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Comment by foxfluff | Hacker News Reader

Again, simply watching or having watched live streams from Kiev might net you a ban.

> If you watched any Kiev livestream it may have been the reason for your termination. It happened to a lot of us too, it seems some Russian bots have been mass-reporting every single person that watched them

> Yes, yesterday night I watched a livestream. Im shocked

> I also watched a Livestream yesterday night. How i wish I didn't now since my account got terminated.

https://www.reddit.com/r/youtube/comments/t1445p/this_accoun...

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Do you lose your entire google account just for watching a stream on YT??? Because if yes, that's an absolute madness

Does this apply to embedded videos too? Imagine reading a news article during lunch at work and getting your corporate account kicked!

Besides autoplay being evil, sounds like the GDPR-compliant pages have it right. Your data is only sent to YT after your approval.

One great example of this is the Gumtree site[0]. The social media share buttons at the bottom only load in when you hover over them (with the placeholder being Gumtree-styled social media icons). Great for performance and privacy (although I would prefer no buttons / social media code at all). I've always been really impressed by this, I wish more sites would do it.

[0]: https://www.gumtree.com/

I don't think YT bans usually affect your google account. I got falsely flagged by a bot for copyright striking a bunch of my own videos which resulted in permanent, apparently unappealable, ban of all my YouTube accounts on that google account but the google account still works just fine.

permanent, apparently unappealable

This should be illegal. It's like a diner owner saying he's going to deny service to all terrorists and then denying service to anyone with brown skin because it's how he determines who is a terrorist.

It's really sad. I lost one channel that I had been uploading content to for years. I supplied some small communities with, in my opinion, what were high quality tutorials and guides. All gone [see note below]. On top of all that, the videos which I tried to flag are still mostly up and I don't want to risk other accounts or my whole google account by flagging them. My only hope is to one day get in contact with someone at YT and ask them to take a look (doubt this will ever happen).

Note: I think I've got the videos backed up somewhere, but losing the channel kind of ruined the appeal of re-uploading. Lost the channel url, subscribers, and most importantly all of the video links across the web are dead.

While outrageous, that's not quite the same.

What you described in your simile is a violation of Civil Rights Act of 1964 because it is public (as in John Q can walk in) business practicing discrimination based on a protected class (race, in this case).

And my point was that this should be illegal too.

On the reddit thread the hypothesis is that somehow viewers got mass reported.

I wonder if their accounts were picked up for using the chat or if there's a viewer list that is being fetched via API.

So now if you watch the wrong video and you are in some list. Looks like it wasn't a good idea to have your full name visible and online identity tied to your youtube account.

Damn google for pushing for that crap, google+ was a blight.

People still fall for using their real name on facebook, twitter, instagram. It's not just google..

It's a good reason why nothing important should be in an online account these days, it's too easy to lose access.

You are overreacting, nothing important should be on Google account is enough.

Even that's an overreaction. Saying as someone who has moved out everything from Google, the best bet is to own your "identity" (domains, email address, & logins - don't use Google login), and backup your data (either in another cloud or locally in a Desktop/Laptop).

I use a throwaway Google account for YouTube as well, just in case.

Welcome to Google. I know it sounds like cheap answer, but yes, some people lost access to their entire google related accounts including GMAIL and DRIVE when they were banned from specific services, like adsense for instance.

Definitely, but not in this case. They only lost access to Youtube.

Source: Got banned yesterday and unbanned today.

It's never too late to de-google. Use it as a good excuse to switch to a password manager if you aren't using one. If you are then it is much less painful to switch.

Internet identity is too valuable to trust to a company that demonstrates they are willing to fall asleep with an armed grenade in their hand.

This is exactly the reason I am migrating away from a Gmail address to my personal domain. I don't think most people realise just how in trouble they are if they lose access to their primary email address.

I got banned from this, so yes, it can happen to someone that does not comment on any video, has no videos of their own, and only makes a few comments in these Ukraine live streams.

I did not lose any other Google services during this, just access to youtube.

Thankfully, the ban got reversed today.

Ukraine has actually discouraged people live streaming or publishing Ukranian troop movement, it's revealing their positions and capabilities to the Russians. I'm sure that's a two way street.

How much live streaming happened on Youtube - and how many accounts were terminated - during the conflicts in the middle east?

This could be why YouTube is banning everything. People assume this is anti-Ukraine, but it could be the opposite.

One more reason to never watch YouTube logged in or by using any of the official apps. Ideally we should switch to alternative platforms, but the amount of content on YT is unmatched. So try these instead:

- https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp

- https://newpipe.net/

- https://github.com/iv-org/invidious

> Ideally we should switch to alternative platforms

Please consider supporting PeerTube: https://joinpeertube.org.

I noticed something last night watching a live stream of Kyiv.

A lot of accounts were posting the comment '/cam2', with others implying something was happening on cam2. Others were saying that the cam thing was fake. I kind of thought it was a way to find out who was watching the video, since obviously youtube chat isn't going to change the video angle...And now I think that's exactly what it was, for this exact purpose.

One thing is clear, and it's very scary in light of all the NATO press conferences where people are asking if a cyber attack constitutes an act of war: There is a massive war happening on the internet right now. Reps are reluctant to respond to these questions because it's clear that total cyber war has been going on for years.

How would a bot know to report you? How could it tell you watched a livestream?

Isn't there a "chat"-like feature similar to Twitch, where you can see everyone's usernames?

Yes, I checked and in the chat window you can get a list of participants. I'm watching the (non-Ukraine) stream but not in the participants list, so I assume you have to actually say something in chat.

Maybe if you commented on it, liked it or chatted on the livestream. Otherwise I don't see how they know you actually viewed it.

OP of the Reddit submission claims they didn't comment or chat.

But afaik YouTube livestreams with a chat also have a user list for who is present, at least they used to when I last checked.

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