Has the shooting made YouTube even worse?

[BirdOPrey5]

For months now I have been following a channel called Lore Reloaded on YouTube. 90% of the videos are about Star Trek and the other 10% various other sci-fi series. He had over 20,000 subscribers and probably over a hundred videos, many which took hours to edit as they were completely polished. Topics of the videos were things like "What if the Dominion had won the war?" and "The Borg vs. the Dominion." He'd also do hour+ long live streams where he would answer questions by fans and we'd all generally debate about Trek and other Sci-Fi stuff. The channel wasn't about politics and he never let political discussion go far before shutting it down.

The day of the YouTube shooting he put up an impromptu video offering sympathy for those hurt and strongly condemning the action (despite it being known he too was sometimes affected by seemingly random YouTube policies over prior months.) He did get videos demonetized by CBS because of their incredibly aggressive content checking bots but even when he'd dispute the claims (short clips for review purposes clearly fall under fair use) he'd be told CBS reviewed the clip (sure they did) and still maintains their claim so his only choice is to let CBS monetize his videos (which he did) or sue CBS.

He was apparently making decent money from Patreon, super chats during his live shows, and non-demonetized videos that he was making close to an average annual salary in his area of the USA, enough to let it be his main (only?) job at this point in his life.

In fact his channel and his friend's channel (Anti-Trekker) were the only two channels I supported via Patreon and had anyone told me 6 months ago I'd become such fans of two YouTube channels that I'd actually pay them despite having zero obligation to I'd have laughed before dismissing the idea as stupid. But I digress.

Without warning yesterday, while I was actually watching his final video, YouTube decided to terminate his account. Typical of youtube the channel has a vague message of possible reasons should you try to go to it:

https://www.youtube.com/lorereloaded

This account has been terminated due to multiple or severe violations of YouTube's policy against spam, deceptive practices, and misleading content or other Terms of Service violations.

So note, this message doesn't mention copyright violations and I've seen channels with messages they were terminated for multiple copyright violations so we have to assume CBS isn't behind the termination of his channel, and really, why would they be? They were making tens of thousands in ad revenue by his estimate for free.

Unfortunately under no circumstances do any of the others even remotely apply to the channel I grew to love over the last few months. No spam, no scams and the only deceptive or misleading statement was his insistence Star Trek Discovery wasn't "all bad."

As the channel owner he got the following message, also with zero answers:



The man, clearly in shock, posted this video to Twitter.



He was holding it together better than I would be, putting his hope in the "Appeal" system that this was some kind of terrible mistake. The appeal could take "up to 4 weeks" he was tol.

And then just two hours late this:



Appeal denied - termination permanent.

How did we get here?

Anti-Trekker put up a video... Anti-Treker (another mostly Trek channel despite his name) is Lore Reloaded's good friend and has a smaller channel but is willing to get much more political than Lore does and he has far more issues with copyright strikes, demonetization, and even less than fruitful exchanges with YouTube support for content creators. On top of it he has a mildly offensive avatar. Had his channel been terminated I would have still be upset but I would have had less questions as to why.



Anti-Treker's video on the absurdity of it all. Lore Reloaded would never do it but I can certainly understand how people can be pushed to their breaking point by YouTube's refusal to give a reason for any action they take. I really don't know what I'd do if I was in Lore's place.

Has anyone else seen more YouTube channels terminated recently? Was he just super unlucky? As a YouTube user I feel harmed by this too. I've had hundreds of comments effectively deleted, each one representing time I took to post expecting they would be around in some form for a long time to come, possibly forever. More so than say a forum comment which much as I love forums I don't think many will exist forever. YouTube might, or at least, I thought they would have until recently.

Sorry for the rant.

 

[Ramses]

Maybe OT but google, facebook, paypal, amazon etc. are just too large and I hate it to see only those few companies are owning the largest part of the internet.

 

[zappaDPJ]

Has anyone else seen more YouTube channels terminated recently? Was he just super unlucky? As a YouTube user I feel harmed by this too.

The problem is you can only guess at the reason because the reason given is so generic which I agree is frustrating for everyone. From your description I would wonder if the owner had been receiving copyright strikes because his content has clearly been identified by the Content ID system. That would lead to an account termination exactly as described.

I think that would be a more likely scenario than a take-down because of recent events.

 

[djbaxter]

Anti-Treker's comments about it being morally wrong for Youtube to take away someone's income without explanation is similar to many complaints about AdSense. Google's policy, whether it seems fair or unfair to you, is that they will not tell the individual the specific reason, i.e., the specific violation, because for determined violators that just gives them information on how to stay under the radar in the future.

So you don't get specific reasons from any branch of Google if you are suspended or banned.

On the other hand, I do monetize some sites using AdSense and I have on two occasions received warnings that something I was doing was (inadvertently) a violation of their policies. I was told to notify them that the problem had been corrected within a certain amount of time or risk being banned.

I don't know if Youtube ever takes this action or if they took such action for Lore Reloaded. I watch videos on YouTube but I rarely upload anything and I don't have a "channel".

With "severe" violations, I would assume that they don't issue warnings. You get warnings for going slightly over the speed limit. You don't get warnings for going 100 mph in a school zone, or for drunk driving.

I know nothing about Lore Reloaded. My usual reaction to stories about being suspended in one of Google's programs is okay you must have done something wrong but I know from my own (mild) experiences that it can be unintentional and the fact that it is deemed a violation might be debatable. For example, one of the things AdSense complained about was on my psychology/peer-support forum, a subforum in relationships titled Sex or Sexual Behavior or something similar - it wasn't even a frequently used subforum. Note this was not an X-rated section and posts there were carefully moderated both for language and for content. But AdSense said that violated their rules. Could I have appealed this? Or argued that in fact it was NOT a violation? Maybe. But as your post illustrates, BOP5, it's not always easy to get a clear picture of what their rules ARE. In that case, I just removed the sub-forum... it didn't seem worth my time to argue about it.

So I don't have anything helpful to say. Google's sites, Google's rules (aka ToS). Sometimes on the surface at least it does seem unfair but I don't know that there's much we can do about that, short of taking it to court and dropping a ton of cash which most people do not have but Google does.

 

[BirdOPrey5]

The problem is you can only guess at the reason because the reason given is so generic which I agree is frustrating for everyone. From your description I would wonder if the owner had been receiving copyright strikes because his content has clearly been identified by the Content ID system. That would lead to an account termination exactly as described.

I think that would be a more likely scenario than a take-down because of recent events.

It wasn't copyright. Copyright terminations have a seperate copyright specific message, it also must allow the uploader the option of challenging the takedown because youtube can't determine (legally) who owns the copyright to material. They follow (mostly) the DMCA rules, taking down the content as required but it can be argued back in court.

because for determined violators that just gives them information on how to stay under the radar in the future.

Absurd conclusion, in also tells people what to avoid doing.

For example, one of the things AdSense complained about was on my psychology/peer-support forum, a subforum in relationships titled Sex or Sexual Behavior or something similar

Case in point, you got details enough to figure out the Sexual Behavior forum was the issue. That level of detail would be fine.

 

[djbaxter]

Yes, but as I said above:

With "severe" violations, I would assume that they don't issue warnings. You get warnings for going slightly over the speed limit. You don't get warnings for going 100 mph in a school zone, or for drunk driving.

 

[BirdOPrey5]

OK but I've watched every video for the last 2 to 3 months (and many older ones) and there was nothing close to a severe violation of any terms of service. If you had asked me to name the most model YouTuber up until yesterday it would have been his account.

 

[cornnfedd]

youtube is clearly biased towards the left of politics, they are absolutely AGAINST free speech.

hence they continue to sensor any conservative point of view as "hate speech"

what a load of crap

 

[ehd]

Any content you outsorce may endanger you. Any host can kill you. Depend on nobody but yourself.

 

[BirdOPrey5]

The audio of this video is NOT SAFE FOR WORK, lots of F-bombs... But that said, it is very telling.

There is some hope now the channel may be restored Monday or Tuesday.

 

[LeadCrow]

Any content you outsorce may endager you. Any host can kill you. Depend on nobody but yourself.

This.
At some point some need to evaluate wether it makes sense to be at the mercy of a single provider of services. If you depend on videos embedded over 3rdparty websites, there's no difference wether you host them on youtube or even your own webspace since bandwidth is cheap nowadays.

 

[fixer]

Everyone wants me to start a Pro Gun Video site , or add the functionality to www.progungroup.com it may be worth looking into with you tube policies , porn hub even removed the gun groups that ran there from you tube

 

[R0binHood]

YouTube may want to hide or conceal their reasons for actions like this for business reasons, but it's still pretty ****y when they do it to people who have literally made major life and career decisions based on the earnings from using their tools, services or platforms.

It's the typical silicon valley digital business mindset that they'll automate as much as possible and only intervene using humans who have discretion as little as possible so that they can continue to scale the business and pretend to be as non-bias as possible. An even when they get a mod involved, there's zero actual debate by the looks of it. They pass a first and final decision and that's it pretty much. Zero real discussion.

If a channel is earning enough that it's the creators full time job and therefore also making YT a chunk of change, then there should be more discretion or communication with that creator before something as drastic as this happens. Especially so they don't feel left in the lurch and get the urge to visit the head offices and shoot up the joint.

I guess YT is making so much money across so many smaller and larger channels combined that it's just not worth it to them. A normal full time salary for one niche YouTuber or blog publisher is nothing to them, so they only have real liaisons and lines of comms with the major channels.

I guess the threshold for "a chunk of change" must be quite high now, which is why so many smaller YouTubers who could previously rely on the platform are getting bumped off so easily now.

 

[zappaDPJ]

Copyright terminations have a seperate copyright specific message, it also must allow the uploader the option of challenging the takedown because youtube can't determine (legally) who owns the copyright to material.

That's written policy and I agree there is a specific notice for copyright infringement but the reality is YouTube content is controlled by automatons working on a three strikes and you're out basis. In my experience it's almost always the case that accounts are terminated in that manner.

 

[LeadCrow]

Everyone wants me to start a Pro Gun Video site , or add the functionality to www.progungroup.com it may be worth looking into with you tube policies , porn hub even removed the gun groups that ran there from you tube

If its so controversial, dont even risk suspension. You could host and stream videos from your own webspace, bandwidth is cheap nowadays. As long as users can embed the videos onto their own pages and social media, it shouldnt make a difference from keeping them on youtube.

 

[mysiteguy]

porn hub even removed the gun groups that ran there from you tube

No they didn't. It was an April Fools joke.

 

[Anton Chigurh]

I do song parodies and also, digital "re-imagination" and remaster of music. I have had quite a few videos deleted by YT for copyright violations, but each time I appealed I won the appeal. Can't monetize any of them of course, "fair use" precludes that completely and is understandable. But up to now for my part I have found YT to be reasonable where the fair use copyright exception is concerned.

Obviously "Lore Reloaded" has had a long ongoing dispute with YT far more serious than my issues have been. I hope they see fit to restore his channel and thereby his livelihood.

 

[Drastic]

FB and Twitter are playing too many games too. The "thought crimes" seem worse than the real crimes.

 

[BirdOPrey5]

He hopes his channel will be restored later today or tomorrow. Apparently the real decision makers don't work weekends.

FB and Twitter are playing too many games too. The "thought crimes" seem worse than the real crimes.

Indeed. Through this whole thing I learned about https://www.minds.com/ - Trying to be Facebook alternative for the privacy minded. Don't think it will be an easy sell as the younger generations seem to care zero for privacy in my experience trying to explain it to family members.

 

[cornnfedd]

yes Minds is good, I just wish a lot of the bigger youtubers I follow would go over.

they also need a better app.