by throwthere on 2/25/22, 2:59 PM
We’ll this is just massively embarrassing for YouTube. The Reddit thread will get picked up by National media. YouTube will say the reporting was misuse of their terms and was a cyberattack from state level actors implying their reporting algo isn’t actually at fault. They will mention that the automated algo protects children and at risk people. They will then reinstate the accounts and say they are sorry for the temporary inconvenience and pleased that they could respond so swiftly. And the algos won’t change, not one bit. And there will still be no human oversite of these sorts of bans.
by foxfluff on 2/25/22, 2:09 PM
Again, simply watching or having watched live streams from Kiev might net you a ban.
> If you watched any Kiev livestream it may have been the reason for your termination. It happened to a lot of us too, it seems some Russian bots have been mass-reporting every single person that watched them
> Yes, yesterday night I watched a livestream. Im shocked
> I also watched a Livestream yesterday night. How i wish I didn't now since my account got terminated.
https://www.reddit.com/r/youtube/comments/t1445p/this_accoun...
by jandrese on 2/25/22, 4:06 PM
This should come as a surprise to absolutely nobody. People have been complaining for a decade now that all automated takedown bots are ripe for abuse are are actively being abused by media cartels. You can't be shocked when systems that enable abuse are abused by foreign intelligence services.
Google has said it is cheaper to ignore the problem and until that changes they aren't going to fix it. And remember that on the other end of these abusive systems are corporations that are willing to sue individuals for literally billions of dollars over sharing files.
Big corporations will not have your back when it could affect their income stream.
by dutchbrit on 2/25/22, 3:44 PM
My YouTube channel also got removed, received an email 3 hours ago.
"We have reviewed your content and found severe or repeated violations of our Community Guidelines. Because of this, we have removed your channel from YouTube."
Also posted a message showing support to Ukraine in a Kiev livestream.
by mabbo on 2/25/22, 3:42 PM
This is what happens when you remove all humans from the loop. The decisions made by software can be manipulated once you have a reasonable estimation of what the software is doing.
This time it's Russia. Next time it will be an American political party (whichever one you don't like). YouTube saved some money on human moderation, and all it cost was selling their platform to the first group willing to abuse the system.
And do you know how they'll respond? By trying to improve the automation. No no, no need to add costs by having humans in the loop, we'll just make better software. Because that's what worked so well for SEO, right?
by andrewinardeer on 2/25/22, 3:18 PM
I'd be willing to wager money this is a cyber operation by a nation state weaponizing YT's automated systems.
by ravenstine on 2/25/22, 4:11 PM
YouTube is quickly going on its way to becoming of low relevance. It will take a while, but when even non-controversial YouTube channels have to speak in code words in order to not get demonetized/striked/deleted, you know there's a real problem. I don't know if this banning of Ukraine support is real and, if it is, whether it's intentional or just another round of The Google's Best AI snagging on bugs again, but it doesn't matter. YouTube simply is becoming an nonviable platform to tie to one's business or opinions. At this point, you're not even that likely to get a following without several years of posting videos every day because of just how biased YouTube has become against small creators; you're better off posting on smaller video platforms or even just making your own website.
by rcoveson on 2/25/22, 7:10 PM
@dang, I'm speaking from a position of ignorance here, but I think this thread is getting flagged, given its age, score, and position on the (currently) second page. It's possible that it has triggered some other less-documented condition, like "political keywords + too many upvotes?" or something, in which case disregard.
If it is the flagging, I think we can agree that if any political thread were ever HN-appropriate then this one is. It would also be nice to have confirmation one way or another, since if it has been that fact in and of itself becomes part of the conversation.
by dr_faustus on 2/25/22, 3:38 PM
On the other hand, RT is still happily streaming on YouTube, spouting their non-sense. German viewers is not even IP blocked, even though the have lost their broadcasting license.
by hericium on 2/25/22, 3:04 PM
Reddit I understand but Alphabet/Google/YouTube reached next level of incompetence.
by drocer88 on 2/25/22, 3:52 PM
Don't browse youtube on the browser you have logged in to google.
Use firefox with ublock origin and don't log in to google. Youtube is great without ads. Use chrome for any of those things that you are okay with being tracked. Use archive.is when they bitch about blockers.
Use tor browser to see interesting ads not targeted to you.
by batch12 on 2/25/22, 3:40 PM
The chilling effect of this should be taken in account too. Once this is more widely reported, I can see many people choosing to avoid these sources of information even after bans are lifted because they are afraid of losing their google account.
by ganzuul on 2/25/22, 3:14 PM
Isn't YT moderation outsourced? The infiltrators might just be overzealous Russian nationals in one of those cubicle farms.
by kilnr on 2/25/22, 2:28 PM
I wasn't aware you can see what others are watching. How does one do that?
by jdrc on 2/25/22, 4:58 PM
This has happened to other wars in the region too. State trolls mass report twitter and youtube accounts to get people banned, or have their videos "age restricted" (which means youtube does not recommend them). It' s the standard practice of google's nonexistent jouranlism/publishing ethics.
Twitter has this thing in Germany where they are required to tell you if someone reported your account. This is at least a good way for reporters to know that they are being targetted by trolls.
by bedast on 2/25/22, 3:57 PM
It's probably worth noting that these are livestreams which have chat enabled. You are automatically added as a participant, and show up on the participant list, which anyone can see. I suspect watching, say, the WaPo livestream is fine because they have disabled chat and comments. If you must go to one of these livestreams, for some reason, check to see if chat is enabled, and if so, probably avoid it until Youtube figures out how to deal with this.
by sebow on 2/25/22, 3:10 PM
This has happened way too frequently and in distinct cases to keep pretending 'it's just incompetence/ignorance'. By the time people realize it's more akin to malevolence it will sadly be too late.
I now propose an updated motto: "Don't be evil: just look away."
by jb1991 on 2/25/22, 3:11 PM
For starters, regarding live streams, the Ukraine government doesn't want citizens filming what is happening because it might give away positions of the Ukraine defenders as they attempt to maneuver in Kyiv, so that could be one motivation.
by vezycash on 2/25/22, 3:05 PM
A livestream about watching Kiev livestream to demo how long it takes for the account to get banned should be interesting.
by sharken on 2/25/22, 3:06 PM
YouTube, where oppressive regimes decide what you can watch.
I'm sure this is top priority right now for Google to fix. But perhaps everything is automated to an extent that this has no good countermove. We shall see.
by Dolores12 on 2/25/22, 3:37 PM
Probably what happens is that people are being reported for saying something in chat that others don't like. X reports and your account is terminated automatically.
by TekMol on 2/25/22, 3:41 PM
What is the state of decentralized (ake Web3) video hosting platforms?
Are they ready to fill the gap to some extend?
I think this is a typical use case for the decentralized approach?
by seanw444 on 2/25/22, 4:03 PM
by thescriptkiddie on 2/25/22, 6:26 PM
by urthor on 2/26/22, 1:00 AM
Not a new problem.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
People have talked a lot about how this is morally wrong.
It's more morally pretty wrong for a long time.
Copyright complaints shouldn't get settled by a "report them instant action," model. Not having a fair hearing in a court of law, is a serious weakness in our modern day legal system.
Jurists legitimately have not figured out how to solve this problem. Copyright & patent law when social graphs spread IP at light-speed is a real conundrum.
But it's not a new problem.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
What's new is Youtube's algorithm has become a huge asset to Russian foreign policy.
Which is directly opposed to the United State's interests.
If you're working in the foreign policy apparatus of the US Government and watching this... the fact Alphabet is projecting Russian soft power is a big big problem.
by Avamander on 2/25/22, 4:00 PM
Google's approach to abuse has a lot of false positives and false negatives but no proper way to remedy either of them.
The spiciest example I can think of is one Estonian parish being marked as belonging to Russia, even right this moment, on Google Maps.
by somethoughts on 2/25/22, 5:49 PM
Perhaps a happy medium for Youtube and other content hosters might be to disaggregate content uploads into two buckets of service:
1.) Generalized content hosting that has minimal oversight with commenting, upvotes and monetization, etc. Basically "bring your own audience" Vimeo style.
2.) More carefully moderated content that gets reviewed by human moderators/stricter opinionated screening filters before it is pushed into the auto-recommendation engine/viral feed algorithm.
This blind viral content also based solely on uplikes seems a bit too blind/automated.
by josevalerio on 2/25/22, 6:58 PM
It’s a private corporation, they can do what they want!!
Wait not like that
by macilacilove on 2/25/22, 5:56 PM
Maybe they calculate that too much outrage will make Russia appear more powerful especially if at the same time Western leaders are not going to do that much(not sure if they will).
Maybe they want to save face for politicians who - people will argue - mishandled this crisis.
Maybe it is just not really true, despite some people saying it on the internet.
by lmilcin on 2/25/22, 3:16 PM
I think larger interesting problem here is possibility of those huge corporations taking sides in wars.
by Buttons840 on 2/25/22, 7:51 PM
I've been leaving comments on YouTube videos and have seen some strange things. I post a comment, get a few thumbs up and engage in some responses, and then the video will disappear, taken down. Quite a coincidence. So I 100% believe the claim of this post.
by rurban on 2/26/22, 7:43 AM
In Germany this is an important new principle called "Täterschutz". Eg if an amokrunner is active, you cannot post information of his location or identification.
First I thought it's Reddit crazyness only, but it spread over.
by gzer0 on 2/25/22, 3:21 PM
I stand corrected. My apologies.
by freeflight on 2/25/22, 4:07 PM
What's the chance of these accounts having been compromised for a while, and they were now activated to serve as bots, with YouTube detecting that increased activity and changed behavior, thus flagging them for suspend?
by LoveGracePeace on 2/25/22, 5:15 PM
Some commenters have said it could be that the videos make it easier for Russia to see what the Ukranians are doing, though I'd imagine they'd just take those respective videos down instead of outright banning people's accounts (since several years ago they force tied our YT accounts directly to our Google accounts even though some of us pay for services like Drive storage and Google Domains - and YT Premium for that matter).
Aside from that, food for thought; I know this won't be popular but Google does have ties to JetBrains (Android Studio, Android development used to be done in Eclipse, I prefer Eclipse). JetBrains has offices in Saint Petersburg and Moscow. Google has a strong interest in pushing nginx (formerly (?) Russian made, though I personally prefer Apache) in Kubernetes.
by pyuser583 on 2/26/22, 3:45 AM
Twitter was shutting down mainstream OSINT accounts. They eventually apologized.
It seems like the new media are keen to shut down information offensives, but are trying to use AI or some other lazy technique.
by protomyth on 2/25/22, 4:06 PM
The cynical side of me thinks this to remove competition from the approved (read monetization) news networks on YouTube, but I bet it is more algorithmic incompetence with no human oversight.
by lkxijlewlf on 2/25/22, 4:08 PM
Question: When YouTube (aka Google, aka Alphabet) bans a user, is that user then deleted from the ad database so that Alphabet no longer makes any money from that user's data?
by squarefoot on 2/25/22, 7:06 PM
Some users reported that their accounts were restored. So it appears that Google is actually capable of reading complaints and checking for wrong removals, when they want to.
by jeffwask on 2/25/22, 3:54 PM
It's far past time for American companies to espouse some American values like freedom and democracy rather than boot licking foreign dictators for nickles.
by ipaddr on 2/25/22, 4:57 PM
The ironic thing is vk is not censoring similiar content.
by browningstreet on 2/25/22, 4:20 PM
When Google bans an account like this, and that account is a Premium subscriber, do they automatically cancel the subscription?
by mindcandy on 2/25/22, 7:25 PM
How likely is it that this is the result of Russian bots mass-reporting Ukraine supporters for "violations"?
by rr808 on 2/25/22, 4:24 PM
Most of Russian side social media is on Telegram. Does anyone even know if they ban people or moderate content?
by lallysingh on 2/25/22, 3:34 PM
Is this actually happening or are people trying to keep others from supporting Ukraine?
by penjelly on 2/25/22, 4:42 PM
its crazy to me this can occur for any reason, even if they blame the algo, most companies would not be able to get away with something like this without a major effect on their reputation.
by obayesshelton on 2/28/22, 6:33 PM
And you wonder what happens around politics season..
by glogla on 2/25/22, 3:13 PM
Twitter, Facebook and Google - reliable allies of evil everywhere in the world.
I mean we knew that, but now it's like they're competing who is worse.
by decremental on 2/25/22, 5:13 PM
Dollars to donuts says they were fed posting and got in trouble for it.
by 0xJRS on 2/25/22, 3:55 PM
YouTube: "What're you gonna do? Go use Vimeo?"
by JaimeThompson on 2/25/22, 6:32 PM
And yet YouTube allows channels that call the holocaust a hoax, that threaten people, etc to stay up and collect superchats.
Strange.
by alergnon1234 on 2/25/22, 2:59 PM
I'll always be amazed at how advanced and desperate pro-Kremlin shilling is, using a throwaway account just in case they decide to DDoS my side project as retaliation.
by ukraineally on 2/25/22, 4:52 PM
There has also been huge amounts of bans on twitter. Say the wrong thing and you get ejected. Yet the clear russian propaganda is allowed to stay. I wonder what the threshold is to accuse twitter of russian collaboration.
It's certainly a charged event with emotions running hot. People are going to say things that are wrong.
Crimea was a difficult subject because they are ethnically russian. Due in large part to a gigantic naval base. They did vote to separate from the Ukraine.
That was then, today is different. The direct invasion of Ukraine is aggression. Putin lied, diplomacy has failed.
As emperor of canada I would have done what my gov has done so far, but also put a sunset. In 1 year, unless something changes, we end any and all connection to russia. their citizens may not come here. none of their citizens may own property here. Absolutely no trade of any kind. Anyone who is currently doing business with them, your contracts are null and void. Find new suppliers.
by supreme_berry on 2/25/22, 6:02 PM
Just to remind you all YouTube and Stadia product manager was/is Russian person in Silicon Valley.
by Jabbles on 2/25/22, 2:59 PM
OK what seems more plausible: YT is banning people simply for watching a live stream that they are hosting, or that these reports are mistaken or part of a disinformation campaign by a country known for them.
by kybernetyk on 2/25/22, 3:28 PM
Too bad but luckily I don't really care anymore. I de-googlified myself some time ago. My email is fastmail on my own domain, I don't use Google's cloud services.
Sucks for people who are still trapped in the Goolag ecosystem though. Maybe this should be a warning at least not to host your precious family photos with Google and not to use their email service.
by itchyjunk on 2/25/22, 3:35 PM
I am not sure about watching, but a few different streamer have said showing dead bodies other other list of things can get you banned. Some streamer I was watching mentioned that even violent gun fights and other things might get you in trouble. They were watching videos first without showing it to make sure it was safe.
I also wonder if youtube is trying to do detect propaganda somehow. Some videos were clearly using old/altered clips and making claims about the war. This might be factoring in too. Unfortunately, no actual detail is provided of what exactly was the trigger. Even some of the reddit thread seems to have disappeared.
In my humble opinion, HN is a file place to be outraged about something some company/person has not but not really that good of a place if there is no data/information/real indication/ that something bad has happened. I am happy to listen to counter points.