Spam404, The State of YouTube, and Moving Forward

To catch everyone up as to what I’m referring to, and to give a little context:

Google and/or YouTube have hired a third-party company to help clean up spam, abusive, or malicious content on YouTube. This company is Spam404. Basically, they’ve become the police for the YouTube Terms of Service, Community Guidelines, etc.

This is part of their “Trusted Flaggers” or “YouTube Sheriff” program. Spam404 aren’t the only ones involved in this, but they’re the primary group to come forward publicly about it for obvious reasons.

Overall, this was a great idea. While strict enforcement of any platform’s rules or laws typically leads to more pressure and chilling effects on users than anything, YouTube’s enforcement was just a little too lax.

With the old system, it seemed the only way a video (or channel) would get taken down for breaking the rules, trying to scam people, posting spam videos, gaming the system with extraneous metadata, meta-tagging, inappropriate thumbnails, etc. was if enough users reported the video (or channel) and it got YouTube’s attention.

Now, things are a little different. Instead of a self-policing system which allowed for minor discrepancies in the rules for community members who were really not doing a whole lot of harm, we have a third party actively hunting down any infractions of the rules.

Granted, it is important to note that YouTube’s algorithm moved from focusing on view counts to watch time because they could not control how many people gamed the system for views. Clearly some change was needed along the line.

Again, this doesn’t sound like too bad of an idea, and you can’t really win arguments by defending those breaking the rules. There are two negative (in my opinion) results that have come from this so far that I deem to be very unfortunate and give me a strong feeling of instability for the future of YouTube’s sustainability.

By that I am referring to the idea that there are now many, many individuals who make their living income through YouTube’s partnership program with various networks and that these quick, drastic and unwarned changes are risking putting people out on the streets for something they had little way of knowing was happening.

Equally as frustrating, YouTubers are being punished retroactively for videos published before rule changes, with no breathing room for them to be grandfathered in. Older videos should definitely be grandfathered in given how many videos one creator may hold at a time. At the very least, they need to be properly contacted and directed about older videos, versus just having their work taken down.

Malpractice

It would be one thing if Spam404 were simply enforcing the rules we had all come to know and live by on YouTube. As I said before, that’s a good thing for just about everyone and something we’ve probably needed on YouTube for a long time.

However, these rules have changed and it’s starting to cost some very prominent members of the community their entire channels, their livelihoods.

The first time we really caught wind of this was at the start of this year when - completely out of nowhere - hundreds (or more) of YouTubers had their channels completely taken down and terminated, with seemingly no hope of getting them back. (I know at least a few of the big YouTubers, as well as some small ones got their channels back, but I don’t know how many out of the original group.)

Spam404’s reasoning? The users broke the Community Guidelines by partaking in what’s called “meta-tagging.” This is the practice of putting extraneous (or entire blocks of extraneous) tags in the description field of a video (versus the proper tag field) to help increase search results.

The funny thing is, many of the users who had their channels taken down had not, within their knowledge, done this.

Meta-tagging was actually a very very common practice in the earlier days of gaming videos on YouTube. Most of us tried it once or twice (and I’m talking no more recent than 2012-ish. Most of that was 2009-2011.) and never saw any significant result from it, so we stopped doing it. At some point about a year ago the rules changed and this became something that was against the rules.

Many of us heard about this change, and honestly none of us were against it. We knew not to do it moving forward and things were square. Sure, some people still used meta-tagging in their videos, but it was typically frowned upon since it was against the rules.

I’m not sure if anyone actually got into trouble for meta-tagging before Spam404 came into the picture, but it didn’t seem like anyone did. Most of the rules being discussed here are under the “Community Guidelines” not the “Terms of Service” and we’ve always seen them as that: guidelines. Never does the word “guidelines” mean “strict rules you must follow or get banned,” and that’s not okay now. The point of them being guidelines was that it relied on our self-policing, which was pretty important given that most of the guidelines weren’t severe enough of abuses to warrant a full channel ban.

As with any set of rules, there still ended up being plenty of content creators who went about their regular business of meta-tagging and trying to cram anything they could to help their videos’ SEO (while cheating the system) that they could manage. I believe this is what Spam404 was hired on to help with.

From my observations, however, on the whole these people are not the ones that ended up getting their channels banned.
Instead people like you and me who may have tried out meta-tagging on a few videos years ago before it was even against the rules or guidelines or anything are the ones suffering the wrath of these mass takedowns.

Sure, the idea of “if you break the rules, your channel is going to be taken down and we won’t feel sorry for you” sounds good in theory, but in practice we have totally different results.

Most YouTube channels that have been running for a long time have posted hundreds, if not thousands, of videos. I am one of those people. I know that I have meta-tagged a few times (again, a very long time ago before it was against the rules) on some videos on my older channel, and maybe on other channels. However, there’s no possible way for me to really find out and take care of it.

I have about 2000 videos throughout my channels. Even cutting off the most recent year or two, that’s a hell of a lot of videos to go through to check descriptions and see if I might have meta-tagged.

Yes, I accept the argument that in theory the work it would check all those videos is much less than the work that sums all of my channels, but in practice it’s still not something we can do.

Is it really fair - or hell, is it even logical - for YouTubers to have their channels taken down for a guideline infraction they committed long ago, before it was against the guidelines, and in a place they have no way of tracking down? Not by a fucking long shot.

If Spam404 wanted to be a productive party to clean up YouTube, how about instead of just nuking channels over essentially nothing, they send us a list of videos we’ve meta-tagged (for those of us who don’t do it every video) and have us fix it within a month or so? I feel like that’s so much of a better solution than just having YouTubers wake up to their entire way of living being gone for no apparent reason.

It’s also extremely frustrating to see good-hearted YouTubers who don’t even remembering having ever meta-tagged before lose their channels whilst there is communities of people who still meta-tag en masse to this day without hearing a word about it. That’s not fair, nor does it make sense.

It is important to note that Spam404 have been seen contacting a couple YouTubers via Twitter about their channels’ infractions, however many of the big channels that got taken down never saw it coming.

Also anyone who meta-titles (I just made that up, but instead of posting blocks of tags at the end of their description, they just copy-paste their title like 5 times) is getting off without harm despite it being the same idea and problem.

New Rules

Another very frustrating part about all this is that it would seem (though completely unconfirmed, these are just my conclusions) that Spam404 have had an influence on the creation or modification of new YouTube rules and guidelines that they can take down channels for, and we’re not even being told of the changes.

Account Termination: https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/57391 

There is now a rule that if your channel has been terminated, you cannot create and operate a new one.

While this is a little extreme, it does make sense. However, Spam404’s interpretation of it seems to be a little fucked up.

As Spam404 is themselves now showing, YouTubers can have their channels terminated for just about any reason. In the past when your channel was taken down by malicious botting or any other reason that you didn’t know or couldn’t fight, the primary reaction was to just make a new channel and keep moving forward. And this was okay.

This is a relatively new rule - or at least relatively new in terms of direct interpretation and enforcement - and those who have had channels taken down at any point in time are now having years of work taken down and deleted over reasons that Spam404 probably don’t even know or care to find out.

Why and how is that possibly okay?

My case example for this is GoldGloveTV. A good-hearted, energetic YouTuber who has always remained a great member of the gaming YouTube community.

He woke up the other day to all 3 of his channels - with tons of subscribers and years of hard work terminated. He didn’t even receive a notice of termination, just cause, warning, anything. They were just gone.

How the fuck can you just do that to someone??

Giveaways & Contests: https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/1620498

This next new rule is one that’s got us all scared of the potential enforcement.

Giveaways have long been an extremely popular way for content creators to give back to their followers and communities.

Sure, there’s potential growth to come from holding giveaways, but a few extra subscribers and likes in trade for giving out free gifts to your followers seems like a win-win situation to most people.

Looks like all that may be changing in the near future, or already has begun to change.

I’m not going to play dumb. I know the use of giveaways for channel growth can be abused. In fact, I still remember vividly when this was abused to a very extreme level.

YouTubers, including WhiteBoy7thSt and xJawz (prominent Call of Duty YouTubers at the time) made a decent fortune for themselves throughout a period of just a few months by buying a ton of gaming accessories and giving them out in daily videos.

Other shady tactics such as fraudulent video categorization and YouTube homepage gaming were also involved (which eventually lead to the significance of video categories being removed) but the main concept lied in the giveaways.

For months these YouTubers gamed YouTube’s homepage, shutting out any other videos from potentially making it to that page and receiving their deserved promotion. They made a ton of ad revenue and gave a lot of things away.

However, YouTube did crack down on these guys, their practices were shut down and they issued public apologies.

To this day people still either hold fake giveaways to scam people for their view and subscriptions or just do everything they can to abuse giveaways for personal gain. However, there are many more of us who simply use giveaways as a means of giving back to those who support us and to connect with our audience.

Now we have a new set of guidelines to follow which basically make doing proper giveaways near impossible for most of us.

Yes, the page technically says “contest” buy it has been argued that Spam404 are interpreting this in a way to fight against giveaways in general, and that has seemed to ring pretty true thus far.

For the sake of time, I won’t go into immense detail about the rules - you can read for yourself - but I will highlight a couple key issues.

“You may not utilize channel functions, such as video likes or view counts, to conduct your contest.”

So the entire thing of asking for likes and subscriptions as entrance for giveaways would likely be punished. Basically defeating the entire point of the giveaway. Sure, generous people will still provide likes, views, and subscriptions in return for the giveaways on their own, but there are plenty of freeloaders.

Results From Me

How am I reacting to this within my channel?

On the whole, I’m choosing to ignore it. I don’t post hateful, abusive, nor misleading content. I won’t change most of the way I operate on channel because some other group thinks they can interpret the rules however they want.

One thing I will be changing purely out of safety is how I conduct giveaways.

As things have become more and more unstable on YouTube, it’s been more and more important that I (and other content creators) start to build a stronger and more reliable presence and audience on our own platform. Having all your proverbial eggs in one basket is never a good idea - especially when someone else made and holds the basket.

Giveaways will now be held exclusively on my website. I will make brief vlog-style videos mentioning that a giveaway is happening on my website, but all details and giveaway conducting will be happening on my website.

Sure this may lower the number of people that participate, but it’s safer for me and our channel - and if you’re someone who enters, you’re much more likely to win!

I will still create detailed videos for the giveaway, but those will be hosted on a separate platform and embedded in the website post for the giveaway.

Ongoing giveaways have been put on hold and will continue on my website ASAP. Keep an eye out for more details.

Rant over, guys! I just wanted to share my thoughts.

You may also be interested to know that YouTube is holding a survey about channel takedowns and strikes right now, which you can find in your YouTube dashboard: https://www.youtube.com/dashboard?o=U

The fact alone that they put the survey there shows that obvious communication about these issues is not on YouTube’s priority list since very few people likely ever go to the Dashboard (it has no real use and never has) and even fewer probably saw the survey.