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Our channel on YouTube has been deleted due to “spam and deceptive policies”

bsky.app

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Re: Our channel on YouTube has been deleted due to “spam and deceptive policies”

#51

Might be moot, but the shutdown email mentions "spam, scam or deceptive practices", not just "reasons". Without any context about the owner of the channel, the reader has no way to know how unfair the shutdown is. I understand from the HN thread that the dev is well known and that the shutdown seems unfair - but it's always hard to share the outrage in this situation. Best of luck to the channel's owner - let's hope…

YouTube is notorious for that, though. With that context, this is one more instance, showing that the issue persists. I remember a German youtuber tried to unionize creators through IG Metall, though there doesn't seem to be any news in years so I'm not sure it went anywhere. https://fairtube.info/en/seite/press-coverage-of-fairtube/

Re: Our channel on YouTube has been deleted due to “spam and deceptive policies”

#52

That's shocking, sinevibes is a legit developer in the music/audio space. They made the FX for dreadbox's Typhon synth and several popular FX plugins for Korg logue synths. I'm subscribed to their newsletter and have never received spam. All their youtube channel had were demos of their products, as far as I recall. Like "here's how the dry synth sounds, here's how it sounds with reverb", can't even imagine how an al…

> can't even imagine how an algorithm thought it runs afoul of a spam or scam policy

Could a competitor cause the algorithm to think that, somehow, perhaps by engaging a service that reports the videos, in bulk, repeatedly from a seemingly diverse set of user accounts?

Re: Our channel on YouTube has been deleted due to “spam and deceptive policies”

#53
post #21
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a really fascinating, but horrible, point. Every AI decision becomes a way to shirk responsibility, even more than just automated ones (because then its "your" rule). Welcome to the brave new world of AI-decision laundering.

That makes it a great point, not a horrible one.

I think they mean its reality and implications are horrible.

Re: Our channel on YouTube has been deleted due to “spam and deceptive policies”

#55

Might be moot, but the shutdown email mentions "spam, scam or deceptive practices", not just "reasons". Without any context about the owner of the channel, the reader has no way to know how unfair the shutdown is. I understand from the HN thread that the dev is well known and that the shutdown seems unfair - but it's always hard to share the outrage in this situation. Best of luck to the channel's owner - let's hope…

[dead]

Re: Our channel on YouTube has been deleted due to “spam and deceptive policies”

#56

Same happened to oluv, one of the few honest audio review guys. His channel got attacked by scammers, his content stolen and hit with fraudulent IP claims. Youtube has become a cesspool.

The Internet generally has devolved towards the lowest common denominator, which is the cesspool or below. Social media and content sharing sites just concentrate and magnify it.

IMO, good content creators need to go back to self-hosting as their primary location, preferably on a decent host that won't just shut them down though if they make sure they have full control of the domain name at least and a good local/backup copy of everything, getting up and running elsewhere if that host goes tits-up is relatively easy. Then upload to youtube/others as secondary channels, so you can take advantage of the infamous algorithms for exposure, the interaction features¹, and to save bandwidth²³.

Also make sure your identity everywhere is, well, identifiable - so if youtune/InsertIdentityHere goes down someone searching for InsertIdentityHere can easily find the instances hosted on other sharing sites or your central one.

More work of course, but not massively so especially if it is (or is intended to be) a money making channel rather than purely a hobby project, and worth it long-term if take-downs happen.

--------

[1] I would not want to manage public comments and such on a self-hosted instance, fighting spam, hate, and other such issues can become a full-time job.

[2] Essentially using them as CDNs.

[3] You might have to give low quality versions of videos to most public requests to your main site⁴, sending users to yt/other for HD+, perhaps serving ad-free high quality videos direct to those who support you via payment (via Patreon or similar).

[4] And make sure you have appropriate throughput limits⁵ in place so “going viral” doesn't result in a massive bandwidth overage bill.

[5] This could be site-wide, though you could implement finer grained controls, perhaps if a particular item becomes temporarily “too popular” start serving a _really_ low quality version and more obvious links to TY/Vimeo/… until things die down.

Re: Our channel on YouTube has been deleted due to “spam and deceptive policies”

#57
post #30

a computer can never be held accountable — therefore a computer must never make a management decision

For anyone who hasn't seen this before, it's from an IBM internal training document in 1979. Sadly the original source was lost in a flood and IBM archives do not have a copy: https://twitter.com/jonty/status/1798170111058264280 Edit: here's a better link https://simonwillison.net/2025/Feb/3/a-computer-can-never-be...

Seen what, all I see is a tweet that there isn't an archive?

Or is that tweet about the parent post?

Re: Our channel on YouTube has been deleted due to “spam and deceptive policies”

#58

That's shocking, sinevibes is a legit developer in the music/audio space. They made the FX for dreadbox's Typhon synth and several popular FX plugins for Korg logue synths. I'm subscribed to their newsletter and have never received spam. All their youtube channel had were demos of their products, as far as I recall. Like "here's how the dry synth sounds, here's how it sounds with reverb", can't even imagine how an al…

> can't even imagine how an algorithm thought it runs afoul of a spam or scam policy Could a competitor cause the algorithm to think that, somehow, perhaps by engaging a service that reports the videos, in bulk, repeatedly from a seemingly diverse set of user accounts?

The market is not that nasty, AFAIK. It's all pretty niche. And YT isn't the biggest marketing channel for this segment, I think. The forums have lively discussions of plugins by people that understand and use the stuff, and whose previous contributions you can easily look up.

Re: Our channel on YouTube has been deleted due to “spam and deceptive policies”

#59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Done. I had the same issues with it myself when I initially wrote it, but couldn't think of a better wording at the time. Hopefully it's less confusing now.

"Audio developer's fifteen-year-old channel" would do it.

after 15...
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