11 ms·

Part of the issue is just the systems on the backend. I had my account removed about 3 years ago for some mistaken flag of copyright infringement, having never

Part of the issue is just the systems on the backend. I had my account removed about 3 years ago for some mistaken flag of copyright infringement, having never uploaded a video. I had 7 years of liked videos and curated playlists, that I wanted to save. Compounding the personal severity, some of the channels I'm subscribed to contained personal private videos from friends that had passed away. It took me 4 days to get my account restored, and required calling into both Google and Youtube, as well as emailing, and contacting friends that worked at Google to get internal numbers. All because they have some system that accidentally flagged an account with zero uploads, and Google still lacks any real form of public customer service.

colonelpopcorn 9y ago
Because you're not a customer. You don't pay for YouTube, advertisers do.
- motardo 9y ago
  Exactly, advertisers are the customer, you are the product
  - cable2600 9y ago
    A Tom Sawyer business plan where the users do all the work and pay for the privilege by having their data sold to the highest bidder. Free as in money does not mean the same as free as in speech.
- stevenwoo 9y ago
  I wonder if the OP were one of the youtube paying customer (for the ad free version) if OP would have gotten a better response.
- reificator 9y ago
  I absolutely pay for YouTube in a package deal with Google Play Music. $15/mo for the family plan.
- adventurer 9y ago
  YouTube Red or as I like to call it sometimes, because frankly I can't remember, RedTube. <-NSFW
  - tnoeu09rclnt 9y ago
    In case anyone is unclear on this, RedTube is a different site that hosts hardcore porn.
    - yjftsjthsd-h 9y ago
      ... a fact which can lead to hilarious misunderstandings
xor1 9y ago
You should be extremely grateful you were actually able to reach anyone and get it restored at all.
- JauntyHatAngle 9y ago
  >You should be extremely grateful you were actually able to reach anyone and get it restored at all. Nitpicky, but no he shouldn't, he should feel lucky, sure, but grateful? No, he should feel angry that it happened in the first place, and only somewhat placated that they restored it.
  - jimminy 9y ago
    Absolutely feel a little grateful, to the people that I was able to reach. And somewhat lucky that I had contacts, to escalate if necessary, though I did manage to go through public channels. And yes, I'm absolutely livid still over the fact that their system couldn't observe a purely consumer account, with only a few small comments, could be flagged as copyright infringing. Had I been unable to reach a human for manual review of the nonsense of my account status, I'm positive I wouldn't have regained access.
justinjlynn 9y ago
Might I highly recommend something like youtube-dl to save those precious videos and playlists locally. You never know when they're going to shut down your account again or go under.
- jimminy 9y ago
  Yep, I did that at the time, for the important videos. Still haven't found a good playlist backup, aside from using the API, not wanting to store all those videos (something like 2000 videos at this point across 30 lists, not including my watchlist or likes which is ~2500 videos). I think they're safe from going under, but do worry about them shutting my account down again by accident.
  - justinjlynn 9y ago
    youtube-dl handles playlist backup, annotation download, subtitles, thumbnails, etc. - no need to download the video or anything you don't want to (or you can download postage stamp previews, etc). shrug best archival solution I've found so far.
    - IllogicalLogic 9y ago
      Try using a service called LBRY....they are a decentralized video platform and nothing can ever be deleted by design (LBRY.io). I believe they have a mass import script (all open source and the service is free)
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - kingofpandora 9y ago
    > Yep, I did that at the time, for the important videos. Still haven't found a good playlist backup, aside from using the API, not wanting to store all those videos (something like 2000 videos at this point ... This is going to sound snarky but here goes ... Sounds like the problem is not wanting to store an admittedly large number of videos but not liking the service of the company doing it for you at no charge.
tyingq 9y ago
I assume this hosed your main Google account, right? Not just your access to YouTube? That's the part that really rubs me the wrong way. That, for example, your nest thermostat (or email, or phone, etc) might not work right because you uploaded the wrong video one day.
- jimminy 9y ago
  > I assume this hosed your main Google account, right? Not just your access to YouTube? Nope, it was just the Youtube account. When they did the Google+ transition, I generated a new Google account for my Youtube account, but linked it to my normal Google account. I actually found out about the account removal because of message in Gmail that I had missed for 2-3 days.
- tgragnato 9y ago
  Did he upload the wrong video ? The possibility is even worse than that, it's because of a server side bug.
  - KGIII 9y ago
    jimminy stated they'd never uploaded any videos, which makes it even more puzzling.
    - lostmsu 9y ago
      He also stated later, that he had older videos uploaded long time ago.
      - jimminy 9y ago
        That was a different individual. I've never uploaded a video at any point.
RealityNow 9y ago
My Youtube account got banned 10 years ago with videos on it I made as a teen that are now gone forever. 7 years ago or so I had tried emailing their customer support which of course didn't get me anywhere. Is there any way I can get those videos back? Unfortunately I don't have any contacts at Google, but if I were to get in hold with someone who works there, is there anything in particular I should direct them to do? I should be upfront and say that I got banned for uploading a video that was deemed inappropriate. I don't really fault them for banning the account, I just wish they had given me the chance to back up my other perfectly appropriate videos. I know those videos probably still exist on some hard drive on a Google server.
- digi_owl 9y ago
  What i don't get i why they do these "hard" bans. Would have been more helpful and long term friendly to basically take the videos off air and forbid the account from uploading any more videos, but leave the account itself active.
  - jimminy 9y ago
    Yeah, that would be a great policy. Still allow consumption, but remove any production rights on the service.
- jimminy 9y ago
  I don't know about Google's cleanup policies, but I would guess that data may have been gone within 3-6 months. When my ban occurred, I had reclaimed access in a total of 5-6 days, due to an urgency to make sure I got through before any cleanup occurred.
  - RealityNow 9y ago
    Well that sucks. Guess those videos are probably gone forever.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
tmaly 9y ago
I often wonder what people do for all the videos they make of their kids. I do not want to lose them, but in the age of HD video, where do you store them for the long term?
- jimminy 9y ago
  Depending on how much content you have a small drive array should be fine if you're willing to down size to 720p^. Or willing to upgrade to higher capacity than what I share below. An hour of 720p = ~1.15GB An hour per week for a year is ~60GB. On a hard drive, you can fit 30 years of data at that rate into a 2TB drive. Or you could put almost a year of data onto a dual-layer Blu-Ray disc (50GB). ^I personally have a really hard time seeing quality gains in video above that.
  - tmaly 9y ago
    how do you handle redundancy and fires?
    - jimminy 9y ago
      For local redundancy, use a RAID 1 or RAID 5 setup, either in one of your home systems, or you can buy a simple NAS solution like a Drobo, and set it up for mirroring to multiple drives. The NAS unit ($350-500) + 3-4 4TB HDD's (~$120/each), or $700-1000 which will last years. To do offsite, in case of fire, you can clone backups onto another harddrive or every few weeks or months onto blurays and store them at a relatives, safety deposit box, or somewhere else you consider safe and accessible. Or you are willing, for offsite matters, go a cloud provided like Google, Box, DropBox, which will charge you $10-20/mo for a TB of storage on their servers, you can use that. I personally, don't use much offsite storage, for most of my data. I make occasional Blu-Ray or thumbdrive clones of important files and keep them in my bedroom, and accessible if I have to run. And while traveling I'll bring a set of thumbdrives with me.

colonelpopcorn 9y ago

Because you're not a customer. You don't pay for YouTube, advertisers do.

motardo 9y ago
Exactly, advertisers are the customer, you are the product
- cable2600 9y ago
  A Tom Sawyer business plan where the users do all the work and pay for the privilege by having their data sold to the highest bidder. Free as in money does not mean the same as free as in speech.
stevenwoo 9y ago
I wonder if the OP were one of the youtube paying customer (for the ad free version) if OP would have gotten a better response.
reificator 9y ago
I absolutely pay for YouTube in a package deal with Google Play Music. $15/mo for the family plan.
adventurer 9y ago
YouTube Red or as I like to call it sometimes, because frankly I can't remember, RedTube. <-NSFW
- tnoeu09rclnt 9y ago
  In case anyone is unclear on this, RedTube is a different site that hosts hardcore porn.
  - yjftsjthsd-h 9y ago
    ... a fact which can lead to hilarious misunderstandings

xor1 9y ago

You should be extremely grateful you were actually able to reach anyone and get it restored at all.

JauntyHatAngle 9y ago
>You should be extremely grateful you were actually able to reach anyone and get it restored at all. Nitpicky, but no he shouldn't, he should feel lucky, sure, but grateful? No, he should feel angry that it happened in the first place, and only somewhat placated that they restored it.
- jimminy 9y ago
  Absolutely feel a little grateful, to the people that I was able to reach. And somewhat lucky that I had contacts, to escalate if necessary, though I did manage to go through public channels. And yes, I'm absolutely livid still over the fact that their system couldn't observe a purely consumer account, with only a few small comments, could be flagged as copyright infringing. Had I been unable to reach a human for manual review of the nonsense of my account status, I'm positive I wouldn't have regained access.

justinjlynn 9y ago

Might I highly recommend something like youtube-dl to save those precious videos and playlists locally. You never know when they're going to shut down your account again or go under.

jimminy 9y ago
Yep, I did that at the time, for the important videos. Still haven't found a good playlist backup, aside from using the API, not wanting to store all those videos (something like 2000 videos at this point across 30 lists, not including my watchlist or likes which is ~2500 videos). I think they're safe from going under, but do worry about them shutting my account down again by accident.
- justinjlynn 9y ago
  youtube-dl handles playlist backup, annotation download, subtitles, thumbnails, etc. - no need to download the video or anything you don't want to (or you can download postage stamp previews, etc). shrug best archival solution I've found so far.
  - IllogicalLogic 9y ago
    Try using a service called LBRY....they are a decentralized video platform and nothing can ever be deleted by design (LBRY.io). I believe they have a mass import script (all open source and the service is free)
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- kingofpandora 9y ago
  > Yep, I did that at the time, for the important videos. Still haven't found a good playlist backup, aside from using the API, not wanting to store all those videos (something like 2000 videos at this point ... This is going to sound snarky but here goes ... Sounds like the problem is not wanting to store an admittedly large number of videos but not liking the service of the company doing it for you at no charge.

tyingq 9y ago

I assume this hosed your main Google account, right? Not just your access to YouTube? That's the part that really rubs me the wrong way. That, for example, your nest thermostat (or email, or phone, etc) might not work right because you uploaded the wrong video one day.

jimminy 9y ago
> I assume this hosed your main Google account, right? Not just your access to YouTube? Nope, it was just the Youtube account. When they did the Google+ transition, I generated a new Google account for my Youtube account, but linked it to my normal Google account. I actually found out about the account removal because of message in Gmail that I had missed for 2-3 days.
tgragnato 9y ago
Did he upload the wrong video ? The possibility is even worse than that, it's because of a server side bug.
- KGIII 9y ago
  jimminy stated they'd never uploaded any videos, which makes it even more puzzling.
  - lostmsu 9y ago
    He also stated later, that he had older videos uploaded long time ago.
    - jimminy 9y ago
      That was a different individual. I've never uploaded a video at any point.

RealityNow 9y ago

My Youtube account got banned 10 years ago with videos on it I made as a teen that are now gone forever. 7 years ago or so I had tried emailing their customer support which of course didn't get me anywhere. Is there any way I can get those videos back? Unfortunately I don't have any contacts at Google, but if I were to get in hold with someone who works there, is there anything in particular I should direct them to do? I should be upfront and say that I got banned for uploading a video that was deemed inappropriate. I don't really fault them for banning the account, I just wish they had given me the chance to back up my other perfectly appropriate videos. I know those videos probably still exist on some hard drive on a Google server.

digi_owl 9y ago
What i don't get i why they do these "hard" bans. Would have been more helpful and long term friendly to basically take the videos off air and forbid the account from uploading any more videos, but leave the account itself active.
- jimminy 9y ago
  Yeah, that would be a great policy. Still allow consumption, but remove any production rights on the service.
jimminy 9y ago
I don't know about Google's cleanup policies, but I would guess that data may have been gone within 3-6 months. When my ban occurred, I had reclaimed access in a total of 5-6 days, due to an urgency to make sure I got through before any cleanup occurred.
- RealityNow 9y ago
  Well that sucks. Guess those videos are probably gone forever.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

tmaly 9y ago

I often wonder what people do for all the videos they make of their kids. I do not want to lose them, but in the age of HD video, where do you store them for the long term?

jimminy 9y ago
Depending on how much content you have a small drive array should be fine if you're willing to down size to 720p^. Or willing to upgrade to higher capacity than what I share below. An hour of 720p = ~1.15GB An hour per week for a year is ~60GB. On a hard drive, you can fit 30 years of data at that rate into a 2TB drive. Or you could put almost a year of data onto a dual-layer Blu-Ray disc (50GB). ^I personally have a really hard time seeing quality gains in video above that.
- tmaly 9y ago
  how do you handle redundancy and fires?
  - jimminy 9y ago
    For local redundancy, use a RAID 1 or RAID 5 setup, either in one of your home systems, or you can buy a simple NAS solution like a Drobo, and set it up for mirroring to multiple drives. The NAS unit ($350-500) + 3-4 4TB HDD's (~$120/each), or $700-1000 which will last years. To do offsite, in case of fire, you can clone backups onto another harddrive or every few weeks or months onto blurays and store them at a relatives, safety deposit box, or somewhere else you consider safe and accessible. Or you are willing, for offsite matters, go a cloud provided like Google, Box, DropBox, which will charge you $10-20/mo for a TB of storage on their servers, you can use that. I personally, don't use much offsite storage, for most of my data. I make occasional Blu-Ray or thumbdrive clones of important files and keep them in my bedroom, and accessible if I have to run. And while traveling I'll bring a set of thumbdrives with me.