[HN Gopher] Ask HN: Best Way to Contact YouTube
___________________________________________________________________
Ask HN: Best Way to Contact YouTube
I woke up this morning to an email from YouTube stating that my
channel is banned for repeated violations. They didn't specify what
I violated but it could be anything from copyright to hate speech.
Let me explain the content of all 5 videos on my 11 year + old
channel. 1) a video of a squirrel that carried half a loaf of
French bread along a fence and jumped into a tree. He dropped the
bread during the jump but somehow managed to one hand/paw catch the
bread and save it. 2) a friend of mine who was unable to ride a
spring horse on a playground. 3)my son reacting to a scene from
the movie hot rod(cool beans) this was a private video. 4) music
video of my own music. No samples or other copyrighted material
contained. 5) another music video also with no copyrighted
material. I submitted a request to the YouTube forum but I suspect
that is a black hole where support requests go to die. I'm not
really all that upset and I have all the videos that are on the
channel locally but the 1 strike you are banned seems awfully
extreme. The fact that I wasn't told that something was flagged or
given any sort of heads up is really what bothers me. How can I get
YouTubes attention?
Author : S_A_P
Score : 450 points
Date : 2021-12-13 15:56 UTC (7 hours ago)
| stefantalpalaru wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YouTube_headquarters_shooting
| ganeshkrishnan wrote:
| Most likely some spambots hit the "report" button on your
| channel. sometimes its people with very similar video as yours
| and want their content to be viral.
|
| youtube "Hero" is a dumpster fire. Someone mass banned my google
| dev account for one app that I had for around 8 years as
| "impersonating or trying to impersonate" whatever that means.
|
| I applied for review and got an automated review that even all
| related accounts will be banned and they went ahead and banned a
| related play dev account.
|
| Weird thing is that I have a google cloud account with $120k
| yearly spend and my startup on it. Time to hedge my bets and move
| off google cloud.
| sabellito wrote:
| Reminds me of the Terraria dev saying that doing business with
| google is a liability.
|
| https://www.byteside.com/2021/02/terraria-dev-to-google-doin...
| spaniard89277 wrote:
| > Weird thing is that I have a google cloud account with $120k
| yearly spend and my startup on it. Time to hedge my bets and
| move off google cloud.
|
| Aren't you afraid to get your startup down by some automated BS
| hell?
| ganeshkrishnan wrote:
| I am too ingrained into google cloud. I can migrate only at
| the cost of very annoyed customers and employees.
|
| besides as a solo boostrapped company, I hardly have any time
| for tech work.
| xtracto wrote:
| > Weird thing is that I have a google cloud account with $120k
| yearly spend and my startup on it. Time to hedge my bets and
| move off google cloud.
|
| I wouldn't trust Google with anything valuable... their
| customer support is non existent and the company seems to be
| "full of themselves" in dealing with their errors and things
| that are their fault.
|
| For all shit that Amazon gets, my experience with AWS has been
| generally positive: Their technical support is really good (you
| get a HUMAN who guides you through screen share to achieve what
| you want) and it has been quite _dependable_ in the more 10+
| years that I have used them commercially.
|
| Today's Google feels like Microsoft in the 90s or early 2000:
| "You don't like us, tough luck, fuck you and you still have to
| use us".
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| Your problem going viral is the only tried and true solution for
| human involvement. Sorry.
| winternett wrote:
| YT, TikTok, IG (etc) are having extensive problems with people
| gaming their algorithms. The algorithms were launched way too
| early without proper testing of course, and they now allow
| content spammers and re-uploaders (content thieves) to make
| creator fund money for literally stealing content.
|
| Right now their storage is balooning with duplicate content
| because of the wave of content theft that TikTok has encouraged,
| and it may be necessary for the clock to be reset, and for their
| copyright policies and support to be fixed in total. This means
| that original content creators, and creator funds may also take a
| big hit until something stable is finally worked out, but it
| shouldn't let platforms like YouTube off the hook for shoddy
| copyright policies and and mis-management of the process for many
| years.
|
| They need to implement a cutoff date for enforcement, the trend
| of content copying was not popular until TikTok surged in
| popularity, somewhere around then should be the cutoff point
| (around 3 years ago). YouTube also created shorts, which was only
| another poorly thought out enticement for content theft and
| cloning.
|
| I followed procedure over 2 years ago to request my profile be
| converted into a music artist profile, and YouTube still has not
| done anything nor responded... They need to also hire real life
| moderators and implement a real support and moderation
| team/process that is professional and accountable. If they don't
| the entire site will turn into a platform of spam and junk ads
| and triggering content like TikTok is fast becoming now.
|
| Original content creators are the lifeblood of social media
| platforms, they shouldn't be required to go unrewarded, and worse
| yet, they shouldn't be abused and ignored by the platforms they
| post to... OC creators are the only ones that help platforms to
| disguise the fact that they're collecting money under the table
| from big industry.
| comeonseriously wrote:
| I think the only real way to get their attention is to convince
| someone sufficiently tech famous to tweet that you're getting a
| shit deal from YouTube. Only then will a real person step in.
| enriquto wrote:
| My impulsive answer to this problem is "you had it coming for
| subscribing to a service with unacceptable terms".
|
| For the non-impulsive answer, I don't really have anything of
| value to say.
| ratww wrote:
| I'm suspicious of video #4 being the reason.
|
| There is a wave of people copying other people's music, claiming
| as their own and then sending claims to the original video.
|
| Maybe since your channel is small, Youtube decided to just ban.
| I've seen it happened with people who tried to pirate music more
| than once.
|
| I don't post any music at all on Youtube. It all goes trough a
| third-party service that posts on my behalf and on streaming
| services.
| winternett wrote:
| I wish there was a shazam service for Google... People that
| hijack music should not be allowed to profit from doing so at
| the original artist's expense, and YT is liable for letting
| that happen. There will probably be a class action suit in a
| few years where Lawyers will likely collect all the settlement
| money, and then justice won't be served. This is America.
| hunter2_ wrote:
| If I understand you correctly, it does exist, and it's called
| Content ID.
| winternett wrote:
| Only Google people can view the back-end of Content ID...
| I'm talking about a service that we as normal people can
| use to see where our own music is being used across the
| Internet... Right now the only thing content creators can
| do is use metadata to search for their own content, but if
| there was a method to search for the footprints of music
| and film, then we could work on overall fairness better.
| hunter2_ wrote:
| Oh I see. That would be very cool. Sounds like it could
| work similarly to the "search Google for this image"
| feature.
| winternett wrote:
| Yeah, unfortunately Google reverse image search doesn't
| work properly any more as well :(
| emmelaich wrote:
| Pasting a comment from myself ... [0]
|
| > _This video (link below) has been marked as having a song
| when there is absolutely no fragment of the song in the
| video._
|
| > _The video was used for Forever Young by Youth Group. But
| this is the original footage, from Australian TV, from 1976.
| Waaay before even the original Forever Young, by Alphaville
| in 1984._
|
| > _I went to record a complaint but you have to be the owner,
| so I threw it in the too hard basket._
|
| > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nod5q7OHAF4
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26910465
| brudgers wrote:
| The copying issue can arise when using legally licensed content
| loops and tracks without substantial modification and layering.
|
| Basically when it is easy and simple and sounds good right out
| of the box, someone else has beat you to using it in a song,
| and you are in violation of _their_ copyright.
|
| The license to the loop/track/etc. doesn't mean your work isn't
| protected by copyright. And it doesn't mean your work doesn't
| infringe on other work using the same content under the same
| license.
| S_A_P wrote:
| I suppose that is possible but don't they give you a strike for
| that instead of an outright ban for strike 1?
| ratww wrote:
| That's correct, but I've seen this rule being broken often on
| channels that had pirate music.
| S_A_P wrote:
| The music has been there for 8 years for one and 2 years
| for the second one. I'm wondering If my channel name is the
| reason "stupid American pig" is my band name. But it's been
| that name since 2008
| ghostbrainalpha wrote:
| Holy Shit! That's a fantastic name. Are you punk rock?
|
| But I agree that is a very dangerous name in the time of
| algorithm controlled moderation.
| S_A_P wrote:
| I'm a fan of punk rock but I wouldn't call my music that.
| Mostly lofi type stuff.
| ratww wrote:
| Ah the plot thickens, then! It could be an overzealous
| filter.
| brudgers wrote:
| There's almost always more to My account was banned
| stories.
|
| I mean here there's the obvious question of why not make
| a new account and move on? Considering the description of
| the account that would be much less effort than has been
| invested here.
|
| And less drama.
| pvarangot wrote:
| I do music as a hobby and tried to use YouTube to share some
| stuff with Reddit/Discord/friends and I couldn't get anything
| to survive unclaimed for more than a day after posting on
| Reddit. I was using maybe some samples from percussion but from
| a pack that I have a license to but the rest of the stuff was
| my own sound design and arrangement... also it sounded really
| bad.
|
| Now I just don't share on Reddit anymore and mostly use private
| links because of that experience.
| brudgers wrote:
| Your original work uses the licensed track. You have a
| copyright.
|
| Someone else used the same track in their original work. They
| also have copyright.
|
| Your work is similar to their work.
|
| If they were first they have a plausible copyright claim
| against you.
|
| Unless the license was copyleft. Which is a motivation for
| copyleft.
|
| The license to a drum track only protects from claims from
| the rightsholder of the drum track.
| cletus wrote:
| Best way? I can think of four:
|
| 1. Have a large enough Twitter following such that complaining
| will get somebody's attention;
|
| 2. Know someone at Google who can contact the right people to
| resolve this;
|
| 3. Be a large enough advertiser such that your account manager
| will make noise on your behalf; or
|
| 4. Be a large enough content producer such that the threat of you
| pulling your content from Youtube is sufficient to get their
| attention.
|
| This isn't unique to Youtube or Google. It's just how "support"
| works on platforms these days.
| Ansil849 wrote:
| > 3)my son reacting to a scene from the movie hot rod(cool beans)
| this was a private video.
|
| This would seemingly be the most straightforward reason. The
| system flagged a copyright film clip. Though this doesn't explain
| why you didn't get a notice about just that video.
|
| But honestly, why spend time worrying about this? It sounds like
| you barely used your account, so just get a new one.
| avian wrote:
| > Though this doesn't explain why you didn't get a notice about
| just that video.
|
| I don't know if that's a thing with YouTube and private videos,
| but when I got a copyright strike on my YouTube account because
| of a private video I never got explicitly notified about it.
|
| I just have random stuff on my channel, similar to what OP
| describes and largely use YouTube for watching content. The
| video in question was a private video of me doing a quick demo
| of some project where a radio was faintly playing in the
| background (I didn't even notice that at first - only after
| finding the original video file and cranking up the volume did
| I realize that the mic picked up some recognizable music in the
| background).
|
| I would have never noticed that I had a copyright strike if I
| wasn't bored and randomly clicking through the YouTube UI one
| day.
| S_A_P wrote:
| I get that sentiment but I think it's the fact that I have to
| start over and make a new channel. Lost all my subscriptions
| that I watch. The fact that 1 strike and you're out is a thing.
|
| The private video did not show the movie and showed my son
| getting excited and trying to imitate the cool beans bit. It
| was barely audible in a few seconds of the 20 second video and
| my son was talking over it so I doubt automated solution would
| likely not fingerprint it. It's also about 10 years old and has
| always been private.
| Ansil849 wrote:
| The fact that it's private is irrelevant. The fact that it's
| been up for 10 years may also be irrelevant if this property
| was just added to the scanner's library.
|
| Honestly, you're wasting way too much mental energy on this.
| Youtube is a blackbox. Effectively, it bans and otherwise
| penalizes accounts arbitrarily with absolutely no recourse.
| You either use their services understanding this, or don't.
| It's pretty straightforward.
| nocubicles wrote:
| Don't know the answer but thanks for the information. I have also
| user in youtube where I have uploaded some random recorded videos
| with my brother and other memories that I have no local copy of.
| Will make that ASAP!
| rootsudo wrote:
| Through legal channels, but you agreed to Terms of Service. They
| may redirect your request to someone that _could_ help, or a
| further black hole.
|
| Email: legal@support.youtube.com
|
| Fax: +1 650 872 8513
|
| Address: Legal Support YouTube
| (Google LLC) 901 Cherry Ave. San Bruno,
| CA 94066 USA
| hagbard_c wrote:
| Just put your videos on PeerTube, Odysee, Rumble or any of the
| other video platforms out there. If you have a server of your own
| you could host a PeerTube instance and put them there.
|
| Ditch YouTube.
| fruit2020 wrote:
| Imagine getting a fine for speeding but without revealing the
| location where you were speeding. What size do these companies
| need to be before we get some consumer protection regulations
| m1m wrote:
| What is your yt channel url/id?
| bastardoperator wrote:
| If you aren't flooding Google with insane amounts of cash, good
| luck ever talking to a real person.
| paulpauper wrote:
| almost impossible to reach a human unless you know someone who
| works there, or unless you get the media's attention, or are a
| huge brand, or spend a lot of money on ads, sorry
| numpad0 wrote:
| Don't worry, "repeated violations" means their backend workers
| flagged your content or processed reports on your content
| multiple times. Not a fault on your side.
|
| Could be 1.5s of silence in your video repeatedly flagged
| automatically and cleared manually, or had been script reported
| by 65535-node botnet that claims to be real individual non-group
| of people in a remote Eastern Europe village.
|
| Every major social networks has this class of problems, worsening
| each minute as time goes on, and while your online fame can be
| exploited to exempt yourself from it, it will probably need a
| legislative action to control.
| eatbitseveryday wrote:
| I wonder if you could just try putting your videos elsewhere?
| Vimeo? Self-host?
| cab404 wrote:
| Just for the record: if you don't really plan to monetize your
| videos -- just share and store, consider using Peertube
|
| https://joinpeertube.org/
|
| It's instances usually have low quotas though~
| mcherm wrote:
| It is obvious to everyone involved (except, apparently, employees
| of Alphabet) that YouTube's system for reporting violations and
| adjudicating them is broken.
|
| I would happily move to using a competitor instead except that
| between the price point (free or better) and the mass audience,
| there are no effective competitors.
|
| What can we do about this?
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| this is not worth upvoting ppl. Help out in the comments and move
| along.
|
| here's a previous recent thread on similar:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26916096
| pixelgeek wrote:
| Maybe the squirrel sent in a DMCA takedown?
| riffic wrote:
| that only applies if the squirrel holds the camera and takes
| the shot itself.
| imadethis wrote:
| It's the squirrel equivalent to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki
| /Monkey_selfie_copyright_disput...
| eropple wrote:
| Squirrel barratry is real and it's here.
| mdoms wrote:
| This isn't Reddit.
| DoItToMe81 wrote:
| Tell us how it goes. My channel was taken down for the same
| reason. A private video of a friend singing was marked as hate
| speech and my whole channel was wiped for it. I never got it
| back, no matter how many emails I sent.
| tradertef wrote:
| For me only their twitter support worked @TeamYoutube. All other
| channels are silent.
| TekMol wrote:
| I wonder how hard it would be to create a protocol which avoids
| problems like this.
|
| A user who wants to publish a video could do that in the form of
| special links which contain a hash of the video (maybe magnet
| links do that?).
|
| They could do that on their own website for example. Or in
| multiple places. Their website, their GitHub pages, their Twitter
| etc.
|
| The viewer (say Joe) who wants to see such a video would click
| the special link and have a software that searches it on a
| decentralized network of nodes.
|
| Some other viewer (say Paul) who recently viewed the video and
| still has it in his cache could deliver the video to Joe.
|
| In return, Joe could automatically get some crypto currency. Say
| worth $0.01 or so.
|
| Content aggregators could crawl all these sites and create an
| experience similar to YouTube. Or maybe this could also be
| implemented in a decentralized fashion.
| noman-land wrote:
| There are some systems which are implementing stuff like this,
| like IPFS and Filecoin, Storj, Swarm, and others.
|
| We could really use a decentralized YouTube. Our collective
| culture just should not be living behind YouTube's walls.
| genewitch wrote:
| No one wants to wait for decentralized videos to load.
|
| Sure, the hundred or thousand most popular videos will load
| relatively quickly, but some video I saw 10 years ago that is
| relevant to a conversation I am having would either take a very
| long time to load, or not load at all. And now you, the human,
| as a content producer, need to game the algorithm to be viral
| with every video.
|
| Don't get me wrong I think YouTube and Google drop the ball
| constantly, but you can't decentralize content distribution and
| have the selection you do now. It'd be like going back to the
| 70s with broadcast television.
| TekMol wrote:
| If the $0.01 is more than what it costs to store the video
| until someone requests it and deliver it, then loading will
| be super fast. Because tons of players in the market will
| compete for this margin.
| photon-torpedo wrote:
| This, minus the cryptocurrency, is IPFS. (Though I've never
| used it, so I may be wrong.)
| TekMol wrote:
| Without currency, what is the incentive for nodes to cache
| and forward content?
| ju-st wrote:
| Did you post any comments on other videos while being logged in
| that channel?
| S_A_P wrote:
| Never anything other that "this is great content" type content.
| I purposely do not comment on videos I don't like or post
| negative or argumentative comments. I've a few YouTuber friends
| and we chat on their channels now and then. Again much like
| here on HN I do make an effort to keep most comments friendly
| and positive.
| tmp538394722 wrote:
| Malice hat:
|
| Maybe bots are trying to muddy the waters of legitimate take down
| requests by flooding support with fake ones.
|
| Incompetence hat:
|
| Maybe YouTube's abuse detection is broken.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| You can wear multiple hats at the same time.
| javajosh wrote:
| _> Malice hat...Incompetence hat_
|
| How can you tell them apart? ;) Jokes aside, I'd like to add
| another hat, which is "ambivalence hat", which says: This
| person's pain is not all that important. The (very mild) harm
| it does to YT's reputation can be safely ignored. Ambivalence
| hat synergizes with "ignorance hat" which is the one that says,
| "Gosh, I'd like to help but I just don't know what to do."
|
| (A person wearing both ambivalent AND ignorant hats is a good
| approximation of the population at any given time about any
| given topic, btw.)
| frogpelt wrote:
| Do you have a desirable username?
| bitwize wrote:
| Put them on blast on Twitter or HN, get upvoted/retweeted a lot.
|
| It's kinda like Linux tech support: ask "How do I do X?" and get
| told to RTFM. But say "Linux sucks because I can't do X" and
| nerds will fall all over themselves to help you.
| winternett wrote:
| If you think that's bad, imagine a whole year of missing the
| entire "good" music promotion wave on TikTok because they were
| automatically muting every video I posted of my own music
| (without any explanation or POC) due to applying vague copyright
| rules against me... Now TikTok is flooded and promo capability is
| very weak. I decided to just develop my own site further though,
| and it's automatically targeted to people who like my music
| without me having to figure out which hashtags are trending every
| day at least...
|
| The best way I've found to spur YouTube into action though is to
| @ their account on Twitter... It works for now.
| prettyStandard wrote:
| Just removed all my videos from YouTube, I can't be bothered with
| nonsense like this. Sorry friends.
| ratww wrote:
| Yep. I just use social network or disposable/temporary video
| hosts for anything now.
| shmatt wrote:
| Any example for said video hosts? Vimeo isn't much better
| these days
| ratww wrote:
| Streamable and Ufile are the ones I used last, if you don't
| want anything too permanent. Imgur has videos too I think.
| winternett wrote:
| Why do that? Just leave them there and don't check on them.
| There is no benefit to dropping out of a game that you don't
| really need to do anything to play.
|
| You don't have to follow the stupid and time-wasting script
| they promote for being a creator.... It's a phony script. There
| are several other ways to skin the cat of promotion in getting
| people to listen.
| et-al wrote:
| Ideally, it's a way to get Google to actually address these
| complaints.
|
| However, until professional YouTubers start leaving and cause
| Google's ad revenue to dip by 2-3%, we won't see any action.
| Most of us with a handful of random videos deleting our
| content from YouTube won't change anything. And even if the
| top 50 YouTubers quit en masse, there's still the queue of
| bright hopefuls more than willing to fill those spots.
| winternett wrote:
| We often forget the people desperate for money in the
| world, many people working on 5 year old cell phones that
| would be happy to make even a dollar to feed their family
| for 1 month. These are also the people we're pitted in
| competition with on these platforms that are too far-
| reaching to really be helpful. This is why protests don't
| work. Those struggling people would be happy to replace any
| of us with (even those of us with very minor levels of
| success) in a scam-riddled creator economy.
|
| The platforms have a responsibility to create better
| economies of scale so that each community can be more
| effectively managed and integrated.
|
| One single "front page" or "For you page" (or even a
| handful of them) is a terribly short sighted idea from a
| terribly greedy mind... And it's probably the main reason
| why most content uploaded never finds an audience on most
| modern platforms.
|
| Reddit had that right at first, but they began to let
| moderators control each subreddit like it's own single
| front page, which then also introduced the usual corruption
| and pay-for-play into the mix.
| pvarangot wrote:
| Professional YouTubers get human support. I know even some
| kinda of the kinda bespoke music production channels with
| like 25k/30k subs get human support.
| winternett wrote:
| If you make money for YT, they support you... It's a
| pretty reasonable thing, but the truth is that under the
| table YT is also deeply involved in supporting big
| industry and even manufactured celebrities, and that's
| exactly what corrupts the "vibrant creator community"
| model.
|
| YT (and many other platforms) end up needing to make sure
| that their sponsored artists always trend first no matter
| what, and consequently that also means they need to take
| steps to hold other (non-affiliated) artists down once
| they begin to trend and gain support through organic
| means.
|
| It's kind of like the friend that invites you over to
| play a video game, but when they only have one game
| controller... They really just want you to watch them
| play games...
|
| The best thing to do in that situation is to ignore them
| and create your own footprint elsewhere until they get
| bored of putting on a terribly inconsiderate and selfish
| party.
| prettyStandard wrote:
| Exactly.
|
| I don't need my whole Google account being locked for some
| dumb strike/claim/whatever for some stuff I don't care about.
| ratww wrote:
| I'm not the GP but I also removed the sole video I had in my
| account and deleted the channel. The video just had birds in
| it. If Google bans the account for any reason, it might spill
| over to other accounts that are easy to associate with it. I
| can't afford to lose those.
| Johnyma22 wrote:
| I began this painful process just recently deleting the vast
| majority of my old videos. :(
| JimWestergren wrote:
| This also happened to me in march 2021 on a channel with almost
| no videos and no activity at all "We have reviewed your content
| and found severe or repeated violations of our Community
| Guidelines. Because of this, we have removed your channel from
| YouTube.".
|
| Got another email later the same day from YouTube: "We're pleased
| to let you know that we've recently reviewed your YouTube account
| and, after taking another look, we can confirm that it is not in
| violation of our Terms of Service. We have lifted the suspension
| of your account, and it is once again active and operational."
|
| Must have been an error or glitch, I did not take any action.
| Maybe the same for you.
| jdprgm wrote:
| It's wild to me the strength of Youtube's monopoly. I was just
| talking with a friend about this the other day... I can't think
| of another consumer app with as dominant a position.
| logicalmonster wrote:
| I feel for you and you have my upvote for the signal, but good
| luck getting any action unless this goes sufficiently viral.
|
| I've had this discussion with Googlers here before and this is
| apparently what they actually believe.
|
| * They're content with algorithmic approaches to spam prevention
| and other moderation that results in numerous false positives and
| don't see the problem with that.
|
| * They think their support channels are more than adequate.
|
| * They think their bans result solely in bad actors being harmed
| and don't realize that shady businesses that actually do spam
| have endless fake companies at their disposal to keep on
| trucking.
| S_A_P wrote:
| I'm also just realizing that all my subscriptions are
| inaccessible since my channel is cut off so I will have to re-
| create that list with a new account now. Sigh. That's probably
| the worst part is finding and recreating my subscription list.
| logicalmonster wrote:
| I'm not sure what other browsers its available for, but
| there's a Safari extension PocketTube that can save and
| categorize your YouTube subscription list apart from your
| actual account. So if you get banned, resubscribing is
| possible.
| ghostbrainalpha wrote:
| It's crazy their is a big enough need for that, that
| someone made that a product.
| alpaca128 wrote:
| There's also the application called FreeTube which stores
| subscriptions offline as well. And comes with complete
| adblocking including the ad placements within videos.
| Seanambers wrote:
| When your paycheck depends on you not understanding something.
| You will sure make an effort to not understand :)
| CGamesPlay wrote:
| As an ex-FB, which has a pretty similar culture, I'm apparently
| picking today to halfheartedly stand up to these grave
| injustices against company culture. My input here is mostly
| just to humanize the people who stand on the other side of the
| robotic wall that is preventing our OP from posting videos of
| his son, but understanding the problem a little better may help
| resolve it in the end.
|
| > * They're content with algorithmic approaches to spam
| prevention and other moderation that results in numerous false
| positives and don't see the problem with that.
|
| Spot on. False positives are part of the game when you're
| trying to improve on $1.3MM revenue/employee.
|
| > * They think their support channels are more than adequate.
|
| Anybody at any internal discussion would probably disagree with
| this, instead saying something along the lines of "there may be
| deficiencies with our support process but we can always improve
| them later on."
|
| > * They think their bans result solely in bad actors being
| harmed and don't realize that shady businesses that actually do
| spam have endless fake companies at their disposal to keep on
| trucking.
|
| Nobody thinks that the bans solely result in bad actors being
| harmed and the fact that there are endless fake companies is
| what necessitates these robot walls that don't have human
| connections. False positives will happen and a goal is
| minimizing them... however goal #1 is growing the product
| (which indirectly requires keeping false positives from getting
| too high) and goal #2 is preventing company liability (which
| directly requires that false negatives stay really low). When
| you have strong pressure to keep false negatives low and less
| pressure to keep false positives low, then you end up with a
| bias toward positive results.
|
| OK, well, that's why we end up here. Is this helpful to OP?
| Probably not. Sorry, OP!
| xg15 wrote:
| > _Spot on. False positives are part of the game when you 're
| trying to improve on $1.3MM revenue/employee._
|
| Algorithmic moderation will always have false positives. The
| question is how you deal with them: Do you have an appeals
| process that involves human review or do you just say "sucks
| to be you" and let the false positive be the user's problem?
|
| In a similar way, car accidents will always happen. However
| the car industry decided (not completely on their own) to
| invest in safety so that when accidents do happen, they are
| less deadly.
|
| > _Anybody at any internal discussion would probably disagree
| with this, instead saying something along the lines of "there
| may be deficiencies with our support process but we can
| always improve them later on."_
|
| The mythical time of "later on". When exactly would that be?
|
| And yes, you can always improve anything. This is a vaguely
| pleasant-sounding non-statement.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| The false positives at scale problem isn't something that
| could be solved by an appeals process, because the problem
| is a step above that: a lack of continuous process
| improvement.
|
| Why was the false positive generated? Why was the user
| unable to use the process in place to appeal? And then
| improve the root process cause.
|
| This is what seems to be broken at Google and Facebook, and
| is the fundamental difference between a black hole support
| model (make problems invisible to us, because they never
| get to us) and one that works at scale. You're always going
| to have false positives, but I don't think anyone feels
| like the mega-corps actually have a process in place to
| monitor and improve the _process_ for dealing with them.
| b20000 wrote:
| right, out of touch, like with many other of their products.
| can16358p wrote:
| This is unbelieable.
|
| Googlers are smart people, how can they believe in something
| this plain wrong?
| csours wrote:
| Motivation and Cognitive bias. It is very believable, every
| organization and person has them.
| kreeben wrote:
| Because humans, even smart ones, are tribal and these
| particular people are part of a tribe that believe in said
| points.
| snerbles wrote:
| You've answered your own question.
|
| The System constructed by Googlers is so smart, the Googlers
| themselves are subject to a form of papal infallibility.
| javajosh wrote:
| Isn't it more of a Tyler Durden calculas, "If it costs less
| to payoff the wrongful death suits than to issue a recall,
| then we don't do one."
| vb6sp6 wrote:
| > Googlers are smart people
|
| they are smart enough to know that "improved customer
| service" will never get them that promotion
| [deleted]
| ALittleLight wrote:
| Oh, I doubt most Googlers believe those things. I'm sure they
| know they have terrible customer service and support. I would
| say it's borderline non-existent.
|
| I suspect the rationale is something like "Well, you don't
| pay for your YouTube account (or don't pay that much) so you
| shouldn't expect good support or moderation."
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Googlers are smart people,
|
| They are probably highly skilled in the things they are
| selected for skill in. "Smart", even when it is really high
| general IQ, doesn't translate to universal proficiency
| without dedicating time and effort to particular domains.
|
| > how can they believe in something this plain wrong?
|
| Strong selective pressure: people who don't have beliefs that
| fit with the current Google context and bureaucracy are less
| likely to be selected by, or select to work for, Google and,
| even if they are, are more likely to be selected out, or
| voluntarily depart.
|
| See the destruction of the Ethical AI unit over issues very
| closely related to the conflict over blind faith in
| algorithmic approaches.
| veeti wrote:
| Getting a $200,000 paycheck regardless of how many people
| your company fucks over helps.
| iamevn wrote:
| Even if you get Google employees to see (which you almost
| certainly have now), it's frustratingly difficult to escalate
| this sort of issue internally. While I worked at Google (not in
| YouTube) I'd tried to escelate this sort of issue on several
| occasions and gotten absolutely nowhere. It really seems like
| the only way to get help is to go viral and raise enough of a
| stink that they're forced to help.
|
| I wasn't even able to get my one of my best friends' access to
| their account restored when they had all the correct info and
| the automated account recovery form was breaking with
| absolutely useless error messages.
| tmaly wrote:
| maybe there needs to be a new service to help the little guy?
| Bring back some form of the Don't be Evil
| spaniard89277 wrote:
| It won't happen unless they're forced to do so, or a
| competitor arises.
|
| But competing with YT is nearly impossible. Maybe YTubers
| should start talking about some sort of association.
| syshum wrote:
| There have been a few attempts. It never goes anywhere
| and never will
| ethbr0 wrote:
| > _Maybe YTubers should start talking about some sort of
| association._
|
| Like some sort of _union_ of workers with similar
| interests?
| nickff wrote:
| It seems like this would be more of a cartel.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| Because producing creative videos is a limited resource
| than can be cornered?
| wing-_-nuts wrote:
| I bought a pixel this year with a $100 discount for signing
| up for google fi. Turns out, their map is a lie, and I was
| completely without coverage, so I sign up with my old
| provider. I then get a nastygram saying I'm going to be
| charged the full $100 because I cancelled google fi. $50
| more than the non promo price.
|
| I honestly started to do a chargeback on the promo charge,
| but I guarantee you I'd lose access to all google services
| because of a tos violation if I did that. Lesson learned.
| Never do business with a monopoly provider, you have _no_
| recourse.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| It doesn't scale.
|
| That's the problem and why moderation is so difficult. It's
| incredibly difficult to scale.
|
| Anything that allows people to appeal negative actions
| _will_ be abused by bad actors. Spend some time on the
| League of Legends or World of Warcraft forums or subreddits
| and you 'll see people claiming to have been suspended or
| banned for no reason, until eventually a moderator or CS
| rep will come in and say "Actually you were banned because
| you spammed racial slurs in the game and told a teammate to
| kill themselves."
|
| Now imagine how many people put copyrighted music in their
| YouTube and afterwards appeal the inevitable copyright
| strikes on their video because they think it somehow falls
| under fair use or think putting "No copyright infringement
| intended" in the description absolves themselves of any
| wrong-doing.
| m348e912 wrote:
| Youtube could use this problem to their advantage by
| allowing users to validate algorithmic based flags.
| Youtube could present a user a video on their feed that
| has been algorithmically flagged for reasons xyz. You
| could be one of several folks that agree or disagree. If
| enough disagree, the ban doesn't go into effect.
| logicalmonster wrote:
| People have suggested that this can be solved by Big Tech
| charging money for premium support in some fashion. It's
| not a perfect solution, but it would weed out the most
| frivolous and unimportant claims and make supporting the
| desperate people manageable.
| jedberg wrote:
| That would be terrible PR for them though. "YouTube
| banned me just so they could take my money to get help!"
| "Only rich people can get their YouTube accounts
| unbanned!" and so on.
| nanidin wrote:
| The problem is that there is no path to forgiveness for
| someone that makes an honest mistake. "Terminate account,
| lock out from all content (email, calendars, videos,
| whatever), and refuse to communicate" is something akin
| to using the death penalty for every violation of the
| law. In many cases there are teachable moments and
| bringing out the banhammer + silent treatment for every
| infraction creates a suboptimal society.
| specialist wrote:
| If sufficient moderation -- for ad supported businesses
| exploiting user provided content -- cannot or will not be
| performed, then perhaps moderation is not the problem.
| markdown wrote:
| Nonsense! All you have to do is charge a few dollars more
| than cost to handle every single support query, and it
| will scale all the way to the moon.
| 8ytecoder wrote:
| With a tiny bit of creativity in your queries you can find the
| channels that skirt the spirit of the rule without breaking it.
| Both the algorithms and the overworked humans behind the
| moderation just let it stand.
|
| Then there's channels that do everything from outright stealing
| content to adding a voiceover to get around copyright, playing
| the real video in a frame surrounded with other content and on
| and on.
|
| I don't think I have a particular knack for it but I see way
| too many of these channels every single time I open YouTube.
| They're all perfectly fine.
|
| AND that's what is extremely annoying. If the rules are applied
| by a bit but in a consistent way and mercilessly, people will
| either not break the rules by being aware or they'll switch to
| something else where their stuff is not banned.
| awbraunstein wrote:
| As someone who worked at YouTube for some time, I'd actually
| say that this isn't an accurate assessment. Most of my former
| coworkers were disheartened at these stories. Some individuals
| actually were very active on the r/youtube subreddit and worked
| to handle individual cases that came up like this one. I think
| many are just resigned (but not content) to the fact that
| unless Google decides pump lots of money into human moderation,
| we are stuck with the algorithmic moderation that is
| responsible for many of these issues. And unfortunately, that
| isn't a problem that can be simply solved with code.
| S_A_P wrote:
| Thanks I will try the Reddit channel.
| notreallyserio wrote:
| I don't really understand this. It seems like anyone working
| as an engineer for YouTube could find a position anywhere
| else. Why put up with this sort of unethical corporate
| behavior -- that is, banning without providing details?
|
| You're right that it can't be solved with code, but can't it
| be solved by leveraging power as a scarce resource? Hiring is
| incredibly expensive so at some point they have to give. And
| if they don't, well, at least you're not contributing to the
| problem.
| winternett wrote:
| They are simply too big now, and there is this dumb idea
| about promoting one path of success across many different
| types of creators.
|
| A plumber that wants to promote their business and it's
| reliability should not be required to make funny scripted
| videos using the "OhNo song" just to get views.
|
| A doctor that pops pimples should not be required to make
| funny or gross scripted videos using the "OhNo song" just to
| get views.
|
| A musician that want's to promote their music as well should
| not be required to make funny scripted videos using the "OhNo
| song" just to get views, especially because that song is
| probably not their own, and it has nothing to do with their
| music.
|
| None of those "creators" should be required to pay to
| promote/boost their originally produced content either
| (especially when they're primarily promoting "OhNo by
| Creeper", but somehow that's become a widely accepted thing
| as well... It's all dumb, and pretty much a modern-day
| pyramid scheme.
|
| If you spend most of your time working on designing
| thumbnails and writing scripts, finding daily trending hash
| tags, and in shooting and editing videos according to success
| advice, you're simply not working on improving your "bread
| and butter". As trends become coveted goals, the overall
| quality of content declines as well, and it burdens attention
| spans of viewers overall (just look at how many videos now
| over-use jump cuts, overly excited and sensationalized
| dialogue, and zoom effects)... :\
|
| This is what also encourages content theft as an easy route
| to getting views and likes that ultimately do nothing good
| for most people... It's popularity without profit for anyone
| but the platform.
|
| People get frustrated only after years of trying to climb the
| mountain and finding out there is nothing at the top, the
| platform loses it's foothold, and then is replaced by
| something new... Rinse and repeat... Friendster, Myspace,
| Mp3.Com, Napster, etc... :\
| xg15 wrote:
| > _Most of my former coworkers were disheartened at these
| stories. Some individuals actually were very active on the r
| /youtube subreddit and worked to handle individual cases that
| came up like this one._
|
| Out of curiousity, is there any actual process that is kicked
| off when someone posts into the support forum or the
| subreddit?
|
| Or are there just some employees who happen to browse those
| boards in their free/20% time - and if they feel particularly
| moved by some post, they can try to rally up enough internal
| support to do something about it?
|
| Because with all due respect, that's not support, that's
| charity.
| jahav wrote:
| We need a rule of law from these unaccountable tech-giants.
|
| It's not an acceptable to say "algorithm did it" with no
| recourse.
| nanidin wrote:
| I lost my Google account the same way in 2007ish. I never got it
| back, nor was I able to get any explanation of the violation or
| chance at redemption. Best of luck to you, but until there is
| regulatory pressure to give some rights to account owners, you're
| probably not getting anywhere.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| There's the approach of showing up in person to voice
| displeasure. Even if it's not an avenue you plan on taking, it's
| sufficiently viable that Alphabet / Google / YouTube should
| include it in their threat model.
|
| I'd strongly recommend taking steps to remove yourself from the
| platform, voting with your feet. You're cetainly not strongly
| wedded, as major YouTube creators are, many of whom have been
| taking steps to establish themselves more independently of that
| one platform and its advertising revenue, through direct
| donations (generally through Patreon, which I'd put fair money on
| one of the monopolists buying out at some point, possibly to shut
| down). What I'd strongly suggest is trialing peer-to-peer video-
| sharing technologies such as PeerTube.
|
| Note that the independent route may also be subject to copyright
| claims (will your Internet provider cut you off?), harassment,
| and/or cracking attempts. YouTube does actually protect you a
| gainst a fair amount of that. You'll also want to find out what
| CDN options are available for that video that makes you Internet
| Famous for a day.
|
| I'd strongly urge you to file complaints with your political
| representatives and consumer-protection agencies. This would
| include local (city/county), state, and national representatives,
| as well as your state's attorney (usually, there may be another
| consumer protection agency), and national communications and
| trade agencies (in the US: FCC and FTC). _This step combined with
| seeking out and promoting alternatives is our best way out of the
| present monopoly hell._
|
| I'd specifically request:
|
| - Appeals processes for account bans.
|
| - Full reports on _why_ invalid bans were imposed.
|
| There's a long list of other reforms people who've spent more
| time than me on this have come up with. Look up Cory Doctorow,
| Tim Wu, Tristan Harris, the EFF, and others who are advocating
| for reforms.
| dmitrygr wrote:
| Re: threat model
|
| I am sure it is I considered. There was that one shooting at
| the YouTube, campus caused by precisely this.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| I am aware.
| daveevad wrote:
| > There's the approach of showing up in person to voice
| displeasure.
|
| People should remember that someone showed up at Youtube HQ
| with a gun a few years ago[0].
|
| [0](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YouTube_headquarters_shooting
| )
| robflynn wrote:
| I uploaded a private video of a screen recording of me demoing an
| in-development feature of a website for a client so that I could
| ask them if that's how they intended it to function. There was no
| audio.
|
| That video received a strike and was flagged as a scam... before
| I ever even sent it to the client. YT is ridiculous.
| mayregretit wrote:
| Can "banned for repeated violations" be construed as _defamation_
| (libel)?
|
| Maybe average internet users go to OP's channel, see it's banned,
| and assume that OP did something illegal--like posting pirated
| movies, stealing money earned from copyrighted music, or even
| worse things like posting violent videos, terrorism or child
| pornography--thus tarnishing OP's good name.
|
| I wish we had some legal mechanism for average citizens that
| covered the increasingly common case where "company X forced _me_
| to spend a bunch of time /money because of _their_ mistake. "
|
| P.S. Sorry that happened to you. Good that you had local backups,
| that's a lesson for us all!
| cronix wrote:
| Everything you listed is someone else's opinion on what
| happened, but never stated by the company. All the company did
| publicly was say "this account is banned" with no libelous or
| defamatory statements attached. IANAL.
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