
YouTube can terminate anyone they deem “not commercially viable” - bluefreeze
https://www.reddit.com/r/YouShouldKnow/comments/du95s3/ysk_that_youtube_is_updating_their_terms_of/
======
tristanj
For what it's worth, the terms and conditions in other Google products such as
Chrome, Chrome OS, and Android Studio already include similar language. I
don't believe this clause was added specifically for YouTube.

[1] Google Chrome Terms of Service - _12.2 Google may at any time, terminate
its legal agreement with you if ... (E) the provision of the Services to you
by Google is, in Google’s opinion, no longer commercially viable._
[https://www.google.com/intl/en_sg/chrome/privacy/eula_text.h...](https://www.google.com/intl/en_sg/chrome/privacy/eula_text.html)

[2] Google Chrome OS Terms - _11.2 Google may at any time, terminate its legal
agreement with you if ... (E) the provision of the Software or Services to you
by Google is, in Google’s opinion, no longer commercially viable._
[https://www.google.com/chromebook/termsofservice.html](https://www.google.com/chromebook/termsofservice.html)

[3] Android Software Development Kit License Agreement - _9.3 Google may at
any time, terminate the License Agreement with you if ... (D) Google decides
to no longer provide the SDK or certain parts of the SDK to users in the
country in which you are resident or from which you use the service, or the
provision of the SDK or certain SDK services to you by Google is, in Google 's
sole discretion, no longer commercially viable._
[https://developer.android.com/studio/terms](https://developer.android.com/studio/terms)

------
recrudesce
To me this means that Google are within their rights to remove access to a
system that THEY deem to be not commercially viable.

Rather than "hey, you're not making us any money, you can no longer access
Youtube" it's more "hey, this service we're offering you is costing us more to
run than we make out of it, so we're going to shut it down".

People are reading this wrong IMHO.

------
recrudesce
[https://twitter.com/TeamYouTube/status/1193988444873060352](https://twitter.com/TeamYouTube/status/1193988444873060352)

> The section of our Terms that you're referring to is _not_ about terminating
> an account if it’s not making enough money – it's about discontinuing
> certain YouTube features or parts of the service, e.g. removing outdated/low
> usage features. This does not impact anyone in new ways!

Told ya.

------
eqtn
So, Does this mean that the YouTube has a clause to ban your account if you
are using ad blocker? I would say that a person with numerous subscriptions
and watches YouTube daily (non ad block user) would be considered commercially
viable.

~~~
nextlevelwizard
Accounts are free and if you are not uploading completely unnecessary. You can
still access the RSS feeds for each channel regardless if you have an account
or not.

~~~
Andrew_nenakhov
Someone recently [1] got his Google account (think Gmail, Docs, etc) banned
for watching YouTube without ads via some Android app.

[1]
[https://github.com/TeamNewPipe/NewPipe/issues/2723](https://github.com/TeamNewPipe/NewPipe/issues/2723)

Upd: added link

~~~
_nalply
Source?

~~~
Andrew_nenakhov
It was posted here on HN:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21247759](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21247759)

------
detaro
I see this in the current (local, can't figure out how to see English/US
version) terms already.

------
jerkstate
It's not really clear on what The Service is, is it youtube of all of google
services?

------
ngngngng
Isn't Youtube still unprofitable? It always seemed too good to be true to let
everyone upload their petabytes of useless videos that receive 3 views and
never generate any revenue for anyone.

Maybe the days of free storage are just ending.

~~~
iKevinShah
If you got to make money, you got to make money - Thats okay.

Major worry here being if I dont be a "money earning user" for Youtube i.e. I
have ad blocker and I do not monetize / upload videos, will I lose access to
ALL my Google products? (All being analytics, webmaster tools, gmail being 3
main ones)

------
azurezyq
I don't think there's any problem here.

Nothing lives forever and YT is not PG&E, it may shutdown and never return.
Similar things happened before, e.g., MSN Spaces, myspaces, etc.

It's actually a good thing to say this upfront.

~~~
thih9
I think this is not about the service shutting down.

It’s about the service terminating accounts for selected unprofitable users
only.

