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Comment by pen2l | Hacker News Reader

This is not as terrifying to me as the other news brought to my attention by a post in today's Reddit's r/YSK, that if you use Adblock, your gmail can be closed.

In the new TOS of Youtube [1], it states that if your account is not deemed commercially viable, your Google account (i.e. your Gmail, your Google Photos, your Google Drive, etc.) can be closed down:

    YouTube may terminate your access, or your Google 
    account’s access to all or part of the Service if YouTube
    believes, in its sole discretion, that provision of the 
    Service to you is no longer commercially viable.

Makes sense they would make this decision, as Youtube is a big money-loser for Google and they want to do something about this. Still, this is more of a wake-up call to me than anything else that I need to get off Google.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/t/terms?preview=20191210#main&

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> Terminations and Suspensions by YouTube for Cause

> YouTube may suspend or terminate your access, your Google account, or your Google account’s access to all or part of the Service if (a) you materially or repeatedly breach this Agreement; (b) we are required to do so to comply with a legal requirement or a court order; or (c) we believe there has been conduct that creates (or could create) liability or harm to any user, other third party, YouTube or our Affiliates

https://www.youtube.com/t/terms?preview=20191210

Edit: just to be cristal clear, yes, YouTube can terminate your Google account

> YouTube may terminate your access, or your Google account’s access to all or part of the Service if YouTube believes, in its sole discretion, that provision of the Service to you is no longer commercially viable.

just one more reason i continue to recommend that youtube is greatly improved by signing out. none of the signin-walled "features" are worth it anyway. comments are a banal wasteland, votes mean nothing for creator visibility, subscribing doesn't mean you'll see new videos when they're released, algorithm-driven recommendations actively harm diverse content discoverability...

I don't even visit the YouTube site that often anymore. I've set up a script to use youtube-dl to download new videos from channels I like on a daily basis.

Can you share any more information or the source of your script? Sounds like a pretty cool idea.

It's actually really simple! Here's an example:

youtube-dl --dateafter now-7days --playlist-end 10 --download-archive '/path/to/folder/downloaded.txt' -o '/path/to/folder/%(title)s.%(ext)s' -- 'https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYO_jab_esuFRV4b17AJtAw'

You can play around with the parameters to get the behavior you want (there are tons more than I don't use), I kept it pretty simple. In my case it checks the channel page for videos that are newer than 7 days (it runs daily but this gives me a buffer). If there are more than 10 videos newer than 7 days it only checks the first 10. It stores previously downloaded video information in downloaded.txt so it doesn't download duplicate videos, and outputs the video in the format videoName.ext.

Then throw that into a shell script along with any other channels you want and set up a cron job to run it as often as you'd like. You'll also probably want to put 'youtube-dl -U' into a cron job to keep it up to date, YouTube frequently changes things that breaks functionality of youtube-dl.

I never thought to set up something like this, but it's a fantastic idea!

Now... this may seem like a silly question: What does the '--' do before the channel url? I know '--' is normally used for parameters longer than one character, but that one is kinda just floating about haha.

Looks like a mistake on my part, I was probably playing around with another parameter and forgot to remove it completely. It runs fine with it there so I never noticed it but it isn't needed.

Putting "--" as an argument means that future arguments starting with "-" will not be parsed as arguments (imagine trying to rm a file called "-rf" or grep for "-"). But it just so happens that it's not necessary in this case.

Ohhhhh okay, that makes sense. Thanks!

Your comment inspired a quick and dirty implementation of this.

It's on my github[1] if anyone wants to take a look. I don't use bash often, so if anyone sees better ways to do things I'm all ears.

[1] https://github.com/kiddico/Fight_the_Man

that's an excellent option, but make sure you aren't logged into your gmail on that same computer. Your script shouldn't access the cookies of the browser, but if somehow they are able to, they will disable your gmail account when they realize you are watching from the same IP with a headless script that can't watch ads.

Curious, why not just use invidio.us?

Youtube-dl saved my youtube experience, as I have many playlists that have actually gotten entries deleted somehow, and I had then no recourse into recovering my playlist (often the uploader or another youtube denizen just re-uploads it, but I lost all information about the video).

Where does it say your gmail can be closed. The terms listed only say they can terminate your account access to the service, aka Youtube.

When they close your YouTube account, they close the associated account on the Google side of things

I actually found it mentioned in a different paragraph. It explicitly states your Google account.

You can have your YouTube account shut down and still have an email account

The thing with markiplier a few days ago says otherwise

I don't know what a markiplier is, I am just reading the actual changes on the YouTube terms website.

  Terminations and Suspensions by YouTube for Cause

  YouTube may suspend or terminate your access, _your Google account_ , or your Google account’s access to all or part of the Service if 
  (a) you materially or repeatedly breach this Agreement; 
  (b) we are required to do so to comply with a legal requirement or a court order; or 
  (c) we believe there has been conduct that creates (or could create) liability or harm to any user, other third party, YouTube or our Affiliates.

I tend to believe YouTube wouldn't put it in if they didn't mean it.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21490674

Just because they can terminate a Google account doesn't mean they have too... I do not understand what point you are trying to make

Your original comment asks where it says they can terminate your Gmail account. I was responding to that. There are dozens (hundreds?) of documented cases of Google banning the associated Google account when they ban the YouTube account.

Yes, just because they can, doesn’t mean they have to, but they do it anyways.

I think we agree and one of us just got confused on the way? I know they have done that for youtube accounts; developer accounts too.

They are now at least making it much more obvious

I find that very worryingly vague. In my reading though, that only applies to YouTube itself ("the Service"). It seems to be saying that your Google account can lose access to YouTube, not that you can lose access to your Google account.

It's recently been proven that the two are one in the same (look up the "Markplier YouTube Ban").

*Markiplier

Wow. That is some heavy-handed, misguided "justice" there. Banning people's Google (including GMail) accounts, even rejecting appeals, only for using emotes the way it was requested and encouraged by the streamer they were commenting on.

The thing that was apparently against unspoken Youtube policy here was this kind of interactive, emote-driven streaming. But I get the impression Markiplier didn't get banned, only their fans.

It's bizarre and alarming.

Maybe, but maybe not. There was another recent YouTube controversy where dozens of people were banned from all google services (including Gmail) for spamming on a gaming livestream chat (which is considered perfectly acceptable behavior by most streamers).

Losing access to ALL Google services happens because of abuse signals. I don't know of any other instances where global bans happen.

Abuse signals, as determined by a machine learning system that is a complete mystery to even its creators.

But that's beside the point. Losing the ability to receive email is not something that should ever happen under any circumstances.

I think it depends on how "the Service" is defined. As "Service" is capitalized, it is likely defined in the TOS, and may only apply to Youtube (not Google as a whole). So I believe you (and the redditor) are reading that passage incorrectly.

(IANAL, and I have no clue if what I said is right).

I've been struggling with this myself. But extrapolating from news that some Youtubers who got banned also found their Google accounts (i.e. Gmail, Drive, etc.) closed, (someone up above just commented on this), I feel I must err on the side of caution. I mean, what do you then make of this haphazard interpretation of 'Service'?

p.s., not to be snarky, but you ought to add a disclaimer that you're a Googler in your comment!

Yup,thanks for calling it out. I'm Googler, opinions are my own (and I have no idea about how youtube operates).

There's the theoretical legal interpretation, and then there's the precedent for how google have traditionally enforced their rules. And they have been absolutely ruthless. Banning your family and everyone who ever logged in from the same IP as you. Deleting corporate Play Store accounts if one of the developers was banned in the past. It's all done automatically, and there is no way to appeal.

I don’t sign in to any of their web properties ever. I do have a Google account for Gmail, but I only use it from my various mail clients.

They probably know who I am though when I browse “anonymously”. Am I at risk?

> YouTube is a big money-loser for Google

Source?

I have AdBlocker for YouTube in Firefox on desktop, but I use the app on mobile, which shows me ads normally, so I guess I’m fine?

Unfortunately nobody knows, and you have little to no recourse if they ban you :(

It's insane to me that Google has gotten so hostile, they place little to no value on individual accounts, meanwhile those accounts are the lifeline of so many individuals and businesses.

This makes me want to ditch gmail to prevent accidentally getting my account closed, say for using Youtube while I have Adblock installed in my browser. I do have personal email on a domain I own, but it will be a lot of work to update my e-mail address with each service.

I want to ditch Gmail/Google as well but I am so entrenched into Android that I'm torn. I don't want to rely on third party ROMs that I need to root and install on my phone. I want the latest AOSP security updates, that's why I choose to buy the Pixel line of phones (looking into Android One phones as well). Also how do I keep my contacts synced between devices. What's a good replacement for Google Photos that gives me the same features. I'm sure people have figured this out already somewhere

This is exactly my problem as well. I think the best bet is to partially move off. Setup backups with other systems. For email, have all emails forward to a backup Yahoo account or something. You don't have to check it, but just have it in case Google screws you.

Yeah that's what I'm going to have to do as well. I think the most important (for me) is changing my email to another service (looking at Fastmail) and then slowly changing all my logins to that one. Backing up my contacts on a regular basis and importing them to the new service. And moving any important stuff off Google Drive. I'll probably still use docs and sheets but for things that I don't care if I lose. And finally, Google Photos will be the hardest one to leave. I have so much in there

And that's how it works. If you want to be able to use all the cool stuff that Google creates, you have to submit to their business model and play by their rules.

It took me about a year before I stopped getting any legitimate email at my gmail address. Start changing everything you can to your new email address at a domain that you own, and start forwarding your gmail to it. Every time a legitimate message comes in to your old gmail address, tell that person about your new email address, or update your email address with that service.

Fortunately, for privacy-conscious people this is not a huge problem as we're usually running Google apps in a separate workspace already. It sure is a problem for mobile users though as ads in general are a huge battery drain.

My confession as a privacy-conscious person: yeah, YouTube is the only Google service that I (reluctantly) use. I even pay cash money for it in exchange for no advertising.

However, I only use it on a single tablet that is devoted exclusively to that purpose. As with all Google services, I wouldn't dare to actually use it on a machine that I use for anything else.

So if you want to use ad-blockers, I guess it's important to use Youtube only while not logged in. Keep your GMail and Youtube use independent from each other.

Hopefully that's just saying they have the right to shut down YouTube altogether, rather than denying specific individuals. But I'm not fluent enough in Legalese to be sure about that.

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