WHAT HAPPENED WHEN MY YOUTUBE CHANNEL WAS ATTACKED
Simply put, YouTube is the most popular, and the most powerful, platform for video content consumption and creation. However, unintentionally I’m sure, YouTube enables their content creators to be harassed, trolled, and attacked online by anyone with a grudge, malice, or pathological intentions.
I say this because recently a short video I created and posted to my YouTube channel was maliciously targeted by an unknown (to me) attacker–for now let’s call them a troll. The troll flagged to YouTube that my video “was inappropriate”.
What was in my video? I was sitting amongst several boxed products, talking about the upcoming review videos I was going to create. I demoed skiing glove liners and showed a Smartwool skiing sock.
Most disappointingly, YouTube immediately removed my video from my channel and flagged it as having “inappropriate content”. YouTube also gave me a “Community Strike”. According to YouTube, “Additional violations could prevent you from posting content to YouTube or even lead to your account getting terminated.”
Making great content is something I try to do with every video I create for YouTube, which I have been doing since 2009. Mostly I create product review videos–I review products I purchase or products that companies send to me. I also sometimes create VLOG and travel videos. Sometimes I show my puppy dog or my cat in my videos.
Here’s the posted description on my YouTube channel:
I do tech. And writing. And coffee.
I like helping people. I like tech. I like learning. I like my puppy dog. So lots of happy people-tech-puppy-guitar-travel video goodness here on my channel.
Subscribe and join the adventure!
HINT: this is not the video channel of one who seeks to violate ethical, moral, or whatever standards.
Creating videos is a learning process, but after more than 150 videos, I am happy to be gaining a growing list of subscribers (more than 850!) to my YouTube channel, and I have received lots of comments thanking me for helpful or interesting videos.
YOUTUBE COMMUNITY GUIDELINES AND INAPPROPRIATE CONTENT
According to this article, “YouTube earned about $5.6 billion in advertising revenue in 2013” off of content creators. YouTube in return passes about 50% of that back to the creators. For example, Jack Conte creates music videos and earns about $400 per month. Thus, YouTube provides not only a creative outlet, but also a source of income for content creators.
In any community as diverse as the one created by YouTube, it is important to set certain standards for the types of videos available. YouTube has created a Community Guidelines document, which states that the following video content is prohibited:
- Nudity or sexual content
- Violent or graphic content
- Hateful content
- Spam, misleading metadata, and scams
- Harmful or dangerous content
- Copyright
- Threats
These standards are enforced in part by allowing a viewer to flag videos having what the viewer thinks contains “inappropriate content”. This is a reasonable approach, but the way YouTube reacts to these reports creates a power imbalance that grossly favors the viewer rather than the content creator.
This power imbalance is a perfect weapon for use by those seeking to hurt content creators. Just as in the physical world, there are people who like to stalk, harass, troll, bully, and attack their victims. The suicide of Megan Meier, for example, is attributed to cyberbullying by the girl’s neighbor.
THE ONLINE ATTACK THAT YOUTUBE ENABLES
So here’s the type of online attack enabled by YouTube:
Say we have two people, Person A and Person B.
Say Person B has a YouTube channel that features a daily diary vlog. Say Person A is the ex-boy/girlfriend or ex-spouse of Person B.
Here is how YouTube enables Person A to attack Person B:
- Person A reports to YouTube (which can be done with one click) that one of Person B’s videos contains “inappropriate content”.
- Without validating the truth of Person A’s claim, YouTube removes Person B’s video and gives Person B a Community Strike.
NOTE that YouTube does not indicate to Person B why they removed Person B’s video. Person B just gets an aggressive email from YouTube indicating the removal due to Person B’s video containing “inappropriate content”.
Of course, Person A can repeat this attack against Person B by flagging another video, effectively executing a denial-of-service attack against Person B’s YouTube channel.
Person B can appeal the removal of their video, but YouTube threatens that they can appeal only ONE TIME–clearly YouTube automatically sides with the filer of the report rather than the content creator, even if the content creator has been a content creator for years, has hundreds or thousands of videos on their channel, and is otherwise a member in good standing.
CONCLUSION
Does YouTube need a way for viewers to flag inappropriate content? Sure, but that’s not what we are talking about here. The question here is whether YouTube enables trolling, harassment, and attacks against their content creators.
By making it trivial for a troll to lodge an “inappropriate content” claim, by automatically taking the side of the troll, by immediately removing the suspect video, by giving the content creator a Community Strike, and by making it difficult, time consuming, and financially costly for the content creator to address the false claim, YouTube does indeed enable this pathological behavior and has has effectively sided with trolls, harrassers, and online attackers rather than its content creators.
This is disappointing behavior by YouTube.
At the time of this writing it has been three days since my channel was attacked, my video removed, and my appeal submitted–there has been no response from YouTube nor any evidence shown that my video does indeed contain inappropriate content. If I hear an explanation from YouTube as to why my video was removed, or if they reverse their decision and restore my video, I will update this page.
I still think YouTube is a useful platform for content creators, but YouTube should stop enabling trolls, harassers, and online attackers by addressing the power imbalance caused by YouTube’s automatic video removal upon receiving an “inappropriate content” claim. YouTube’s current policy hurts the content creators–the ones providing all the free content that makes YouTube great.
UPDATE!
Five days after my appeal, YouTube finally reversed their decision and restored my video.
So now, YOU can see the video that was ONCE BANNED BY YOUTUBE!!!