One day Google locked one of my gmail accounts and demanded a verified phone number in exchange for access. Luckily, that email wasn't that important. However this taught me a lesson: next time Google is going to lock my important gmail and demand an ID, W2, routing number, full address and medical records in exchange for access and then I'll have a hard choice. That day I finally put effort into setting up my own email domain.
YouTube accidentally permanently terminated my account
261–270 of 280 posts
Re: YouTube accidentally permanently terminated my account
#262Earlier quoted context omitted.
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, inflammator…
What big tech is doing so clearly violates the principles of free speech that I can't see an argument for it. It goes well beyond people expressing unpopular opinions, to the point of interfering with markets and elections.
Twitter has been interfering in elections by selectively deplatforming candidates that they don't like. It is so obvious that the biggest threat to the integrity of American elections is big tech. I can't believe that there are some that think that Russia buying a few thousand dollars worth of Facebook ads is a bigger threat than Google.
Re: YouTube accidentally permanently terminated my account
#263Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Instead, you have to span [your content] on multiple platforms and tell your audience where to find you if you get deleted. OK, so what's the safest holdout?
Mu.[1] The principle of "spread across multiple platforms" is fundamentally inconsistent with a "safest holdout". You need to hedge your bets. You need to realise that free services can be discontinued, paid contracts can be terminated, content or accounts can be flagged, copyright or patent claims may be asserted (more the former than the latter, generally, but expect patent claims on more capable systems), domains…
Yes, what I've been saying is that we're moving back to where we were 20 years ago. We're moving back to a hosting model where you can not completely rely on any hosting company to get the job done.
Big tech companies changed things a lot, and developed very sophisticated infrastructure that we could not compete with.
Nobody could compete with YouTube for awhile. But now, YouTube has made itself so unreliable, that people are forced to find new video hosting services, and people will put up with slower speeds for more reliability.
Re: YouTube accidentally permanently terminated my account
#264Earlier quoted context omitted.
Mu.[1] The principle of "spread across multiple platforms" is fundamentally inconsistent with a "safest holdout". You need to hedge your bets. You need to realise that free services can be discontinued, paid contracts can be terminated, content or accounts can be flagged, copyright or patent claims may be asserted (more the former than the latter, generally, but expect patent claims on more capable systems), domains…
Yes, what I've been saying is that we're moving back to where we were 20 years ago. We're moving back to a hosting model where you can not completely rely on any hosting company to get the job done. Big tech companies changed things a lot, and developed very sophisticated infrastructure that we could not compete with. Nobody could compete with YouTube for awhile. But now, YouTube has made itself so unreliable, that p…
> We're moving back to a hosting model where you can not completely rely on any hosting company to get the job done.
That's become my mantra about anonymization: that you can't trust any one system/provider, so it's prudent to distribute trust. Basically, what Chaum said, so many years ago.
But that's harder with hosting. Sure, if you lease a domain, you can easily point to different IPs. But then, what happens if you lose the domain?
And for people who don't lease domains, how will your followers find your other sites? Once the one they were hitting is gone, I mean. Some will bookmark all of them, for sure. But not most, I bet. Search services would help, but I suspect that'd be iffy.
Re: YouTube accidentally permanently terminated my account
#265Earlier quoted context omitted.
Someone at Google could. Someone at Google fixed it, and others there are likely aware of the circumstances.
That’s not going to happen. Google won’t say a word on this.
Yes, I know that "Google" won't. But there have been leaks about many issues. And this is arguably a huge, if poorly reported, issue. Perhaps not relative to the total user population, but huge in absolute terms.
Re: YouTube accidentally permanently terminated my account
#266Re: YouTube accidentally permanently terminated my account
#267Earlier quoted context omitted.
That would be an admission of guilt.
Not really. You can apologize when something happens by accident too. Does not mean there was intent to it.
Obligatory reference: https://xkcd.com/945/
Re: YouTube accidentally permanently terminated my account
#268Earlier quoted context omitted.
A lot of them, I have two Gmail accounts randomly locked and one Ads account randomly locked as well.
Was it really "randomly"? Wasn't there some sort of behavior that got caught in their algos?
No, nothing as far as I can see, the Gmail accounts don't even specify the reason they are locked and the Ads account just say "suspicious behavior".
Re: YouTube accidentally permanently terminated my account
#269Earlier quoted context omitted.
What's interesting is this generally doesn't happen with the federal government. You can always call someone, or go into an office somewhere, or find someone up the chain in municipal / local / state offices to get something solved. It may take a very long time, but it gets solved. And that scales to at least 300 million users. Google is apparently less competent then the federal government in that regard (granted Go…
> Google is apparently less competent then the federal government in that regard (granted Google can't print money, yet). Even if they could, they would randomly discontinue the money 3 years down the line. But I think comparing Google and the government in this sense isn't quite appropriate. Google is trying to make a profit. They try to keep their costs low. Automating customer support is one of these things, even…
Amazon has competitors, Google doesn't.
Re: YouTube accidentally permanently terminated my account
#270Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
> things like Nebula and CuriosityStream
i wish them success, but i doubt they will see the sort of revenue possible with youtube. These premium subscription services are more like netflix, where they need to provide value proposition to the payer. They don't scale tbh, as the majority of the internet is non-paying. I suppose with a large enough backlog, it can start to look attractive for viewers to pay to subscribe.
But then you have to see that every company wants their subscription. If you wanted to have access to each service, you'd end up paying 100's of dollars per month. So more likely to happen is that people see a specific series they want, and pay for just that month.
Youtube's business model is much more broad and does not depend on quality content, but on the existence of a large audience. I think creators go to where the audience is, not the other way around.