Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

YouTube accidentally permanently terminated my account

medium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

251–260 of 280 posts

Re: YouTube accidentally permanently terminated my account

#251

Post by alpha_squared »

TheAceOfHearts wrote: post #221
chx wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> once they start doing call centres it will just become a cost for ever more. then charge for it? Even support that only deals with account terminations would be worth $5, $10 a month to quite a few of us, I would think. You have a busy YouTube channel, ten bucks a month is not that much to ensure it doesn't go up flames accidentally.

I'm paying $12/mo for YouTube Premium because I consider it an exceptionally valuable service, but they only offer automated support. Google can afford to give high quality customer support, as we've seen with Project Fi, they just don't care about their users.

I think I'd phrase this a little differently. It's out that they don't care, it's that they practically deify software.

Their hyper-obsession of algorithmic trivia in hiring, I think, leads to a natural conclusion that there's an algorithm for every problem. And, indeed, every product they launch is extremely heavy on technical complexity with little reliance or consideration for customer value.

This is purely opinion with no real data, but it's what I've observed for about a decade now.

Re: YouTube accidentally permanently terminated my account

#253

Post by jplayer01 »

hpcjoe wrote: post #116

I keep hearing stories about similar issues. Suddenly someone is terminated from a Google service for unknown reasons, without any possibility of reversing such decisions. This appears to be true of Twitter and others as well. From my vantage point, it appears to be quite arbitrary. And quite concerning in a number of cases, given the centralization of email, docs, etc. I do make backups of google content every so of…

I don't know what is do if I lost access to my Gmail account. I have tons of accounts on other services that only know me by that email address.

Re: YouTube accidentally permanently terminated my account

#254

Post by dredmorbius »

hpcjoe wrote: post #242
eitland wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The big techs cannot differentiate between legitimate de-platforming I can try to give some guidelines, I'd love to see improvements (and also like to know if anyone points out I'm wrong :-) Legitimate de-platforming is a) when an individual or organization is removed from the platform based on a request from law enforcement followed by a review by the platforms staff to verify that the request is genuine and that…

I was at Joyent when we deplatformed some group. The vast majority of the company was for this action, based upon what they interpreted as "their values." Their values were not shared in whole across the entire company. Some of us believed that speech, no matter how repugnant it is, should not be constricted. This is the nature of the 1st amendment in the US. The government cannot restrain speech. A private company w…

Government can and does restain speach. It issues gag orders, classifies information, places and enforces injunctions, and facilitates private bounds on speech through patent, trademark, and copyright law, trade secrets, and recognition and enforcement of nondisclosure and nondisparagement contracts. Even forms of observation may be limited under espionage or treason laws. Limits are placed on incitement, inflammatory speech, pornography, indecency, and "fighting words".

Freedom of speech, as with other legal and civil rights, is an ideal, not an absolute. It has evolved tremendously within the US, arriving at a form we'd recognise currently only in the 1950s and 60s, about 60 years ago. The famous "shouting 'fire' in a crowded theatre" objection was raised in a case (Schenck) in free speech was found not to apply to anti-draft advocates during WWI, barely over a century ago.

And the US Supreme Court's "marketplace of ideas" standard is similarly quite problematic, owing far more to free-market fundamentalist advocacy than some doctrine of prevailing truth.

Turns out it was always more a bit of pro-free-market-fundamentalism propaganda than a pro-truth notion.

See Jill Gordon, “John Stuart Mill and the ‘Marketplace of Ideas’"

https://philpapers.org/rec/GORJSM

Or Stanley Ingber, “The Marketplace of Ideas: A legitimizing myth”.

https://scholarship.law.duke.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article... (PDF).

Re: YouTube accidentally permanently terminated my account

#255

Post by valuearb »

globular-toast wrote: post #200
apostacy wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It used to be much harder to knock someone you didn't like offline. You used to have to organize a DDOS attack. But now, all you have to do is organize a much easier mass-flagging attack. We need to update our threat models to account for how unreliable major platforms have become. We can no longer rely on these companies. After big tech spent so much time investing in their own infrastructure, they are undermining t…

We also need to update our definition of freedom of speech. It's commonly repeated on the Internet that freedom of speech doesn't cover private platforms. That's true because in 1791, when the First Amendment was written, only the government could impact individual freedom of speech. But now large companies can do it very effectively because they own the platforms everyone is using. Sure, you can still express yourse…

That’s exactly the spirit of the constitution. Back then few people could afford a printing press, so your ability to reach the masses could easily be frustrated by the refusal of private entities that did.

But the founding fathers never thought it necessary to regulate printing presses to ensure the access of minority opinions. The First Amendment was explicitly written to prevent that kind of social intervention.

I think they’d tell you, set up your own server and your own service, it’s not hard.

Re: YouTube accidentally permanently terminated my account

#257

Post by aglionby »

username90 wrote: post #182
chii wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how come the revenue google makes in advertising on those videos can't be used to cover the cost of such support? It should not cost money for a user to correct the mistake of a service provider. If the telephone company shutdown my number, i have the telecommunications onbudsman to call and get the problem fixed. Granted, youtube isn't as essential as a phone, a similar body should exist to ensure that online servic…

> It should not cost money for a user to correct the mistake of a service provider. You aren't paying for the service though, the people who buy ads are.

Isn't taking this as an absolutist view kind of myopic? Sure, people don't pay anything to watch and each person's eyeballs aren't worth that much. But pretty much the entire value of the service is locked up in the crowd of these people, led by the minority who actually create things. Annoy enough of the creators (or lose the trust of those who see what happens to their peers) and they'll start to leave, taking your advert-viewing crowd with them. The network effect makes this really difficult and slow to begin with, but we're already seeing attempts by people like Wendover Productions with things like Nebula and CuriosityStream. I'm curious to see how this plays out over the next few years (and if it's similar to anything that's happened historically?).

Re: YouTube accidentally permanently terminated my account

#258

Post by rovr138 »

hosteur wrote: post #195
hpcjoe wrote: post #116

I keep hearing stories about similar issues. Suddenly someone is terminated from a Google service for unknown reasons, without any possibility of reversing such decisions. This appears to be true of Twitter and others as well. From my vantage point, it appears to be quite arbitrary. And quite concerning in a number of cases, given the centralization of email, docs, etc. I do make backups of google content every so of…

How do you backup Gmail?

I use imapsync, http://imapsync.lamiral.info/

Re: YouTube accidentally permanently terminated my account

#259

Post by rovr138 »

skissane wrote: post #223
codegladiator wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please lets not start this. Apologies means nothing, especially coming from companies.

What I’d really want is not an apology but a post mortem: “here’s what caused this to happen and here’s what we are doing so it doesn’t happen again”

This is what’s important from a company.

Re: YouTube accidentally permanently terminated my account

#260

Post by dnr »

benhurmarcel wrote: post #240
mceachen wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Make sure you get a Google Takeout, but realize that much of the image metadata is deleted (and sometimes outright changed) from the originals. My takeout failed with an write until I requested an archive that was only photos, and only a year-subset of my library (which required me to make a manual album). I also tried the open source "timeliner" project, (which does incremental backups very conveniently), but due to…

Is there a method for automatic backup of Google Photos? Something that a script could do, without manually using Google Takeout. Also, is there another service to backup photos that doesn't modify the data? I was thinking of using Nextcloud. But the prices for Google One are quite attractive.

https://github.com/gilesknap/gphotos-sync

I run it nightly from my home server. It has a few limitations (due to limitations of the Google Photos API) but overall it does what you want.

Post reply on HN