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YouTube suspended my channel for a video with disclosed issue in Grammarly
- happytiger 5y agoI swear to goodness sometimes it seems like the search for the decentralized Internet / Web 3.0 tech is being powered primarily by outrage from google and PayPal’s behavior specifically. They are the negative PR royal couple for centralized control gone wrong on the Internet.
- bingohbangoh 5y agoI think Grammarly is a CIA front, or a front for some foreign intelligence. Founded by three Ukrainians -- none of whom speak English as a first language -- that can read and analyze any text you write and is chock full of security vulnerabilities. Color me skeptical.
- smallmouth 5y agoYoutube is not a place to "rock the boat" or question popular orthodoxy.
- maxltv 5y agoA Grammarly team member but posting own thoughts to clarify some things. First, Grammarly has nothing to do with this suspension and does not have any problem with the videos in question, just as mentioned in the official HackerOne response. Second, this is not a hack or even a flaw. It is an attempt to use Grammarly for a NON-INTENDED purpose, that predictably did not work. Grammarly is not meant for anti-plagiarism policy enforcement. Grammarly aims to help users avoid accidental or unintentional plagiarism by highlighting parts that may need to be cited. So it does not attempt to deal with any plagiarism enforcement countermeasures. If someone is deliberately masking plagiarism with these countermeasures, it's definitely NOT unintentional or accidental and a whole different issue altogether, so Grammarly does not get involved with this, by design. Bypassing the tool that is designed to HELP YOU avoid getting in trouble with accidental plagiarism is not a hack but more like "bypassing" your wifi by putting your own router in a microwave - defeating the purpose rather than defeating security. So Grammarly does not care about these videos (although I think presenting this as a hack or a flaw is a little unfair). Finally, Youtube's automated (I'm guessing) blocking often does strange things. My account was once blocked for supposedly violating Sony's video game copyright. The video in question was me driving a car on a race track, in real life. It got unblocked within a week or two, though.
- XCSme 5y agoI agree with you, I don't think the bug report was a security issue or even a bug. It's like telling Google that searching for bananas returns pictures of apples and reporting it as a vulnerability because self-driving cars might use the Google results as training data.
- omegalulw 5y agoI'm assuming plagiarism checks are do ne serverside - do you save any logs/information about plagiarism check results for a user, possibly under a TTL?
- manquer 5y agoThe product that he is talking about it specifically their plagiarism checker[1] Their own documentation says the product is also for teachers to enforce rules. This poster keeps making the same incorrect claims in multiple places in this thread, even after the original author clarifed it to him. [1] https://www.grammarly.com/plagiarism-checker https://www.grammarly.com/plagiarism-checker
- maxltv 5y agoThere is no separate product - it is a feature of the main product. Please point out where documentation says it's for enforcement because that will need to be corrected. It can help teachers educate students about plagiarism but it's not meant for enforcement. It's a student tool. Here is the text from the linked landing page describing the plagiarism checker feature (emphasis mine): Our free plagiarism check will tell you whether or not your text contains duplicate content. Our Premium plagiarism check highlights passages that require citations and gives you the resources you need to properly credit your sources. This makes it quite clear that is an authoring tool, not policing tool. Plagiarism masking is not addressed by design. It's a trivial thing to code if there was a need but the company made a decision to stay out of plagiarism enforcement (at least for now).
- manquer 5y agoFrom the page linked > "Who Benefits from Grammarly’s Plagiarism Checker? Whether you’re a student writing an essay, a teacher grading papers, or a writer working on original content for the web, a plagiarism scan will not only save you time, but also help you avoid writing mistakes." ( emphasis mine) Grammarly Sales has always sold it to academic institutions and teachers, it is must be news to them it is not meant for policing. The four customers highlighted (Arizona State University, University of Phoenix, California State University, Ashford University ) on the page are all education institutions who most certainly use it for policing. Also it is product and not feature because it is sold standalone and does not depend on license to their more well known grammar checking product to work.
- lamontcg 5y agoDays since last Kafkaesque account ban by Google/Apple/Amazon/Paypal: 0 When are we going to start regulating them?
- xony 5y ago
- autobash 5y agoFor anyone interested here is a test you can do on https://www.grammarly.com/plagiarism-checker https://www.grammarly.com/plagiarism-checker Will be detected as plagiarism > But with ahab the question assumed a modified aspect. considering that with two legs man is but a hobbling wight in all times of danger; considering that the pursuit of whales is always under great and extraordinary difficulties; that every individual moment, indeed, then comprises a peril; under these circumstances is it wise for any maimed man to enter a whale-boat in the hunt? As a general thing, the joint-owners of the Pequod must have plainly thought not. Won't be detected as plagiarism > But with аhаb thе quеstiоn аssumеd а mоdifiеd аspесt. соnsidеring thаt with twо lеgs mаn is but а hоbbling wight in аll timеs оf dаngеr; соnsidеring thаt thе pursuit оf whаlеs is аlwаys undеr grеаt аnd еxtrаоrdinаry diffiсultiеs; thаt еvеry individuаl mоmеnt, indееd, thеn соmprisеs а pеril; undеr thеsе сirсumstаnсеs is it wisе fоr аny mаimеd mаn tо еntеr а whаlе-bоаt in thе hunt? аs а gеnеrаl thing, thе jоint-оwnеrs оf thе Pеquоd must hаvе plаinly thоught nоt.
- evilksandr 5y ago"The described behavior is a functionality limitation that does not affect the security and privacy of our product" they said.
- XCSme 5y agoIt's a nice find, but I still fail to see how it is a vulnerability or a security issue.
- evilksandr 5y agoI posted a case to HackerOne with the intent to warn against this behavior and with the weakness type "Business Logic Errors". Please, read in my report section "Impact" and my answer about the potentional impact of the reported behavior. But, as maxltv clarified, it's not a policing tool but an authoring tool and described use of the product violate their TOS. My case is relevant if clients use it as a policing tool.
- rurban 5y agoSo I got really scared and deleted all my YouTube videos from the green revolution in Teheran. I reposted them there from inside contacts who had no YouTube access. But now it looks like Google is even more dangerous than the Persian secret services.
- evilksandr 5y agoThey constantly update their ToS, but in order to protect themselves from lawsuits
- evilksandr 5y ago1) At the blocking moment I had only 2 videos (just screen records) on my channel which showed the same problem in 2 different Grammarly products 2) these videos were an illustration for my report https://hackerone.com/reports/1282282 https://hackerone.com/reports/1282282, which Grammarly disclosed to the public and does not consider this a problem. 3) these videos were published after Grammarly representatives allowed me to release this information 4) in the description of the video there were links to the HackerOne case for the problem and to my blog https://evilksandr.medium.com/7bdb343c956b https://evilksandr.medium.com/7bdb343c956b with a detailed study of this problem 5) the video was posted for educational purposes only and without malicious intent I believe that my channel was blocked by mistake. Please, anyone who knows somebody from YT/G team, tag them in my tweet.
- ballenf 5y agoWhy did you consider tricking the plagiarism detection engine a hack? Seems more like just one of probably several or even dozens of ways to trick the detection engine. While I applaud your work and clearly think the channel suspension is BS, I just don't know that I would have thought "HackerOne" when I discovered the issue.
- ipaddr 5y agoTrick the program into doing something other than intended is a hack. Whether someone cares enough to pay a bounty is something else
- evilksandr 5y agoGrammarly didn't pay me even a penny for this issue I published in their Bug Bounty channel on the HackerOne.
- dylan604 5y agoHistory is filled with people having an idea, thinking it is not worth pursuing, then watching someone else actually do something with that idea instead, followed by the first person downplaying the idea altogether.
- Sosh101 5y agoI wonder how much money Grammarly have spent with youtube.
- evilksandr 5y agoAnd I wonder that Grammarly didn't pay me even a penny for this issue I published in their Bug Bounty channel on the HackerOne.
- maxltv 5y agoThat would be irrelevant in this case. Grammarly has no issues with the videos, as the company stated in the official responses on HackerOne. Grammarly's plagiarism self-check is to help its users avoid accidental or unintentional plagiarism by highlighting text that may need citations. If a user is using countermeasures to mask plagiarism, it's not accidental or unintentional, so Grammarly stays out of it. Grammarly is NOT a plagiarism policy enforcement tool.
- evilksandr 5y agoWe continued our discussion in this thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29933516#29947146 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29933516#29947146
- altdataseller 5y agoI read somewhere they are among their top 10 advertisers. So this is not a good look for YouTube. Hope someone from Google chimes in because this is a PR disaster in the making
- usr1106 5y agoI don't think that I have ever seen a single ad for Grammarly on Youtube. Well, Google proably knows that I don't live in an English speaking country. I do see Grammarly ads if I search things like "practice or practise" because I write English every work day. Well, I use Firefox account containers and auto cookie delete everywhere. So Youtube knows little about me writing English. Many people outside the English-speaking world will never see those adds. Your search bubble is not others. Despite that, even in the search bubbles containing Grammarly I doubt closing an account with 3 videos will do any significant PR damage to anyone. So what where the videos about? Grammarly storing everything the user writes??? Selling it to others???
- usr1106 5y agoIt's called surveillance capitalism for a reason. Remember it's also totalitarianism, you don't have free speech when using free services. (libre vs. free) Edit: Of course lack of free speech is what Trumpists complain about, too. I say the same although I would use free speech for very different content.
- megumax 5y agoAfter Grammarly spent millions of dollars on Google ads, I expect them not to accept valid criticism on Google platforms. But it's unfair to block a guy that talked about a real flaw in Grammarly's plagiarism checker, at least pretend that you allow free speech and take down that video for a random reason specified in your ToS.
- evilksandr 5y agoThanks for your support!
- maxltv 5y agoFirst, Grammarly has nothing to do with this suspension or any problem with the videos in question. Second, this is not a flaw or a hack but an unsuccessful attempt to use Grammarly for an UNINTENDED purpose. Grammarly is not meant for anti-plagiarism enforcement. Grammarly aims to help users avoid accidental or unintentional plagiarism by highlighting parts that may need to be cited. So it does not attempt to deal with any plagiarisms enforcement countermeasures - if someone is deliberately masking plagiarism, it's definitely not unintentional or accidental. It's trivial to overcome these particular counter-measures but that's just not what Grammarly is for.
- evilksandr 5y agoGrammarly has a separate plagiarism checker https://www.grammarly.com/plagiarism-checker https://www.grammarly.com/plagiarism-checker which was in my report
- maxltv 5y agoOleksandre, you got an official response that this is by design. I explained why. This is a landing page, not a separate product, and the description of the plagiarism feature clearly states it's not for policing: "...Our free plagiarism check will tell you whether or not your text contains duplicate content. Our Premium plagiarism check highlights passages that require citations and gives you the resources you need to properly credit your sources."
- butz 5y agoPublish those videos on odysee.com then.
- ballenf 5y agoI wonder if we'll see a backlash against "plagiarism" being considered cheating? Parallel in some ways to using a calculator.
- Terry_Roll 5y agoIs your backup or contingency using something like PeerTube?
- dekoruotas 5y agoHave you lost access to the associated Gmail account too? Thinking I might have too many eggs in one basket.
- C19is20 5y agoSimilar. I have 40-person-viewed yt page with several videos (dashcam footages). One of the videos got blocked (someone reported it) and I had to appeal. Things went well as I specified no bad language, blood, anything even remotely 'bad', but I do wonder if things could have been worse. A few days ago there was an hn comment thread referring Gmail backups. I tried one of the processes, failed (it went very tech for me), but I did set up some rules to send messages from certain people to another account....just in case I need them. Yesterday, I actually did need one of them - a message from over 10yrs ago - the presentation of which saved me several 'conversations', at work.
- fireflymetavrse 5y agoI'm now considering removing all the videos uploaded, some of them more than 10 years old. Not worth the risk of an account ban.
- evilksandr 5y agoReally good idea for primary account which related with gmail.
- duiker101 5y agoFor those wanting a more honest alternative to Grammarly, LanguageTool[1] is open source and quite good. That said, I am not a power user and my English is just passable, so your mileage may vary. [1] https://languagetool.org https://languagetool.org
- maxltv 5y agoMore honest in what way?
- darekkay 5y agoI second this. JetBrains IDEs use LanguageTool under the hood via the Grazie plugin [0]. I haven't used Grammarly ever since Grazie was introduced. Check Settings → Natural Languages → Grammar → Rules for all available grammar rules. [0] https://plugins.jetbrains.com/plugin/12175-grazie https://plugins.jetbrains.com/plugin/12175-grazie
- Anthony-G 5y agoThanks. It’s good to see that it’s released under a LGPL license: https://github.com/languagetool-org/languagetool https://github.com/languagetool-org/languagetool
- newhotelowner 5y agoThank you! If this tool works as good as Grammarly, I will cancel Grammarly subscription.
- shafyy 5y agoI've been using LanguageTool over Grammarly for the past few years, and love it. Granted, I just use it occasionally, and it's possible that Grammarly is a tad better - but it's more than enough for my needs.
- stjohnswarts 5y agoIt's not as good as grammarly, but it will definitely help and isn't that hard to run. My tricks to run it on a cheap digital ocean server 0. Use the docker version 1. use maxsize memory flag to keep the memory under control 2. set up a cron job to kill/restart it in the middle of the night, every night. 3. use a reverse proxy to hide the address at least a little bit
- ddtaylor 5y agoWelcome to YouTube support. Please submit your issue and wait for the community to upvote it enough until a real person at a large corporation actually reads it and clicks a button. Thanks for using YouTube support.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- evilksandr 5y agoit seems to be true (
- waymon 5y agoWhy does everyone think youtube owes them something? Yall gotta stop using that service.
- JaimeThompson 5y agoAnd yet YouTube has no problem monetizing channels that call the Holocaust a hoax.
- HKH2 5y agoCan you name one?
- joelbondurant1 5y ago
- kragen 5y agoI got an error message page from Twtter trying to follow the link; https://birdsite.xanny.family/evilksandr/status/1479507618066571268 https://birdsite.xanny.family/evilksandr/status/147950761806... works.
- itake 5y agoYoutube does not allow "instructional hacking" videos. This is a TOS / community guidelines [0] violation. This ban has nothing to do with their advertiser. [0] - https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2801964?hl=en https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2801964?hl=en
- evilksandr 5y agoThe video was published after Grammarly representatives identified the case as "The described behavior is a functionality limitation that does not affect the security and privacy of our product", disclosed the case and gave me permission to publish my research results. More details here https://hackerone.com/reports/1282282 https://hackerone.com/reports/1282282 . Аlso there in the files you can find the original videos that were published on my channel.
- itake 5y agoWhat was the title and description of the videos on your channel?
- jjk166 5y agoHow would google's automated system for detecting hacking instruction videos know that grammarly doesn't consider something hacking and gave you permission to publish? You're posting something that looks like an exploit, and linking to multiple places that strongly resemble instructions for how to exploit a system, one of which is actively advertising "hiring hackers" and absolutely loaded with keywords and phrases that are going to trigger the algorithm.
- evilksandr 5y agoOk, I agree with the keywords (not with content, which Grammarly mentioned as "not affect the security and privacy of our product"). But YT algorithm has been thinking about that 4 months after I published these videos and terminated my account (without any strikes) 2 days after YT terms was changed https://www.youtube.com/t/terms https://www.youtube.com/t/terms
- password4321 5y agoThis seems to be standard practice, for years? YouTube's ban on “hacking techniques” threatens to shut down infosec YouTube https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20350306 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20350306 (Jul 2019) YouTube is taking down educational hacking videos https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21251609 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21251609 (Oct 2019)
- pshawcaddy 5y agoPost on other platform. You’ll get more votes purely from the fact that you were censored by Google.
- starwind 5y agoMeanwhile, the video where Trevor Jacob appears to intentionally crash his plane is still up on Youtube, albeit demonetized
- evilksandr 5y agoI did not even expect that my post here will raise such a storm and collect so many comments and reactions. Thank you all for your support, I hope it helps to reinstate my channel.