At one point, a streamer on Youtube asked his audience something like "Spam F's in chat [to signal that you like this thing I just did]"
Hundreds of users got banned by Youtube for spamming.
But they didn't get banned from "Youtube". They got banned from "Google". They lost access to their Gmail, and to their Android login, and every other Google service, meaning they lost their phone text verification system for every other login, and quite possibly their password manager.
Hundreds of identities were stolen and set on fire by an overly aggressive approach to spam management.
I try to remember this failure mode in planning (or being unable to plan) the security of my online presence.
Then I incorporate Elon Musk's recent behavior and recognize that while the profit motive _generally_ constrains the behavior of these firms, it's by no means assured.
For basic social welfare, either this identity stuff needs to be heavily regulated or all of these big companies need to be broken up.
Just remember if you ever give up your domain, whoever purchases it will now have your email as root-of-trust to EVERY site you ever created an account with.
Also, it can be pricey. If you have a .com/.org it is cheap, but I have a .io and the price keeps doubling every few years.
Also, it can be risky: and there is a very real risk that .io will be (rightly) reclaimed by the country that owns it and either seize the domains are really jack up the prices even more.
Yeah I would suggest against using a ccTLD unless you have a strong connection to that country. Don't buy .io or .ai because they're trendy. Buy .com or .net or .dev or something else generic, or buy .co.uk if you live in the UK etc.
Even without malice or incompetence you will have false positives and false negatives. Then when you attempt to correct the mistake you will have false positives and false negatives again.
Should a false positive from the YouTube anti-spam algorithm accidentally temp-ban someone from commenting on YouTube for a week, or should it permanently and irrevocably destroy their online presence, possibly preventing them from logging into anything online: email, banking, government services, paying their mortgage? Because the whole problem is that we're in the universe where the latter happens.
I see now how it sounds that way but I'm not making excuses. It was to describe the puzzle without all the emotional luggage. You need a system that gets it wrong, corrects it self then gets the correction wrong with infinite recursion.
Instant judgement shooting from the hip without dialog or appeal is the dumbest way of doing things. Google isn't even trying.
I’ve heard this story quite a few times but it’s always hearsay without anything concrete enough to even begin to verify. Given that one account of mine got perma-banned on YouTube (for violating the “impersonation rule” with a bunch of screen recordings set to private…) and it didn’t affect the rest of the account, I have to assume the story is fake.
This legitimately terrifies me because it feels like a realistic eventual outcome — whether it’s via a careless automated system with no recourse or simply enshittification of an existing product due to leadership change.
I’m so entrenched in various platform ecosystems I’m not even sure how to claw my way out of it.
Hundreds of users got banned by Youtube for spamming.
But they didn't get banned from "Youtube". They got banned from "Google". They lost access to their Gmail, and to their Android login, and every other Google service, meaning they lost their phone text verification system for every other login, and quite possibly their password manager.
Hundreds of identities were stolen and set on fire by an overly aggressive approach to spam management.
I try to remember this failure mode in planning (or being unable to plan) the security of my online presence.
Then I incorporate Elon Musk's recent behavior and recognize that while the profit motive _generally_ constrains the behavior of these firms, it's by no means assured.
For basic social welfare, either this identity stuff needs to be heavily regulated or all of these big companies need to be broken up.