selected the Network tab, and pressed the XHR button to cut down the bedlam. Then I reloaded the tab to take it from the top. Sure enough, one of the first things it did was to download that JSON I posted. That was all I needed to see.

[The Westerner]

Are those wheely bird hats photoshopped on or are they worn to distinguish leadership from worker bees?

[E. Pluribus Unum]

I don’t know much about javascript. I played with it but couldn’t figure out how to download it. I might try the firefox flash downloader addon. That works a lot of the time. Have to install it first.

[cynwoody]

Those are called Noogler hats and are passed out to new employees at their first TGIF meeting.

[The Westerner]

How humiliating.