I discovered the DW documentaries during the pandemic and they’ve kept me decent (if sometimes depressing) company throughout the ordeal.

There was this one documentary called ‘9/11 The Unheeded Warning’ that I planned to watch later today, so I kept their [main](https://www.youtube.com/c/DWDocumentary/videos) videos tab open in YouTube since this morning, as I usually do since I use it as an index of sorts. I should clarify I always leave my pc on since I’m mining some ETH.

So imagine my surprise when, hours later, I click on the link that goes to said documentary, only to be greeted with a *’This video is not available. This video is private’* notice. Obviously I go back to the previous page (the videos tab in their profile) and the documentary was no longer there.

For some reason, they decided to make that video private between the moment that I first loaded their profile’s videos tab, and later in the day when I actually wanted to watch the doc.

Anybody knows why this might be? Given the bold claims made by the title, and the sensitive subject that it covered, I feel it’s kind of *sus*.

Is this how people become conspiracy nut jobs?

I found a couple of links that refer to its existence, listed below:

​

* [The link for the doc that was made private](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_uR-KdAvRC0)
* [From the DW itself, a trailer and description of it](https://www.dw.com/en/9-11-the-unheeded-warning/a-58317034)
* [A reddit post on r /Videos from a month ago that has no comments](https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/pmqykj/911_the_unheeded_warning_dw_documentary/).
* [The site for the actual video on the DW, broken (410)](https://www.dw.com/en/9-11-the-unheeded-warning/av-59123997)
* [A news site from Ghana (?) that linked to the vanished doc.](https://www.modernghana.com/videodocumentaries//1/27746/)
* [This Australian site that seems to have the doc, saying it’s from France. I understand the DW buys docs, so it makes sense. I can’t watch it from there because I’m not australian nor do I have a VPN to fake it.](https://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/video/1935245891546/911-the-unheeded-warning)
* [Welp I found the people who produced it](https://kwanza.fr/catalogue/warning)

​

So, as I was making the list, the most likely explanation that occurred to me is that something related to the rights of the doc had to have happened and the video was pulled, or that the documentary itself was kinda sus and was found to not adhere to the DW standards. Or something related to YT’s content moderation.

Or maybe it *is* a conspiracy, and the US forced the hand of the DW and had them hide the video *just so I couldn’t watch it.*

Anyway, I still would like to see it though. Might get a VPN for that Australian site.

10 comments

  3. Something similar happened to me. They had this documentary about the big seed industry: for how much they’re selling the tomato seeds, how are they produced, how the Israelis engineered the tomato we use today and it’s super bad from the nutrition perspective, and when they offered to engineer a better one the big ind wasn’t interested etc etc etc. A few month later I was searching for the docu since I tried to look up one detail mentioned in it (just wanted to know the guy in southern France who still produces this old tomato seed varieties), and I couldn’t find it. So I emailed them what happened with the documentary and where I could find it and they replied:

    “This is a documentary that we purchased and not filmed, therefore from the legal perspective we had to remove it. Because of this we can also not give you any additional information regarding it.”

    So. If anyone knows the french dude. Please let me know.

  5. Either the rights they bought expired or they decided it might support conspiracy narratives or something.

  6. It might also have something to do with the fact that channels sponsored by the public art by law required to take down their videos after a certain time (I think two month?). There was a similar discussion a while back when Arte removed a documentary about China, and the official Arte account came in to explain it, but I think the discussion was in German.

  8. DW is a pretty small operation, so in order to show loads of documentaries, most are not produced by them. Instead they aquire the rights for them from other stations (mostly other german public broadcasters) and then re-dubb them into english.

    Which means that eventually, they will have to pull them from youtube due to the expiration of the broadcasting rights.

  10. Is *it* really such a “bold claim” to say that America ignored the warnings?

    Bin Laden was threatening to attack the US for years, and he did when his people blew a hole in the side of that ship. The WTC was attacked before then also, albeit by different agents.

    And the amount of enemies America was making around the world at the time (and today) makes it the least bold claim *ever.*

    In fact, you could rename it as:

    ***”9/11: We’re Surprised it took THAT Long***”

    *or*

    ***”9/11: A Dozen Unheeded Warnings”****…*

    …and it would still hold true as a title, even if the documentary is produced by nutcases and is full of conspiracy theory.

    America being attacked in 2001 was the least surprising thing ever, and there were warning signs from all angles.

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