141–150 of 194 posts
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I think they recently changed the tos to blacklist all videos regarding hacking and similar stuff
We did quite extensive digging into the ToS and there was nothing explicitly forbidden about what he had done and they refused to point to any rule he had violated in particular. If they've updated it, it must have been in the last 4-5 months.
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Why did you consider tricking the plagiarism detection engine a hack? Seems more like just one of probably several or even dozens of ways to trick the detection engine. While I applaud your work and clearly think the channel suspension is BS, I just don't know that I would have thought "HackerOne" when I discovered the issue.
Trick the program into doing something other than intended is a hack. Whether someone cares enough to pay a bounty is something else
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Well, the 'punishment' is not letting him use the service, which he wasn't supposed to be able to do anyway as a minor. It isn't like he is going to jail or being forced to pay a fine. You seem to be arguing that you can't ever prevent minors from using your service, since you can only exclude them via your TOS and you can't enforce a TOS against minors. This seems very similar to the arguments that "freeman of the l…
> You seem to be arguing that you can't ever prevent minors from using your service Oh, I actually meant you shouldn't be able to exclude an adult based on them violating the ToS when they were a minor.
I wonder how much money Grammarly have spent with youtube.
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It's not that I didn't understand the point you were making, I just think it was not really relevant. It would be incorrect to say that they violated the user's first amendment rights. But the comment you responded to says: > at least pretend that you allow free speech Which is different than that, and I'd argue most platforms do at least pretend to espouse the ideals of 'free speech' even if that notion has been wea…
> It is a speech issue, even if not a legal issue, if you can pay Google to shut down random accounts that say things you don't like. The ToS violation is a red herring. I think we here all presume that interested parties can pay corporations to do anything that is both legal, and which remains within the letter of the contracts (e.g. Terms of Service) that the corporation has entered into; and that the only thing st…
The plagiarism check is for self-checking, as in users making sure they did not miss any quotations and references in their work, and thus it does not even attempt to defeat any plagiarism enforcement counter-measures. It's not an enforcement tool.
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What basic freedom are these companies trampling? I dislike them as much as the next person, but it's been clear from the start that they operate their little fiefdoms as they see fit and we should be under no illusions that we have no rights there. If we want to fight for a change to the various laws in various countries, then that is a conversation I would be very willing to have. But let's not pretend that any of…
Have you considered why those places become grim places? Does free speech lead to those ideas? That would be quite a out-there conclusion. Rather, those people can only express themselves on forums like that, they are banned on all the other mediums. If free speech was set as a standard on all mediums, those people would express themselves evenly on facebook, youtube and the chans, rather than being penned into fring…
After Grammarly spent millions of dollars on Google ads, I expect them not to accept valid criticism on Google platforms. But it's unfair to block a guy that talked about a real flaw in Grammarly's plagiarism checker, at least pretend that you allow free speech and take down that video for a random reason specified in your ToS.
Second, this is not a flaw or a hack but an unsuccessful attempt to use Grammarly for an UNINTENDED purpose. Grammarly is not meant for anti-plagiarism enforcement. Grammarly aims to help users avoid accidental or unintentional plagiarism by highlighting parts that may need to be cited. So it does not attempt to deal with any plagiarisms enforcement countermeasures - if someone is deliberately masking plagiarism, it's definitely not unintentional or accidental. It's trivial to overcome these particular counter-measures but that's just not what Grammarly is for.
For those wanting a more honest alternative to Grammarly, LanguageTool[1] is open source and quite good. That said, I am not a power user and my English is just passable, so your mileage may vary. [1] https://languagetool.org
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My son (a curious juvenile) found his own YouTube account banned in a similar manner for disclosing a security issue in Google wifi products. There was no first or second warning (despite what the Terms of Service say). Google would not give him a justification for the banning other than "terms of service violation". The appeals fell on deaf ears. Now their automated system keeps banning every YouTube account he crea…
I think they recently changed the tos to blacklist all videos regarding hacking and similar stuff
> Hacking: Demonstrating how to use computers or information technology with the intent to steal credentials, compromise personal data or cause serious harm to others such as (but not limited to) hacking into social media accounts.
The placement of "with the intent to" is really weird to me. I could see it applying either to the demonstration being performed with intent, or the demonstrated usage having intent. The latter doesn't really make sense, because any basic computer usage could also be done with the intent to perform malicious actions. (e.g. "How to back-up your stored passwords", used maliciously to back-up somebody else's stored passwords.) The former would make sense, but not be applicable in this case. It would apply to cases where the video itself was an attempt to steal credentials, such as guiding people to a known compromised browser extension.
In order for this to apply, the "with the intent to" clause would need to be missing entirely. In that case, a demonstration alone would be enough to fall under that clause. So either Google poorly wrote their guidelines, or are poorly applying it.
But that's just from the strict letter of the ToS, which is as meaningless as a fart in a breeze when Google can unilaterally amend them. The real story is that Google is removing content in order to protect itself and others from embarrassment, and their actions to discredit and downplay responsible disclosure are what matter here, not their supposed justification of those actions.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/static?template=terms
[1] https://www.youtube.com/howyoutubeworks/policies/community-g...