
Google terminating YouTube channels and videos (2016) - amelius
https://www.maxlaumeister.com/blog/google-is-deleting-your-favorite-youtube-videos/
======
jimminy
Part of the issue is just the systems on the backend. I had my account removed
about 3 years ago for some mistaken flag of copyright infringement, having
never uploaded a video. I had 7 years of liked videos and curated playlists,
that I wanted to save. Compounding the personal severity, some of the channels
I'm subscribed to contained personal private videos from friends that had
passed away.

It took me 4 days to get my account restored, and required calling into both
Google and Youtube, as well as emailing, and contacting friends that worked at
Google to get internal numbers. All because they have some system that
accidentally flagged an account with zero uploads, and Google still lacks any
real form of public customer service.

~~~
colonelpopcorn
Because you're not a customer. You don't pay for YouTube, advertisers do.

~~~
adventurer
YouTube Red or as I like to call it sometimes, because frankly I can't
remember, RedTube. <-NSFW

~~~
tnoeu09rclnt
In case anyone is unclear on this, RedTube is a different site that hosts
hardcore porn.

~~~
yjftsjthsd-h
... a fact which can lead to _hilarious_ misunderstandings

------
thedevil
Because of these, Alexa O'Brien, Microstopped, and a few other incidents I've
seen on HN, I've become very concerned about Google's power over my life,
arbitrary moral decisions, and lack of customer service.

Within a week I will take my phone number out of Google Voice. I plan to
change emails in the coming months as well. I've started to do regular backups
of my Google Drive. I've also started to do any searches on controversial
topics in Firefox on DuckDuckGo. If any of my side projects become valuable
enough, I'll probably move them off GCS as well.

I'm a little weird in the way I think, so maybe I'm the only one so concerned.
I'm probably too paranoid. But sometimes I lose a little sleep thinking about
the potential consequences of Google randomly closing my account.

~~~
dsrajapaksha
How do you plan to change emails? I'm thinking of moving out of Gmail too but
didn't decide on a service yet. Office 365 with Exchange sounds good but it's
like moving from one monopoly to another I guess.

~~~
x0x0
Fastmail is the best of the non-gmail email providers imo. Plus they're a
simple business: you give them money and they give you email. You should check
them out.

~~~
velox_io
I only skimmed their website, but I didn't see user aliasing[edit: they do
aliasing & wildcards], or shared accounts. In fact any real mailbox features?

I am becoming concerned about the power Google has over my life (have been for
a while). They know what you're reading (Chrome, even in incognito mode via
DNS), what your thinking (web searches), who you're in contact with (Gmail,
Android + their Apps), not to mention maps and what they do with your photos/
drive data. Even patient data with the NHS sharing data with Deepmind[0]. The
company needs to broken up as the Did with Microsoft years ago.

[0][http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-40497020](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-40497020)

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chiaro
Yeah, it's hard to get this right, and while they've been overly aggressive on
copyright claims for a while, I'm glad that they're finally expanding this
hardline stance against extremist content too. Though I'm not surprised it
took literally funding Hezbollah (in contravention of UN SCR 2178 I might add)
for them to take a look at what their monetisation schemes were enabling. A
lot more to go though. When opening an incognito tab and searching something
as innocuous as "feminist" gives the results it does, it's not hard to see
youtube as being one of the foremost contributors to extremism, especially in
kids. Real change won't happen until flagged videos get penalised in
recommendations and search results too.

~~~
averagewall
Extremism is still just a political viewpoint. It's not inherently more wrong
than the others. You're saying Google should impose popular US culture and
politics on the world. Including taking sides in conflicts between other
countries. It's pretty arbitrary and could easily be wrong.

If you're worried about kids, better ban violent movies, video games, the
news, and angry music. No, people have tried "think of the children" before
but the children turned out fine.

~~~
chiaro
Extremism is political, but it can't be reduced to a simple difference in
viewpoints. Cultural/moral relativism, beyond being a bit of a dead end
philosophically, can certainly result in an inaction that opens the doors to
political degeneration, anti-social behaviour, and terrorism.

As for other forms of media, we _do_ prevent kids from accessing age-
inappropriate stuff, more or less in line with developmental psych research
[see: Huesmann, Moise-Titus, Podolski, & Eron (2003)]. YouTube is the odd man
out here. The handwringing apologia over the appropriateness of a child
entertainer using ethnic slurs would be laughable in any other medium.

Google has famously taken a stance on not being evil. It'd somewhat undermine
this goal if it were unable to determine what evil is, and isn't.

~~~
Testerkasdl
> Google has famously taken a stance on not being evil.

They changed this policy when they got into the business of telling people
what to think and control opinions.

~~~
kevinh
Google's motto is still "Don't be evil". You may be confusing it with
Alphabet's motto, which is "Do the right thing".

~~~
talmand
Regardless, both are still failing.

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pjc50
TLDR: the copyright takedown regime still has no recourse for errors or
malice.

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smnscu
I follow both Casey and the Trending page. This was his first video of his not
in there. I'm so incredibly fed up with them. I hope Cloudflare Stream will
help someone build a creator-friendly to YouTube, so it can burn in the
dumpster fire it created.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZakJFqdpRY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZakJFqdpRY)

~~~
dingoonline
YouTube isn't going to get replaced. Google still aren't still aren't really
making any money from it. For the majority of YouTube's life, it's run at a
loss for it's owner. Think about it; YouTube offers free, unlimited, original
quality video storage. In fact, they're such a charity, they'll even compress
down your original quality video down to a manageable size where thousands of
people can be accessing it from across the globe at the same time with no
bandwidth issues. If web video standards improve such as to allow 60fps
playback, YouTube will automatically re-encode and re-compress your original
file to match.

YouTube isn't great. As a community, it's a pretty bad caretaker. But it's the
best that anyone will get. It almost seems like people have forgotten the pre-
YouTube times where ebaumsworld was still the dominant video site and where
they were _actual_ gatekeepers to content.

[https://www.wsj.com/articles/viewers-dont-add-up-to-
profit-f...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/viewers-dont-add-up-to-profit-for-
youtube-1424897967)

The only way it gets replaced is if they upset the majority of their users.
Which at this point, still isn't happening. The YouTube drama crowd isn't the
majority of the site. The reason why late night clips get sent to the top of
trending most often isn't because YouTube is in conspiracy cahootz with ABC.
It's because that's what an 'average' YouTube viewer is most likely to want to
watch and would most likely produce a predictable return.

For a successful YouTube competitor, it's going to take a large company with
real balls to want to compete with Google and YouTube.

------
amelius
> I believe that OwnVideo is an important experiment in letting users retake
> control of their video content and in helping make the internet more
> decentralized, as it was originally designed.

I wonder how Google feels about vloggers leaving their platform, and if they
would actively try to stop them, e.g. by downranking videos that refer to
videos on other websites.

~~~
mmanfrin

      e.g. by downranking videos that refer to videos on other websites.
    

This feels like it would be a very large antitrust suit waiting to happen.

~~~
mkhalil
Companies get away with antitrust violations a lot more than an average person
thinks.

~~~
xor1
You are being extremely unfair towards the average person. The average person
knows, and they also know that they are powerless.

~~~
ShabbosGoy
Like Michael Lewis states in the Big Short, immigrants will be blamed for the
corporate racketeering that regularly takes place in the US.

------
chiefalchemist
Slightly off topic (sorry), but if Google can't manage YouTube and its users,
how is Sidewalk Labs going to fare any better trying to run whole cities?

[https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/oct/21/google-
ur...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/oct/21/google-urban-cities-
planning-data)

What is it about providing a reasonable level of human-based customer service
so many SV firms don't understand?

------
pdimitar
Let me be the hater: _Serves you right for trusting a corporation._ :)

In seriousness, use youtube-dl or similar tools and mirror your content. If
you're a content creator and can make anywhere from $1500 to $5000+ a month,
surely it isn't a big problem to buy a NAS at some point. You have no excuse
not to do so in this age.

 _Corporations don 't care about people_, it's shameful that this isn't a
genetic memory of the entire Homo Sapiens species yet.

Guard your backyard with your own shotgun.

------
profalseidol
Go for the extra (but most important) mile, use "Free Software" and not "Open
Source".

------
wolco
Is the author better off for leaving? No, why not continue to offer the videos
on youtube not work during school. Keep posting the videos to your website and
using the free time you have add in additional content.

Google might lose a little but it won't matter or be noticed by them. But the
author will lose their income and free time. This seems to be an emotional
choice but not a wise one.

If the offending videos are from 5 years ago chances are they earned the
majority of what they will. Youtube may change a rule in the future but you
can follow policy changes and in this case they gave a year or so grace.

~~~
Tijdreiziger
This is an ideological move on the author's part, not a pragmatic one. He most
likely knows that Google won't care, but he's of the opinion that he can't
continue to endorse using YouTube in any way, and therefore he's taken his
videos down.

------
chmike
Excellent initiative to create OwnVideo. I was wondering how much time it
would take. Now find a way to add advertisment or tips to it and you might get
rich. I would have implemented it in Go or integrated it with Hugo.

------
profalseidol
A glimpse into how the world will be once capital accumulates more and more.

------
antiremover
Because Google love removing everything for no reason, and they love it. There
are lot of features that are being removed from Google's services for no
reason. Example: Dark mode removed from Android OS without notice. And they
just bring us annoying features instead. Google will die soon at 2030, they
have no live, trust me.

------
lupinglade
Yeah, sounds like Google.

