The YouTube Meltdown - Warning

no, they're just trying to cut down on the repetitive, inaccurate crap which is so rife on the web these days.

Dude, they are not heartless, they are doing this for better user experience, there are just to many people that are trying to game the system and take value instead of give value.

To many crappy videos out there.

Yes, take down videos that may offend the great Google/YouTube gods

Right now, their triggers are set on chop off their heads and ask questions later....

I'm in complete agreement on this. If there are videos posted on Youtube, Vimeo, Metacafe and elsewhere...any video hosting site...I think content should be king...and spammers of any sort should be called out on it.

I agree - up to a point.

See "Tragedy of the Commons", for the Big Picture View.

Basically, people game the "system".
e.g.- google, amazon's kindle, etc...
by spewing out non-stop crapola 24/7, and then surprise, surprise!

The owner of the resource - the "evil ones" -
the ones who spent billions building the resource don't want it turned into an open sewer.

BUT -
the problem is the owner (as is their habit), are using purely mechanical techniques to do a mass kill-off.
Take a human subjective judgement approach - NEVER!

And so it goes...

But all-in-all, its really for the best - imho.

The problem with that Andy is it's affecting legitimate marketers in all niche markets also. If they just took down the "crap" that would be great. But instead they are hacking away at videos that aren't scams or crap. I think it's really wrong what they are doing.

They need to stop and think (like that will ever happen) about what they are doing and set their sights on true garbage. Not just videos with keywords that have "make money" or what not.

OR

Not thinking about what is good for the community, because they are so busy hoping it would be good for their bank account.

I totally agree. I hate to see worthy free services such as Craigslist, YouTube, eZines, etc being exploited by marketers.

Yup, monopoly it is with no end in sight.
However, there truly was and is soooo much spammy junk out there. I just wish they could find a middle way

Exactly!

And not to sound like a conspiracy theorist (on what is probably my first post here--LOL) but I have always (10 years or so) felt like Google sits on the left hand of the devil, while the government sits on the right.

At this point, I also wonder if I should kill my gmail account. Are they going to be snooping into that next and delete those because we might mention making money? It sounds nutty, but look at everything Google does. If that's not nutty, I don't know what is.

I've heard others mention using Facebook more. I personally don't have any luck with FB and I trust them about as far as I trust Google.

Sounds like we all just need to build a better mousetrap.

It's just rolling out now.

It will take some months to get into full swing.

My spies tell me they have perfected software to listen and analyze videos.

More when it's available....

It is my understanding that they already have such a thing and I've been advised to submit videos with computer generated voice as the software they use can understand the words easier.

You have a good point, but I'd like to also point out that Google Places for business owners which Google offers for free to local business owners actually encourages listing owners to link to Youtube videos in their Google Places listing. In fact the only option for business owners to upload videos to their Places listing is from Youtube and no other Video sharing site.

Obviously seeing that Google Places is for businesses the videos would be self promotional in nature as well. What Dentist is going to put a video of his dog eating the mail on his YouTube account and then link to it in his Google Places Listing?

PS: Well I'm an idiot as I need to get glasses! I misread YT TOS in regards to commercial usage. LOL

Well, the problem is that there are far too many scams associated with the MMO business. You run an honest business, I do and a lot of people do, but there are many who don't.

Let's say that everyone in the MMO business was honest. Why should Google pay for them advertising their businesses? That's what a youtube MMO video is .. an ad, with Google footing the bill for the servers and bandwidth.

Lets say that make money one, which is #1, actually provided people with some valuable content and they kept it, why wouldn't they sh*t can numbers 2-7? If I were YouTube, I would not be footing the bill for people to advertise their businesses, whether they were a scam or not.

Marketers have such a sense of entitlement. Someone launches a free site/service and marketers think it is their right to use it in any way that they want to use it to market their services, even if that is explicitly against the site's TOS.

Freaking Magic Money Tree. Sounds like a good WSO!

Tiff,

I'm annoyed that your videos are gone as well. It's time to research some of the other video places some of the folks here have mentioned, where we can control the content.

Oh...I searched for your Squidoo video. Got this message which I'm sure you've seen...

"This video has been removed as a violation of YouTube's policy againstspam, scams, and commercially deceptive content.
Sorry about that."


So, I clicked on their "Report a bug" link and sent this message....
"There MUST be a bug somewhere in your system because Tiffany Dow has never done anything but assist a lot of people in learning how to set up an honest business!!

Please figure this out and put her videos back up!!

Debi J"

I'm sure it will do absolutely no good and they will completely ignore me....but I felt better having bugged them anyway!!

So sorry to hear about your videos...glad I got to watch most of them before they mucked it all up!!
Debi

Thanks Tiffany. I had my account "Terminated" by Google YouTube 3 weeks ago. I'm NOT looking for any sympathy, I've started again with a site called Viddler..

Am I a Spammer. NO, do I make Cr*p Videos - NO. I offer video tutorials on how to make money from Internet Marketing, Social Media etc..

I lost 91 videos, it took two weeks after my account was closed for YouTube to tell me what my CRIME was.. YES... I put the words "Make Money Fast" in the video title of one of my videos..

NOW, any other organisation would perhaps have sent a "Warning", so you can ACT and continue, but NO - not YouTube.. TERMINATION...

Now, I know it's FREE to use, but is this FAIR.. after all, re-embedding all of your videos from scratch again, all of the lost comments, hits etc.. when all YouTube had to do was REMOVE the offending video and issue you with a warning, surely this would have been more LOGICAL..

After all, YouTube still has tons of Money Making Videos, some of which are total CR*P, it also has videos about people VOMITTING, getting DRUNK etc..

SO, when did "Making Money" become such a SIN ?

That's exactly what happened to my adwords account. Got permanently suspended with no prior warning, no explanation of what was wrong with my ad...just POOF! you're gone. It was my first adword ad, too.

I have no problem with them cleaning up the joint, but I do have a problem of doing so without any explanation or giving a chance for the user to correct the problem.

Nope wont sell without hype to oil the sales process

From the list of subjects OP posted, it kind of looks like these particular areas might indicate areas where they might be practicing strategic management.

These areas are excellent targets for government actions and 3rd party lawsuits. If I was a regulatory agency or a lawyer, I would be targetting the folks who have the pockets deep enough to provide a nice hefty fine or damages.

I think it is possible that Google might be targetting these particular areas as first on the clean up list because those are easy targets for punitive damages and only consequentially areas which marketers target.

Oh, good grief. We've been hearing this about one company or another for as long as the forum has existed.

The translation of this comment is as follows: "The owners of the company want to use their resources for their own benefit, rather than sacrificing them for us, so they're evil bastiches who fillet kittens and serve them with butterfly sauce."

Piffle, I say.


Paul

Oops

It looks like I am going to have to go and do some serious name changes of my videos and blogs.

Not more work

I know it is worth doing rather than losing my accounts

To Your Success

Well put, Paul..errr, although I don't know what "evil bastiches" and "piffle" mean, the recipe sounds wonderful.
Bob

wow, some of those I could understand like stolen content, but most of them I don't agree with.

I'm sure this will result in a shift from youtube to other sites

I had a video on my Youtube channel that started with "Make Money" so I guess that explains why my account was terminated a few months ago.

Hey, thanks for posting this and please be sure to tell your "spy" at Youtube that I wish they would go F themselves and die for terminating my account (that complied with all their "terms" and had valuable content) with no explanation of the problem and chance to change anything.

Steve

Google can and will do what they want but in a age of social media, Google's pattern of behavior will leave a sour taste in the mouth.

I have seen it with Adwords, Adsense and now Youtube. When you start to ignore the customer, you open the way for competitors to rise and chalenge you.

Hi Paul,

Thanks for the reply.

Nope. Firstly, I was referring to their virtually unique combination of interlaced paid and free products, not just free products. Secondly, I wasn't saying that they have a responsibility to do it the way the recipients demand, I am saying that due to their possibly unique position which means that to a large degree, they control huge chunks of the internet, they therefore have a social responsibility.

For example - I watched a video the other day of a man dying. To view this, I had to log in in order to 'prove' my age. Does this not demonstrate that the business they are in has at least some element of social responsibility? (Yes, I'm aware that this is a different area of responsibility to the one I first referred to, I'm just establishing that many areas of their business lead to them having a social responsibility.)

The first part relates mainly to organic vs PPC so if I were to go too deep into that it will take us off the youtube topic. But the part of this that is relevant is that the organic vs PPC is a part of their monopoly.

I am aware of the story you told about your subscribers (you've told it before, it's a helpful story.) I totally agree with your point about them telling you that you had no right to remove them and how this is ludicrous. I'm also aware of how this also relates to the forum I'm posting in. But you (or the forum) are not Google - you have a different business model, and just one of the key differences is scale, in terms of how much of the market their particular business dominates and another is what kind of market/business they are in.

My comments were related to all of Google's business as a whole rather than youtube in isolation - some of my comments were specifically not focussed on youtube, but elsewhere - EG - (the only part where I mentioned social responsibility)

So to be more specific with youtube - what I am saying is that it would make all of the difference in the world (due to the fact that you (presumeably), I and everyone else (I reckon) knows that people have built businesses that depend on youtube traffic) if, rather than closing people down overnight, they tried just a little bit harder to identify where people are causing problems, highlight those areas for them and then inform that they either clear up the problems or lose their account.

I'm not saying that they should have to do this, I'm saying that it would demonstrate that they are capable of taking responsibility (or social responsibility) towards their users. It would demonstrate that they recognise the broadness of their reach and their position as a dominant market leader and the responsibility that goes with that and that they are acting in a way that is befitting of that position - that they understand the difference between being unsubscribed from your newsletter and having a youtube account closed - (not trying to belittle your excellent newsletter, just making a point about Google's reach.)

Again, the monopoly I refer to is not one of monopolising the free video hosting market. The one I refer to is being a major player in free video hosting, free email, free search engine, 1001 other free things plus many paid things, including paid search and including a contextual advertising system that infiltrates nearly every one of their services (and many other peoples), whether that is displaying the advertising, or mining the data that powers that contextual advertising.

Let's get this into the proper context - this is a company that when it uses an interesting logo on it's main search page, virtually every major national newspaper in the UK runs a full page story on the logo. They never do that when I change my logo! This is a company whose brand name has been turned into an internationally recognised verb.

Paul, you know that I know this. You should probably know by now that I am one of the least likely to suggest state interference or regulation in business affairs.

Where do you draw the line between 'the market's freely chosen preference' and a dangerous monopoly? It's not unsimilar to the recent F.I.F.A vote. Sepp Blatter was the voters freely chosen preference to head the organisation in the leadership election. He was also the only candidate on the ballot paper!

Taking your statement as it stands, I agree. But taken in the context of everything else that they do, then the conclusion is different.

Example -

Joe Bloggs' business gets a lot of valuable business (traffic) from his youtube videos. He gets his account closed down.

So he thinks, 'shame about that. Where do I go for traffic now?' Of course there are other video hosts, but none of them are the number one video host like youtube, who have vastly superior brand awareness and traffic.

So he looks to different mediums. What about PPC? Who's the market leader with the most reach? Google. Do they kick people out in the same manner after they have done a ton of work setting up their campaigns and complying with a ton of specific rules? Yes.

What about organic SERPs? What about ad networks and affiliate networks? Google are everywhere and they tend to lead those markets.

Does that clarify my earlier points?

If we talk about youtube solely then I agree with your points. But they don't negate my points.

If we talk about their monopoly of a whole spectrum of internet services, then I feel that my points are valid and also that their current behaviour regarding youtube justifies bringing their monopolistic status into the discussion because even though in isolation, their youtube actions are justifiable, when considered in the context of the big picture I would suggest that their actions are demonstrative of why they shouldn't be allowed to control such a huge chunk of the internet.

It's probably worth mentioning that due to my lack of youtube videos I don't actually have a dog in this particular fight or any personal grievance or loss motivating my posts. It's the usual motivation - principle and of course possible future personal grievance/loss.

Hi Harlan,

I agree. But I would add that they are clearly interested in taking away their affiliate business for themselves, which then throws a slightly different light on their overall behaviour when considering their unique position as the dominating controller and profiteer of way too many traffic sources and internet businesses along with the sheer quantity of data they have regarding competing businesses and their activities.

It's true to say that we can avoid allowing Google to harvest our data. But it's also true to say that it's actually very difficult to do any kind of online business and avoid them harvesting our data in the process.

Hey everyone, it's been fun but I'm moving on for a while.

I have some new information about the Panda update (hint) they aren't done and I'll be speaking to my insider about YouTube.

I'll be back to post in a few weeks.

Over and out.

Peace.

Just a tip: One takeaway is that you need to keep copies of your videos.

Many marketers integrate the youtube version of their video into their own website to save bandwidth. Then if their youtube account is shut down, they lose the video on all places where they had it embedded.

Youtube is just a distribution channel, don't see it as the main host for your video content.

Ralf

Hi Matt,

I just read the PM after I posted, then sent you two PMs before deleting my reply in response to the initial deletion of yours!

So here's my post again, undeleted!

(For anyone confused, Matt's reply to me above is to the post below, his quoted part is what inspired this response. Confused even more now?)

.................................................. ............

Very good question Matt, I appreciate the challenge presented in answering that. I agree with that point about 99%.

The 1% is this - when someone has such huge reach in a market, then the consequences of their actions go beyond the 'normal' scope and therefore the normal principles, or 'rulings' that we apply to them.

Should we base all of our laws, judgements and regulations on absolutely unfettered capitalism? Should we never reconsider things when monopolisation may be occurring?

What about if this is in one of the newest industries, the product of a technological revolution that involves many facets of possible invasion of privacy, risk to children (for example) and (specifically) damage to competition and nefarious, underhand activities by dominant corporations?

When television appeared in our lives, was it a wise thing to immediately consider and investigate the possibility of brainwashing? Were ordinary people capable of immediately realising and understanding their susceptibility to things like subliminal messages (at one end of the scale) and product placement (at the other)?

Is it not also logical to assume that the internet and all of it's possibilities present new, possibly currently misunderstood or untackled challenges that may for a period of time provide dominant corporations with a dangerous level of reach or advantage?

Some 'tough love' might just be a bit too tough.

.................................................. ............

Hi Matt,

I agree. Why do golfers play with a handicap?

Because it's no fun when one guy annihilates everyone else every time because there's no competition.

In business, without competition innovation can stall because it's not a priority (maximising profits is) and ethical standards fall even further behind.

Thanks for the back and forth, it's been educational. Where's Paul?

You keep making me question whether I actually believe what I'm saying, or whether there's a hole in my argument so big that I'm looking straight through it.

Exactly the point I was making.....and spot on. You Tube in their attempt to clean up this or that....should start with what is actually a federal crime in this country......copyright infringement.

Seems to me that should be the focus....that should trump "evil videos on MLM." et al.

But it's not. I love You Tube...but let's get real......a major percentage of their content is in fact violating the friggin' LAW. Not civil....criminal.

And you're right......how many millions of videos are in violation of federal copyright laws right now at this very second on YOU TUBE......I couldn't count that high.

Napster played the game for a while....but it to ended.

Eventually....You Tube's weak excuse of "if they report it , we'll remove it policy"..... isn't going to hold water when some musician or movie studio finally says your ass is going to court.

And you know how easy a case this would be to win? Exhibit A.....you honor....we'd like to log into You Tube right now and ask the head honcho on the stand how many videos are in direct violation of copyright law.

LMAO.....that would be one long trial. Google, YouTube.....might put a bit more importance on this issue...rather then doing a replay of the Google Slap.....cuz they had the right to do that. Hosting millions of videos that are clearly in violations of the law....is gonna be a tough sell in front of a jury.


peace,


Vegas Vince

One of my channels was shut down. It was my Internet Marketing channel and had about 100 videos on it. None of the videos were spammy but all of them revolved around the Internet Marketing niche and there were at least 2 video sales letter I put up for my 2 WSO's.

Also, I had a lot of talking head/screen capture reviews of products. They were well produced and high quality.

So, I really do not know why my account was targeted.

Shannon

** Warning ** What follows is JUST my opinion. Take it for what it's worth
to you.

No third party site, vendor or whatever owes you anything unless you're paying
for it. And even then, what you pay for only buys you so much. I get a kick
out of folks who purchase a $7 ebook from me and expect lifetime coaching
to come with it.

Google, within the law (and I know nothing about Internet law) can do
whatever the hell it wants provided it isn't breaking that law. Should the
powers that be come to see them as a monopoly, maybe at that time they
will do something about it...just like they did with Bell Telephone back in the
good old days.

Until then...if you don't like what Google is doing...don't use them.

Don't put your videos up on YouTube
Don't use Adwords
Don't use their keyword tools
Don't use their search engine period
Don't use Adsense
Don't use Blogspot

Pretend as if they don't exist.

There are other search engines
There are other PPC sites
There are other keyword tools

Life CAN go on without Google in our lives.

I depend on them for almost nothing. Hasn't seemed to affect my business
any.

The more dependent you become on other people, the more likely you're
going to find that your business is about as stable as a bottle of nitro on
top of a bull in a china shop.

Again...take this message for what it's worth to you.

Personally I think there is an opportunity here. I think the only real thing they have done is clear out a lot of the competition and noise. Everyone in the MMO market is still going to find ways to market their product / service but now a lot of the millions of videos they had to compete with are gone. So we change up the approach and the pitch. The objective is still the same. We have a product and there are people who are looking for it, do the keyword research. The market is there and people are going to pursue that market. It ain't rocket science.

Honestly I think some of the people at Google are a bit of prima donnas. There are 197 gazillion websites on the internet. How many of them do you suppose are trying to make money? To try to pretend that wanting to make money online is somehow evil is just stupid. Of course people want to make money online. May as well complain that water is wet.

Hi Steven, He's done some very good blog posts recently on the same type of subjects which is why I mentioned his blog in post# 36. They're well worth a read. I like the fact that he links extensively to the sources for his statements.

Also what I did years ago was contact hosting companies directly and let them know what kind of content I was going to be hosting and what kind of bandwidth I would need and most of the time they could give me a custom plan that suited my needs. I also shopped around for the best deal.

Alot of people who run / offer hosting can and will work with you. So it could be a potential win/win for both parties.

It may be too late for some but it may be advantageous for others to set up a secondary account with no videos on it just to add the friends/subs you do have on your main account in case that does get banned.

It's just a thought since you can message everyone who was on your main channel friend/subscriber list should SHTF and remind them where you can be found off YT.

V

Hi,

Two things that interest me -

1. What inspired the decision by Google to use the type of wording they do when they terminate accounts, whether it's youtube or adwords or anything else. These emails are boiler-plate, so it's entirely up to them (no extra effort) whether these emails are cold, brief, accusational and harshly-worded or they could instead do this -

'We're truly sorry, but we have been forced into a position where we have to...'

As I said, it's no extra effort. One person has to sit there for a few extra minutes and word them so that they show at least an inkling of appreciation for the very people who have built them up to be what they are - a brand that instantly falls off everyones lips when online video is mentioned.

It would still be irrelevant if 99% of the people terminated were guilty, you would (normally) still consider the guaranteed 1% who were totally innocent and caught up in the cull. The truth is, it's probably many more than 1% who are just ordinary, law-abiding, TOS respecting people who have been unceremoniously dumped.

It doesn't cost anything extra for them to be nice, courteous and considerate. Surely it's just good business?

So what exactly, motivates them to act like a gleeful executioner?

2. I spend plenty of my time researching political things, much of which would fall into the 'conspiracy' bracket. There are some excellent, informative and enlightening websites out there. Much of the information I find is contained within videos, some on youtube, some on Google video (although I think they are being moved to youtube?)

Due to my cynical nature and as someone who has read enough conspiracy theories to become one of those people who regularly gets labelled a 'conspiracy theorist', plus the fact that governments and mainstream media are currently making a lot of noises about the dangers of the unregulated internet and add to this a lot of high-profile hacking going on, I am particularly interested to see if some of the most controversial videos get caught up in this termination net.

If Google were to have this on their list, perhaps on the orders of higher powers, it would make sense to go in hard on a different sector (make money), with the convenient 'we can't afford to review and cherry-pick so mass deletions is the only way, unfortunately for those innocents caught up in this' excuse ready at hand. Then later on, the conspiracy sector gets the chop too, when the anger has already abated somewhat and people have already moved on.

Interesting times.