
Vice Media Had YouTube Shut Down My Gaming Channel Without Contacting Me - thinkingemote
https://medium.com/@anthonyheddings/vice-media-had-youtube-shut-down-my-gaming-channel-without-even-contacting-me-4298d13da841
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dragonwriter
> Vice Media Had YouTube Shut Down My Gaming Channel Without Even Contacting
> Me

Shouldn't the complaint be “YouTube shut down my gaming channel at Vice’s
direction without even contacting me.”?

Though I'm not sure even that is a particularly valid complaint given the
authors _admission_ that he was probably infringing the trademark: because in
that case, as soon as YouTube was aware of what was going on, it was also
quite likely knowingly violating trademark, and the only option that did not
involve risking incurring liability was to stop doing that. Now, if there was
a contractual relationship which exposed YouTube to parallel liability risk
for cutting of a channel for potential infringement improperly, then they'd
have to carefully weigh their action, but like every online service provider
of broad public services, they've structured their contracts well to minimize
liability risk for actions against their users based on site policy or legal
compliance issues even when the decision is ultimately erroneous, so there's a
definite assymetry in disputes even where the who is in the right is a 50/50
tossup from the info available to YouTube. Or even where the complaining party
is most likely wrong, as a small risk of large damage is still a significant
risk.

~~~
ehsankia
Note that the author has zero proof of any of this. He just knows that his
channel was deleted, and assumes everything written there. The correct
approach would've been to contact Youtube and understand the situation. Since
the content has nothing to do with Vice, I honestly don't see why Youtube
would want to take down the content. Seeing that the channel is back up, it
seems like it was indeed a misunderstanding and it has been resolved.

~~~
tyingq
_" Seeing that the channel is back up, it seems like it was indeed a
misunderstanding and it has been resolved"_

A more cynical view would be that contacting YouTube has little effect. Being
publicly noisy with speculation works better.

~~~
ehsankia
I would normally agree in cases where creators try to contact Youtube for a
week, fail, and post on social media. But in this case, we have no way of
knowing since the author went straight to speculation and social media.

~~~
dwild
There's plenty of way bigger channel that had to go public because they had no
point of contact with Youtube that would answer them.

I often saw people on Reddit refer other youtuber to H3H3 because they did
have great contact with Youtube (sadly because they were often victims of how
Youtube deal with that kind of stuff).

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danso
This discussion seems as good as any to post this related tweet:
[https://twitter.com/megtra/status/1101294091214573568](https://twitter.com/megtra/status/1101294091214573568)

> _Hey @YouTube you just booted me out of my youtube & all my google accounts
> for "impersonating" someone. My legal name IS Meghan Trainor. My website:
> [http://meghantrainor.com](http://meghantrainor.com) with several decades of
> articles about my work. I can't even access the form to correct this! Help!_

(Meghan Trainor is also the name of a popular singer/songwriter)

To YouTube's credit, they are responding via that Twitter (after 12+ hours).
Amusingly they ask her to "send us a link to your channel URL or a video that
you've posted in the past" and she can't because her Google account was also
apparently suspended.

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amanaplanacanal
> I don’t keep backups of my content

I think I see the biggest problem here.

~~~
reificator
Part of the appeal for YouTube is that there's no storage limit or associated
costs.

I've spoken to YouTubers who started off keeping backups but quickly realized
it was nowhere near cost effective for them to do so. And even if you do pay
enough to keep those backups around, there's no way to back up the links
themselves. For some videos it doesn't matter whether you reupload them or
not, if it's not available at the original link it might as well still be
dead.

~~~
cr0sh
> I've spoken to YouTubers who started off keeping backups but quickly
> realized it was nowhere near cost effective for them to do so.

Because 1 TB drives are expensive?

I realize that wasn't always the case (look, I'm old enough to remember when a
5 MB hard drive cost close to $10k for a personal computer system) - but I
still think it's a bad excuse. If the data is important enough to put up for
others, then it's important enough to back up (even if only the edited and
compressed version).

Today, it makes no sense at all not to keep a backup. Even using DropBox or
Google Drive is plenty cheap.

Your other points do stand, however.

~~~
mchristen
Some of the creators on Youtube are recording in RAW 8K footage. A few 1TB
drives will not make a dent in their capacity needs.

~~~
sandworm101
Fools and their money. If your only product is uploads to youtube, 8k is
massive overkill. 4k is overkill. For the vast majority of content, even 1080p
is overkill.

Spend that money on microphones and editing equipment.

~~~
jdboyd
Lighting and sound are definitely more important. Under many circumstances a
good sounding well lit 720 (or even 480) video is better than an average 1080
video. That does mean that 1080 or 4k is overkill though. Especial if the
content includes a lot of detail shots or text.

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dewey
Channel seems to be back? Or am I missing something, clicking on the "old
channel" link seems to show a bunch of videos.

~~~
ehsankia
It irks me how, with most of these take down controversies, the creator
doesn't even try contacting Youtube anymore. They go straight to making a big
fiery video and post it on all social media sites. They always have bold
claims with zero proof.

I don't understand how the author can just assume the cause and intent of this
take down when he hasn't even contacted Youtube yet. To me it sounds like a
misunderstanding or bug.

~~~
CaliforniaKarl
Near the end of the post, the author does say:

> I haven’t heard back from YouTube yet on the appeal I submitted.

To be fair, we don't know how much time has elapsed between submitting the
appeal and making the Medium post.

~~~
ehsankia
The post says:

> I awoke this morning to a barrage of messages from fans of mine wondering
> where my content had gone.

Since this blog post was posted today, it seems like not very long.

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djsumdog
Every single content creator needs to host all their videos on something that
is more under their control. People need to learn how to setup PeerTube
instances. I realize people are afraid they close loose subscribers/revenue,
but trust me, the people who prefer PeerTube are most likely running
adblockers anyway.

Always host your video on an alternative network you pay someone for and have
regular backups of. The time is coming when YouTube will not be a viable place
for creators.

~~~
eropple
I can't see how PeerTube isn't a non-starter. Aside from being _much worse_ of
a cesspit of porn, white supremacists, and other things you don't want your
kids finding without having you there to explain what's going on (and yeah,
you're gonna say "but you can filter it!"\-- _you_ can, _I_ can, _people_
can't), it has no reasonable-person-testable model for creatives to actually
pay their bills, both through lack of reach and lack of accessibility. (Which
is to say--the adpocalypse is real, but most creatives aren't finding Patreon
supporters on ye olde PeerTube.)

(Aside: if your proposed model includes the word "cryptocurrency," you fail,
do not pass go, do not collect two hundred dollars. Rent and taxes are
denominated in real money, thou must do likewise.)

For all the huge, gaping problems that YouTube has, and right now in another
thread I'm going to the mat on exactly that, centralization won and will
continue to win and so we need to use the big lever (y'know, the "being in a
society" one) to fix what's centralized, not expect people to scatter to the
four winds of irrelevance.

~~~
felipemnoa
>> centralization won and will continue to win and so we need to use the big
lever

It may have won the current battle, but who really knows if centralization
will be the norm in say 10, 20 or 50 years. There have been lots of instances
where a technology or company seemed to have won only to loose to an upstart
that they never saw coming. And when they loose they tend to loose big.
Getting completely obliterated within a few short years. Nokia and BlackBerry
phones are relevant examples.

~~~
wmf
If you die in the short term you can't come back 10, 20 or 50 years later.

------
Animats
This is why I have "ANIMATS" as a registered trademark.

