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I was blackmailed – any YouTuber could be next

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Re: I was blackmailed – any YouTuber could be next

#211

Post by marcus_holmes »

colinmhayes wrote: post #123
colechristensen wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then complain about Google's monopoly, not its moderation inadequacies, and consider that creators unwilling to leave are the source of the monopoly, not necessarily its victims, especially if they're not even trying other platforms. I guess I don't like the entitlement/blame cycle where people who help create a problem complain about the consequences.

The monopoly is due to threshold of creators being on youtube. A single channel leaving would make no difference. I'd love to see a movement away from youtube, but that would require a movement with serous organization, which creators mostly aren't capable of doing.

This is exactly the same conversation that HN is having about blogging/social media.

Be the change we want to see in the world. Stop posting on YT/FB/IG/wherever, and create your own site, attract your own audience.

I'll come watch you/read it/listen to it. I'm sick of FB/YT/IG/wherever.

Re: I was blackmailed – any YouTuber could be next

#212

Post by phreack »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #208
vorpalhex wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then your company doesn't get to scale. Sorry, but you can't skip support because it's not cost effective, just like you can't skip financial regulations or data regs. You don't get to use the excuse of "Sorry we are too busy making billions, maybe we wouldn't have to cut corners if we weren't so successful."

The problem isn't scale. Scale is just how they made a lot of money. If you make a dollar a billion times you made a billion dollars. The problem is that good customer support costs more than $1. It costs more than what they make from the average user, so the average user can't have it. That would still be true if they had 100 times less users. It's a result of the service being free, not the service being large.

Do you think charging users for support could be a feasible option? I'd pay $100 for a call with a representative who can call shots on Youtube's strike reviews.

Re: I was blackmailed – any YouTuber could be next

#213

Post by LargoLasskhyfv »

movedx wrote: post #70
tekkk wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think they are really doing their best. If other Google's support forums are any indicator of their effort, they are mostly trying to automate the whole process as much as possible which then causes errors like this. Which makes sense from the SV software engineer perspective, but really is unfathomable to the normal user who then has to live in fear if some malicious teenager decides to ruin their channel. I…

> Instead of actually trying to create the best customer service I've worked in high volume customer services. It's not easy for the agents doing the work or the companies operating them. I've worked in multiple call centers dealing with calls and tickets. I've worked in companies in which I dealt with mobile phone bill queries and hardware issues right up to Cisco networking problems and then eventually enterprise g…

Well. I have some experience with O2 too, from a customers point of view. Let me tell you a story:

Once upon a time i've been a happy customer of a regional ISP called Hansenet, started by the local public electric utility. It was (at least for me) lightyears ahead of the crappy experience (speed/latency/price/(competence of)service(if needed)) the former state monopolist had. Everything was golden, also excellent peering. They grew slowly, cooperated with some other regional upstarts, stayed golden, speed even got faster without raising of monthly fees, furthermore no long contracts necessary, could be canceled within a month.

Then Telecom Italia came and bought them, now it was Alice, as advertised by some mouthbreathing twen all over the public space, larger than life.

Quality of service went down, very unsexy of you, Alice! But still was better than the former state monopolist, and still got faster without raising prices or contract conditions.

They even retained a local service center where you could walk into and talk to people who knew their stuff and could change settings in realtime! Imagine that! Not some outsourced call-center agent mouthpiecing some useless uml-diagram.

Anyways, too good to be true? Right! Telefonica came to rescue (of BlackRock), to milk the cash cow as long as possible, and it was noticable.

Fortunately another neighboring public utility, pioniering fiber roll out since the nineties expanded and became a choice for me then. All is golden again! Yay!

Why am i ranting? Because everybody i know is mostly unhappy with O2 in any form, except for the price.

O2 can't do!

I wish i could add some internal, even worse insights from another ISP growing larger at the time, but am not allowed to. Also they managed, got better, and meanwhile can do again.

Lesson? There is no lesson here, with the exception of economies of scale are bad for humans above certain amounts of 'scale'.

Re: I was blackmailed – any YouTuber could be next

#214

Post by meowface »

Freeboots wrote: post #194
scottlawson wrote: post #4

I think this is called extortion, not blackmail.

Right?! This annoyed the hell out of me when i saw the vid on youtube. It sucks his videos are getting taken down, but to my mind he loses intergity by playing it up as blackmail. Extortion is bad enough, why not call it like it is?

Extortion is a worse crime than blackmail generally, in my opinion, ethically speaking. Extortion is using one's power and force to threaten harm to someone in some way if not paid, while blackmail is using knowledge of information to do the same. Extortion is the more "violent" and violating act. Either way, they're pretty similar, though

Your post is extremely confusing and bizarre to me.

Re: I was blackmailed – any YouTuber could be next

#215

Post by zaksoup »

RandomTisk wrote: post #205
wayoutthere wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m a big fan of looking at annual reports to understand a company. Google is not subtle about where its priorities lie. There is a section in their 10-K titled “How we make money” and the two sub-bullets are “Performance advertising” and “Brand advertising”. The rest is a footnote. Their revenue breakdown tells a similar story. Google as a whole had revenues of $161B in 2019, and $134B of that was direct revenue fro…

Does this mean that Google is basically using all their services like Stadia or Fiber to keep people's minds aware of their presence, essentially using these services as their own advertisement outreach while hoping they also return a profit on their own advertisement?

Or as other vectors for advertising. Stadia store sells ad space to game companies. Google Home is a speaker capable of playing ads (or more subtly giving paid-for answers to questions) etc.

Re: I was blackmailed – any YouTuber could be next

#216

Post by AnthonyMouse »

phreack wrote: post #212
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem isn't scale. Scale is just how they made a lot of money. If you make a dollar a billion times you made a billion dollars. The problem is that good customer support costs more than $1. It costs more than what they make from the average user, so the average user can't have it. That would still be true if they had 100 times less users. It's a result of the service being free, not the service being large.

Do you think charging users for support could be a feasible option? I'd pay $100 for a call with a representative who can call shots on Youtube's strike reviews.

It would solve the cost problem, but people would hate it. You'd have to pay even if you won because they have to pay the customer service rep either way.

And it would open up a new trolling vector. Now the troll files complaint after complaint and forces you to pay $100 over and over again.

What could work is to do loser pays. If someone wants to object to your video, they have to post $100, and so do you if you want to get it reinstated. Then whoever wins the dispute gets their money back. And extra points for having a builtin troll deterrent.

Re: I was blackmailed – any YouTuber could be next

#217

Post by bencollier49 »

Animats wrote: post #189

This is extortion. Did Google disclose to you the identity of the party who sent the takedown notice. If not, a lawyer might be able to help here. You have a good case against the other party for extortion, and a weak case against Google for assisting them. There's a strong legal incentive here for Google to disclose the name of the other party, if they are being difficult about doing so. DMCA notices can't be anonym…

Is a circumvention of technology claim part of the DMCA?

Re: I was blackmailed – any YouTuber could be next

#218

Post by bencollier49 »

throwanem wrote: post #93
elicash wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Weirdly enough, Spotify's goal is to scoop up all the money that's currently going directly to podcasters by making the advertising market more efficient. They want to enjoy the type of monopoly that Facebook/Google/Amazon currently have online, except in the podcast space.

Oh well, podcasts had a good run.

Switch to Napster. I did, for this reason, and I'm very happy I did.

Re: I was blackmailed – any YouTuber could be next

#219

Post by raducu »

movedx wrote: post #70
tekkk wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think they are really doing their best. If other Google's support forums are any indicator of their effort, they are mostly trying to automate the whole process as much as possible which then causes errors like this. Which makes sense from the SV software engineer perspective, but really is unfathomable to the normal user who then has to live in fear if some malicious teenager decides to ruin their channel. I…

> Instead of actually trying to create the best customer service I've worked in high volume customer services. It's not easy for the agents doing the work or the companies operating them. I've worked in multiple call centers dealing with calls and tickets. I've worked in companies in which I dealt with mobile phone bill queries and hardware issues right up to Cisco networking problems and then eventually enterprise g…

Oh please, I've worked on the anti-fraud/abuse system of a large hosting/internet provider in Europe. It was a flexible "if then scoring escalation/ticketing rules".

I'm not saying my knowledge applies to all customer support cases, but what happened here would never have happened with our system.

Just very simple tricks go a loooong way dealing with malicious people:

how old is the account of the "reporter" ?

is the "reporters" id verified?

how long has the account we're taking action against been our customer?

whitelists/blacklists -- temporary or permanent

are all complaints against a customer of the same type grouped to the same ticket type/ticket?

Just based on those simple facts, we would mmediately lock functionality/content for unverified, new customers we received complaints about, while delaying, notifying and giving verified, aged customers the chance to respond/fix issues.

I'm not saying this is easy, for the system I worked, our agents designing the rules had about 80 individual ticket types(in a hierarchy, with rule re-use for ticket category), but they used their brains and did not take any "lock X functionality of the customer" lightly.

Re: I was blackmailed – any YouTuber could be next

#220

Post by rndgermandude »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #208
vorpalhex wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then your company doesn't get to scale. Sorry, but you can't skip support because it's not cost effective, just like you can't skip financial regulations or data regs. You don't get to use the excuse of "Sorry we are too busy making billions, maybe we wouldn't have to cut corners if we weren't so successful."

The problem isn't scale. Scale is just how they made a lot of money. If you make a dollar a billion times you made a billion dollars. The problem is that good customer support costs more than $1. It costs more than what they make from the average user, so the average user can't have it. That would still be true if they had 100 times less users. It's a result of the service being free, not the service being large.

The vast majority of Google users will never need customer support, and those who do probably will mostly have easy problems.

There aren't a billion content creators on Youtube, and even fewer who would be good targets for blackmail like this.

The channel in question has 100K+ subscribers and 17M+ views. That's probably a sizable amount of profit for Google from ads. It it really so unfathomable that google could tune their ban bot from "ban this video/channel/account immediately" to "signal a human to have a look and decide on what to do, maybe after talking to the channel creator"? That's just ridiculous to me.

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