(empo-utoobd) My long-term Plan C to reverse the @YouTube TOU #4 Section H permanent disabling of my account

For the background of this, see the posts from 2009, 2009, 2013, early today, and a little later today.

Briefly: one day in 2009 I discovered that my YouTube account had been permanently disabled. I was told at the time that the account "has been found to have violated our Community Guidelines" and that "[w]e are unable to provide specific detail regarding your account suspension or your video's removal." (In essence, you read our Community Guidelines and figure out what rule you broke.)

Four years later I learned additional information: namely, that I allegedly violated TOU #4 Section H. From what I could make out, it sounds like I had constructed automated scripts or something.

As I stated in 2013 (and again less than 24 hours ago) the only problem is that to my knowledge I never did violate TOU #4 Section H. I don't even know how to construct automated scripts or whatever it was that I allegedly did.

Basically, I hadn't addressed this with Google since 2013. But I figured that after five years, it was time to launch a second appeal of the permanent disabling of my account.

Impressively, Google moved quickly to review the entire situation, including the circumstances surrounding my permanent disabling nearly a decade ago. This is remarkable, since Google had to review a ton of information, including information that I don't even have about my alleged violation.

So, less than six hours after I launched my appeal, I heard back from Google.

Hello,

Thank you for your account suspension appeal. We have decided to keep your account suspended based on our Community Guidelines and Terms of Service. Please visit http://www.youtube.com/t/community_guidelines for more information.

Please do not respond to this email. Replies to this email will not be processed. Please refer to our Help Center for more information.

Sincerely,
The YouTube Team

Oddly enough, I actually received LESS information in 2018 than I did in 2013. At least in 2013 I was told what part of the terms I had alleged violated. This time around, I was merely told that Google had "decided to keep your account suspended based on our Community Guidelines and Terms of Service."

I still don't know what I allegedly did.

And it's not worth Google's time to even discuss the specifics to me. After all, there were over 500 million YouTube channels in 2012. Why spend time worrying about one relatively unknown person who is unhappy? I guess I should feel thankful that Google even spent six hours reviewing the case.

I have to say I'm not especially shocked that my appeal was dismissed. In fact, even before my appeal was rejected, I began wondering what I should do if it WAS rejected.

Hence, this thread, which consisted of links to two items.

The first was a tweet from a woman named Kylie Jenner. If you haven't heard of Kylie Jenner, let's just note that she has a sister named Kim Kardashian. And she has two mommies, but that's a whole other story.

So what did Kylie Jenner tweet on February 21?

sooo does anyone else not open Snapchat anymore? Or is it just me... ugh this is so sad.

Now if I were going to tweet something like this (which I wouldn't; I don't use Snapchat), I'm not sure that it would cause much of a ripple. But that tweet from Ms. Jenner has resulted in over 75,000 retweets, and over 370,000 likes.

And what else? Well, that brings me to my second link.

Snap (SNAP) stock closed down 6% on Thursday after the reality TV star said she is no longer using the app. The plunge wiped about $1.3 billion off the company's market value.

While Jenner's effect on Snapchat's stock price was subsequently questioned, you can bet that Snapchat internally paid very close attention to Ms. Jenner's issues. And I'm sure that someone discussed it with Evan Spiegel.

I don't think that Sundar Pichai spent any appreciable time examining the ramifications of the suspension of my YouTube account.

And if I decide to launch yet another appeal of my suspension in 2023, I don't think that Pichai or his successor will spend a lot of time on it either.

Or will he?

Because, you see, if I begin to execute a long-term plan now, I can GUARANTEE that my YouTube permanent disabling will FINALLY be reversed.

I'll admit that my idea is not original with me. I stole it from Steve Martin.

You.. can be a millionaire.. and never pay taxes! You can be a millionaire.. and never pay taxes! You say.. "Steve.. how can I be a millionaire.. and never pay taxes?" First.. get a million dollars. Now.. you say, "Steve.. what do I say to the tax man when he comes to my door and says, 'You.. have never paid taxes'?" Two simple words. Two simple words in the English language: "I forgot!"

Martin's technique works...just as long as you get past the "get a million dollars" part.

My long-term plan to reverse the permanent disabling of my YouTube account also has two steps.

The first step?

Become more famous than the Kardashian/Jenner family and the Trump family COMBINED.

Once I achieve that first step, and get to that rarefied plane where people hang on my every word, and a single word from me can make or break empires...well, at that stage, the rest is easy.








Because, you see, when I reach that level of fame, and I decide that I want to talk at the World Trade Center (not too far away from Wall Street) at 9:15 on a weekday morning (right before the U.S. stock markets open), and I would like Oprah Winfrey, Kim Kardashian, and Donald Trump to ask me questions...they WILL come. (And Putin will be so sad that I didn't invite him...but he won't be able to do anything about it.)

CC BY-SA 3.0, Link

And Donald Trump will be groveling before me, telling me that I'm the greatest genius of all time.

I'll just smile.

And because the world wants to know everything about me, Oprah Winfrey will ask me what TV shows I watch.

I'll respond, "Well, to tell you the truth, I don't watch much TV."

(At that time, future stock prices on the companies owning the major television networks will plummet.)

I'll quietly continue. "Since I live in the West Coast, just about everything is on tape delay except for sports, and I don't really like to watch things that happened three hours ago."

(And just like that, NBC will immediately start broadcasting "Saturday Night Live" at 8:30pm in Los Angeles.)

But I'm not done yet. "I love sports. I'd watch the Dodgers if they were on TV, but of course most people in Los Angeles can't see the games."

(Within five minutes, the Dodgers would sign a deal allowing every over-the-air TV station in Southern California to carry every Dodgers home and away game live, without commercial interruption.)

Having satisfactorily answered Oprah's question, I can turn my attention to Kim Kardashian's question.

"So, what online services do you like?"

"Well, Kim," I'll respond, "I love online services. Perhaps I don't use Twitter as much as Donnie-boy here..."

(Twitter immediately files for bankruptcy.)

I continue. "...but there are other social services that I love. One of the services that I loved the most was FriendFeed. Too bad Facebook shut it down."

(As I continue speaking, Mark Zuckerberg will place an urgent Messenger message to Benjamin Golub. "Do what you can to get the FriendFeed servers running again. NOW!" orders Zuckerberg.)

I continue talking. Billions of people are hanging on my every word. The slightest comment, positive or negative, about any online service will make or break careers and reputations.

Finally, after a couple of minutes of this, Kim will ask the question that I previously ordered her to ask.

"But you haven't mentioned YouTube," she'll say.

And I'll smile.

"YouTube doesn't want me to use its service," I'll say quietly, in my best aw shucks voice. "I guess I'm not all that important to YouTube."

During the next minute, as Donald, Oprah, and Kim pour adulation on me and my wisdom, Google's Tiger Team will pour through its warehouse of data, looking up the super-secret private number on my mobile phone.

And as the interview concludes, and the U.S. stock markets prepare to open for the day, my phone will ring.

And the CEO of Google will be on the other end of the line, preparing his or her abject apologies for the years that I was unable to use the YouTube service.

Problem solved!








Yes, the scenario above is entirely possible, once I get past that first "fame" step.

In the meantime, if you want me to like or comment on your videos...it ain't happening. Sundar doesn't want me to.

(empo-utoobd) Well, they got the appeal

This was an auto-generated message that I received a half hour before my post went live, but I might as well document it.

Hello,

We have received your account appeal and will get back to you as soon as possible.

Sincerely,
The YouTube Team

(empo-utoobd) It's been almost five years - might as well try again

So I've been mulling over my mysterious 2009 YouTube suspension again - the one where my YouTube account was permanently disabled and it took me four years to even find out why.

Hi there,

This account was found in Violation of TOU #4 Section H:
http://www.youtube.com/t/terms

"You agree not to use or launch any automated system, including without limitation, "robots," "spiders," or "offline readers," that accesses the Service in a manner that sends more request messages to the YouTube servers in a given period of time than a human can reasonably produce in the same period by using a conventional on-line web browser. Notwithstanding the foregoing, YouTube grants the operators of public search engines permission to use spiders to copy materials from the site for the sole purpose of and solely to the extent necessary for creating publicly available searchable indices of the materials, but not caches or archives of such materials. YouTube reserves the right to revoke these exceptions either generally or in specific cases. You agree not to collect or harvest any personally identifiable information, including account names, from the Service, nor to use the communication systems provided by the Service (e.g., comments, email) for any commercial solicitation purposes. You agree not to solicit, for commercial purposes, any users of the Service with respect to their Content."

Sincerely,
The YouTube Team

So I've launched another appeal, again stating that I wasn't a script kiddie or whatever I presumably was.

Incidentally, back in 2013 I wrote the following:

If you see this post years after I wrote it, or if you're not a sports enthusiast, I should explain that Ryan Braun is a baseball player who vehemently denied for 18+ months that he violated baseball's drug policy - until yesterday, when he suddenly admitted that he had violated baseball's drug policy. I wanted to make the point that I'm not going to subsequently admit to using some type of automated spider, especially since any attempt of mine to prove that I could even launch an automated spider would be a laughable failure. No, I am not a script kiddie.

While I'm waiting, I took the opportunity to read any new news on permanently disabled YouTube accounts since 2013. Most importatly, I found this thread that explains (better than Google did) what TOU #4 Section H actually is.

rewboss said:
TOU #4 Section H is about gaming views. It says you're not allowed to use any bot or other automated system to artificially inflate your view count or generate likes, comments and so on.

Basically, this is what YouTube is accusing you of. To YouTube, it looks like lots of your views came from a bot or a click farm of some sort. What's now happening is that you've appealed, and people at YouTube are taking a second look to try to figure out whether you really did cheat. So far, in some cases they have decided that there's no good evidence you did cheat.

If you actually did buy views, likes and comments, you've been lucky; if you didn't, you've been unlucky. But it may be difficult for YouTube to determine whether or not you cheated, because of course these fraudulant services try to make their activities look legit. That may be why it's taking YouTube so long to investigate.

Which is nice to know, but parts of the rest of the thread are bizarre - things about some accounts being reinstated, and some not reinstated, and empty accounts being permanently disabled, and Adsense issues. For example:

One of my youtube channels show - "Monetization on this account has been disabled due to invalid click activity" - How is that even possible if they reinstated that channel saying that I have not violated TOU #4H, and today they reinstated another channel of mine, few hours after Adsense was disabled.

(Incidentally, I never did monetize my YouTube account. From what I recall - and again, this was nearly a decade ago - I only had one YouTube video that was publicly viewable, so there wouldn't be any point in monetizing my YouTube account.)

However, this thread includes references to a number of appeals in a single month (because multiple channels were involved), so I guess my "appeal every five years" strategy should be safe (although possibly not productive).

Oh, and this appeal thread ended with...well, this:

I was suspended again few days ago and they reinstated my account yesterday - the 2nd time..
Can stuff like this happen again ?

(empo-utoobd) On Devangelism and Quora Banning - Warning, Explanation, and Recourse

In the early 1980s, the company then known as Apple Computer took the religious term "evangelism" and applied it to secular concerns - well, I guess it's secular if you don't consider the Cult of Mac to be a religion. However, although Apple Computer employed and paid salaries to "evangelists," it recognized that some of Apple's best evangelists were, and are, people who are so enthusiastic about Apple that they sing the company's praises through word of mouth.

By the same logic, if someone is so unenthusiastic about a company that he or she spreads negative word of mouth, I guess you can say that person is a "devangelist." While some use this term to refer to developer evangelists, others (h/t) use it to refer to the opposite of evangelism - rather than attracting people to your god or your cause, you are instead driving them away.

As my previous entries in the "empo-utoobd" category show, I guess that I have become a devangelist for YouTube, ever since YouTube permanently disabled my account in 2009 without warning and, until 2013, without explanation. The 2013 explanation? According to Google, I violated TOU #4 Section H (You agree not to use or launch any automated system, including without limitation, "robots," "spiders," or "offline readers," that accesses the Service in a manner that sends more request messages to the YouTube servers in a given period of time than a human can reasonably produce in the same period by using a conventional on-line web browser....). And yes, it still bugs me, especially since I don't even know how to launch such an automated system, and since I have no recourse to rectify the issue.

Well, unless things are rectified soon, it looks like I may be devangelizing another service.

On Sunday night, I used one of my mobile devices to start up the Quora app, and noticed that I was being asked to log in. That's odd, I thought. When I did log in, I was not allowed to access Quora. Eventually, after trying to log in on other devices, I figured out why.

Yup...I've been banned by Quora.

Remember how my YouTube account was permanently disabled with no warning, (initially) no explanation, and no recourse? Let's see how Quora measures up.

I figured that I'd check the email associated with my Quora account to see if there was any notice saying why I was banned. The last email that I received from Quora, on July 4, was a Quora Digest (What do Americans think about Bobby Jindal?) The message that I received on July 2 mentioned nothing about banning.

Quora Moderation has flagged your answer to "What possible alternatives are there to Facebook's "real names" policy?" as not complying with policy.

Your answer should be a comment

Answers that do not answer the question will be collapsed.

To request clarification on a question or make commentary on the question itself, a comment should be used, not an answer. Answers should only be used to directly answer the question.

For more information, see Quora's policy on comments.

To make these improvements, visit:
http:/​/​www.​quora.​com/​login/​auto_login?.​.​.​

Re-reading the message again, I see that reading the first three paragraphs alone may not have been enough. I figured that my answer was flagged and collapsed, and that was the end of it. But buried at the bottom was the "To make these improvements" text.

Was I banned for not removing an answer that had already been collapsed, as well as for one other violation? (Note that I have apparently been banned for "repeated policy violations.")

So, on Monday afternoon, I sent the following message to the Appeals address at Quora.

Dear Appeals,

Since July 5, I have received the message above when I attempt to log in to my Quora account.

The only violation of which I am aware is the one documented in the July 2 message below. I had understood - perhaps mistakenly - that the answer in question would be collapsed.

Was I supposed to actually delete the answer in question?

Since the banning notice mentions "repeated" violations, is there some other item(s) that need(s) correction for my Quora account to be reinstated? If so, how can I make these changes since I am not able to access the service?

Thank you for your reconsideration.

John Bredehoft

After sending that message, I got the following reply from Quora. You know how the message told me to send my appeal to appeals@quora.com? Apparently I'm not supposed to do that.

Hello,

Thank you for writing in!

We receive many appeal requests each day and will work to get to your appeal as quickly as possible. In order to better assist you with your appeal, we ask that you please forward your appeal request to one of the following addresses:

appeals+ban@quora.com - If your appeal is in regards to a banned account.
appeals+name@quora.com - If your appeal is in regards to a name change.
appeals+anonymity@quora.com - If your appeal is in regards to your anonymity.***
appeals+bnbr@quora.com - If your appeal is in regards to a violation of our Be Nice, Be Respectful policy.
appeals+spam@quora.com - If your appeal is in regards to content that has been marked as spam or not disclosing relevant affiliations.
appeals+other@quora.com - If your appeal is in regards to any other violation.

***Appealing revoked anonymity: Please be aware that you will have to include a link to your anonymous content when appealing revoked anonymity. By providing us a link to your anonymous content, we may be able to link your anonymous activity to your email address. If you are not comfortable with this, please make sure to email us from a throw away email address.

To learn more about our policies, please visit the following links:

* Banned accounts - http://qr.ae/EJe7p
* Spam - http://qr.ae/IVyaF
* Relevant affiliations - http://qr.ae/EJiEn
* Anonymity - http://qr.ae/EJaob
* BNBR - http://qr.ae/EJaiQ
* Name change - http://qr.ae/jNpRh
* Quora policies and guidelines - http://qr.ae/EJeRT

Please make sure to include a link to the content that you are appealing, as well as a link to your profile URL. Due to the large volume of appeals that we experience, please note that we will only be able to provide you with a response if we determine that your appeal is valid.

Thank you,
The Quora Team

(Interesting aside from the "banned accounts" link: "In most cases, admins have the discretion to make edit-block and banning decisions based on their own judgment.")

I then replied:

As instructed, I am resending my message to appeals+ban@quora.com.

I was asked to provide a link to the content that I am appealing, as well as a link to my profile URL. Since I cannot log into my account, I do not know my profile URL - however, the email address associated with this account is [REDACTED]. As for the content that I am appealing, I only know of one violation, as I stated in my original message (reproduced below).

I then reproduced my original email to appeals@quora.com, including Quora's July 2 message.

Quora will presumably respond, either quickly or not to quickly, in one of three ways:

1. Documentation of all of my repeated policy violations (explanation). Ideally, Quora would also say how to correct these, and how to get my account reinstated (recourse). Or, Quora might say, "Sorry, bud" (no recourse).

2. A simple statement that I violated Quora's policies, with no explanation and no recourse.

3. Silence, which obviously implies no explanation and no recourse.

So I'm waiting for the response, mainly due to curiosity - did I really get banned for putting a comment in the form of an answer? Is Alex Trebek an investor in Quora?

Or perhaps I should take the advice of my former school classmate, who offered this comment when I discussed this on Facebook Sunday night:

Sounds like somebody did you a favor John

To be continued...

(empo-utoobd) YouTube customer service has evolved...slightly...since my account was permanently disabled in 2009

For those of you who missed the original story, a quick recap. Back in 2009, I logged into my Empoprises YouTube account one day and found that it had been "permanently disabled." When I sought more information from Google, I received a canned message with the following information:

We are unable to provide specific detail regarding your account suspension or your video's removal. For more information on our what we consider inappropriate content or conduct while using YouTube, please visit our Community Guidelines and Tips at http://www.youtube.com/t/community_guidelines and our Help Center article at http://help.youtube.com/support/youtube/bin/answer.py?answer=92486.


In other words, your account has been suspended, and we can't tell you why. I awarded a "Customer Service Darwin Award" to Google for that one.

That was several years ago, and the permanent disabling of my YouTube account continues to this day - something that I've discussed in the empo-utoobd post series.

However, a few days ago, I tried my usual couple of times a year login to YouTube - something that was again denied - and noticed a new button that allowed you to appeal your suspension. I clicked it, and a day ago I actually received a response, and finally learned why my YouTube account had been suspended all those years ago.

Hi there,

This account was found in Violation of TOU #4 Section H:
http://www.youtube.com/t/terms

"You agree not to use or launch any automated system, including without limitation, "robots," "spiders," or "offline readers," that accesses the Service in a manner that sends more request messages to the YouTube servers in a given period of time than a human can reasonably produce in the same period by using a conventional on-line web browser. Notwithstanding the foregoing, YouTube grants the operators of public search engines permission to use spiders to copy materials from the site for the sole purpose of and solely to the extent necessary for creating publicly available searchable indices of the materials, but not caches or archives of such materials. YouTube reserves the right to revoke these exceptions either generally or in specific cases. You agree not to collect or harvest any personally identifiable information, including account names, from the Service, nor to use the communication systems provided by the Service (e.g., comments, email) for any commercial solicitation purposes. You agree not to solicit, for commercial purposes, any users of the Service with respect to their Content."

Sincerely,
The YouTube Team

So apparently back in 2009, I launched some sort of automated spider that retrieved tons of data from YouTube. This was news to me, as I noted in my reply to Google:

Well, now it's good to know after all these years why my YouTube account was shut down. When I first inquired about this, I simply received an automated message to read the Terms of Service.

Unfortunately, there's only one teeny tiny issue - I've never used any automated system to access YouTube. And no, I'm not saying this in a Ryan Braun way - I really haven't.

Is there any recourse to get my YouTube account reinstated, or am I presumed guilty of something that I didn't do?

Looking forward to your reply.

Sincerely,
John Bredehoft

If you see this post years after I wrote it, or if you're not a sports enthusiast, I should explain that Ryan Braun is a baseball player who vehemently denied for 18+ months that he violated baseball's drug policy - until yesterday, when he suddenly admitted that he had violated baseball's drug policy. I wanted to make the point that I'm not going to subsequently admit to using some type of automated spider, especially since any attempt of mine to prove that I could even launch an automated spider would be a laughable failure. No, I am not a script kiddie.

As I promised back in 2009, I'll provide any updates on my personal situation. Either this thing is getting very close to being successfully resolved, or it's not.

(empo-utoobd) The Minnesota Lynx is suffering from poor Google customer service

I have previously written posts about the fact that my YouTube account was "permanently disabled" several years ago - and Google doesn't have any way to talk to them about it.

Other than writing about it several times, I haven't really made a huge deal of this, however. Naysayers would argue that I don't have a case - Google is a free service, I am not a Google customer (Google's customers are their advertisers, not their users), and Google can do whatever they want with their services. And frankly, the naysayers are right.

But what about the people who work with Google to use one of Google's properties - and then lose it?

Mari Thomas shared something that was originally shared by Greg Finn. Finn and Thomas shared a story from Marketing Land about the Minnesota Lynx. Now I'll confess that the name "Minnesota Lynx" doesn't ring a bell to me, but the Lynx are a basketball team in the WNBA. And not just any basketball team - they're last year's champions.

The Lynx decided, like many other cool kids, that it might be a good idea to have a Google+ presence. The team worked with local Google marketing people in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area and established a Google+ page. That page took off, and eventually had 30,000 subscribers.

There was only one little problem:

It turns out that even though the Minnesota Lynx had multiple page managers, the Google+ user that set up the account left the organization. The email of the user was out of the Lynx’s system (Google+ was not available for Google Apps until 4 months post-launch,) giving the Lynx no options for bringing the account back.

The page disappeared, and when the team went to Google to see what could be done to restore the page, the Lynx were told that they would have to "start over."

Bob Stanke of the Lynx is not pleased:

Hey +Google+ and +Google... All summer long we put a ton of time and resources into building our Minnesota Lynx page with great content and a strong fan base. Then you helped our Minnesota Lynx Google+ page become verified and we were experiencing great growth. Because of our excitement, we even went in and re-evaluated our strategy around Google+. We adopted early and what did we get in return??? Our page is now completely gone! And the advice is to "start over"? All that time we spent with your awesome local marketing team here in Minneapolis is now a complete waste. Unacceptable on every level. You are one of the top technology companies in the world and you can't restore our page? Even as reigning WNBA champions, we might not matter to you, but this action does make us strongly consider moving our entire organization's social marketing efforts to other places and completely cut all ad spending we were going to do with Google.

And before you dismiss Stanke's complaints, bear in mind that he doesn't only work for the Minnesota Lynx. He also works for the Minnesota Timberwolves.

I suspect that the next time a Google salesperson calls on David Stern, the meeting will get VERY unpleasant.

And frankly, even if Stanke is able to raise enough of a stink to get Google to get the Lynx page restored, that really doesn't prove anything. Most people are not able to raise a big enough stink, and many of these cases will end up in the wronged users abandoning Google.

P.S. The Minnesota Lynx Facebook page is at https://www.facebook.com/#!/minnesotalynx?fref=ts.

(empo-utoobd) When social companies become anti-social - who you gonna call at Google?

I've brought this up before, but it's relevant to bring it up again. When Google "permanently disabled" my YouTube account a few years ago, not only was I not informed why this was done, but I was offered no way to contact any real live person by phone, email, or whatever to find out why my account was permanently disabled.

However, in a way I can't be disappointed. As I myself have noted, I am not a Google customer. Google's customers are the advertisers that pay them money to advertise on the service. I don't pay them a dime, so I mean nothing to them.

But what of Google's true, paying customers? Let's take a look at the story of Pat Irwin Design:

While, as "Warren De Zeez" stated, there are Google 'freeloaders' in the world, there are also a very large number of legitimate, paying CUSTOMERS of Google who from time to time, need support which goes beyond a message board of other users looking for answers to the same problem, or an email form which only leads to a pre-formatted response and a link to the same, fruitless message boards.

I am responsible for twenty(+) clients who pay a very large amount of money to Google for Ad Words campaigns, totaling well over 40,000 per month. I personally use Google Checkout to process 15k a month in transactions, with Google taking a 2.9% cut off the top. In either case, I have NEVER been able to reach anyone at Google to resolve either technical or billing problems. It is irresponsible for a company, such as Google, to NOT provide at least a minimum amount of telephone support for customers who are actually making financial transactions with them.

In addition to not providing telephone support, it appears they intentionally make receiving ANY kind of support a laborous, frustrating and time consuming process. Do I really have to fill out three different forms, read eight different FAQ's and scroll through six different message boards to find a departmental email? Only to receive a form letter stating, "We're sorry you're having a problem with...."

Bullocks to Google!

This story was posted as a comment to a Los Angeles Times article that described the inability of others to talk to a real live person at Google. David Lazarus' article spent some time on the story of Steve Gillette, who was getting repeated text messages from Google that appeared to be part of an identity theft scam. Lazarus wanted to talk to someone at Google, but couldn't. In the end, the journalist Lazarus ended up making contact with a real person at Google (Jeff Pulver used similar pull to get his YouTube account restored), and discovered that someone had keyed in Gillette's mobile phone number by mistake. So the fact that Gillette couldn't contact someone about this is a failure, right? Wrong:

Once it became clear to Google's computers that the texts and calls were going unanswered, the company stopped bugging Gillette. In this way, Freund observed, all's well that ends well.

"The situation was self-resolving," she said.

Unfortunately for Google, some of these situations are self-resolving in other ways. Commenter Tony Lush:

Google has lots of employees, but no people, so I advertise with their competitors.

Incidentally, I originally discovered this Los Angeles Times story courtesy of a Lauren Weinstein share. Now Weinstein, who notes that many complaints about Google are actually misunderstandings, also notes that many people have difficult getting any type of answer from Google.

In many cases users claimed they had attempted to obtain clarification of their concerns from Google directly without receiving substantive replies, and/or had attempted to obtain information from Google Help Forums -- but received no answers, inadequate answers, or conflicting answers from Forum participants. Usually no official responses were forthcoming, according to these submissions

The irony of all this? Google, and its competitors such as Facebook (and no, you can't call Facebook either), are often classified as "social media" companies.

Yeah, social. Like people talking to each other.

Just don't have any expectations of being able to talk to the service provider.

(empo-utoobd) The short shelf life of videos

As you may know, I have been blogging since 2003, and have created a number of blogs over the last nine years.

For five months in 2006 and 2007, I authored a blog entitled KOET Synthetica Television Transcripts. The premise of this was that I (in my then-online identity of Ontario Emperor) was running a television station based in Guasti, California, and that the blog posts documented things that I broadcasted on my television station. (I had done something similar with a previous blog, KOER Synthetica Radio Transcripts.)

During the period that the KOET blog was active, I wrote a number of posts that linked to YouTube videos. The videos covered a wide range of topics: the Cure's song "A Forest"; Dana Carvey's impersonation of Tom Brokaw reading pre-recorded obituaries for Gerald Ford; some Kiira Korpi skating videos; and several other things that I found on YouTube.

I recently revisted that blog and discovered something interesting - every one of the videos that I linked to in 2006-2007 is no longer on YouTube.

A variety of reasons are given for the deletions of the videos, but the two major reasons for removal were copyright claims from various content providers, and termination of various accounts by YouTube. (I don't know if the accounts were "permanently disabled," or literally terminated.)

Since the KOET blog consisted solely of YouTube videos, this means that the KOET blog is today devoid of meaningful content. Compare this to my text-based blogs, some of which date back to 2003. They are also devoid of meaningful content, but at least there is some content there. (It's just not all that meaningful.)

And it's just not my blog that's affected. Check this 2009 post from Sparkups. And here's a 2006 post from Videomixer that can't be viewed in the United States. And check out this expired video.

For a variety of reasons, I prefer text posts to video posts. One of those reasons is evident here - why create a video post when it probably won't survive for more than a couple of years?

(empo-utoobd) On planning for viral videos

Don't:

Marketers often add viral videos to marketing plans as if “viral” is as predictable as the circulation in a coupon drop or the number of samples in a sampling event. What marketers forget is that no one can create a viral video. We can only create quality content that may or may not go viral.

Be sure to read the rest of Tom Fishburne's post to see how Orabrush got 46 million YouTube videos, even though you really can't make a viral video about a tongue scraper.

(empo-utoobd) Too bad I can't help 'em promote it - or maybe I can...

As I've mentioned ad nauseum, my YouTube account was permanently disabled some time ago for reasons unknown. As far as I know, there's still no procedure to contact YouTube to rectify the situation and regain access to the account.

Of course, you get what you pay for, and I can't argue with what's being done here. Google could decide to completely shut down the YouTube service to everyone this evening, and no one would have any legal recourse.

But it's interesting to note that even though I am permanently banned from using a YouTube account, YouTube can use me whenever they want.

I recently discovered that YouTube has a page listing every YouTube video that I have posted to this blog. Yes, despite the fact that YouTube doesn't like me, I still like YouTube, and link to its videos frequently (though not exclusively). YouTube obviously compiles this information and makes it available for whatever purpose such statistics are used.

Hmmm...







Incidentally, here are the results from my 2009 inquiry into the permanently disabled status. Recap:

Your "empoprises" account has been found to have violated our Community Guidelines. Your account has now been terminated. Please be aware that you are prohibited from accessing, possessing or creating any other YouTube accounts....

We are unable to provide specific detail regarding your account suspension or your video's removal....

(empo-utoobd) Before condemning Facebook's terms of service...

At the moment, this post from Michael Lee Johnson is being shared all over Google+. It begins as follows:

LOL: I recently ran a Google+ advertisement on Facebook that got all of my campaigns suspended. - Great.

Johnson reproduced the ad that he ran, which encouraged Facebook users with Google+ accounts to add him, and he also reproduced the message that he purported to have received from Facebook.

Your account has been disabled. All of your adverts have been stopped and should not be run again on the site under any circumstances. Generally, we disable an account if too many of its adverts violate our Terms of Use or Advertising guidelines. Unfortunately we cannot provide you with the specific violations that have been deemed abusive. Please review our Terms of Use and Advertising guidelines if you have any further questions.

Inasmuch as Johnson shared this on Google+, and since a vocal minority of Google+ users think that Facebook is about to go out of business because of the First Coming of Google+, it's not surprising that a lot of the comments are along the lines of "fACEBuK sUx d00d." Actually they're written in proper English, but the sentiment is certainly there.

But when I read the message that came from Facebook, I flashed back to another message - one that I had received a couple of years ago. Here's part of it:

We are unable to provide specific detail regarding your account suspension .... For more information on our what we consider inappropriate content or conduct ... please visit our Community Guidelines and Tips ....

Yes, it's remarkably similar. The service permanently disabled my account and didn't bother to tell me why.

And which service did this? YouTube - a Google property.

So before you start chanting "Google rules, Facebook drools," just bear in mind that a similar thing could happen to you. I haven't specifically read Google+'s Terms of Service, but if it has the same Terms of Service as other Google properties, there's a possibility that Johnson could have his Google account yanked also, without warning.

Think about it.

P.S. Johnson's ad paid off despite the suspension. A number of people, including myself, added him.

[9:40 PM - SEE FOLLOW-UP POST.]

(empo-tymshft) (empo-utoobd) (empo-tuulwey) Social media at Interpublic Group - what's changed in four years?

In 2006, both Marshall Kirkpatrick and I were blogging, and B.L. Ochman was blogging also. She wrote a post in 2006 and re-posted it in 2010 because, in a macro sense, not much has changed. Many marketing advances, such as blogging, are made by small companies, and when the big companies try to imitate these trends, they sometimes fail.

Intermedia Group issued a statement in 2006 which Ochman quoted:

"In the age of the empowered new consumer, the establishment of this unit at Interpublic Media is a logical next step in broadening our offering and further maximizing the opportunities for our client partners in the emerging media space."

What does this mean? Ochman wasn't quite sure, but she did note:

Interpublic Group: 91 ad agencies, 43,000 employees, $6 billion in revenues annually, no agency blog listed on its website. How can they possibly lead a conversation they haven't even joined?

This got me curious - while perhaps the macro environment is similar, what about the micro environment? Specifically, what is Interpublic Group doing in 2010 in the social media arena? In a sense, it's hard to deduce this, since Interpublic Group is a parent company to a number of different organizations, but I figured I'd start at the parent level and see what I found.

My first Google search, for interpublic group blog, resulted in a number of hits to blog posts about Interpublic - blog posts from other companies.

After a number of other searches, I found a 2006 article about Interpublic Group and Facebook. That seemed promising.

As part of this partnership, the Interpublic Group of companies (McCann, FCB/Draft, Deutsch, Jack Morton, etc) will receive .05% ownership of Facebook.com in return for a 10 million dollar Advertising commitment. Moreover, Interpublic will receive preferential access to prime ad space on Facebook.

The writer, Eric Friedman, was breathlessly ecstatic:

This partnership is a brilliant move for Interpublic, especially given the recent success of MySpace. While News Corp. paid $500 million dollars to control advertising on MySpace, IPG secured a mutually beneficial partnership with Facebook....

Perhaps the most valuable aspect of this deal is: the Interpublic agencies gain exclusive access to Facebook user data for research purposes.

OK, this is all well and good, and all of us in 2010 know how valuable Facebook user data can be to companies, but I'm still wondering - is Interpublic actually using some of these new tools (other than banner ads or whatever) to get their messages out?

I figured that it would be best if I concentrated on one component in the Interpublic Group. I picked McCann Erickson because it appeared first on one of the lists that I saw. The McCann website has a bunch of tabs on the bottom of the page, which allow you to launch a bunch of other microsites.



At this point I asked myself - what I am looking for here? Am I looking for a blog? Am I looking for a Facebook presence? I decided that I needed to reframe the question - is McCann using tools (of whatever type) to interact with its audience (or at least engage it), rather than doing the traditional blasting messages to a passive audience (e.g. one sitting in front of the aptly-named "boob tube")?

So with that, I went to the Momentum site. It sounded promising:

Momentum is the first and only marketing agency for the Phygital(tm) world. We create ideas and brand engagement with consumers through the seamless interplay of experiences in both the physical and the digital space. In doing so, we inspire action and loyalty.

Once you get past the ad-speak, it sounds like this was exactly what I was looking for. So now the question is - what has Momentum DONE? This led me to the Estonia story. Here's the video:



Now the one thing that caught my eye, especially in 2008, was the use of Google Earth to upload information about the country's litter spots to a national map.

From October 2007 until april 2008 we geomapped with the help of hundreds of volunteers about 10 000 tons of waste littered all over Estonia. One of our core-team members, Ahti Heinla, developed special software based on Google Earth. It allowed us to place all the illegal dumping sites on a Google map, visible to everyone on the web. Our partners Nokia, EMT and Nutiteq provided us with phones, connection and special software to make the mapping process easy and fun. Each of the illegal dumping sites was given an ID code on the map, relevant descriptive data and a photo. Such details made later a thorough logistics planning possible. The map was located online, on our webpage during all the mapping period. By april 2008 we had located more than 10 000 specific dumping places on the map.

The actual engagement of the volunteers was multi-faceted, using both traditional and newer avenues of communication:

Media was the key partner through all the process. It was never just about the garbage – it was about engaging people from all the corners of the society and change the way they see their sorroundings and their own role in creating it all. The key was that from the start we perceived and treated media as our partner and participant. Without the real support from the journalists in national and local level, we couldn‘t have brought our message to so big audience. In addition to extensive media networking from october 2007, we needed to give things extra boost at the final end. In March and April 2008 we launched broadest media campaign ever in Estonian history. We had twenty Estonian cultural leaders, artists, musicians etc giving their own personal message to the audience – about why it was important to take part in this big step, why they personally felt the necessity to participate. Campaign involved national and local TV, radio, print media channels, internet, outdoors and other alternative mediums.

Now the YouTube video that I posted above was from the account of Firstbuddy7, an Estonian. No idea who Firstbuddy was, but I looked for McCann Erickson YouTube channels. I found one in Portugal. Here's the most popular video:



Now some may argue that these examples are too isolated, and don't necessarily indicate that Interpublic Group as a whole has any understanding of how these tools can be used to engage customers.

But is it necessary for Michael I. Roth to personally be tweeting about his company? Let's face it, Larry Ellison is not on Twitter (this is not him) - that's why Justin Kestelyn is there. As long as the Interpublic Group has people scattered throughout its organization who are knowledgeable in these tools and can employ them in intelligent ways, that's good enough for me.

P.S. Off-topic, but I have to share this tweet from the fake Larry Ellison:

The president of a corporation is one of the most highest ranking execs. I got two of them! That's the way of the Larry, remeber that!

Unfortunately the fake Larry wasn't tweeting during the attempted purchase of the Golden State Warriors...

(empo-utoobd) Spending time in Steve Jobs' Flash-less Utopia

I can't really share the complete details of this, but suffice it to say that as a result of a recent Adobe security advisory, one of the computers to which I have access did not have Flash support for a week.

According to Steve Jobs, I didn't lose anything. Here are some excerpts from his "Thoughts on Flash":

Adobe has repeatedly said that Apple mobile devices cannot access “the full web” because 75% of video on the web is in Flash. What they don’t say is that almost all this video is also available in a more modern format, H.264, and viewable on iPhones, iPods and iPads. YouTube, with an estimated 40% of the web’s video, shines in an app bundled on all Apple mobile devices, with the iPad offering perhaps the best YouTube discovery and viewing experience ever. Add to this video from Vimeo, Netflix, Facebook, ABC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, ESPN, NPR, Time, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Sports Illustrated, People, National Geographic, and many, many others. iPhone, iPod and iPad users aren’t missing much video.

Another Adobe claim is that Apple devices cannot play Flash games. This is true. Fortunately, there are over 50,000 games and entertainment titles on the App Store, and many of them are free. There are more games and entertainment titles available for iPhone, iPod and iPad than for any other platform in the world.

But what about, if I may borrow a term from Apple, "the rest of us"? In my case, my entertainment choices were significantly decreased.

I rarely watch television any more, and consume my entertainment via reading or via the radio. And frankly, even my listening to "the radio" is often online listening. As an example, Lakers games are broadcast on ESPN's Los Angeles, California radio station (KSPN, AM 710), which is all well and good during the day, but after dark the signal is pretty fuzzy in the Inland Empire, which I live. When I'm in the car, I listen to Lakers games on KSPA. When I'm not, I go to one of ESPN's websites to hear the games...

...which are streamed in Flash. So I couldn't listen to the Finals games on my computer during that one-week period.

Or to World Cup games, which ESPN broadcasts.

In my case, YouTube was out of the question also - which put a damper on my attempts to view Chris Brogan's new "Man on the Go" travel blog. Perhaps the iPad user can play YouTube, but it wasn't working on my computer. As you know, I'm fond of sharing YouTube videos via my Empoprise-MU music blog (here's a recent example). Perhaps you noticed that I didn't share any during the last week. Now you know why; if I can't play them, why share them?

Perhaps my lack of activity in the music blog adversely impacted my analytics. But if it did, I couldn't tell, because Google Analytics also uses Flash, so I couldn't see my analytics or even select time periods to view.

Over the decades, Jobs has been notorious for making design decisions that run the risk of penalizing his customers. For example, the original Macs did not come with a standard 5 1/4" floppy disk drive, but instead came with the newfangled 3 1/2" floppy disk drive (well, if you can refer to a 3 1/2" disk as "floppy"). In this case, Jobs ended up setting an industry-wise standard...well, at least until the floppy disk itself disappeared.

Will Jobs win his current battle against Flash? Time will tell.

(empo-utoobd) Will Twitter evolve like YouTube?

Dave Winer wrote a post that got me thinking. In the process of commenting on Twitter's latest tweaks to its business model, and its potential effects on developers and users, Winer said the following:

Twitter is gradually encroaching on the roles of its developers, publishers, even plain old users. Where does this end? My prediction: It ends with us all being couch potatoes. Watching the Britney Spears Channel or the Barack Obama Channel or the Comcast Cares Channel, and going elsewhere for the free-for-all that Twitter used to be.

This got me to thinking about the difference between media creators and media consumers. Winer clearly believes that Twitter is moving from serving the former to serving the latter.

It's instructive to look at the evolution of another popular service, YouTube. Back in November 2005, USA Today ran a story entitled Video websites pop up, invite postings. The article talked about a number of services that were trying to become video versions of Flickr.

"People have a lot of different experiences out there, and they want to share them," says Chad Hurley, who started YouTube in Palo Alto, Calif., with two friends, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim. "That's what we're about. We're the ultimate reality TV, giving you a glimpse into other people's lives."

And while Google actually checked out videos before they were posted, the other sites didn't.

The free sites have policies against pornography and copyrighted material. But since they don't screen clips, they still end up with video some might find objectionable. YouTube and Vimeo have a lot of what Lodwick calls "amateur strip-tease." Other clips feature people lip-synching songs in their own music videos, using copyrighted material.

That was 2005. Where are we in 2010? Well, Google acquired YouTube, of course, but the entire emphasis of YouTube has also changed. The first two paragraphs of YouTube's May 24, 2010 blog post indicate the new direction:

Tonight, at 9.30 p.m. ET, we’re teaming up with (RED) to premiere the documentary “The Lazarus Effect” on the Join(RED) YouTube Channel.

The half-hour documentary, directed by Lance Bangs and executive produced by Spike Jonze, captures a series of powerful testimonials from HIV positive patients. Many of these stories seem like miracles, but they aren’t. They’re made possible through access to two pills a day -- two pills that cost just 40 cents.

If you had gone to a YouTube contributor in November 2005 and asked to speak with his/her executive producer, the contributor probably would have mooned you.

But that's just part of it. If you read my Empoprise-MU music blog, then you probably saw my March 1 post about VEVO, the new YouTube destination for music videos.

Sure, YouTube allows you (well, not me) to upload your own videos, but they don't matter. The real money is in the professional content, the agreements with the content providers, etc. Let's face it - if you can get 60 million people to watch a music video, aren't you going to pay more attention to them than to BrotherSister?



(Oh, and to any personal friends who are reading this - this show was in Adelaide, not Alabama. I was sorely disappointed.)

Back to Twitter. We're already seeing this type of transition now, in which Oprah and other celebrities are issuing promotional tweets, and Guy Kawasaki and others are hiring people to write tweets for them. And it seems that just about every advertisement includes the words "Follow us on Facebook and Twitter." In a sense, Winer's era of the Britney channel and the Comcast Cares channel is already here. And now Twitter is moving toward a two-tiered service, just like YouTube, where certain basic services will be provided to everyone, but only the major content creators will get special attention.

(empo-utoobd) The surprising things that you can learn with Google Dashboard

Back in 2008 when I began the Empoprises series of blogs, I made a conscious effort to employ Google services as part of these blogs. In addition to the obvious ones (Blogger, for example), I used Google Docs to store some of my private files associated with Empoprises.

Well, I logged into Google Dashboard for the first time on Friday afternoon, and the extent of my Google use, both blog-related and non-blog-related, became all too clear. Account, Blogger, Calendar, Contacts, Docs, Friend Connect, Gmail, Reader, Voice, and several others...

...including YouTube.

Yes, my account is still permanently disabled, but Google Dashboard allows me to view statistics about my account.

Favorites 56 favorites
Most recent: Manfred Mann - Fox On The Run on Aug 17, 2009

Subscriptions 34 public
Most recent: schmoyoho on Sep 18, 2009

Comments
Most recent: Country Gentlemen - Fox on the Run on Aug 17, 2009

Contacts 4 public
Most recent: neuromancer2012 on May 25, 2009

Personal messages
Most recent: free tacos on me on Feb 23, 2009

Of course, if I try to click on any of the associated links, I still run across the "Your account has been permanently disabled" message.

And still, Google offers no way to un-disable your account, or even to discover the specific infraction that caused your account to be permanently disabled in the first place. Assuming that there was such an infraction; maybe some anonymous Google employee happens to hate "Fox on the Run" and took it out on me. If that's the case here, I hope that Google employee doesn't transfer to Blogger, or else I'm in trouble.

Yes, YouTube customer service is atrocious. While you do get what you pay for, this doesn't necessarily encourage me to pay for any Google services.

Oracle showed the video star

During Oracle OpenWorld, I participated in three interviews, shot two videos, and did some other things here and there. Oracle has chosen to publish one of the videos on its YouTube channel.



There's actually another Oracle video of me floating around somewhere; I'll have to go dig it up.

I normally don't write a ton about my day job here, but at some point (once I've had a chance to catch my breath), I'll try to write a little bit about some of the 11g technologies that I mentioned here.

(empo-utoobd) YouTube's account termination policy

Continuing in the series of posts that I was inspired to write after receiving a Your account has been permanently disabled message from YouTube, it's appropriate to see what YouTube's own Terms of Service say about account termination.

7. Account Termination Policy

1. YouTube will terminate a User's access to its Website if, under appropriate circumstances, they are determined to be a repeat infringer.

2. YouTube reserves the right to decide whether Content or a User Submission is appropriate and complies with these Terms of Service for violations other than copyright infringement, such as, but not limited to, pornography, obscene or defamatory material, or excessive length. YouTube may remove such User Submissions and/or terminate a User's access for uploading such material in violation of these Terms of Service at any time, without prior notice and at its sole discretion.


The key point here is "without prior notice and at its sole discretion." In essence, I have no right to know why YouTube terminated my account. The Terms of Service can say whatever it wants about "repeat infringer" language or whatever, but in the end it doesn't matter, since YouTube reserves to itself the power to determine when it terminates accounts. And it even reserves the right to post contradictory information:

If a user posts a video or otherwise behaves on the site contrary to these Guidelines, we will generally remove the offending material, and apply a Community Guidelines warning strike against the account of the poster. These strikes stick with the accounts belonging to that user for six months from the date they are received. If a user receives such a strike they will be notified when they next log-in to their YouTube account. For reference, copies of the notice are also sent to the user's email address and YouTube private message inbox.

The first strike on an account is considered a warning. If an account receives two strikes within a six month period, the ability to post new content to YouTube from that account will be temporarily disabled. If there are no further issues, full privileges will be restored automatically after a period. If an account receives a third Community Guidelines strike within six months (before the first strike has expired) the account will be terminated.

When a user has posting privileges temporarily disabled on one account, for the duration of the suspension that user is also prohibited from posting material to YouTube using any other account. Attempts to circumvent this rule may result in immediate termination without warning of all accounts.

Presumably the terms of service take precedence over a "General Policy Enforcement Information" page, which means that despite all of the stuff about notification and strikes, the operative language is still

YouTube may...terminate a User's access for uploading such material in violation of these Terms of Service at any time, without prior notice and at its sole discretion.

(empo-utoobd) Duncan Riley's YouTube story, January 2009

Duncan Riley, who runs the Inquisitr, has had several issues with YouTube, but this one is the most interesting. Riley talked about this on a January 2009 blog post, YouTube Now Blocks Copyright Material First, Asks Questions Later. In essence, Riley gets pitches from various people who want Inquisitr exposure. For example:

On January 23 we received an email from one of our regular PR contacts...for the upcoming film Sunshine Cleaning. The email included links to private downloads for the movie, including a trailer and poster. I downloaded the trailer this morning, ran it through iMovie for processing, then uploaded it to YouTube so we could run it on The Inquisitr.

So Riley uploaded material which he had permission to reproduce. And what happened?

Imagine then my surprise that after the clip had finished prcoessing, YouTube immediately identified it as being in breach of copyright and didn’t allow it to go up.

However, unlike the people who receive "your account has been permanently disabled" messages, YouTube DOES have an avenue for upload issues. Riley used that avenue, YouTube quickly agreed that Riley had the right to upload the material, and everything was solved. But Riley still wondered:

[W]hy has YouTube seemingly abandoned the DMCA process in favor of blocking material upfront, and automatically presuming that the uploader isn’t authorized to share the material?

So what is the "DMCA process" to which Riley referred? Let's see what...oh...Google says about it.

To file a notice of infringement with us, you must provide a written communication (by fax or regular mail -- not by email, except by prior agreement) that sets forth the items specified below. Please note that you will be liable for damages (including costs and attorneys' fees) if you materially misrepresent that a product or activity is infringing your copyrights.

Google then states what someone needs to submit to claim a copyright violation, and talks about the counter-statement that the alleged infringer can provide.

Riley's concern is that Google didn't wait for a copyright infringement notice, but simply decided on its own - incorrectly - that Riley was uploading unauthorized material.

(empo-utoobd) Jeff Pulver's YouTube story, October 2008

I've alluded to this a couple of times, but now it's time to revisit the Jeff Pulver-YouTube story and put it in context.

First off, let's review Jeff Pulver's mini-autobiography:

Jeff Pulver is the Chairman and Founder of pulver.com, and one of the true pioneers of the VoIP industry and a leader in the emerging TV on the Net industry. Leveraging well over a decade of hands-on experience in Internet/IP communications and innovation, Mr. Pulver is a globally renowned thought leader, author and entrepreneur. His blog is well read within the IP Communications Industry and in high-tech communities around the world. He is the publisher of The Pulver Report and and creator of the industry standard Voice on the Net (VON) events. Additionally, Mr. Pulver is the founder of FWD, the VON Coalition, PrimeTimeRewind.TV, Vivox and is the co-founder of VoIP provider, Vonage.

(Uh...don't tell Jeff I signed up for Skype over the weekend.)

Anyway, Pulver's blog is at http://pulverblog.pulver.com/, and it includes post that go back to 2001.

In Pulver's October 5, 2008 post In Search Of: Customer Support from YouTube, he related what happened to him that day. Basically, he checked his YouTube account in the morning, and saw the "Your account has been permanently disabled" message. This was a surprise to him.

There has been no communication with me regarding why my account has been disabled. I have built a considerable audience and devoted an extraordinary amount of time and effort to attract viewers to my site and your service. It is confounding as to why this action has been taken. I presume, due to lack of notice, that this is simply a technical error or some other hiccup by YouTube.

Pulver then composed a letter to YouTube. The full text of the letter can be found at his post, but I'd like to extract a couple of points.

First, as noted above, Pulver had no notice that this was going to happen, or why it happened.

I have no clue why my account was disabled. If I have inadvertently done anything to violate YouTube rules, which I don’t believe I have, I hereby apologize and will work to correct any error on my part. But, I suspect the problem is an arbitrary decision or error on your end.

Second, Pulver discovered that he had lost all access to his data, even the data that was presumably compliant.

I request my YouTube account be reinstated. If for some reason that is not possible, I strongly request arranging some method so that I may be able DOWNLOAD and recover the archives of videos that I uploaded during the past couple of years.

I don't know whether Pulver specifically emailed the letter to anyone or not, or whether he just posted it on his (popular) blog. However, since Pulver had no way to contact YouTube about the issue, he had to issue a plea and a hope that someone from YouTube would see his post. And apparently someone did, because Pulver subsequently posted this comment:

My account has been restored!

Special thanks to everyone who helped make it happen. :)

Posted by: Jeff Pulver at October 8, 2008 03:47 PM

For whatever reason, Pulver did not reveal anything more than this, or whether he truly had material that violated YouTube's terms of service, or whether it was just a glitch.

The disturbing part from my perspective is that Pulver had no way to contact YouTube; he had to wait for YouTube to contact him.

P.S. If you want to see Pulver's YouTube channel, it's at http://www.youtube.com/jeffpulver.

(empo-utoobd) How YouTube Earned My Customer Service Darwin Award

In a previous post, I added a postscript about how Google yanked my YouTube account with no notification, only giving me the message "Your account has been permanently disabled." Finding a link that purported to provide me with more information, I clicked it. As I noted in the prior post, this resulted in the following email from Google:

Hi empoprises,

Thanks for your email. Your "empoprises" account has been found to have violated our Community Guidelines. Your account has now been terminated. Please be aware that you are prohibited from accessing, possessing or creating any other YouTube accounts.

YouTube staff review flagged videos 24 hours a day, seven days a week to determine whether they violate our Community Guidelines. When a video or account is brought to our attention we investigate and take action if necessary.

We are unable to provide specific detail regarding your account suspension or your video's removal. For more information on our what we consider inappropriate content or conduct while using YouTube, please visit our Community Guidelines and Tips at http://www.youtube.com/t/community_guidelines and our Help Center article at http://help.youtube.com/support/youtube/bin/answer.py?answer=92486.

Regards,

The YouTube Team

My initial reaction, after noting that Jeff Pulver has had a similar experience, was to explore other stories of Google's policies regarding its terms of service. My story is relatively uninteresting, since I don't depend upon YouTube for business purposes. (In fact, I don't even depend upon it for personal purposes.)

Incidentally, after my initial reaction, I think I finally figured out what my violation may have been. When I wrote the original post on Friday, I did not recall uploading any videos to this account. However, I subsequently realized that I had uploaded a video of two people dancing - a video that was not publicly accessible. (No, not THAT kind of dancing - I just didn't think the dancers wanted everyone to see their dance moves.) And then I recalled that video had music...which probably triggered some type of nasty slap.

Unfortunately, Google's policies don't even allow me to access my account to see what the problem was - whether it was that video, or perhaps some comment that I made to someone else's video that caused another person offense. Did I call a conservative a baby seal clubber? Did I call a liberal a Communist? No way to know, and no way offered to contact someone, by email or otherwise, to find out my offense. Remember, my only contact with Google explicitly stated:

We are unable to provide specific detail regarding your account suspension or your video's removal.

Well, that WAS my only contact with Google - until now. As the automated Google service continue to chug along, Google has requested feedback on my recent question (i.e. the "why was my YouTube account suspended" question, which garnered the "we are unable to provide specific detail" reply.

Here's the email that I just received from Google:

Dear YouTube User,

Thank you for contacting us about your query 515418251.

We are eager to hear about your YouTube experience. Please take a minute
to answer this short survey about your satisfaction with YouTube support:

After providing me with a link, the email concluded:

We value your thoughts.

The YouTube Support Team

* Find out more about GoogleRatings.com at
http://www.google.com/support/youtube/bin/answer.py?answer=157303

P. S. Please don't respond to this email -- we won't receive it!

Well, Google won't receive a response to the email, but Google certainly will receive my survey:



In case the image is too small to be readable, you can rest assured that I marked "Very Dissatisfied" to both categories. I did give YouTube credit for providing feedback that was "easy to understand," "respectful," and "timely," but graded them low on the "specific" (what violation?), "relevant" (no way to correct!), and "complete" categories.

My free-form response was as follows:

My YouTube account was disabled with no notice, no explanation given, no ability to rectify the situation, and no ability to contact anyone to rectify the situation. Am I supposed to be "very satisfied" about Google's lack of customer service?

Now I have no illusions about this having any effect - more than likely, the responses will just be filed away somewhere and compounded into metric reports, and sometime in 2010 a Google report will state something like this:

Our survey data indicates that people whose YouTube accounts are terminated are very dissatisfied with Google's service. Further study is required to ascertain why these people are very dissatisfied, and what proactive steps need to be taken to make our customers very satisfied with our no-notice termination policy.

Now obviously there's another avenue - going around channels and getting someone to help. Jeff Pulver obviously had some pull, was able to find a Google contact, and get his situation fixed. And I could probably use my hundreds of contacts to find someone at Google who can find a human in the YouTube division to give me an actual explanation of what happened.

But that's not the point.

The point is that YouTube has a system that is broken. I've had problems. Pulver has had problems. And I'm sure others have had problems too.

Hence a new series - empo-utoobd. This joins my other series, which at present include empo-tuulwey and empo-tymshft, as well as the series oow09 which is being used by multiple people. I want to look for people who have been YouTubed, why they were YouTubed, and what, if anything, they did about it.

And if there are any updates on my personal situation, I'll post them in this series also. But I'm primarily interested in overall trends here.