
YouTube might terminate your access if not profitable for Google - hashier
https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;t&#x2F;terms?preview=20191210#main<p>&gt; Terminations by YouTube for Service Changes
&gt; 
&gt; YouTube may terminate your access, or your Google account’s access to all or part of the Service if YouTube believes, in its sole discretion, that provision of the Service to you is no longer commercially viable.
======
imustbeevil
> 7 hours ago

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21502162](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21502162)

> 14 hours ago

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21500325](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21500325)

~~~
dang
and
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21506403](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21506403)

------
mic47
This might be actually a good thing. Say that you are a user, which uploads a
LOT of large videos that almost nobody is watching, apart from your small
cabal, and you restrict ads on them (AFAIK was possible in past, not sure if
it is now). In such case, you get quite good service for free, and you cost
YouTube quite a lot of money for storage.

I see that YouTube have following options: 1.) Show more ads elsewhere (so
other people will pay the price). 2.) Terminate your account. 3.) Charge you
money.

From those, actually 2/3 seems like the best (and being able to do #2 will
give them leverage for you to pay #3).

~~~
utf985
How is this a good thing? Obscure and/or old archive footage which usually
doesnt get that many views is one of the best things about YT.

~~~
k_sze
I’d argue that YouTube is a for-profit business. They have every right, within
legal bounds, to do whatever makes economic sense to them.

If you want an archive, go with archive.org. But even then, nothing is free.
If somebody thinks a footage deserves to be archived and preserved, somebody
needs to pay for the cost anyhow, e.g. via donations.

~~~
utf985
As a user I am not interested in YT's profits. However, what I am interested
in is being able to access useful content. For all intents and purposes, YT
has become the central place for people to upload such footage and of course
the prospect of its removal is worrying to me. There are vast amounts of
indispensable knowledge and information uploaded to YT that is far from being
deemed as profitable to Google and as such are under risk of being permanently
and irreversibly lost. Hence my confusion at the OP's description of the
situation as "a good thing".

~~~
knlinux
> As a user I am not interested in YT's profits. However, what I am interested
> in is being able to access useful content.

Choose two: a) free* b) reliable c) universal

* not counting ads.

------
madiathomas
I skip all YouTube adverts that are longer than 15 seconds and never click on
any advert when searching. I am probably considered "commercially unviable",
even though a company I own 100%, pays Google thousands of dollars every year
to use Google Suite and Google Cloud Engine. I don't see a reason for my
personal account to be commercially viable.

~~~
varelaz
Google uses CPM or even kind of vCPM model for videos mostly AFAIK, so if you
see more than 5 seconds of the ad, advertisers will pay for it.

~~~
PuffinBlue
Pretty sure it's 30 seconds before it's counted as an add view. Those un-
skippable under 30 seconds are always paid.

~~~
madiathomas
When I encounter an unskippable advert, I refresh the browser or report it as
inapprporiate. I don't want to be forced to watch an advert.

------
dooglius
Well the current ToS say:

> YouTube reserves the right to discontinue any aspect of the Service at any
> time.

So this, the notification, and the ability to appeal seem like significant
improvements.

------
nickjj
This is a weird rule for people uploading videos.

You can't just decide to show ads on your videos. Youtube requires you to meet
certain guidelines. The last time I checked you need 4,000+ hours of view time
each year and 1,000+ subscribers to be allowed to show ads on your videos.

That means smaller channels who have limited audiences would have no way to
avoid termination because Youtube is blocking themselves from generating
revenue from that channel due to their own monetization rules.

~~~
alexeichemenda
It's very likely that if the said small channels are indeed too small to be
allowed to monetize, then they would fall under the not profitable accounts
even if they were allowed to monetize.

~~~
nickjj
> It's very likely that if the said small channels are indeed too small to be
> allowed to monetize, then they would fall under the not profitable accounts
> even if they were allowed to monetize.

It might take 6 months or even a year+ of dedicated uploading to meet those
guidelines for most content (unless it's a really popular / trending niche
like a new game, etc.).

If Youtube starts banning those accounts then they are effectively not
allowing anyone else to join their platform because they would be terminated
before they have a chance to get popular enough to enable ads so that Youtube
can make money.

~~~
alexeichemenda
>If Youtube starts banning those accounts then they are effectively not
allowing anyone else to join their platform

That's a huge if - one that Youtube probably is not going to enforce on new
customers. The same principle applies to most businesses I know - a new
account/client has X months to be profitable until they get dropped.

On the flip side, i've often stumbled (in the days where I was parsing youtube
for side projects) on projects with hours long videos with 3 views - for
years. My best guess would be that those accounts / uploads are what youtube
is targeting, not preventing their new account sign up / new DAU drop.

------
utf985
So let's say you have an old YT account that you don't use anymore tied you
your gmail account and there a few dozen family holiday videos you uploaded
years ago to show friends (which was kinda the original purpose of YouTube)
and completely forgot about. Does this mean that one day you might wake up
with access to your gmail completely blocked off because an algorithm on YT
decided that your channel is not profitable?

~~~
IGotThroughIt
I think they're considered to be isolated services. You can have a gmail
account without having a youtube account.

~~~
ralonso
Not entirely true. Take the recent controversy around YouTuber Markiplier
having users' accounts shut down (including both YouTube and Gmail) for
spamming his YouTube livestream chatroom.[1]

I also did a quick search and it's been a while since both Gmail/Google
accounts and YouTube accounts are tied to one another.[2][3]

[1] [https://www.businessinsider.com/markiplier-youtube-fans-
heis...](https://www.businessinsider.com/markiplier-youtube-fans-heist-lost-
access-google-accounts-spamming-emotes-2019-11)

[2] [https://webapps.stackexchange.com/questions/1692/how-do-i-
un...](https://webapps.stackexchange.com/questions/1692/how-do-i-unlink-my-
youtube-account-from-my-gmail-account)

[3]
[https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/69961?hl=en](https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/69961?hl=en)

~~~
IGotThroughIt
Wow. So not good.

------
esotericn
Presumably this is to prevent silly abuse, like me uploading terabytes of
steganographic videos that no-one ever watches except my backup service?

Having said that, obviously YT can ban you for any reason whatsoever.

------
sornaensis
Good, maybe this signals the leveling off and impending implosion of ad
revenue. Internet 3.0 cannot arrive fast enough...

I am tired of all these giant sites de facto controlling information
repositories and communications channels because they have ad-sponsored
inertia.

~~~
blisterpeanuts
What do you envision internet 3.0 to look like? Some kind of shared,
distributed blockchain thing with no centralized repositories and control,
with micro-revenue flowing to each provider?

~~~
chii
More likely a completely closed off, proprietary protocol garden that only
authorized partners can post content on. Costs 10$ per month, and you get
clean, sanitary and non-controvertial, commercial content.

------
TheSpiceIsLife
Doesn’t this just mean that if YouTube becomes commercial non-viable they’re
not obligated to continue providing a service?

~~~
vbezhenar
Of course they are not obligated to provide a service.

------
tudorizer
As much as I dislike this, they are a business. Running servers and streams is
not free.

The great conondrum of software...

~~~
baybal2
And yet, Google gets very good prices for servers from OEMs. Instead of
terminating people without saying a word, and then stonewalling them, they
could've just demanded payment for the service.

~~~
smcameron
They build their own servers. They are an OEM.

~~~
baybal2
No, they buy them from Quanta and Supermicro

------
ianai
What does termination of your account mean? Are we talking losing your
email/gmail account?

~~~
jowsie
If the Markiplier situation is any indication, then your entire google
account, gmail and all.

[https://twitter.com/TeamYouTube/status/1193216884197314560](https://twitter.com/TeamYouTube/status/1193216884197314560)

~~~
alpaca128
So in other words it's the Google counterpart of Amazon banning users for too
many returns but without disclosing how some algorithm determines what is too
many.

I can see some unfortunate users learning the hard way why reliance on these
huge cloud services can backfire. And some people may just create a lot of
secondary accounts so they can continue uploading whatever they want, so I'm
not sure Google will actually get improvements from this TOS.

------
pingyong
Contrary to what some people seem to believe I really don't think this has
anything to do with trying to ban people who use adblock or the like. YouTube
actively allows for adblock, if they didn't want people blocking ads they
could just splice the ads directly into the video and stop transmission of the
actual video content.

This is most likely just a random change that gets blown way out of
proportion, it's not like Google hasn't banned people for any BS reason they
could come up with before.

------
RenRav
I don't even know what google or youtube ads look like anymore.

Maybe I can finally ditch Google once and for all if they just terminate my
account for me.

------
grenoire
Is this a recent change? I'm not sure if it's just another 'firing your
customers' clause or something more sinister.

~~~
AdrienLemaire
These are the new ToS that will take effect on December 10th.

I cannot find any related clause in the current ToS
[https://www.youtube.com/static?template=terms](https://www.youtube.com/static?template=terms)

------
thejackgoode
It's funny as I was just thinking that this makes sense for YouTube in my
case. I am using it mostly via mobile browser and current page refresh
behavior removes advertising from the video. I do it all the time.

I am expecting something like "pay for subscription or else" feature proposal
in the observable future.

------
Havoc
I thought basically most channels are duds?

------
aabbcc1241
YouTube and all other centralized/walled (hosted) services of course has their
own rights to terminate their services in any ways they prefer to. And the
internet users also always have lots of alternatives.

e.g. using their own web server, p2p network or other centralized/walled
(hosted) services.

------
PeterStuer
I have a family YouTube Premium sub. I think advertising is a horrible
monetization model. I also heard that a YouTube Premium view counts something
like 6-7 times in terms of monetization for content creators as compared to an
ad monetized view.

------
TheCapeGreek
I've seen 3 different interpretations of the same line now:

\- "If the service becomes too expensive for us, we'll close shop"

\- "If you block ads, we'll close your account"

\- "If you upload too much, we'll close your account"

------
19870213
Let's hope that if I view too many video's as a YouTube Premium subscriber I
will at some point get ads. And not that all my Google accounts get
terminated.

------
SamReidHughes
That's just standard "any reason, no reason, or all these explicit reasons
we've thought of" legalese.

------
justforfunhere
How does one become "no longer commercially viable" for youtube?

~~~
nissarup
Adblockers.

~~~
windexh8er
This doesn't make sense. Anyone can watch YouTube without an account. So even
if they terminated a consumer using adblocking it wouldn't change anything for
Google. This is likely targeted at users publishing a lot of low quality video
that get few views. If they enforce this my guess is we see backlash around
free speech and the like. This seems like a perfect way for Google to curate
"good" content in the eyes of themselves and potentially at the downside of
people speaking out against Google, their products or videos promoting a
competitive alternative. Google could deem things "not commercially viable"
for almost any reason. It appears to have the advantage of being a perfect
scapegoat.

~~~
pilif
> This doesn't make sense. Anyone can watch YouTube without an account. So
> even if they terminated a consumer using adblocking it wouldn't change
> anything for Google.

there are means to identify (and block) unique users without them needing to
have an account. Heck, there's even means to identify the usage of an ad-
blocker and/or youtube-dl and to refuse to provide the video for such cases.

~~~
windexh8er
I see the point but that's a cat and mouse game. Google would invest far more
resources to block those users than it was worth.

~~~
pilif
Yes. But if they deal with the low-hanging fruits, this change on TOS means
that they have covered their asses when the banned people start complaining

