Yesterday afternoon I go to do my daily ritual by checking my Google Reader, Google+, and my AdSense revenue only to be directed to this page:
Do not pass Go, do not Collect $100 (click to biggen)
You see, I also have had a YouTube account, and to make things easier for me I assumed that I would just keep all my Google service under one roof, so loging into them would be seamless. Well, that convenience nearly lost me my complete Google account including my G-Mail. All the services were not accessible due to Trolls on YouTube. Yea, that’s right, “TROLLS”
What happened a few weeks ago is I posted a bunch of my own personal videos and a few that were sent to me via e-mail from friends and family. Google let me Monetize some YouTube videos just as long as I owned all the content that was in them. My cat Buddy playing on my couch was one of the video that came under fire. And then a few others.
You see on YouTube, if you have 3 strikes against you, they will permanently disable your account. And in this case, that’s what happened to me. All because some Trolls didn’t like that a couple of my videos were doing so well.
Their comment, “What? This is fucking retarded. Why is this getting so many hits? You’re fucking cheating the counter somehow!!! You fucking cat fucking fag!“
I obviously deleted their comment. I also changed the comment feature to manual approve comments. Well, they didn’t like that and reported my Cat Buddy video as being their video and it was violating the YouTube Terms of Service on Copyright. Which it was not at all the case, but YouTube gave me the strike and removed the video anyway.
I don’t reply to Troll Comments. I’ll either just delete them or ignore them. Trolls feed of retaliation. But in this case I may have wanted to report them because they did it 2 more times getting my account deleted.
I wondered, how the hell is this possible? I took these videos with my own iPhone 4 for fuck sake! As it turns out, all one has to do is send the copyright department the claim of the (FAKE) copyright infringement, add the link to the video and include your full name. That’s it??!?! And apparently the system is automated and no real human interaction is involved.
Anyway, when this all happened, it also effected my Google+ account, my Chrome Sync Feature, my AdSense account, my G-Mail, my Calendar, my Google Docs, and my Google Reader services. All which I’ve been using under this account for many years! I wasn’t about to lose all that over a couple of fucking Trolls!! So I basically begged to get it all back, and if they needed to keep the YouTube account closed, I was completely OK with that. I pretty much told them they can take YouTube and ….well…. you get the picture.
Although it took the whole day to get a response (lucky me because the Google Forums were filled with people who have been waiting weeks), they did in the wee hours of the morning. They said, “We apologize for any inconvenience you may have experienced. The issue you described should now be resolved.” I immediately went to see if everything was OK and it was as if nothing happened. Except for the YouTube account, that remains deleted. I couldn’t really care less about that. I just lost a couple videos that I made, and unfortunately didn’t back up. But I’ll take that small loss over the potential loss of the entire account.
So, there IS a moral of the story here. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket, and in this case, all your services under one Google account. I’ll probably leave the Applications that nobody else has/can have a direct effect on except for myself. So Trolls wont be a problem. Like my G-Mail, Chrome Sync, Google Docs, Google Reader, and my AdSense will be fine with one log in account. If you need a YouTube account, If I were you I would create one under a completely separate account that won’t be linked to your other important and personal information ones.
Soooo…. if you have tried to go to my YouTube channel, you’ll probably be looking at this;
This account has been suspended due to multiple or severe violations of YouTube's Copyright Policy.
Due to multiple or severe violations?? There were three false copyright claims made by Trolls. If that’s considered ‘multiple or severe violations’ then I foresee your user base getting smaller and smaller in the not to distant future. To be honest, YouTube has gotten worse since Google bought them out anyway, and no longer have any balls to stand up for their users whenever somebody whines about their video being shown on the site.
I’m glad I got everything except my YouTube back, and thank you Google for getting it fixed right away. But In my opinion, to which you are entitled to Mr. Google, I would loosen up on your over bloated TOS to which you need a law degree to understand, and at least let users have a way to ‘EASILY’ contact you about those false claims made by Trolls, and not have to fill out this over bloated Legal form. It’s easier to make a false claim than it is to dispute the false claims made against you.
OK, there you have it. If things didn’t turn out the way they did, this post could have ended up a nasty rant, but instead my productive suggestion and opinion to which you are entitled to.
