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Submitted via IRC for Runaway1956
YouTube has removed "hundreds" of videos advertising an essay-writing service, EduBirdie, following a BBC investigation that concluded over 250 channels were promoting the Ukraine-based company.
According to the BBC, the investigation ultimately discovered more than 1,400 videos with over 700 million views promoting EduBirdie, with the topics covering "range of interests including: pranks, video games, fashion and dating." After the BBC revealed the results of the investigation, YouTube advised the channels in question that promoting cheating services was a violation of its policies against "academic aids," which specifically prohibit both test-taking services and paper-writing companies. It further told them that videos featuring EduBirdie plugs would be removed if the creators didn't do so themselves.
Numerous YouTubers complained that they had lost numerous videos as a result of the purge, with several saying dozens had disappeared. One channel claimed that 138 of their videos had been removed. According to the BBC, some said they were in the process of editing out the endorsements when the videos went down
Source: https://gizmodo.com/youtubers-are-mad-again-after-youtube-deletes-videos-wi-1825803083
(Score: 5, Insightful) by bob_super on Tuesday May 08 2018, @12:46AM (6 children)
> lost numerous videos as a result of the purge
You mean that people are mad that someone actually in control of their magic cloud and distribution platform decided to swing a ban hammer a bit hard?
If you lost anything in the process, rejoice for you've just gained experience, and valuable knowledge of them mysterious newfangled backups thingies.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 08 2018, @02:00AM (2 children)
Not to mention how the real world works when you're a
productcustomer of a transnational corporation and you have a grievance with them. Small claims court is likely the way to go for these people.It could have been a test of the censorship capabilities the lizard people now have. Will people turn to distributed content and perhaps distributed payment (some kind of next-gen cryptocoin likely since Visa/MasterCard have already demonstrated blocking payment for political reasons)?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 08 2018, @05:42AM
One thing I sure noticed ( after 50 years experience ) is that in the real world, people who "get things done" are far more valuable than the people who "do things", hence the skill of hiring/firing people is far more valuable than the people.
Or as that joke went around in college when I graduated in the 60's... the class of Engineers yelled out "We Got Jobs! We Got Jobs", while the School of Business shouted back "Working for Us!, Working for Us!".
In my own experience, knowledge was a negative asset, as it tended to make one insubordinate. I took the "honors student" route. Did great in academia. I seemed to have a real knack for doing things that weren't in the book. However, those same paradigms sure got me into disrepute with management, that generally seemed rooted in having me do a certain thing at a certain time, whether or not it was the right thing to do or even needed to be done. And the root cause as I could see is that we, as a division, were so overfunded it wasn't funny. There was no incentive to actually do anything. Just don't rock the boat. There will always be someone else in a position to do what we could have done. Someone outside our business model and did not report to us.
I note my neighbor's kid is doing far better in his Cannabis growing operation than I ever did doing Engineering... All I learned was a skill that is useful to a very few people, and even most of them just want the paper for CYA purposes, they still want someone to blame when things go wrong... so they need obedient ones which are guided by leadership rather than knowledge.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Thexalon on Tuesday May 08 2018, @02:07PM
Read those terms of service again. Generally speaking, any random individual in any contract with any major corporation these days is subject to clauses that say that you cannot sue the major corporation for any reason whatsoever. Nor can that individual join with other individuals harmed by the major corporation to engage in a class action lawsuit. The best you can do is go into binding arbitration, where the major corporation has picked the arbitrator and will be paying the arbitrator's fee, and the arbitrator fully knows this so they know what decision they're being paid to make.
This is largely a consequence of one of the most important Supreme Court decisions you are not likely to have heard about, AT&T Mobility v Concepcion [wikipedia.org], which overturned all state laws banning these kinds of clauses in contracts, and in effect allows big business to exempt themselves from US civil law in their dealings with customers and often employees.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Tuesday May 08 2018, @02:01AM
What they're mad about is that they aren't getting paid. My experience is that if you scratch a deeply held principle that somebody is really making a big deal about, more often than not you'll find somebody who has lost either a source of easy money or a convenience and is looking for a way to rationalize their simple desire for their toy back.
Also, if you lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by darkfeline on Tuesday May 08 2018, @03:45AM (1 child)
There are very few places that allow you to advertise illegal services without getting taken down. Generally, it's just a matter of how visible your services are.
Given that the point of creating YouTube channels is to get as many viewers as possible, these two things are kind of at odds with each other.
If you think advertising illegal services is a great way to make money off of your popularity and public visibility, you are, to put it simply, fucking retarded as hell.
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 3, Informative) by mth on Tuesday May 08 2018, @04:32AM
It is not illegal to pay someone to write an essay, so technically it is not an illegal service, but advertising it violates YouTube's terms of service.
I agree with your sentiment though: the YouTubers knew they were doing something dodgy and now they're upset about the fallout when they got caught. While a lot of content creators complain about YouTube communicating poorly, in this case the problems could have been avoided by simply not promoting something that YouTube has explicitly listed as not allowed on their platform.