How Google shut us down (again) – Updated

Google terminated our Youtube channel after only 2 days stating “This account has been terminated due to multiple or severe violations of YouTube’s policy against spam, deceptive practices, and misleading content or other Terms of Service violations.”

As a legitimate neighborhood association we are dependent on free services to serve our neighbors. For some reason we keep running into Google flagging.

Most recently, a neighbor made a video of heron sitting on the edge of their pool. Frequent visitors know we have a running series on animals in our neighborhood. So, we uploaded the video to our YouTube account and made it available on our website. Yeay, our first video!

Within two days, Google blocked our Youtube channel, citing nothing more than: “We have reviewed your content and found severe or repeated violations of our spam, deceptive practices and scams policy.” Visitors to the video are now greeted by “This account has been terminated due to multiple or severe violations of YouTube’s policy against spam, deceptive practices, and misleading content or other Terms of Service violations.”

Keep in mind; the channel existed for two days, is owned by a legitimate neighborhood association, contained one video, the video is original content made by a neighbor in his own back yard, the subject and content of the video is a bird sitting on a pool’s edge. What is offensive about this, we wonder!?

We don’t know. As usual, Google has no support available. We have no clue why the video, neigh, the whole channel has been taken down, and as such, neither what to appeal.

And this is not the first time Google shut us down. Two years ago, Google blocked our gmail account, after our credit card expired, offering no way to replace it with a newer card. No support, no mercy! We were forced to spend dozens of hours, that could have gone to volunteering, on recreating our systems.

Over the past decade, Google has been building a reputation for itself, one of a company where no humans can be reached and for randomly killing of successful services. It is becoming very clear that using anything Google carries with it serious risks. Godspeed!

Update: Google decided, after allegedly reviewing our YouTube channel, that our one video, the one of a green heron in a neighborhood back yard, is “spam, deceptive and a scam”, and Google really really needs to keep YouTube safe from us. Here is the same in their own words: