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The author doesn't indicate what the supposed violation was. Does Google not even say which part of the content was alleged to be the problem?
Most of the time, no. This is common to prevent people from abusing the system more by trying to find edge cases.
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While I definitely do sympathize, these might be alarm bells telling that we've given too much to these faceless corps. Maybe it's time to reimagine content sharing that has full uncensorable control of the creator and reach of today's centralized platforms, with a fair way to monetize.
Perhaps we (for a random definition of "we") should have legislation requiring these companies to provide warranty for the services they provide, under a common set of minimal and inalienable rights, when the service is "free" but the company has revenue from ads and such. Having warranty for the services require some level of tech support, of course.
Will this scale for a Google-sized company? Probably not, but that's their problem. It would even be better, for us as a society, if this makes these companies unsustainable; I can only dream of they being replaced by thousands of smaller ones for which the approach is sustainable.
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Most of the time, no. This is common to prevent people from abusing the system more by trying to find edge cases.
Trying to figure out exactly what the rules are is abusing the system now?
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Someone is repeatedly filing “Circumvention of Technological Measures” claims, then asking for bitcoin and Twitter promotion in return for stopping the claims.
What is to stop them once they get paid? Why wouldn't they just keep asking every month?
The author doesn't indicate what the supposed violation was. Does Google not even say which part of the content was alleged to be the problem?
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> as creators are ever more dependent on ever-more-centralized services. as creators decided to make themselves ever more dependent on ever-more-centralized services.
Creators don’t control where the audience is. If there was a credible alternative to the centralized services, then maybe more creators would try that. Nebula is one example where some of the more education-focused channels have been posting videos. Not sure if it’s been successful though.
Now you have paperwork establishing a crime.
If you're willing to spend legal fees, talk to a lawyer. You can potentially sue the extortionist as an unknown "John Doe", and Google as collaborating with the extortionist to extract money from you. Google is in a touchy position here, because they really did cooperate with an extortionist to extract money. Google can claim the cooperation was unwitting, but that can fall apart if an ongoing pattern of similar behavior can be shown, and if Google can be shown to have been negligent in determining whether takedown requests were valid.
This is routine in fleet auto accidents. Uber gets this all the time. They want to pass the buck to the driver, but they have to be able to identify the driver to do that. So they are very helpful about identifying the driver.
Because this arises from a criminal offense, Google's terms of service may be irrelevant. You cannot contract away liability for a crime.
So there's stuff you can do. This sort of thing usually settles out of court. But when you file a lawsuit, you're dealing with people well above the level of the customer service staff. Talk to a lawyer. Might even be able to find one willing to take this on a contingency fee basis.
This is an area where Google might not want extensive pre-trial discovery looking into exactly what level of cooperation they provide extortionists. If someone is extorting small dollar amounts, they're doing this more than once.