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I was blackmailed – any YouTuber could be next (2020)

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Re: I was blackmailed – any YouTuber could be next (2020)

#101

Post by sbassi »

Animats wrote: post #79

First step, if you get a demand like that, file a police report. Extortion, and attempted extortion, are crimes. You can also file with the FBI online, which will at least result in your complaint being accumulated with other similar complaints. Not much may happen, but now it's on record. Now you have paperwork establishing a crime. If you're willing to spend legal fees, talk to a lawyer. You can potentially sue the…

I think the FBI has a threshold amount to get involved. It wont move a finger for $50.

Re: I was blackmailed – any YouTuber could be next (2020)

#102

Post by bigiain »

formvoltron wrote: post #53

Dude you can't expect Youtube staff to help you out. The food bar is too good! Oh the massage. Oh the yoga classes. OK, yes I'm a somewhat bitter when I hear about stories like this. Brings me back to the iPhone App store "early" days. "early" because these problems persisted for more than 4 or 5 years... when anyone with a little bit of try could raise their app up in the rankings and send yours down in the rankings…

> Dude you can't expect Youtube staff to help you out. The food bar is too good! Oh the massage. Oh the yoga classes.

I suspect the YouTube _complaints_ staff are much more likely to be contractor micromanaged call centre staff with 90 resolutions per hour targets and stopwatches on their bathroom breaks, instead of the sort of staff slurping down barista-made solent green smoothies while getting Reiki hot stone massages during work hours...

Re: I was blackmailed – any YouTuber could be next (2020)

#103

Post by t-3 »

brokencode wrote: post #70
q-big wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I don't buy it. Creators make audiences, and platforms know this. Users have to take what they get, but producers have options. This is why YouTube hosts content for free, makes advertising and monetizing easy, works to lower the barriers to entry and make independence unnattractive. If creators switched to distributing through their own servers or a different CDN or IPFS or bittorrent or whatever, they would have to figure out the fiddly unfun bits on their own.

Re: I was blackmailed – any YouTuber could be next (2020)

#105

Post by shkkmo »

dodobirdlord wrote: post #74
betwixthewires wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trying to figure out exactly what the rules are is abusing the system now?

Running an abuse prevention system is adversarial. If your abuse detection system isn’t perfect (which is of course impossible), then having a transparent anti-abuse system is the same as not having an anti-abuse system.

> If your abuse detection system isn’t perfect (which is of course impossible), then having a transparent anti-abuse system is the same as not having an anti-abuse system.

This complete hyperbole. While transparency can make some rules easier to dodge, it doesn't necessarily make those rules completely ineffective. There are also different types of rules that are more or less sensitive to transparency.

It is thus definitely possible to design abuse prevention systems that, while not perfect, do function in a transparent environment.

For example, a level of non transparency is important for criminal investigations, many criminal trials can be completely transparent and expose previously secret details of the investigation. All criminal trials must have a certain level if transparency because fair trials are impossible if you are told the evidence that is used against you.

Re: I was blackmailed – any YouTuber could be next (2020)

#106

Post by macintux »

t-3 wrote: post #103
brokencode wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't buy it. Creators make audiences, and platforms know this. Users have to take what they get, but producers have options. This is why YouTube hosts content for free, makes advertising and monetizing easy, works to lower the barriers to entry and make independence unnattractive. If creators switched to distributing through their own servers or a different CDN or IPFS or bittorrent or whatever, they would have to…

Abandoning YouTube for any one creator would more likely result in the audience spending their attention on someone with similar content. What seems necessary (to this ignorant observer) is a union to negotiate with Google or move everyone en masse to a different platform.

Re: I was blackmailed – any YouTuber could be next (2020)

#107

Post by lisper »

sbassi wrote: post #101
Animats wrote: post #79

First step, if you get a demand like that, file a police report. Extortion, and attempted extortion, are crimes. You can also file with the FBI online, which will at least result in your complaint being accumulated with other similar complaints. Not much may happen, but now it's on record. Now you have paperwork establishing a crime. If you're willing to spend legal fees, talk to a lawyer. You can potentially sue the…

I think the FBI has a threshold amount to get involved. It wont move a finger for $50.

You’re missing the point. You don’t file the report in order to get the FBI to investigate. That obviously won’t happen. You file in order to establish a record of an allegation of a crime.

Re: I was blackmailed – any YouTuber could be next (2020)

#108

Post by DrewADesign »

q-big wrote: post #61
rectang wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But now it seems like there's more criminal profit potential in extortion, as creators are ever more dependent on ever-more-centralized services. A growth industry!

> 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.

The FOSS community needs to stop getting so defensive about usability criticism and start seriously considering non-technical users if decentralized media platforms will ever stand a chance at being a viable solution.

Not just interface layout or visual themes, either— design is a lot more than the way something looks. The whole experience from learning about the platform to becoming a regular user— including for people who don't read man pages on a regular basis— is important. As soon as I need to explain to my parents that "yes, it's all PeerTube but PeerTube is just the server software and my cousin's PeerTube instance they signed up with isn't connected to the PeerTube federated service and so they can't see videos from the the PeerTube for their guitar hobby group" then its all over. There is zero point zero percent chance it will become a viable public service without big changes.

Re: I was blackmailed – any YouTuber could be next (2020)

#109

Post by shkkmo »

ziddoap wrote: post #23
jrm4 wrote: post #7

Yup. Make Youtube a "common carrier" or something similar.

I would encourage anyone who thinks along these lines to read the following posts on Techdirt, which explain why this is not the solution people think it is. https://www.techdirt.com/2022/05/26/this-is-really-really-du... https://www.techdirt.com/2022/05/23/11th-circuit-disagrees-w... https://www.techdirt.com/2021/06/08/conservatives-want-commo... Something should be done to ward off the Kafkaesque future we are head…

I don't think those articles are very well written or convincing and seem to have a poor understanding of common carrier status and it's history. One of the sources it cites provides a much better picture of what common carrier status means and where it comes from: http://www.columbia.edu/dlc/wp/citi/citinoam11.html

Several parts of that directly contradict the arguments that techdirr is trying to make.

Edit: For example, one of those articles says "American courts identify industries and businesses as common carriers if they do not distinguish between customers or decide what they will and will not carry. " Which gets the relationship between non-descrimination and common carrier status exactly backwards. Non-discrimination and interoperability are legal requirements imposed on private companies due to their common carrier status in exchange for reducing their liability.

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