Tell HN: YouTube and how my wife lost 7 years of work

I just wanted to share an experience as a warning to fellow users of hacker news and in the hope that somehow someway 7 years and countless hours can be recovered.

I've never posted anything like this, but this is the only place I have any hope of a human response after youtube deleted 700 videos created for internal training for our company. My wife started a company that helps people transition from colleges in their home country (for instance the IIT system in India) by translating their credit system into the American educational credit system.

She utilized a youtube channel with unlisted videos to explain to internal employees the nuances of difficult evaluation types, for instance how to determine for CEGEPs in Quebec the difference between upper secondary and post secondary. Another example would be how to award credits for MBBS programs from U.K modeled educational system (West Africa, India etc).

Youtube sent her 3 strikes in one week. On videos that were 4 years old, indicating cyber bullying. These videos were unlisted and literally contained only incredibly dense, rather boring videos covering the nooks and crannies of various educational systems and how they relate to each other. When she responded, she received an auto reply that stated you get a reply within 2 business days. No further response despite repeated requests within the system, then tweets, and finally submitting a new appeal form from scratch to which the reply was nothing can be done because too much time had passed.

This content was incredibly time intensive to create and was basically another job on top of her position as CEO. As a small company this was a devastating blow. Her work youtube account is now removed.

Personally the cynic in me speculates that google cleans out low hanging fruit, using metrics, and there was nothing in the content that triggered the bot at all, just a case of over 700 somewhat lengthy videos that were getting almost no traffic, and they get to delete them and hide behind the byzantine garbage fire that is their "support".

If you work for the youtube division and can help, I'm begging you please send me a message or reply to this post, it seems this is the only way to rectify this kind of problem. If there is anyway to download the videos that is all we are asking for.

-jdh

As useless and pithy it is to say "just restore from backup", having your livelihood (or a significant time investment) depend on a system far outside of your control, where you have no service guarantees or even a billable relationship, is a fairly shaky ground to stand on. Ultimately if you spend your time producing digital assets, you should have taken action to ensure you had ownership and control over them somewhere.

I know this, you know this, and OP has for damned sure just realised this, as has anyone else who's read this post.

What the purpose of your comment? It's not helpful.

To give everyone else who hasn't done these things a harsh reminder of the damage it could bring if you don't.

I'm not sure OP has realised this, with remarks like "indicating cyber bullying".