Counter notifications that include all legally required elements but do not follow their form letter are still valid. Yet this probably doesn't mash with Google's "Automate all the things!" strategy, so they are instead shafting everyone and hoping they get away with it due to their wealth even though YouTube is blatantly breaking the law.
> Terminations and Suspensions by YouTube for Cause
> YouTube may suspend or terminate your access, your Google account, or your Google account’s access to all or part of the Service if (a) you materially or repeatedly breach this Agreement; (b) we are required to do so to comply with a legal requirement or a court order; or (c) we believe there has been conduct that creates (or could create) liability or harm to any user, other third party, YouTube or our Affiliates
Update: 3 hours after posting and being on the hacker news front page:
Automated email out of the blue: "We’re pleased to let you know that we’ve recently reviewed your YouTube account, and after taking another look, we can confirm that it is not in violation of our Terms of Service. We have lifted the suspension of your account, and it is once again active and operational."
Thanks hacker news for voting this up and clearly triggering something within the GooglePlex. Still a big -1 for Google/YouTube that their normal processes are completely broken.
It would be easy for them to fingerprint it and block it at a server level, given that it uses some hardcoded headers (which are probably sent in the wrong order versus the browser it's spoofing), doesn't fetch any of the images/stylesheets/etc on the page, and probably fetches scripts/manifests/etc in a predictable order that differs from YouTube's own scripts. Maybe they already do this (fingerprinting and logging, that is), but I haven't heard of anyone being banned for it, so it's probably not something to worry about.
It would also be easy for them to just break the extraction code. The old code used to break every time the signature function changed, and while the current code solves that problem, there are still so many things that they could do to break it, and yet they don't (the current code has only broken a few times that I can think of, and I don't think any of those were intentional on Google's part).
Technically it could violate these parts of the ToS, but they're all grey areas:
- access through anything than the site or 'approved' clients (but youtube-dl does use the site, so it could just be classed as another user agent)
- running automated services against them (running youtube-dl manually is probably fine, even for whole playlists or channels, but running a 'youtube-dl as a service' site like the one in this case is almost certainly not)
- downloading videos (but youtube-dl can also be used for streaming, despite the name)
I'm guessing that Google simply doesn't give a shit, as long as you're not using using it abusively (e.g. offering it as a service or using it to do mass-scraping).
> The court orders show the government telling Google to provide the names, addresses, telephone numbers and user activity for all Google account users who accessed the YouTube videos between January 1 and January 8, 2023.
Interesting aside: Viacom used a similar broad request back in 2008 [1] in its lawsuit that nearly put YouTube out of business in its infancy. This time, it's the government making the request, and Google has way more data to potentially provide.
I spent years having to click "No, I do not consent to creating a Google+ profile" every time I used YouTube so I refuse to give them money on principle.
Now, it is true that this alleged "YouTube exception" was listed in emails sent to us. But those emails aren't worth the pixels they're printed on; the only policy that matters is the one published above, and you can plainly see that there are no exceptions for YouTube creators.
I spent over 20 minutes in a chat with One Support to get clarity on this, and after a lot of ignoring my plainly worded questions and a lot of Support copy pasta, I determined that the email was a malicious lie or an innocent mistake. Don't trust what they told you, trust only what they've published.
I knew Google's automated processes were pretty bad from earlier stories here, but today I got hit by it myself.
I participated in the totally legit EthGlobal "Hack Money" hackathon (https://hackathon.money/) earlier this year and one of required submissions of that event was a video describing your work.
I made one and uploaded it to Youtube. The hackathon went great and we won some prizes but that's not relevant to this story.
Yesterday evening I received an email from Youtube that they've removed my channel because "Spam, scams or commercially deceptive content are not allowed on YouTube.".
I thought this certainly must be an error so I used the attached appeal link and got a response within less than 15 minutes that they appeal has been rejected and that no further replies will be processed.
I am a paid Youtube Music subscriber and I can't login to even listen to my own music anymore. Amazing.
I would like to think that Google's AI systems are smarter than just videoTitle.contains("hack") && videoTitle.contains("money"), but apparently not.
If anybody has connections who can help get me unsuspended that would be highly appreciated. The google cache of my channel is still available here:
https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:gcYJ--i6UYgJ:https://www.youtube.com/c/MathijsVogelzang+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=nl
Well they actually host a bunch of videos that they wont allow people to monetize. Is that an issue too? Is monetization a right of a user, TOS be damned?
Russel Brand is still allowed to view youtubes, even post videos. The company that has built, maintained and spent to allow all that has removed the ability from a user user to monetize his videos, but hasn't even silenced him.
I don't know if shutting down his channel and removing all the videos (which Google has a legal right to do) would be better.
The common thread that they are trying to raise awareness about is that Google at any time, for any reason, can lock you out of your account with no way for you to actually find out why or what's happened.
Yes it's probally against YouTube's ToS to get people to pay for content in unlisted videos, but the terms of service doesn't explicitly talk about using YouTube to host paid-for content - it is covered in a border statement though in their ToS [0]
But they should still at least be able to talk to a real human about it and get told the actual reason "Your account was terminated for commercial use of unlisted videos" instead of automated email bot responses/Or have been given some warning "This is against our ToS, your account will be terminated in 7 days"
They must be serious about it because I've received tons of email notifications about this addressed to things like tivo-1234@pages.plusgoogle.com and other random things I didn't know made a youtube account
This is why I don't rely on Google anymore. I do have a Youtube account separate from the Gmail account I used to use, but I don't trust Google to not figure out its the same person and simply terminate both if the Youtube account does something they don't like.
It really is amazing how much power they have. In 19th century terms, if you're an ass to people at the tavern they can raid your home and burn all your personal documents and correspondences.
Google support in general (and YouTube specifically) is one of the most incompetent, entitled, and utterly useless systems that exist. Your feeling of YT doing their best doesn't match the reality of how incapable, slow and unhelpful they are. There are many stories of YouTube channels being taken down, receiving strikes for false copyright claims, or just demonetized based on the whims of some virtue signaling employee.
Automating thins is fine, and even getting things wrong is okay. YouTube is nothing without the content that's on it, so it goes without saying that any money-making channel deserves expedited support, especially in cases like this one.
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