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Tell HN: YouTube and how my wife lost 7 years of work

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Re: Tell HN: YouTube and how my wife lost 7 years of work

#401

Post by stackedinserter »

retube wrote: post #324
stackedinserter wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously, we've been in this for a decade at least. There was enough time to learn this single lesson: data stored in someone's cloud is not your data. In 2022 it's plain stupid to keep your email in Gmail or rely on Google Photos as the only storage for your family archive. People pay $15/mo for Netflix, but can't pay $50/year for a email address? Nobody will lend a random person $1000, but people still happily giv…

Any recommendations for commercial email?

I use fastmail + my own domain (so I'm still the owner of my own email address)

Re: Tell HN: YouTube and how my wife lost 7 years of work

#402

Post by stackedinserter »

oezi wrote: post #281
stackedinserter wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously, we've been in this for a decade at least. There was enough time to learn this single lesson: data stored in someone's cloud is not your data. In 2022 it's plain stupid to keep your email in Gmail or rely on Google Photos as the only storage for your family archive. People pay $15/mo for Netflix, but can't pay $50/year for a email address? Nobody will lend a random person $1000, but people still happily giv…

But paying 50 USD still keeps the data in the cloud. You cannot spend money to solve the backup problem, you need a process and quite a lot of technical and organizational skill. I honestly think there are less than 1 in 100 people who have a working system of backups that would bring them back all their photos taken from their mobile phones. Since Google turned off syncing of photos to Google Drive, my system broke…

Sure, you still need to deal with backups, but at least you won't lose your email address if google decides to block your account. Also, if your email provider blocks your account, you just switch MX record to another one.

Re: Tell HN: YouTube and how my wife lost 7 years of work

#403

Post by torstenvl »

kingcharles wrote: post #168
torstenvl wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder what the right rule is. I think if I were running a Web 2.0 site, a deactivated account would still allow log-in for, say, 60 days, but present only an account admin panel with four options: - Appeal the deactivation, with guaranteed human review of the account if above the, say, 20th %ile of account age - Download your text and media assets - Send a message to social connections with an e-mail where to reac…

I think you present some excellent ideas. And I would guess some of them depend on the reason for termination (although often the reason selected by some automated processes makes no sense). In the OP's scenario, for instance, YouTube could have at least allowed his partner to export all the videos. There are some definite easy wins to be made by players in this space that don't even involve them having to hire more…

Thanks! For the things that do require human review, I wonder what the best way is to scale that.

It actually might be a potential business opportunity. Gig economy social media moderation. Pay $50 and YouTube contracts out with a company for $40 to pay a subcontractor $30 to spend an hour reviewing your appeal and account history and making a recommendation.

It has an icky protection racket feel to it and would incentivize YouTube to be more aggressive in deactivating accounts. But... maybe it's less icky than advertising, selling your privacy for pennies, and permanently deleting your stuff?

Re: Tell HN: YouTube and how my wife lost 7 years of work

#404

Post by eyelidlessness »

dotancohen wrote: post #299
eyelidlessness wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I have the stomach for it, I click irrelevant ads which don’t reflect my interests. You know—out of curiosity—to spend their money. It’s astonishing how quickly a silly hat becomes literal violent propaganda. I mean, in the same minute.

> It’s astonishing how quickly a silly hat becomes literal violent propaganda. I mean, in the same minute. Could you please explain?

Like if I click an ad for, say, hunting gear… I’m instantly inundated with “thin blue line” and not very subtly threatening “guns rights” stuff and pretty much every single thing I would expect to see in a far right mob.

Re: Tell HN: YouTube and how my wife lost 7 years of work

#405

Post by hnfong »

Havoc wrote: post #363
ilamont wrote: post #97

How many more pleas like this will we see on HN? Or, hear from friends, colleagues, and relatives who have been locked out or denied access to an important service, either through no fault of their own or by an innocent action? No warning. No explanation other than "suspicious activity" or "violation of [vaguely worded] policy." No human to call who can help troubleshoot, other than a tech-savvy friend or relative. N…

>How many more pleas like this will we see on HN? Till the cost of bad press exceeds the cost of providing a usable support service.

Not necessarily.

The existing managers get their bonuses from the cost savings and move on to other things. 3 years later, a new generation of managers take over, realize the goodwill is already gone, and it would take an unrealistic herculean effort to reverse public sentiment. And it would take years. They take the easy route and try to squeeze even more money from the services by cutting more costs (yay AI!).

That's how giant companies fail.

Re: Tell HN: YouTube and how my wife lost 7 years of work

#406

Post by toss1 »

naasking wrote: post #395
toss1 wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good points, and all easily manageable via a few adjustments to the rule. If it's cporn or other felony content, then fine, shut it all off. For anything else, allow download only from the last three IP addresses the owner personally logged in from, plus two (if they've moved or are nomadic), plus maybe the same two or three last logged-in-from MAC addresses. Limit to three successful copies downloaded, then shut off…

The reason felony content is a problem is due to liability issues, but it doesn't only apply to that. The lines aren't always clear, so they would probably err on the side of being overly aggressive to be safe. Can you relax that paranoia legislatively somehow?

Yes, tho it seems that as soon as they are not publishing it, i.e., only holding it for private storage by the single posting party, the only problem is with strict liability content like cpron, which mere possession is a crime?

Additionally, the hosts like Google/YouTube, etc. can say that they have found that the material has potential legal issues, and they will hold it for release when the courts sort it out.

Again, the key here is to have some kind of recourse. Anything less is psycopathic - they make a fair exchange by providing a "free" service in exchange for the users' attention, and then when someone puts in 2/3 of a decade of attention and content-building, to simply cut it off with no recourse is just massive theft or vandalism, at best.

And, if they are not going to provide that, they need to provide at least constant prompts that Damocles' sword is hanging over their heads and they need to make local backups.

Re: Tell HN: YouTube and how my wife lost 7 years of work

#407

Post by gaius_baltar »

jdhendrickson wrote: post #56

Mea Culpa I'm in the industry. I knew we should have had backups. She is brilliant but not technical and while the backups would have been expensive and difficult due to size, I should have built multiple NAS and distributed them geographically and used Syncthing to keep them updated. To be clear we were legacy G-suite users and have converted to paying customers, so it was a free service while this happened, and is…

First, IANAL.

This is really dependent on where you live, but as you are paid customers I would suggest to file a lawsuit in a small claims court. Seriously! Google is not playing its part on a legally binding contract, and money exchanging hands is enough to make it valid for the courts. The amount of work poured into these videos, compared with the equivalent compensation that you would have to pay for an employee to make the same work would also qualify for damages. This can also protect you against retaliation from google. But again, IANAL and check our local legislation carefully before.

Where I live it's a thing a person can do in an afternoon (usually takes less time than fighting big companies' support online), do not require lawyers, and the other part also can not bring a lawyer to conciliatory session (for big companies this is usually a sham: even if their representative does not have a lawyer present at court, be sure that s/he was heavily counseled by company legal staff before and everything presented was proofread by them too).

Re: Tell HN: YouTube and how my wife lost 7 years of work

#409

Post by dataangel »

inapis wrote: post #321
Axsuul wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You did the best you could with the information you were given. I don't think anyone should have to resort to building multiple NAS and distributing them geographically. It's 2022 and this an extremely esoteric thing to do. Going forward though, Vimeo feels like a better fit for you guys. Caveat emptor, never rely on free services for critical parts of your operation.

>I don't think anyone should have to resort to building multiple NAS and distributing them geographically. It's 2022 and this an extremely esoteric thing to do. Given how giant companies (especially Google) behave, I do not feel it is an esoteric thing to do. Anyone with even a modicum of technical skill can roll their DIY NAS. For the non-tech savvy, buying off the shelf is fine. Should not be needed in real life bu…

I have technical skill but have never done this. Where do you start?
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