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Our channel on YouTube has been deleted due to “spam and deceptive policies”

FeistySkink 2y ago
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.
WoodenChair 2y ago
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/3lhbep5pxq22b https://bsky.app/profile/sinevibes.bsky.social/post/3lhbep5p...
- richrichardsson 2y ago
  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.
  - rachofsunshine 2y ago
    "Audio developer's fifteen-year-old channel" would do it.
    - 6510 2y ago
      after 15...
gsich 2y ago
Don't worry, you can appeal at the GMAFIA robot. Who will instantly deny you.
- Cumpiler69 2y ago
  "Because THAT'S what heroes do." - The AI bot costing billions in development, compute and energy who just banned your account based on a false positive
- dontseethefnord 2y ago
  Just like with Facebook/Instagram, if your account gets taken over and then banned because the hackers used it for spam/scams, there’s no way to get your account back. There’s an “appeal” button where a robot instantly denies your appeal without any opportunity to provide evidence. It’s not a joke. Once you’re locked out, you’re fucked. Meta doesn’t give a shit about its users, that’s the only way this business model can work. Now for me, I try to use Meta products as little as possible. But my partner gets a significant amount of business leads from Instagram, it’s quite lucrative for her, so she took quite a hit when she lost that account and had to start over.
  - throw310822 2y ago
    > with Facebook/Instagram, if your account gets taken over and then banned because the hackers used it for spam/scams Happened to one of my relatives recently. Their (at least 10 years old) Facebook account has been linked by some hacker (I don't know how) with some unknown Instagram account, which then misbehaved, and the FB account was suspended as a result. A message says that the decision can be appealed from the unknown Instagram account to which we never had access and is not anymore linked. Reddit is full of people that had the exact same issue. Drives me crazy the fact that there's absolutely no way to talk to any human to solve this.
  - throw310822 2y ago
    > Meta doesn’t give a shit about its users, that’s the only way this business model can work Heh. Not really. Meta poured tens of billions in the last few years in their VR effort, with almost no results to show. With that money, they could have literally given a few minutes of human customer support to each and every of their users.
conradfr 2y ago
Note that the channel was 15 years old, not the person running it.
- richrichardsson 2y ago
  Yes, sorry for the awful wording. I've updated it to hopefully be less confusing.
portaouflop 2y ago
a computer can never be held accountable — therefore a computer must never make a management decision
- ericb 2y ago
  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.
  - epgui 2y ago
    That makes it a great point, not a horrible one.
    - ulbu 2y ago
      I think they mean its reality and implications are horrible.
      - ericb 2y ago
        Yes, thank-you.
    - ericb 2y ago
      You mistook my meaning. Great thought from op. Horrible implications.
  - Nasrudith 2y ago
    The same can be said of any bureaucracy's function. It isn't your fault that you made an abhorrently stupid decision, you were just following the directive. Not to say it isn't a problem, but that it isn't new.
- loloquwowndueo 2y ago
  Unless of course you don’t care about accountability. This gives google a lot of “oops, the system did it” leeway.
MrBuddyCasino 2y ago
Same happened to oluv, one of the few honest audio review guys. His channel got attacked by scammers, his content stolen and hit with fraudulent IP claims. Youtube has become a cesspool.
- dspillett 2y ago
  The Internet generally has devolved towards the lowest common denominator, which is the cesspool or below. Social media and content sharing sites just concentrate and magnify it. IMO, good content creators need to go back to self-hosting as their primary location, preferably on a decent host that won't just shut them down though if they make sure they have full control of the domain name at least and a good local/backup copy of everything, getting up and running elsewhere if that host goes tits-up is relatively easy. Then upload to youtube/others as secondary channels, so you can take advantage of the infamous algorithms for exposure, the interaction features¹, and to save bandwidth²³. Also make sure your identity everywhere is, well, identifiable - so if youtune/InsertIdentityHere goes down someone searching for InsertIdentityHere can easily find the instances hosted on other sharing sites or your central one. More work of course, but not massively so especially if it is (or is intended to be) a money making channel rather than purely a hobby project, and worth it long-term if take-downs happen. -------- [1] I would not want to manage public comments and such on a self-hosted instance, fighting spam, hate, and other such issues can become a full-time job. [2] Essentially using them as CDNs. [3] You might have to give low quality versions of videos to most public requests to your main site⁴, sending users to yt/other for HD+, perhaps serving ad-free high quality videos direct to those who support you via payment (via Patreon or similar). [4] And make sure you have appropriate throughput limits⁵ in place so “going viral” doesn't result in a massive bandwidth overage bill. [5] This could be site-wide, though you could implement finer grained controls, perhaps if a particular item becomes temporarily “too popular” start serving a _really_ low quality version and more obvious links to TY/Vimeo/… until things die down.
ribadeo 2y ago
Tech titans have too much arbitrary power.
readyplayernull 2y ago
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.
- n4r9 2y ago
  How does that even work on YouTube? You publish each video to every backup channel? You'd still lose followers and views surely.
- marcosdumay 2y ago
  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?
- 6510 2y ago
  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 2y ago
  We need decentralized services that are not subject to the whims of whichever power hungry billionaire is in charge this week
- grishka 2y ago
  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.
S_A_P 2y ago
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 2y ago
  Affer the shut down on YouTube, did you post them elsewhere? That way, people can still watch it.
  - S_A_P 2y ago
    I lost 1-2 videos due to a lost hard drive, but I have not found alternative video hosting. Any that you recommend?
Keyframe 2y ago
I am sure this will end up all well in the end for the channel. I also get it why you can't have anything but automated filtering as a first pass on the volume youtube deals, it's absolutely understandable. This, however, might be a learning on youtube's end to include "if filter returns that this channel is literally hitler, but channel is also >xy years old or >subs or >views take it at least for a human consideration before inconvenience". Ultimately it won't render anything new to youtube as a platform, they'll still have to deal with automated and then human appeal process, but at least it will gain some confidence to content creators that the broom isn't all that thick.
ulrikrasmussen 2y ago
Mistake? Haha, we don't make mistakes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzFmPFLIH5s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzFmPFLIH5s
ddtaylor 2y ago
Hope your story bubbles up enough to get real support from Google.
gtsop 2y ago
Why hire and pay actual humans to moderate and review false takedowns when you can have the free labor of other community platforms (like twitter, hn, reddit) organically raise only the high impact support tickets for you? It is literally jira, but free, IQ 1000
dimatura 2y ago
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 2y ago
  > 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?
  - tgv 2y ago
    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 2y ago
      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.
  - j16sdiz 2y ago
    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.
dsign 2y ago
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 2y ago
  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-rican-super-mario-defeats-nintendo-in-court https://ticotimes.net/2025/01/30/david-vs-goliath-costa-rica...
- gtsop 2y ago
  I don't buy the switch speculation. Since we have zero info it sounds too arbitrary.
ta1243 2y ago
Live by the platform, die by the platform
chad1n 2y ago
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 2y ago
  My appeal is still pending: https://github.com/sschueller/peertube-android/issues/302 https://github.com/sschueller/peertube-android/issues/302
- piva00 2y ago
  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 2y ago
    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-customer-service-hotline-160224479.html?guccounter=1 https://www.engadget.com/how-small-claims-court-became-metas...
    - TheOtherHobbes 2y ago
      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.
keepamovin 2y ago
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.
flerchin 2y ago
Is there a chance the account was taken over by spammers and shutdown before OP ever got a chance to review things? Even if so, I suppose Google should suspend the account.
ai-christianson 2y ago
YouTube is still a big platform, but I notice that they've lost their monopoly on hosting and distributing long-form video as of ~a few years ago. IMO the way to look at it now is that all the major social media platforms are video platforms. X, insta, TikTok, etc. all allow posting long videos directly to the platform.
- ajsnigrutin 2y ago
  Youtube still has the monopoly for "outside users". Most other platforms force you to create an account to view the video, even the ones that historically didn't (ahem, twitter). Imagine you sold a product for general popularion, and wanted to publish a tutorial video somewhere online... except for self-hosting it, youtube is the only viable option, sadly.
  - logicchains 2y ago
    TikTok doesn't require an account to view videos.
    - logical_proof 2y ago
      There is tremendous friction on mobile for watching TikTok videos without an account. I do not have a TikTok account and have had videos just not work without signing up. Not sure if they have been AB testing this or something because once in a while the video does work.
      - j16sdiz 2y ago
        This is by design. It tease you with some content, than force you to install app at random interval. Many Chinese apps do this. I think Meta is doing this now as well
petee 2y ago
The irony in taking down a channel for spam and deceptice practices, when most YouTube advertisements are exactly that, yet are nearly impossible to get pulled
cynicalsecurity 2y ago
Always run and advertise your own website. There is no protection against deletion from social media for whatever reason they are going to come up with.
neilv 2y ago
This keeps happening, and it can end someone's company, and livelihoods. Can people sue, and seek punitive damages large enough to be punitive to a trillion-dollar company?
- worksonmine 2y ago
  > Can people sue, and seek punitive damages large enough to be punitive to a trillion-dollar company? If they can, should they be able to? If I run a website I think I should be allowed to decide what content is on there, and taking space in my DB is not a human right. I should be able to just rm -rf / without asking permission. I would be an asshole, but I'm paying the bills and I decide what my site is. I shouldn't even need a TOS that states that I can, I shouldn't have to keep promises I've never made. The problem here is using YouTube and Google products that are known for these kinds of shutdowns, with no way to get in touch with a human. They are known to censor and remove access to truths they disagree with, and those truths are subject to change. Instead of trying to change companies we don't support, we should help companies we do support get the traction they need. Educate people and de-google.
phtrivier 2y ago
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.
- MathMonkeyMan 2y ago
  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 2y ago
    Have you ever tried out librewolf? It's blue!
- afh1 2y ago
  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/ https://fairtube.info/en/seite/press-coverage-of-fairtube/
- saltserv 2y ago
  [dead]
- secondcoming 2y ago
  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.
hd4 2y ago
"These days it feels like the only way you get resolution to this automated bullshit is to post on some social media platform or other." Just leave for another platform, especially if you're making content people would actively seek out. Who even watches Youtube at this point?
throw_m239339 2y ago
Likely was mass reported? fake copyright strikes? account hacked? it is a possible explanation. Sinevibes makes audio plugins and other stuff for makes synthesizers, so I am not sure what it is about... Meanwhile, Youtube does not lack of crypto scam channels with millions of subscribers...
saltserv 2y ago
[dead]
Rhapso 2y ago
At some point Youtube is going to cull the long-tail to save money. It will be an Alexandria burning sort of moment.
dspillett 2y ago
[flagged]
- xfeeefeee 2y ago
  This is what I've had to do. I got my channel banned from YouTube despite never getting a strike, and only one warning. Admittedly some of my videos can be a bit provocative but nothing too bad, and many not even that. When they've been flagged before I had appealed and gotten them reapproved, so I was under the impression that I was following the community guidelines appropriately. A sudden ban was unexpected. Worse though is that banning your channel actually disables your entire YouTube account so I can't even watch YouTube with that account now! Not to mention playlists being gone, though I was able to get data from Google Takeout. That part was the most frustrating for me. I was even a premium subscriber! And I've made videos for other people that have been around for years that I can't reupload due to the terms of the ban, which is also disheartening. I had started working under a different name before all this for much more artistic and abstract work, at the demand of the people I was working with, which now makes a lot more sense why they were pushing for that. I'm still uncertain if "me" being banned is all my personas or just the one that was banned; there are no obvious connections between them though. Anyway, self hosting isn't too bad, though certainly need to ensure your hosting is capped so you don't get a giant bill if there is a sudden influx of viewers. Thankfully I have enough donations to keep running with only a small amount I have to pay to cover the difference. Hopefully I don't have to end up using ads. However the notable takeaway from all this is that there is no real competitor to YouTube! Nothing even comes close.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
ribcage 2y ago
[dead]
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
superfist 2y ago
When Poland was in the Soviet bloc (post-WWII until 1989), there was the "Main Office for the Control of Press, Publications, and Performances." Every censor working there was known by their full name, and you could even negotiate with them on certain issues when publishing a book, movie, etc. This was classic censorship but based on some old-fashioned rules. Now, Big Tech can censor your work while providing only a vague explanation, with no clear feedback channel to protest or request more information. How would you call that?
- noisy_boy 2y ago
  Digital Dictatorship.
  - cduzz 2y ago
    Which is worse, Big Brother or lots of little brothers? Let's try both!
    - mapt 2y ago
      What free market advocates fail to accept is that an unregulated monopoly position, whether it was arrived at "fairly" or "unfairly", includes Big Brother, bureaucracy and whatever other malpractice is profitable, every time. Because the choice of whether to pay a price for mutually beneficial provision of goods and services is gone through whatever mechanism is sustaining the monopoly. The benefits of a market disappear; Participation is no longer voluntary. Monopolies are the worst combination of traits typically associated with corporate and government organizations.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
sussmannbaka 2y ago
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.
HumblyTossed 2y ago
Sometimes I wish it would all just burn down so we could have a do over. The currently players in the market aren't good stewards.
Applejinx 2y ago
I'm a fellow audio dev and I have a hard time understanding who they even made MAD, they look very innocuous. Only thing I can see is they have one Bluesky post celebrating Independence day for Ukraine. That's it. This is either a test shot, or some private grudge, and an obvious SWATting using YouTube automated systems. Someone tip off Google? This is beyond egregious. I started digging through their social media posts expecting they'd be some kind of noisy advocate, but nada. They seem totally innocuous and most of what they have to say, even in replies, is about their synth design work. Even if I was missing something, I saw nothing TOS-violating or even within the same universe as that. Is this the new normal?
drjeep 2y ago
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.
richrichardsson 2y ago
Update: their account has been restored https://bsky.app/profile/sinevibes.bsky.social/post/3lhc6l3caps2l https://bsky.app/profile/sinevibes.bsky.social/post/3lhc6l3c...

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.

WoodenChair 2y ago

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/3lhbep5pxq22b https://bsky.app/profile/sinevibes.bsky.social/post/3lhbep5p...

richrichardsson 2y ago
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.
- rachofsunshine 2y ago
  "Audio developer's fifteen-year-old channel" would do it.
  - 6510 2y ago
    after 15...

gsich 2y ago

Don't worry, you can appeal at the GMAFIA robot. Who will instantly deny you.

Cumpiler69 2y ago
"Because THAT'S what heroes do." - The AI bot costing billions in development, compute and energy who just banned your account based on a false positive
dontseethefnord 2y ago
Just like with Facebook/Instagram, if your account gets taken over and then banned because the hackers used it for spam/scams, there’s no way to get your account back. There’s an “appeal” button where a robot instantly denies your appeal without any opportunity to provide evidence. It’s not a joke. Once you’re locked out, you’re fucked. Meta doesn’t give a shit about its users, that’s the only way this business model can work. Now for me, I try to use Meta products as little as possible. But my partner gets a significant amount of business leads from Instagram, it’s quite lucrative for her, so she took quite a hit when she lost that account and had to start over.
- throw310822 2y ago
  > with Facebook/Instagram, if your account gets taken over and then banned because the hackers used it for spam/scams Happened to one of my relatives recently. Their (at least 10 years old) Facebook account has been linked by some hacker (I don't know how) with some unknown Instagram account, which then misbehaved, and the FB account was suspended as a result. A message says that the decision can be appealed from the unknown Instagram account to which we never had access and is not anymore linked. Reddit is full of people that had the exact same issue. Drives me crazy the fact that there's absolutely no way to talk to any human to solve this.
- throw310822 2y ago
  > Meta doesn’t give a shit about its users, that’s the only way this business model can work Heh. Not really. Meta poured tens of billions in the last few years in their VR effort, with almost no results to show. With that money, they could have literally given a few minutes of human customer support to each and every of their users.

conradfr 2y ago

Note that the channel was 15 years old, not the person running it.

richrichardsson 2y ago
Yes, sorry for the awful wording. I've updated it to hopefully be less confusing.

portaouflop 2y ago

a computer can never be held accountable — therefore a computer must never make a management decision

ericb 2y ago
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.
- epgui 2y ago
  That makes it a great point, not a horrible one.
  - ulbu 2y ago
    I think they mean its reality and implications are horrible.
    - ericb 2y ago
      Yes, thank-you.
  - ericb 2y ago
    You mistook my meaning. Great thought from op. Horrible implications.
- Nasrudith 2y ago
  The same can be said of any bureaucracy's function. It isn't your fault that you made an abhorrently stupid decision, you were just following the directive. Not to say it isn't a problem, but that it isn't new.
loloquwowndueo 2y ago
Unless of course you don’t care about accountability. This gives google a lot of “oops, the system did it” leeway.

MrBuddyCasino 2y ago

Same happened to oluv, one of the few honest audio review guys. His channel got attacked by scammers, his content stolen and hit with fraudulent IP claims. Youtube has become a cesspool.

dspillett 2y ago
The Internet generally has devolved towards the lowest common denominator, which is the cesspool or below. Social media and content sharing sites just concentrate and magnify it. IMO, good content creators need to go back to self-hosting as their primary location, preferably on a decent host that won't just shut them down though if they make sure they have full control of the domain name at least and a good local/backup copy of everything, getting up and running elsewhere if that host goes tits-up is relatively easy. Then upload to youtube/others as secondary channels, so you can take advantage of the infamous algorithms for exposure, the interaction features¹, and to save bandwidth²³. Also make sure your identity everywhere is, well, identifiable - so if youtune/InsertIdentityHere goes down someone searching for InsertIdentityHere can easily find the instances hosted on other sharing sites or your central one. More work of course, but not massively so especially if it is (or is intended to be) a money making channel rather than purely a hobby project, and worth it long-term if take-downs happen. -------- [1] I would not want to manage public comments and such on a self-hosted instance, fighting spam, hate, and other such issues can become a full-time job. [2] Essentially using them as CDNs. [3] You might have to give low quality versions of videos to most public requests to your main site⁴, sending users to yt/other for HD+, perhaps serving ad-free high quality videos direct to those who support you via payment (via Patreon or similar). [4] And make sure you have appropriate throughput limits⁵ in place so “going viral” doesn't result in a massive bandwidth overage bill. [5] This could be site-wide, though you could implement finer grained controls, perhaps if a particular item becomes temporarily “too popular” start serving a _really_ low quality version and more obvious links to TY/Vimeo/… until things die down.

ribadeo 2y ago

Tech titans have too much arbitrary power.

readyplayernull 2y ago

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.

n4r9 2y ago
How does that even work on YouTube? You publish each video to every backup channel? You'd still lose followers and views surely.
marcosdumay 2y ago
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?
6510 2y ago
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 2y ago
We need decentralized services that are not subject to the whims of whichever power hungry billionaire is in charge this week
grishka 2y ago
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.

S_A_P 2y ago

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 2y ago
Affer the shut down on YouTube, did you post them elsewhere? That way, people can still watch it.
- S_A_P 2y ago
  I lost 1-2 videos due to a lost hard drive, but I have not found alternative video hosting. Any that you recommend?

Keyframe 2y ago

I am sure this will end up all well in the end for the channel. I also get it why you can't have anything but automated filtering as a first pass on the volume youtube deals, it's absolutely understandable. This, however, might be a learning on youtube's end to include "if filter returns that this channel is literally hitler, but channel is also >xy years old or >subs or >views take it at least for a human consideration before inconvenience". Ultimately it won't render anything new to youtube as a platform, they'll still have to deal with automated and then human appeal process, but at least it will gain some confidence to content creators that the broom isn't all that thick.

ulrikrasmussen 2y ago

Mistake? Haha, we don't make mistakes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzFmPFLIH5s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzFmPFLIH5s

ddtaylor 2y ago

Hope your story bubbles up enough to get real support from Google.

gtsop 2y ago

Why hire and pay actual humans to moderate and review false takedowns when you can have the free labor of other community platforms (like twitter, hn, reddit) organically raise only the high impact support tickets for you? It is literally jira, but free, IQ 1000

dimatura 2y ago

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 2y ago
> 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?
- tgv 2y ago
  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 2y ago
    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.
- j16sdiz 2y ago
  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.

dsign 2y ago

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 2y ago
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-rican-super-mario-defeats-nintendo-in-court https://ticotimes.net/2025/01/30/david-vs-goliath-costa-rica...
gtsop 2y ago
I don't buy the switch speculation. Since we have zero info it sounds too arbitrary.

ta1243 2y ago

Live by the platform, die by the platform

chad1n 2y ago

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 2y ago
My appeal is still pending: https://github.com/sschueller/peertube-android/issues/302 https://github.com/sschueller/peertube-android/issues/302
piva00 2y ago
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 2y ago
  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-customer-service-hotline-160224479.html?guccounter=1 https://www.engadget.com/how-small-claims-court-became-metas...
  - TheOtherHobbes 2y ago
    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.

keepamovin 2y ago

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.

flerchin 2y ago

Is there a chance the account was taken over by spammers and shutdown before OP ever got a chance to review things? Even if so, I suppose Google should suspend the account.

ai-christianson 2y ago

YouTube is still a big platform, but I notice that they've lost their monopoly on hosting and distributing long-form video as of ~a few years ago. IMO the way to look at it now is that all the major social media platforms are video platforms. X, insta, TikTok, etc. all allow posting long videos directly to the platform.

ajsnigrutin 2y ago
Youtube still has the monopoly for "outside users". Most other platforms force you to create an account to view the video, even the ones that historically didn't (ahem, twitter). Imagine you sold a product for general popularion, and wanted to publish a tutorial video somewhere online... except for self-hosting it, youtube is the only viable option, sadly.
- logicchains 2y ago
  TikTok doesn't require an account to view videos.
  - logical_proof 2y ago
    There is tremendous friction on mobile for watching TikTok videos without an account. I do not have a TikTok account and have had videos just not work without signing up. Not sure if they have been AB testing this or something because once in a while the video does work.
    - j16sdiz 2y ago
      This is by design. It tease you with some content, than force you to install app at random interval. Many Chinese apps do this. I think Meta is doing this now as well

petee 2y ago

The irony in taking down a channel for spam and deceptice practices, when most YouTube advertisements are exactly that, yet are nearly impossible to get pulled

cynicalsecurity 2y ago

Always run and advertise your own website. There is no protection against deletion from social media for whatever reason they are going to come up with.

neilv 2y ago

This keeps happening, and it can end someone's company, and livelihoods. Can people sue, and seek punitive damages large enough to be punitive to a trillion-dollar company?

worksonmine 2y ago
> Can people sue, and seek punitive damages large enough to be punitive to a trillion-dollar company? If they can, should they be able to? If I run a website I think I should be allowed to decide what content is on there, and taking space in my DB is not a human right. I should be able to just rm -rf / without asking permission. I would be an asshole, but I'm paying the bills and I decide what my site is. I shouldn't even need a TOS that states that I can, I shouldn't have to keep promises I've never made. The problem here is using YouTube and Google products that are known for these kinds of shutdowns, with no way to get in touch with a human. They are known to censor and remove access to truths they disagree with, and those truths are subject to change. Instead of trying to change companies we don't support, we should help companies we do support get the traction they need. Educate people and de-google.

phtrivier 2y ago

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.

MathMonkeyMan 2y ago
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 2y ago
  Have you ever tried out librewolf? It's blue!
afh1 2y ago
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/ https://fairtube.info/en/seite/press-coverage-of-fairtube/
saltserv 2y ago
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secondcoming 2y ago
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.

hd4 2y ago

"These days it feels like the only way you get resolution to this automated bullshit is to post on some social media platform or other." Just leave for another platform, especially if you're making content people would actively seek out. Who even watches Youtube at this point?

throw_m239339 2y ago

Likely was mass reported? fake copyright strikes? account hacked? it is a possible explanation. Sinevibes makes audio plugins and other stuff for makes synthesizers, so I am not sure what it is about... Meanwhile, Youtube does not lack of crypto scam channels with millions of subscribers...

saltserv 2y ago

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Rhapso 2y ago

At some point Youtube is going to cull the long-tail to save money. It will be an Alexandria burning sort of moment.

dspillett 2y ago

[flagged]

xfeeefeee 2y ago
This is what I've had to do. I got my channel banned from YouTube despite never getting a strike, and only one warning. Admittedly some of my videos can be a bit provocative but nothing too bad, and many not even that. When they've been flagged before I had appealed and gotten them reapproved, so I was under the impression that I was following the community guidelines appropriately. A sudden ban was unexpected. Worse though is that banning your channel actually disables your entire YouTube account so I can't even watch YouTube with that account now! Not to mention playlists being gone, though I was able to get data from Google Takeout. That part was the most frustrating for me. I was even a premium subscriber! And I've made videos for other people that have been around for years that I can't reupload due to the terms of the ban, which is also disheartening. I had started working under a different name before all this for much more artistic and abstract work, at the demand of the people I was working with, which now makes a lot more sense why they were pushing for that. I'm still uncertain if "me" being banned is all my personas or just the one that was banned; there are no obvious connections between them though. Anyway, self hosting isn't too bad, though certainly need to ensure your hosting is capped so you don't get a giant bill if there is a sudden influx of viewers. Thankfully I have enough donations to keep running with only a small amount I have to pay to cover the difference. Hopefully I don't have to end up using ads. However the notable takeaway from all this is that there is no real competitor to YouTube! Nothing even comes close.
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ribcage 2y ago

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superfist 2y ago

When Poland was in the Soviet bloc (post-WWII until 1989), there was the "Main Office for the Control of Press, Publications, and Performances." Every censor working there was known by their full name, and you could even negotiate with them on certain issues when publishing a book, movie, etc. This was classic censorship but based on some old-fashioned rules. Now, Big Tech can censor your work while providing only a vague explanation, with no clear feedback channel to protest or request more information. How would you call that?

noisy_boy 2y ago
Digital Dictatorship.
- cduzz 2y ago
  Which is worse, Big Brother or lots of little brothers? Let's try both!
  - mapt 2y ago
    What free market advocates fail to accept is that an unregulated monopoly position, whether it was arrived at "fairly" or "unfairly", includes Big Brother, bureaucracy and whatever other malpractice is profitable, every time. Because the choice of whether to pay a price for mutually beneficial provision of goods and services is gone through whatever mechanism is sustaining the monopoly. The benefits of a market disappear; Participation is no longer voluntary. Monopolies are the worst combination of traits typically associated with corporate and government organizations.
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sussmannbaka 2y ago

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.

HumblyTossed 2y ago

Sometimes I wish it would all just burn down so we could have a do over. The currently players in the market aren't good stewards.

Applejinx 2y ago

I'm a fellow audio dev and I have a hard time understanding who they even made MAD, they look very innocuous. Only thing I can see is they have one Bluesky post celebrating Independence day for Ukraine. That's it. This is either a test shot, or some private grudge, and an obvious SWATting using YouTube automated systems. Someone tip off Google? This is beyond egregious. I started digging through their social media posts expecting they'd be some kind of noisy advocate, but nada. They seem totally innocuous and most of what they have to say, even in replies, is about their synth design work. Even if I was missing something, I saw nothing TOS-violating or even within the same universe as that. Is this the new normal?

drjeep 2y ago

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.

richrichardsson 2y ago

Update: their account has been restored https://bsky.app/profile/sinevibes.bsky.social/post/3lhc6l3caps2l https://bsky.app/profile/sinevibes.bsky.social/post/3lhc6l3c...