Our channel on YouTube has been deleted due to “spam and deceptive policies”
98 comments
·February 3, 2025phtrivier
afh1
YouTube is notorious for that, though. With that context, this is one more instance, showing that the issue persists. I remember a German youtuber tried to unionize creators through IG Metall, though there doesn't seem to be any news in years so I'm not sure it went anywhere. https://fairtube.info/en/seite/press-coverage-of-fairtube/
MathMonkeyMan
I've had good luck with Firefox, ublock origin, and sponsorblock. Can't remember the last time I saw an ad, automated or otherwise. There's also an extension that changes your default page to "subscriptions" instead of "home." I do recall using the ad blocker to hide the side panel of video recommendations, too. At least for now, youtube really is a free ride for me.
Mr_Bees69
Have you ever tried out librewolf? It's blue!
Matt_Cutts
For what it's worth, I pinged someone about it.
secondcoming
I'm astounded by how crap the ads on Youtube now are. Back when the Adcopalypse happened they stated they were going to clean up the ads shown, but now it's just AI generated crap.
scotty79
> but it's always hard to share the outrage in this situation
I'm not really sure what makes raging about this so hard for you. Current YouTube practice is equivalent to locking up a citizen for "thievery" and "reasons" without providing any evidence of such at any point.
And sure, few hundreds years ago this course of action would fly. But today we advanced a bit and demand that our justice is a bit more just. I don't see why we should demand less of the corporations. Or do we just accept their role as a pocket of feudalism in modern society? Accepting undemocratic small planned economies of corporations is one thing, accepting customers to be their serfs is another.
MichaelZuo
How does this make sense when zero percent of uploaded youtube videos are owned by the creators?
It’s not like they are paintings loaned to an art gallery, where the gallery might have some obligations to preserve, return, etc.
From what I understand there’s no liability even if the board of directors decide to shut down Youthbe tomorrow and permanently delete every uploaded video.
squigz
This is a pretty good comment, except I'm not really sure what point you're trying to make with the last line.
saltserv
[dead]
dimatura
That's shocking, sinevibes is a legit developer in the music/audio space. They made the FX for dreadbox's Typhon synth and several popular FX plugins for Korg logue synths. I'm subscribed to their newsletter and have never received spam. All their youtube channel had were demos of their products, as far as I recall. Like "here's how the dry synth sounds, here's how it sounds with reverb", can't even imagine how an algorithm thought it runs afoul of a spam or scam policy. Probably a mistake, hope it's fixed.
hoistbypetard
> can't even imagine how an algorithm thought it runs afoul of a spam or scam policy
Could a competitor cause the algorithm to think that, somehow, perhaps by engaging a service that reports the videos, in bulk, repeatedly from a seemingly diverse set of user accounts?
j16sdiz
Or just an update in yourtube's new algorithm.
YouTube have 114 million active channels. A small error rate of 0.001% would kill 1000 channels.
tgv
The market is not that nasty, AFAIK. It's all pretty niche. And YT isn't the biggest marketing channel for this segment, I think. The forums have lively discussions of plugins by people that understand and use the stuff, and whose previous contributions you can easily look up.
danaris
It doesn't have to be due to "the market". It just takes one channel owner who thinks that sinevibes is unfairly stealing their attention and decides to be staggeringly petty about it.
S_A_P
My channel suffered the same fate. I had a few original songs on it and a few original videos on it. Never got a warning or copyright strike or any sort of notice. Just boom shut down.
andsoitis
Affer the shut down on YouTube, did you post them elsewhere? That way, people can still watch it.
WoodenChair
The title on HN needs to be updated. Right now it says "YouTube shut down 15 years old audio developer's channel for "reasons""
It can be read as saying the age of the person is 15 years old. But the developer said they had the channel for 15 years, not that they are 15 years old:
"How they are willing to insanely shut down a 15-year-old channel with not a single issue on record, without any warning or question, is beyond crazy." [0]
[0]: https://bsky.app/profile/sinevibes.bsky.social/post/3lhbep5p...
richrichardsson
Done. I had the same issues with it myself when I initially wrote it, but couldn't think of a better wording at the time. Hopefully it's less confusing now.
readyplayernull
This happens all the time in Google Play, how do you protect against random take downs? You have several copies of your dev account or channel. That's it, you become a spammer to defend against the bot that "protects" us from spammers.
grishka
That's a bad advice. Firstly, Google is known to ban developer accounts "by association". They will easily ban all of your copies all at once. Secondly, apps are identified by globally unique package IDs. If one account has claimed an ID, no other account can use it ever again. So even if you do republish your app, you have no way to make your existing users update to that version. It will be considered a different app both by Google Play and Android itself.
marcosdumay
What guarantees that final users can't protect themselves against phishing, because who knows if that new name, with completely incompatible history belongs to the same owner or not?
n4r9
How does that even work on YouTube? You publish each video to every backup channel? You'd still lose followers and views surely.
6510
People uploading the Hollywood library do it like this:
Have channels with playlists and channels with 1 movie each. Add one of the playlists to the description (that playlist may not contain that movie)
The movies one by one vanish from the playlists and are uploaded again on new channels.
The playlist channels seem to last for a really long time.
spaceywilly
We need decentralized services that are not subject to the whims of whichever power hungry billionaire is in charge this week
drjeep
My 13 year old son's Youtube account (not just channel) was banned without explanation or recourse. Multiple appeals resulted only in generic "stay in the corner and reflect on what you've done" replies but no indication of what he did wrong.
Even if he did upload something questionable, or his account was hacked or whatever the case may be, why ban his paid Youtube Premium account and not just the channel? Why not share the so-called questionable content with the parent so I can help him avoid another strike in future?
Even if opening another Gmail account is trivial, the hassle of setting up Google Family, Youtube Premium, Fortnite, Steam and every other account linked to his Gmail address is a massive pain.
Not sure where I'm going with this other than Google doesn't seem to care about paying customers.
portaouflop
a computer can never be held accountable — therefore a computer must never make a management decision
Ukv
While not the case here, I feel like if some system really does have a lower error rate than humans on some task, then it'd be wrong to rule it out just because it can't be held accountable or punished. To me those are primarily means to reduce mistakes, opposed to requirements or ends onto themselves.
afh1
People who sign-off on the programs to do the task can be held accountable, they just aren't. It's not about computers, it's about the legal system.
loloquwowndueo
Unless of course you don’t care about accountability.
This gives google a lot of “oops, the system did it” leeway.
rwmj
a.k.a "The Unaccountability Machine" - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Unaccountability-Machine-Systems-Te...
tivert
And the market is the ultimate unaccountability machine. Just pay attention to how people use it as a justification sometimes.
simonw
For anyone who hasn't seen this before, it's from an IBM internal training document in 1979.
Sadly the original source was lost in a flood and IBM archives do not have a copy: https://twitter.com/jonty/status/1798170111058264280
Edit: here's a better link https://simonwillison.net/2025/Feb/3/a-computer-can-never-be...
alistairSH
Seen what, all I see is a tweet that there isn't an archive?
Or is that tweet about the parent post?
simonw
I just pulled together a bunch of notes here, since linking to Twitter sucks now (logged out users can't navigate conversations): https://simonwillison.net/2025/Feb/3/a-computer-can-never-be...
ericb
That's a really fascinating, but horrible, point.
Every AI decision becomes a way to shirk responsibility, even more than just automated ones (because then its "your" rule).
Welcome to the brave new world of AI-decision laundering.
chad1n
Same happened to an app that I published on Play Store, I don't even care that much, I only feel bad for the people that bought the premium version of it. Overall the takeway is that your product is never safe and you shouldn't only rely on these big platforms for marketing/distribution.
sschueller
My appeal is still pending: https://github.com/sschueller/peertube-android/issues/302
piva00
It bothers me a lot the ideological hatred for regulations commonly found on HN. This is exactly a showcase why regulations for digital markets/marketplaces need to exist.
We simply cannot trust huge platforms to care about the small to medium developers, people who are essentially powerless against a behemoth like Google or Apple. You get your app taken down, your account locked and the only recourse left would be spending six to seven figures in lawyers while risking losing the case altogether.
It's disgusting.
conartist6
Right now you're correct that the only form of recourse users have is to sue the companies, but you're not entirely correct that it takes spending six figures.
You can sue them in San Mateo county and have the case adjudicated in a court which does not allow lawyers for either side and which has the power to compel a Google or a Facebook to reverse an erroneous moderation decision.
https://www.engadget.com/how-small-claims-court-became-metas...
orwin
Even in countries where the cost to sue is low (mine), it's at lest 20 hours, and low 4-figure at the very least (unless it's against an employer, in that case unions will foot the bill, or against the state/an elected official, an anti-corruption NGO will do it for you)
TheOtherHobbes
Multiple appearances, endless time wasted, and maybe four figures of expenses to show up in person is still not affordable.
And then you get Meta failing to show up, but asking for a set-aside afterwards because... they failed to show up.
It's aggressive customer contempt. This is someone's livelihood, possibly their entire livelihood, and these bobbleheads treat it like a joke.
fzzzy
I guess this gives Facebook even more incentive to re-incorporate in Texas and move the headquarters there.
whizzter
Google is just egerious on another level, the difference between them is that while Apple might clampdown on some obscure rule (or due to the random reviewer assignment), they're usually at least human and unless in litigation can be reasoned with to an extent.
Google otoh is more like, bot/automated system takes things down and unless you happen to catch the eyes of someone in the particular department of Google you're SHOL because they don't want to give away "security secrets".
Point in case, the Terraria dev losing his Google account while making a Stadia port that couldn't get his account back despite having internal Google contacts (maybe he eventually got it back but not before the damage was done).
dsign
For those that rely on social media, this is probably the biggest upside to there being social media platforms... not all of them will take you down at once.
Other than that, this is probably because the content owner has a product called "Switch", and they are not as big and mighty as Nintendo. Makes me think that if you are creating a brand or product name, better use a made-up word
grahamlee
Another company has a store called Super Mario, and the courts are reasonable enough to realize that they don't compete: https://ticotimes.net/2025/01/30/david-vs-goliath-costa-rica...
gtsop
I don't buy the switch speculation. Since we have zero info it sounds too arbitrary.
FeistySkink
Could it be related to them selling a product called Switch? Although unrelated, could match some overzealous Nintendo filter. Who are on a quest against anything emulation recently.
keepamovin
The platforms are opaque in their Kafkaesque bureaucratic nonsense.
But equally consistent is the narratives of the deplatformed are presented from one side, 100% victim, 0% responsible.
I know it’s hard when facing a faceless, robotic, powerful enemy - but going full one-side is just playing into the powerless-game framework of the platforms. Step up, own the full spectrum of your choices - and whatever the outcome, it’s more of a learning experience and you’re more empowered - rather than just “right”.
Also engage Black Swan techniques for dealing with abstruse bureaucracies.
sussmannbaka
If you are choosing to use Google products, you are choosing to solidify their monopolist position and they will thank you by randomly killing your account. Don’t use Google products.
Might be moot, but the shutdown email mentions "spam, scam or deceptive practices", not just "reasons".
Without any context about the owner of the channel, the reader has no way to know how unfair the shutdown is.
I understand from the HN thread that the dev is well known and that the shutdown seems unfair - but it's always hard to share the outrage in this situation.
Best of luck to the channel's owner - let's hope the appeal ends up in front of a human being.
Now, let's all go back on youtube, to watch suggested videos about fake news interspersed with ads for crypto scam.