[HN Gopher] YouTube suspended my channel for a video with disclo...
___________________________________________________________________
YouTube suspended my channel for a video with disclosed issue in
Grammarly
Author : evilksandr
Score : 328 points
Date : 2022-01-14 12:12 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (twitter.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com)
| happytiger wrote:
| I swear to goodness sometimes it seems like the search for the
| decentralized Internet / Web 3.0 tech is being powered primarily
| by outrage from google and PayPal's behavior specifically. They
| are the negative PR royal couple for centralized control gone
| wrong on the Internet.
| usr1106 wrote:
| It's called surveillance capitalism for a reason. Remember it's
| also totalitarianism, you don't have free speech when using free
| services. (libre vs. free)
|
| Edit: Of course lack of free speech is what Trumpists complain
| about, too. I say the same although I would use free speech for
| very different content.
| cobrabyte wrote:
| > Of course that's what Trumpists say, too
|
| Trump really did break some people.
| [deleted]
| dijonman2 wrote:
| I have nothing to do with Trump and hold an absolutist position
| on free speech. What's the political angle?
| waymon wrote:
| Why does everyone think youtube owes them something? Yall gotta
| stop using that service.
| xeromal wrote:
| It's the network effect. There are too many people pushing good
| content on Youtube to ignore it.
| fsflover wrote:
| At this point it's effectively the only public space to share
| videos. If you stop using it, you stop participating in the
| society.
| duiker101 wrote:
| For those wanting a more honest alternative to Grammarly,
| LanguageTool[1] is open source and quite good.
|
| That said, I am not a power user and my English is just passable,
| so your mileage may vary.
|
| [1] https://languagetool.org
| darekkay wrote:
| I second this. JetBrains IDEs use LanguageTool under the hood
| via the Grazie plugin [0]. I haven't used Grammarly ever since
| Grazie was introduced.
|
| Check Settings - Natural Languages - Grammar - Rules for all
| available grammar rules.
|
| [0] https://plugins.jetbrains.com/plugin/12175-grazie
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| It's not as good as grammarly, but it will definitely help and
| isn't that hard to run. My tricks to run it on a cheap digital
| ocean server
|
| 0. Use the docker version
|
| 1. use maxsize memory flag to keep the memory under control
|
| 2. set up a cron job to kill/restart it in the middle of the
| night, every night.
|
| 3. use a reverse proxy to hide the address at least a little
| bit
| newhotelowner wrote:
| Thank you! If this tool works as good as Grammarly, I will
| cancel Grammarly subscription.
| vijayabhaskarj wrote:
| Another alternative I've been using for some time:
| https://grammica.com
| Anthony-G wrote:
| Thanks. It's good to see that it's released under a LGPL
| license: https://github.com/languagetool-org/languagetool
| shafyy wrote:
| I've been using LanguageTool over Grammarly for the past few
| years, and love it. Granted, I just use it occasionally, and
| it's possible that Grammarly is a tad better - but it's more
| than enough for my needs.
| Karunamon wrote:
| Thanks for the pointer! I've been looking for a Grammarly
| alternative for ages now.
|
| Their product is both ridiculously overpriced for what you get
| ($30/month, last I looked, for a spelling/grammar checker along
| the lines of what MS Word provides), a massive privacy/security
| violation (you _have_ to send everything you type for the
| service to do its job; no corporate IT with a pulse would be
| okay with this), and worst of all, it 's buggy as hell. Last
| time I tried it, it refused to work on HN even though this is a
| bog standard text field, and I spent a ton of time trying to
| get it to stop correcting things that didn't need corrected.
| password4321 wrote:
| This seems to be standard practice, for years?
|
| YouTube's ban on "hacking techniques" threatens to shut down
| infosec YouTube
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20350306 (Jul 2019)
|
| YouTube is taking down educational hacking videos
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21251609 (Oct 2019)
| bingohbangoh wrote:
| I think Grammarly is a CIA front, or a front for some foreign
| intelligence.
|
| Founded by three Ukrainians -- none of whom speak English as a
| first language -- that can read and analyze any text you write
| and is chock full of security vulnerabilities. Color me
| skeptical.
| Sosh101 wrote:
| I wonder how much money Grammarly have spent with youtube.
| titzer wrote:
| Them and that...insurance company. They absolutely bombaaaarded
| me with ads and I literally never thought of them when I went
| shopping for car insurance a year back. Money well spent, you
| annoying turds!
| shmde wrote:
| Geniune question. Why don't you use Ad-blocker ? my life on
| the internet turned around when I started using it around 5-6
| years ago.
| titzer wrote:
| I do, but YouTube constantly finds a way around it. I've
| been running Adblock Plus and Ghostery Lite, but YouTube
| ads have poked their way through again.
| shmde wrote:
| I use UBlock Origin and I have NEVER watched an advert
| ever as far as I can remember.
|
| https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ublock-
| origin/cjpa...
|
| https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ublock-
| origin...
| titzer wrote:
| I don't use Chrome anymore, just Safari. I agree that
| uBlock Origin is best!
| evilksandr wrote:
| And I wonder that Grammarly didn't pay me even a penny for this
| issue I published in their Bug Bounty channel on the HackerOne.
| altdataseller wrote:
| I read somewhere they are among their top 10 advertisers. So
| this is not a good look for YouTube.
|
| Hope someone from Google chimes in because this is a PR
| disaster in the making
| usr1106 wrote:
| I don't think that I have ever seen a single ad for Grammarly
| on Youtube. Well, Google proably knows that I don't live in
| an English speaking country.
|
| I do see Grammarly ads if I search things like "practice or
| practise" because I write English every work day.
|
| Well, I use Firefox account containers and auto cookie delete
| everywhere. So Youtube knows little about me writing English.
|
| Many people outside the English-speaking world will never see
| those adds. Your search bubble is not others.
|
| Despite that, even in the search bubbles containing Grammarly
| I doubt closing an account with 3 videos will do any
| significant PR damage to anyone.
|
| So what where the videos about? Grammarly storing everything
| the user writes??? Selling it to others???
| inglor_cz wrote:
| "Many people outside the English-speaking world will never
| see those adds. Your search bubble is not others."
|
| I am a Czech and I see them all the damn time. Maybe
| because I consume a lot of English content.
| usr1106 wrote:
| I generally don't use Youtube a lot and because I never
| log in they have no profile for me. So they show me
| random household ads based on location. Very poorly
| targeted, 90% completely uninteresting stuff. They even
| don't know my mother tongue :)
| whatch wrote:
| > because I never log in they have no profile for me
|
| Oh I wish this was true
| slantyyz wrote:
| What I find funny is that YouTube knows who I am and
| where I live (English-speaking Canada), but every now and
| then I go through a short time period (a few days) where
| most of the ads are in French (for Canada).
| iqanq wrote:
| What do you mean a PR disaster, something people get upset
| about on Twitter for 3 days and then forget?
| pixl97 wrote:
| Unless Google deletes the articles about the incident from
| its index (and hey, it's possible), then the internet
| doesn't forget. Instead it just slowly builds personal and
| political opposition against them.
|
| Or are you saying we just should be quite and let them do
| what they want?
| iqanq wrote:
| How many "PR disasters" have Google had? If you google
| "google scandal", how many pop up? Have people stopped
| using Google because of those scandals? What makes this
| particular scandal stand up amongst those?
| x86_64Ubuntu wrote:
| I think the importance of this is being grossly overstated.
| amelius wrote:
| I also wonder how many users they have.
| prashantsengar wrote:
| I believe most of their users are academicians - students
| writing their thesis. And I don't think a lot of them pay for
| its license themselves. It's their institute which purchases
| the license.
| usr1106 wrote:
| In what sense? Ridiculously few or overwhelmingly many?
|
| Honest question of someone using mostly local free software
| (as not in the cloud, as in free speech, not beer) and not
| living in an English-speaking country.
| amelius wrote:
| What do you mean? How can a number be
| ridiculous/overwhelming when you don't know it yet?
| slantyyz wrote:
| I also wonder how many paid users they have.
|
| Seems like the starting price is USD $12/mo, which IIRC,
| costs more than my Office 365 Personal subscription.
| butz wrote:
| Publish those videos on odysee.com then.
| pshawcaddy wrote:
| Post on other platform. You'll get more votes purely from the
| fact that you were censored by Google.
| ballenf wrote:
| I wonder if we'll see a backlash against "plagiarism" being
| considered cheating? Parallel in some ways to using a calculator.
| Terry_Roll wrote:
| Is your backup or contingency using something like PeerTube?
| starwind wrote:
| Meanwhile, the video where Trevor Jacob appears to intentionally
| crash his plane is still up on Youtube, albeit demonetized
| megumax wrote:
| After Grammarly spent millions of dollars on Google ads, I expect
| them not to accept valid criticism on Google platforms.
|
| But it's unfair to block a guy that talked about a real flaw in
| Grammarly's plagiarism checker, at least pretend that you allow
| free speech and take down that video for a random reason
| specified in your ToS.
| smcl wrote:
| I think you've incorrectly invoked "free speech" here, IMO this
| isn't a free speech issue. It may be a TOS issue and it does
| sound like Google are being a bit unreasonable but "free
| speech" isn't really something Google ever promised to permit
| on their platforms
| raxxorrax wrote:
| Why is that not a free speech issue? It is not a legal issue
| of course, but removal of critical opinions very much
| qualifies to be a violation of the principle.
| smcl wrote:
| Because it's basically never been a thing there. Facebook,
| Twitter, Google - all of these platforms can and do remove
| things from their platforms for whatever reason they feel
| like. There's nothing we can do about it, there is no free
| speech there and acting indignant like they're eroding some
| right that you previously had is just pointless.
|
| It'd be like complaining that you can't get sushi at
| McDonalds anymore. You couldn't _ever_ do that, McDonalds
| haven 't indicated that they would offer this and we all
| know it's not going to happen.
| wintermutestwin wrote:
| Maybe their network effect monopoly means that they are
| essentially a public service and maybe our basic concepts
| of free speech should apply to all public services.
|
| I am obviously not talking about our current legal
| framework, but proposing the idea that the concepts and
| reason for free speech are meaningful enough to transcend
| that framework.
| foxfluff wrote:
| There's no "anymore" in these complaints though. There's
| just the complaint.
|
| It's not "my parents started beating me while they in the
| past didn't", it's just "parents are beating me." Or
| "google is suppressing my speech."
|
| Past actions of the involved entities do not invalidate
| the complaint. Likewise, "the grocery store next door
| doesn't sell sushi" is a legit complaint for the
| afflicted regardless of whether sushi was sold in the
| past or not. (Coincidentally, my go-to store just stopped
| selling sushi a week or two ago)
| smcl wrote:
| > But it's unfair to block a guy that talked about a real
| flaw in Grammarly's plagiarism checker, _at least pretend
| that you allow free speech_ and take down that video for
| a random reason specified in your ToS.
|
| See italicised section, it suggests there's a promise of
| free speech on Google that are somehow reneging on. I am
| just saying that this is a mistake, and now loads of
| people seem to be mad at the idea that I'm attacking
| "free speech". One of the reasons I thought it shouldn't
| be here is that it's fairly complex topic that IMO is
| orthogonal to the case in question because it raises all
| sorts of thorny side-issues that distract from the main
| thing: someone got booted from Google quite unfairly.
| [deleted]
| denton-scratch wrote:
| The (US) constitutional protections on speech constrain the
| actions of US governments; those constraints don't extend
| to private companies and individuals.
|
| And "principles" are things you can adopt and agree with as
| you see fit. They are not law. Not everyone takes an
| absolutist position that "free speech" is a principle we
| should all be defending to the last ditch.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| It's still fair to call this a violation of free speech
| -- even if the company has no legal obligation not to do
| it -- and therefore give them shit about it. As a
| customer. Who can take their business elsewhere.
|
| And if the customer can't take their business elsewhere,
| it appears we have arrived at the underlying problem.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| > It's still fair to call this a violation of free speech
|
| You can call it a violation of rock and roll, if you
| like. Normally, "violate" is something you do the law, or
| a contract, or an agreement. You can't normally "violate"
| a principle that you haven't declared your adherence to,
| just because someone else adheres to it.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > Normally, "violate" is something you do the law, or a
| contract, or an agreement. You can't normally "violate" a
| principle that you haven't declared your adherence to,
| just because someone else adheres to it.
|
| If you're a vegan libertarian who refuses to patronize
| agricultural conglomerates engaged in factory farming
| because it's a violation of the non-aggression principle,
| your argument for them not being in violation of it is
| that they never agreed to it?
|
| It's not the company's principle, it's the customer's.
| The company is violating it so the customer is offended
| and is willing to take their business elsewhere. And to
| publicly condemn the company over it so others do the
| same. This is how the free market is supposed to work.
|
| If a company is charging 6000% margins, you don't say
| "well I guess there's no law against it," you stop
| patronizing that company. And if you can't, the market is
| broken.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| > If you're a vegan libertarian who refuses to patronize
| agricultural conglomerates engaged in factory farming
| because it's a violation of the non-aggression principle,
| your argument for them not being in violation of it is
| that they never agreed to it?
|
| You make your point well.
|
| However I don't know what this "non-aggression principle"
| is. That kind of "violation" doesn't seem to be like
| violating the terms of an agreement; it seems more like
| "violating my personal space".
|
| I mean, I can set up whatever "principles" I like, and
| start accusing others of violating them. That's not like
| violating the terms of a law or agreement. It's a
| different use of the word "violate".
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > However I don't know what this "non-aggression
| principle" is.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-aggression_principle
|
| Often summarized as "don't hurt people and don't take
| their stuff."
|
| Kind of used it on purpose because vegans would want to
| apply it to animals and then there would be a debate
| about whether it should be etc., when that doesn't really
| matter here -- the vegan libertarian is perfectly
| entitled to consider factory farms a violation of the
| principle and use that to condemn them and refuse to
| patronize them.
|
| > That kind of "violation" doesn't seem to be like
| violating the terms of an agreement; it seems more like
| "violating my personal space".
|
| We're getting caught up on the semantics of the word
| "violate." Someone could just as easily accuse the
| company of not supporting free speech and end up in the
| same place.
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| The federal laws, much less the constitution, are the
| bare minimum in the USA. For example, most states have at
| least one statute saying companies can't fire employees
| over some forms of political speech.
|
| So while your statement is true, it is not the
| discussion-stopper that most people seem to think it is.
| VLM wrote:
| Unregulated monopolies do not have to uphold constitutional
| rights.
|
| The phone company used to be regulated so even if you were
| a hated Republican they still had to provide phone service
| to you if you lived in their service area. Those days are
| over and monopolies in practice will never be redefined
| again as "legal monopolies".
| jchw wrote:
| Free speech isn't just something that can be encoded into
| law, it's an ideology. A great ideology, imo.
|
| That said, with COVID-19 it really became apparent that these
| platforms have basically become a new public square, putting
| everyone in an awkward position. You can basically be ousted
| from the internet by just a couple entities like Facebook or
| Twitter and have your entire online presence torpedoed. IRL I
| can just go to a different bar, gym, whatever. On the
| internet, everything consolidates rapidly. It's hard to argue
| that companies should be forced to allow things they don't
| want on their platforms, but it's clear that something has to
| be done here if platforms are going to consolidate this
| badly.
| cloverich wrote:
| (tangent) kind of interesting how it resembles a small town
| in that way. Its a problem those of us in bigger suburbs or
| cities wouldn't recognize but, once you get stereotyped in
| some way -- any way -- it can become difficult or
| impossbile to escape. As the internet is even bigger than a
| large city -- its the whole world -- you'd naively think it
| would be even more proressive. In that sense these little
| fiefdom's provide a regression in addition to the features
| they provide.
| [deleted]
| jcranmer wrote:
| It is refreshing to see someone who diagnoses the issue
| here correctly.
|
| The root problem people are complaining about is the
| moderation policies, and the truth is that services like
| Facebook et al are simply _too large_ to be effectively
| moderated. Appealing to (US ideas of) free speech would
| propose that the solution to bad moderation is _no
| moderation whatsoever_ (speech restrictions must be
| content-neutral, and moderation by definition is not
| content-neutral)--and I think most people would rapidly
| find that no moderation is _worse_ than bad moderation.
|
| The most effective solution is to do what ought to have
| been done a decade ago and prevent further social media
| consolidation and consider breaking up the current
| oligopoly of social media.
| ipaddr wrote:
| I favour no moderation but with spam detection.
|
| Less moderation might be a good middle ground
| brigandish wrote:
| That's one route - that I also favour - but my favourite
| idea would be to give everyone access to the tools that
| FB et al use for moderation. If I don't want to see
| porn/politics/bots/cussing/sport/K-pop... then _I_ want
| to be able to choose that, not the platform. They have
| all this data and the ability to shape the feed, give me
| that power. No need to stomp on free speech, no need to
| clumsily moderate.
|
| Of course, people with power rarely like to share it, and
| they certainly don't want a free flow of information that
| they don't control. There's the rub.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > If I don't want to see
| porn/politics/bots/cussing/sport/K-pop... then I want to
| be able to choose that, not the platform.
|
| This would certainly be a welcome feature, but it doesn't
| really solve the problem.
|
| Suppose you want to see adult content, politics and
| cussing but you don't want to see bots. Nobody wants to
| see bots. Then their broken algorithm calls someone a bot
| who is not. Well, they're blocked from everyone, because
| nobody wants to see bots. That's the same as the status
| quo.
|
| The problem is that there is a trade off between false
| positives and false negatives. If they tune the thing to
| get rid of 100% of actual bots, it's going to false
| positive 98% of real humans. But if they do anything less
| than this, there will be actual bots and people will give
| them a hard time about it.
|
| And not just people, the government. The current
| government has explicitly stated that they want them to
| censor _more_ stuff. And the current government is
| pursuing an antitrust case against them. So their
| incentive is to turn up the false positives and screw
| over whoever that happens to screw over in order to
| appease them.
|
| The argument has been made that this is actually a First
| Amendment violation because of the state action:
| https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1363175977531150338
| jcranmer wrote:
| > The argument has been made that this is actually a
| First Amendment violation because of the state action:
| https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1363175977531150338
|
| The argument has been made, but not successfully. The
| thing is, threatening to pass a (flagrantly
| unconstitutional) law if companies don't do something
| isn't enough of a direct tie by itself to make someone a
| state actor. Especially when those countries from time to
| time _ask_ Congress to pass such a law.
| Karunamon wrote:
| What would likely pass constitutional muster _and_ get
| these companies to pay attention is the threat to either
| revoke Section 230 or modify it so that its protections
| are conditional rather than absolute.
|
| The constitution has nothing to say on the matter of
| holding them responsible for the libelous, defamatory,
| harassing, terrorist, etc. content they fail to moderate
| away every day.
| jcranmer wrote:
| The world without SS230 offers two possibilities: no
| moderation (with all the ills that brings), or moderation
| tuned to have a 0% false negative rate--and as a result a
| rather high false positive rate. Most likely, social
| media companies will choose the latter over the former.
| And given that about half [1] the people who complain
| about the current state of moderation think it's too
| heavy-handed, I think they'll be even less thrilled than
| they are now to have false positive rates skyrocket.
|
| [1] I suspect it's actually a fair bit more than half,
| given the semi-frequent occurrences of cases like this
| article that no one really wants to defend.
| Karunamon wrote:
| Why would they choose the latter when it's the most
| expensive option?
|
| Also, outright revocation of 230 is just one option.
| Companies at Facebook/Twitter/Reddit scale would do
| nearly anything to keep that protection since moderation
| at that scale simply is not possible. This gives an
| inroad to all kinds of regulation.
|
| Alternatively, your second scenario happens, and it
| likely leads to the destruction of large, centralized
| social media, and a proliferation of decentralized, hard-
| to-sue alternatives. This too, is a win.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| Now you're getting into the details of the potential
| retaliation when that isn't really the point.
|
| If a company is discriminating on the basis of race and
| government officials tell them to stop, there is no
| constitutional problem there, even if it comes with an
| implied threat of enforcement or new legislation, because
| passing a law against discrimination on the basis of race
| is not a constitutional violation. The government can
| directly punish that behavior so there is no problem to
| indirectly or implicitly punish it.
|
| If a company is allowing protected speech the government
| doesn't like and government officials tell them to stop,
| that's different. Because it would be unconstitutional
| for them to pass a law saying the same thing. And there
| are many other ways the government can punish a business,
| e.g. by breaking them up. So the implied threat is,
| censor or we'll break you up, or mess with Section 230,
| or some other thing you won't like. It's coercing them to
| do the thing the government isn't allowed to coerce them
| to do, under threat of adverse regulation that the same
| government could withdraw in response to compliance.
|
| What the adverse regulation is doesn't matter. It doesn't
| even have to be specified. The problem is the direction
| to do something the government isn't allowed to make them
| do.
| rosmax_1337 wrote:
| Far to often nowadays I'll hear people defend
| communications-companies based on the idea that they can
| censor whatever they want because they're private entities.
| Mostly though, that idea is only true for them when they
| feel that their ideological opponents are being censored.
| Framing companies like google as new public squares is spot
| on.
|
| And as you say, free speech is an ideology, and in my
| opinion this should be repeated. It is a culture and a
| mindset, not just laws, laws being downstreams from culture
| anyway. If you do not wish for it to apply in all those
| areas, in my opinion, you do not defend it at all.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| _It's hard to argue that companies should be forced to
| allow things they don't want on their platforms_
|
| Yes, because the concept of free speech has never implied
| that you're entitled to have other entities hear or repeat
| your speech nor is there any principle that compels someone
| else to listen to or repeat what you're saying. If you want
| that to be the case, that's certainly your prerogative, but
| that's a different concept from any mainstream definition
| of free speech I've come across.
| smcl wrote:
| My point is not that "free speech" as a concept is bad
| (though I do mention in another comment here that it does
| raise thorny issues). My point is that tying this complaint
| and "free speech" together is pointless because it directs
| attention at the wrong thing.
|
| It's the difference between saying "$person got kicked off
| Google in a violation of their free speech" and "$person
| got kicked off Google for a totally specious reason that
| doesn't even violate Google's TOS".
|
| The first one gets _immediately_ shut down because they
| didn 't violate anyone's free speech. If you try to make
| that argument it's a total non-starter. We can have a big
| fun discussion about free speech online some time - and
| that does happen here on HN - but that's not the issue
| here.
|
| The second one gets at the _actual_ issue - Google have
| just booted someone even though they didn 't apparently
| violate their TOS. They just arbitrarily did so to appease
| a paying client.
|
| I hope this is clear.
| jchw wrote:
| It's not that I didn't understand the point you were
| making, I just think it was not really relevant. It would
| be incorrect to say that they violated the user's first
| amendment rights. But the comment you responded to says:
|
| > at least pretend that you allow free speech
|
| Which is different than that, and I'd argue most
| platforms do at least pretend to espouse the ideals of
| 'free speech' even if that notion has been weaker lately.
|
| > The second one gets at the _actual_ issue - Google have
| just booted someone even though they didn 't apparently
| violate their TOS. They just arbitrarily did so to
| appease a paying client.
|
| It is a speech issue, even if not a legal issue, if you
| can pay Google to shut down random accounts that say
| things you don't like. The ToS violation is a red
| herring.
| derefr wrote:
| > It is a speech issue, even if not a legal issue, if you
| can pay Google to shut down random accounts that say
| things you don't like. The ToS violation is a red
| herring.
|
| I think we here all presume that interested parties can
| pay corporations to do _anything_ that is both legal, and
| which remains within the letter of the contracts (e.g.
| Terms of Service) that the corporation has entered into;
| and that the only thing stopping corporations from not
| being actively malicious /malfeasant (though not
| _illegal_ ) in their interactions with customers/users,
| is that they don't want to be perceived as breaking the
| terms of contracts they themselves offer.
|
| Voluntary self-bindings in a contract like a ToS are
| effectively _precommitments_ about a corporation 's own
| ethical behavior; with negative PR as a punishment for
| breaking said precommitment. Corporations offer these
| because they want people to have faith that they won't do
| certain things, _even when_ interested parties offer to
| pay them to do those things.
|
| So it's not interesting to me that Grammarly can pay
| YouTube to terminate creators _that were already
| violating the ToS in some way_ , but where YouTube
| previously hadn't much cared. Of course they can.
| Selective enforcement is an omnipresent fact of how
| corporate social-network moderation works, because
| corporations have no legal mandate of 100% enforcement,
| and costs can be cut by doing as little as it takes to
| make users not complain. So there are always going to be
| cases where a corporation didn't notice a violation. And
| why _shouldn 't_ a paying customer (one of their
| advertisers) be able to prioritize YouTube's attention on
| a previously un-noticed violation? If YouTube wanted to
| promise us that they wouldn't do that, _they 'd put a
| self-binding to that effect in the ToS_. YouTube, like
| all corporations, is an evil genie that starts off by
| telling you a bounded list of ways in which it _won 't_
| screw you. You still have to assume it'll screw you in
| every way not mentioned in the list.
|
| But it _is_ interesting to me that Grammarly can pay
| YouTube to terminate creators that _weren 't_ already
| violating the ToS in some way. Because that sets a
| precedent for the ToS not limiting YouTube's behavior --
| of YouTube not abiding by the precommitments they have
| made, of not caring about the negative PR consequences of
| doing so. Which really means that -- to the degree that
| this is a structural issue rather than a "renegade" actor
| -- there is no reason to believe that YouTube will hold
| to _any_ of its own precommitments in the future. Like,
| say, its precommitment to pay content creators.
| maxltv wrote:
| Grammarly is not paying for this. Grammarly is not
| involved or even concerned in any way. This is not even a
| "hack" but rather trying to use Grammarly for something
| it was not designed for, and showing it does not work for
| that. "Ok, duh, and thank you for your interest in
| Grammarly..."
|
| The plagiarism check is for self-checking, as in users
| making sure they did not miss any quotations and
| references in their work, and thus it does not even
| attempt to defeat any plagiarism enforcement counter-
| measures. It's not an enforcement tool.
| paulcole wrote:
| It is definitely a free speech issue but not in the legal and
| constitutional sense that you're thinking of.
|
| Regardless of the situation you're in, you have the ability
| to say, "I should have the right to free speech in this
| situation." Whether this belief will be validated in the
| reality of the situation is an entirely different matter.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| > I should have the right to free speech
|
| That's a legitimate opinion.
|
| I am of the view that rights are things that are granted by
| some authority, not something you acquire by simply
| existing. I envy the USA their constitutional protections
| on speech. But unless Google has made a grant of free
| speech rights on their platform, no such rights exist.
| paulcole wrote:
| yes, had you read/quoted my entire comment you'd realize
| that your point is exactly equivalent to my point
| smcl wrote:
| On the contrary, that is _exactly_ the sense I was thinking
| of. My point was that considering this in terms of an
| erosion of your free speech doesn 't make sense because
| there's no expectation of free speech in places like
| Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, etc. There _is_ an expectation
| that as long as you adhere to TOS you 'll be allowed to
| continue to use a platform, however.
|
| I just thought it was a mistake in this case to get into a
| broader debate about free speech online, what should be
| allowed, how it needs to account for various countries'
| conflicting laws, etc. Because that's a huge issue, it's
| probably not what was intended by the original commenter
| and we have a much more narrow and clearly defined issue we
| can focus on (being kicked off despite adhering to TOS).
| 1ris wrote:
| I absolutely disagree. But we had this debate over and over
| and over again. It would be great if you could stop rehashing
| is debate once more.
|
| I some twist of irony, this comment is against the HN TOS. So
| please stop.
| smcl wrote:
| How is my comment against the HN TOS?
| VLM wrote:
| Given the context of the linked article AND the somewhat
| off topic debate, he was clearly being humorous. Or
| trying.
| contravariant wrote:
| The idea that companies should be allowed to trample all over
| basic freedoms because they're not the government has to be
| the most capitalist idea ever.
| alisonkisk wrote:
| smcl wrote:
| What basic freedom are these companies trampling? I dislike
| them as much as the next person, but it's been clear from
| the start that they operate their little fiefdoms as they
| see fit and we should be under no illusions that we have no
| rights there.
|
| If we want to _fight_ for a change to the various laws in
| various countries, then that is a conversation I would be
| very willing to have. But let 's not pretend that any of
| these companies have ever offered their services as a place
| where you can exercise whatever version of free-speech laws
| your country has.
|
| Interestingly the places that tout "free speech" as a
| feature tend to descend into pretty grim places full of
| racism, anti-semitism, conspiracy theories and more besides
| (hello, 8chan/kun!).
| fallingknife wrote:
| Reddit and Twitter very much touted free speech 10 years
| ago and didn't have this issue (unless you want looking
| for it). And Google and FB effectively allowed whatever
| but didn't talk about it, until 2015 or so.
|
| 1. Tout free speech to great success and become a
| dominant platform
|
| 2. Get advertiser and political blowback
|
| 3. Ban unpopular speech
|
| 4. Now "free speech" platforms only have unpopular
| content
|
| As a tangent, pre 2010, the best argument I had with
| conspiracy nuts was "if all this shit you're saying is
| true, then why is the government / corporations not
| trying to silence you, like you say they are doing to all
| the people involved." Can't use that anymore.
| smcl wrote:
| Did that strategy ever work with conspiracy nuts? In my
| experience that argument was always met with a response
| that wove an even more elaborate conspiracy. Like the
| government/corporations/illuminati deliberately allow
| just enough people to talk about it unless they get too
| close, or something similar.
|
| Unfortunately I think this strategy is doomed, it relies
| on people who have rejected reality to use basic common
| sense. I don't even know if there _is_ a good strategy to
| calm a conspiracy nut, thankfully I don 't really talk to
| such people.
| fallingknife wrote:
| You're not arguing with them, but with everyone else in
| the room. Now the conspiracy nut would just say "but they
| do try to silence us" and he would be right.
| tonguez wrote:
| "What basic freedom are these companies trampling?"
|
| Freedom of speech
| rosmax_1337 wrote:
| Have you considered why those places become grim places?
| Does free speech lead to those ideas? That would be quite
| a out-there conclusion. Rather, those people can only
| express themselves on forums like that, they are banned
| on all the other mediums. If free speech was set as a
| standard on all mediums, those people would express
| themselves evenly on facebook, youtube and the chans,
| rather than being penned into fringe spaces like the
| chans. I think that society should be more clear about
| the stance on this, either their speech is banned
| throughout society, and free speech isn't quite what it
| used to be, or their speech is tolerated throughout
| society, and free speech remains.
| dale_glass wrote:
| They become grim because the conflict is asymmetric.
|
| Slinging insults, hate, disinformation, or just posting
| plain nonsense is easy. Explaining how things work
| properly takes a lot of effort and is hard. Eg, saying
| "The moon landings were a hoax" is easy. Explaining why
| that makes no sense, and how exactly humans did land on
| the Moon takes a good amount longer.
|
| There's also that the valuable, accomplished people in a
| community are a scarce resource. What would you prefer
| the resident rocket scientist to do, provide useful
| information for the community on something new going on,
| or try to reason with the newly arrived conspiracy
| theorist?
| alisonkisk wrote:
| mrtranscendence wrote:
| I'm not sure I follow you here. Are you saying that we
| should either ban racist speech outright (let's assume
| for argument that the speech in question is
| unquestionably, disgustingly racist), or else permit it
| in all spaces? Clearly there should be spaces where
| racism shouldn't be tolerated, but banning it outright
| seems like a bridge too far, and could make martyrs of
| those who defy such rules.
| bavell wrote:
| Capitalism is an economic system that works best in a free
| market without monopolies. I believe the word you're
| looking for is corporatism, where huge companies have
| subsumed the role of government (e.g. controlling speech).
| contravariant wrote:
| The fact that it doesn't work in practice doesn't mean
| the notion of allowing companies to do whatever they want
| isn't capitalist.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| The things propping up these companies are laws.
|
| The way you break a network effect is adversarial
| interoperability. You build a new (ideally open) network
| by bootstrapping from the old one. But companies use the
| DMCA and CFAA and other laws to stop competitors from
| doing that, so it doesn't happen.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| Well "free speech" is a concept, context can be
| "${country_constitution_str}" or as in "humanitarian values"
| [deleted]
| evilksandr wrote:
| Thanks for your support!
| joelbondurant1 wrote:
| JaimeThompson wrote:
| And yet YouTube has no problem monetizing channels that call the
| Holocaust a hoax.
| ddtaylor wrote:
| Welcome to YouTube support. Please submit your issue and wait for
| the community to upvote it enough until a real person at a large
| corporation actually reads it and clicks a button.
|
| Thanks for using YouTube support.
| [deleted]
| evilksandr wrote:
| it seems to be true (
| kragen wrote:
| I got an error message page from Twtter trying to follow the
| link;
| https://birdsite.xanny.family/evilksandr/status/147950761806...
| works.
| evilksandr wrote:
| 1) At the blocking moment I had only 2 videos (just screen
| records) on my channel which showed the same problem in 2
| different Grammarly products 2) these videos were an illustration
| for my report https://hackerone.com/reports/1282282, which
| Grammarly disclosed to the public and does not consider this a
| problem. 3) these videos were published after Grammarly
| representatives allowed me to release this information 4) in the
| description of the video there were links to the HackerOne case
| for the problem and to my blog
| https://evilksandr.medium.com/7bdb343c956b with a detailed study
| of this problem 5) the video was posted for educational purposes
| only and without malicious intent I believe that my channel was
| blocked by mistake. Please, anyone who knows somebody from YT/G
| team, tag them in my tweet.
| Ironlikebike wrote:
| My son (a curious juvenile) found his own YouTube account
| banned in a similar manner for disclosing a security issue in
| Google wifi products. There was no first or second warning
| (despite what the Terms of Service say). Google would not give
| him a justification for the banning other than "terms of
| service violation". The appeals fell on deaf ears. Now their
| automated system keeps banning every YouTube account he creates
| within days of creation.
|
| I worry that he'll never be able to appeal and a stupid
| 'mistaken reading of the ToS' on his part as a minor will
| affect his ability to ever host a YouTube channel or have a
| premium account subscription.
|
| Good luck getting a real human in Google to sympathize with
| your plight and restore your account. They see disclosure of
| security issues related to their products or their customers'
| products as ToS violations and appear to be unyielding and
| swift in silencing such content permanently.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| > worry that he'll never be able to appeal and a stupid
| 'mistaken reading of the ToS' on his part as a minor will
| affect his ability to ever host a YouTube channel or have a
| premium account subscription.
|
| How can a minor (who cannot sign a contract) be punished
| (legally) for not adhering to a ToS?
| staticautomatic wrote:
| The agreement can be voided.
| cortesoft wrote:
| Well, the 'punishment' is not letting him use the service,
| which he wasn't supposed to be able to do anyway as a
| minor. It isn't like he is going to jail or being forced to
| pay a fine.
|
| You seem to be arguing that you can't ever prevent minors
| from using your service, since you can only exclude them
| via your TOS and you can't enforce a TOS against minors.
|
| This seems very similar to the arguments that "freeman of
| the land" use to argue that they can do whatever they want
| since they don't agree to be bound by laws.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| > You seem to be arguing that you can't ever prevent
| minors from using your service
|
| Oh, I actually meant you shouldn't be able to exclude an
| adult based on them violating the ToS when they were a
| minor.
| cortesoft wrote:
| They can exclude an adult for any reason they want (in
| the US at least), as long as the reason isn't
| discriminatory against a protected class (for example,
| they can't exclude someone based on their religion).
| Other than that, they can exclude you for any reason they
| want, or no reason at all.
| usbqk wrote:
| I think they recently changed the tos to blacklist all videos
| regarding hacking and similar stuff
| Ironlikebike wrote:
| We did quite extensive digging into the ToS and there was
| nothing explicitly forbidden about what he had done and
| they refused to point to any rule he had violated in
| particular. If they've updated it, it must have been in the
| last 4-5 months.
| evilksandr wrote:
| Thanks for your support! These videos were published 4
| months ago, I posted a link to one of them 75 days ago on
| HN https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29056542 and my
| channel was suspended on Jan 7.
| evilksandr wrote:
| YT changed their ToS on Jan 5
| https://www.youtube.com/t/terms and after 2 days my
| channel was suspended
| habeebtc wrote:
| Wow. I think my big take-away is to never post disclosures
| about a company, on that company's platform.
|
| No, I'm not being sarcastic either. I am sure some Company-
| Man type was the one who stumbled across it and implemented
| the ban.
|
| Of course, the other lesson is one I have learned just
| reading tech news for years and years: Cover your bases and
| plan for retaliation. Even if the company in question doesn't
| have a history of that.
| politician wrote:
| Congratulations on figuring out how to keep your son's data
| out of the hands of Google at such a young age. What a
| blessing that will be!
|
| Many of the folks here have tried Degoogling with less
| success.
| godelski wrote:
| You can still track users without accounts. It's called
| finger printing. It's still probably associated with the
| main Google account too. There's tons of articles on
| Facebook and "dark" accounts.
| judge2020 wrote:
| These bans affect the YouTube Brand account / Channel only,
| Google accounts haven't been affected by regular YT ToS
| violations for a while.
| Ironlikebike wrote:
| Right, he still has access to his Google account, but he
| can't use YouTube from that account. In fact, he can't
| create a new account and login to YouTube from any of his
| devices. His only access to YouTube at this point seems
| to be through non-logged in access.
| [deleted]
| evilksandr wrote:
| Yes, it is. I am not going to create new accounts, it is
| fundamentally important for me to reinstate my own
| account.
| usbqk wrote:
| You mean that he can't open YouTube at all, not even to
| watch videos?!
| rovr138 wrote:
| >Now their automated system keeps banning every YouTube
| account he creates within days of creation.
| ballenf wrote:
| Why did you consider tricking the plagiarism detection engine a
| hack? Seems more like just one of probably several or even
| dozens of ways to trick the detection engine.
|
| While I applaud your work and clearly think the channel
| suspension is BS, I just don't know that I would have thought
| "HackerOne" when I discovered the issue.
| dylan604 wrote:
| History is filled with people having an idea, thinking it is
| not worth pursuing, then watching someone else actually do
| something with that idea instead, followed by the first
| person downplaying the idea altogether.
| ipaddr wrote:
| Trick the program into doing something other than intended is
| a hack.
|
| Whether someone cares enough to pay a bounty is something
| else
| evilksandr wrote:
| Grammarly didn't pay me even a penny for this issue I
| published in their Bug Bounty channel on the HackerOne.
| dekoruotas wrote:
| Have you lost access to the associated Gmail account too?
|
| Thinking I might have too many eggs in one basket.
| C19is20 wrote:
| Similar. I have 40-person-viewed yt page with several videos
| (dashcam footages). One of the videos got blocked (someone
| reported it) and I had to appeal. Things went well as I
| specified no bad language, blood, anything even remotely 'bad',
| but I do wonder if things could have been worse. A few days ago
| there was an hn comment thread referring Gmail backups. I tried
| one of the processes, failed (it went very tech for me), but I
| did set up some rules to send messages from certain people to
| another account....just in case I need them. Yesterday, I
| actually did need one of them - a message from over 10yrs ago -
| the presentation of which saved me several 'conversations', at
| work.
| fireflymetavrse wrote:
| I'm now considering removing all the videos uploaded, some of
| them more than 10 years old. Not worth the risk of an account
| ban.
| evilksandr wrote:
| Really good idea for primary account which related with
| gmail.
| itake wrote:
| Youtube does not allow "instructional hacking" videos. This is a
| TOS / community guidelines [0] violation. This ban has nothing to
| do with their advertiser.
|
| [0] - https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2801964?hl=en
| evilksandr wrote:
| The video was published after Grammarly representatives
| identified the case as "The described behavior is a
| functionality limitation that does not affect the security and
| privacy of our product", disclosed the case and gave me
| permission to publish my research results. More details here
| https://hackerone.com/reports/1282282 . Also there in the files
| you can find the original videos that were published on my
| channel.
| itake wrote:
| What was the title and description of the videos on your
| channel?
| jjk166 wrote:
| How would google's automated system for detecting hacking
| instruction videos know that grammarly doesn't consider
| something hacking and gave you permission to publish? You're
| posting something that looks like an exploit, and linking to
| multiple places that strongly resemble instructions for how
| to exploit a system, one of which is actively advertising
| "hiring hackers" and absolutely loaded with keywords and
| phrases that are going to trigger the algorithm.
| evilksandr wrote:
| Ok, I agree with the keywords (not with content, which
| Grammarly mentioned as "not affect the security and privacy
| of our product"). But YT algorithm has been thinking about
| that 4 months after I published these videos and terminated
| my account (without any strikes) 2 days after YT terms was
| changed https://www.youtube.com/t/terms
| smallmouth wrote:
| Youtube is not a place to "rock the boat" or question popular
| orthodoxy.
| evilksandr wrote:
| I did not even expect that my post here will raise such a storm
| and collect so many comments and reactions. Thank you all for
| your support, I hope it helps to reinstate my channel.
| joelbondurant1 wrote:
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