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

YouTube locked my accounts and I can't cancel my subscription

pocketables.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 113 posts

Re: YouTube locked my accounts and I can't cancel my subscription

#91

Post by Eddy_Viscosity2 »

Mordisquitos wrote: post #43
bigiain wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My gmail account still has the "First off, welcome. And thanks for agreeing to help us test Gmail." mail in it from June 2004. The account itself is over 21 years old. I wonder if I'll get forced to age verify myself any time?

As the owner of a GMail account which is also of legal adult age (and a Reddit account which will be 18 this year), I am morbidly curious what will happen once these mandatory "age verification" start to be enforced. It should be trivial for Google and Reddit to grandfather-in accounts which are more than 18 years old (arguably less, who created their account when they were, e.g. 5 years old?). However, I'm betting t…

Since we all know that age verification is just tracking validation, then your predictions and indignation are justified.

Re: YouTube locked my accounts and I can't cancel my subscription

#92

Post by Eddy_Viscosity2 »

mordae wrote: post #4

I assume you have a consumer protection agency. Ping them. Put it in plain words. "I have been paying... they made it impossible to access stuff I paid for and made it impossible to unsubscribe." That's textbook fraud. They'll be fined and give you your money back.

"They", being a trillion dollar company, can effortlessly draw this out while you expend all manner of time and resources and still not pay you or resolve the problem. Any regulation that would change this to be better for the average consumer (and therefore worse for the trillion dollar company) will never pass because they have more say in the laws then you do.

This is a defeatist comment I know, but I do feel defeated when it comes to tech companies.

Re: YouTube locked my accounts and I can't cancel my subscription

#93

Post by close04 »

grebc wrote: post #89
close04 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Definitely not bullshit. I have a friend who was banned simply for returning a Pixel phone after accidentally ordering 2. Some automated mechanism flagged it as potential fraud and nothing worked to reverse the ban. Going to the bank to block payments, remove authorization, or God forbid, do a chargeback for the money they already took after banning you is playing Russian roulette with your Google account. It's also…

The account is already banned.

The Youtube account is banned. Google can escalate things and widen the net to ban anything and everything you have in the Google ecosystem, like a Gmail account. You can see here [0] that OP still has access to the Gmail account.

[0] https://pocketables.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/image-4-1...

Re: YouTube locked my accounts and I can't cancel my subscription

#94

Post by alsetmusic »

ddtaylor wrote: post #10

I had a strange and similar interaction with Google recently. I was asked to do the Android developer verification, but then I missed a deadline at some point. Support said that I would need to create a new Google account for all of this. I said this was unacceptable as this was a Google account I had for nearly 25 years and I didn't want to create another. They said tough luck, go make the new account. Luckily, I ha…

This is the first and only time I've seen someone say they got a positive resolution. No joke, not a single post about Google account-lockouts (that I've seen) in more than a decade has had a happy ending. I'm happy for you. It's also surprising that this breaks the mold.

Re: YouTube locked my accounts and I can't cancel my subscription

#95

Post by sidewndr46 »

laughing_man wrote: post #13
ddtaylor wrote: post #10

I had a strange and similar interaction with Google recently. I was asked to do the Android developer verification, but then I missed a deadline at some point. Support said that I would need to create a new Google account for all of this. I said this was unacceptable as this was a Google account I had for nearly 25 years and I didn't want to create another. They said tough luck, go make the new account. Luckily, I ha…

I'm surprised you were able to get a person to address your issue.

I suspect the story is entirely made up, based on that detail alone.

Re: YouTube locked my accounts and I can't cancel my subscription

#96

Post by sidewndr46 »

nottorp wrote: post #58
ainiriand wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Damn! That is so dystopic to me. The future of businesses determined by the will of some customer support interpretations of bogus rules. Ain't that a bit black mirroresque?

This is how Apple's app approval process works as well :) You get rejected, you can just increment the version number and resubmit. It will get assigned to a different person and maybe pass this time.

I worked at a job where we had to maintain an app for Apple's platform. We would make some minor bugfix based on user feedback and submit the app. They would come back with a denial that was based on changes or features introduced years ago. We would go tweak that specific feature in some way, resubmit and it would pass.

Re: YouTube locked my accounts and I can't cancel my subscription

#97

Post by surgical_fire »

Gareth321 wrote: post #67
surgical_fire wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been on this path for years, with varying degrees if faulure. How did you manage it? Some bits are harder than others. Most of my important email was migrated to a Protonmail account. With the exception with a couple of things tied to government services that don't have a path of changing your email, which sucks. Android: Next time I switch devices I am going for GrapheneOS. Technically still an Android, sandbox…

Also mixed success, but it depends what you want to achieve. My goal was to minimise risk of life disruption, and I think I succeeded. Some people are on a quest to keep their lives private, and that is harder. Email: The most important component here is owning your domain. Then you can switch between providers. I'm using iCloud now because I can have email addresses for the whole family for very cheap and it integra…

My main concern was actually being locked off my Google account once I realized how much of a wrench it would throw into my life if that happened. Privacy is a secondary concern here - not that I don't think it matters, more that I think it's a lot trickier than simply avoiding Google services.

I recently acquired my own domain, and perhaps that is a good idea, especially considering I can set it up on Proton too.

For Maps I tried HERE and TomTom, but they simply are not good enough where I live (in Europe, ironically). HERE doesn't know that some streets exist on my town, TomTom is missing a lot of addresses which makes things very cumbersome super quickly.

Phone: Apple is not an option. I despise Apple products, and I don't think they are any better than Google.

Cloud storage: I've switched to self hosting + tailscale here. It has been working actually pretty well.

Docs: I use Libre Office. Google Docs is shit.

Re: YouTube locked my accounts and I can't cancel my subscription

#98

Post by surgical_fire »

yangm97 wrote: post #68
surgical_fire wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been on this path for years, with varying degrees if faulure. How did you manage it? Some bits are harder than others. Most of my important email was migrated to a Protonmail account. With the exception with a couple of things tied to government services that don't have a path of changing your email, which sucks. Android: Next time I switch devices I am going for GrapheneOS. Technically still an Android, sandbox…

There’s a platform called Odysee which hosts mirrors of many YouTube channels, might want to check that out instead of alternative frontends like invidious.

Nice, I'll check it out!

Re: YouTube locked my accounts and I can't cancel my subscription

#99

Post by EvanAnderson »

ainiriand wrote: post #39
esperent wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Last year our bakery business got blocked from Google Maps. Reason: Your business is not eligible... Yep, apparently a brick and mortar bakery isn't eligible for Google Maps. Obviously bogus. I appealed over and over again, rereading the rules, watching every dumb YouTube video, fixing every minor imagined transgression I could think of and each time just got another BS automated "your business is not eligible...". P…

Damn! That is so dystopic to me. The future of businesses determined by the will of some customer support interpretations of bogus rules. Ain't that a bit black mirroresque?

> The future of businesses determined by the will of some customer support interpretations of bogus rules.

That's the present. The future will be trying to cajole an LLM into interpretation of bogus rules. Not sure if that's better or worse.

Re: YouTube locked my accounts and I can't cancel my subscription

#100

Post by esperent »

Gareth321 wrote: post #60
ainiriand wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Damn! That is so dystopic to me. The future of businesses determined by the will of some customer support interpretations of bogus rules. Ain't that a bit black mirroresque?

It's also possible/likely they're using discrimination. It's cheaper to avoid lawsuits and PR disasters by ensuring they respond faster to minority customers. That and/or Vietnamese customers tend to have higher spend/conversion, so Google gives them better service. Or her husband's Google account had some kind of score based on previous spend/statistical probability that determined he deserved better service. I thin…

We're in Vietnam. I'm the minority here, as a European.
Post reply on HN