WonderGamer.net

Misdirected video strike causes confusion
and a poor appeal filed due to misunderstanding

Blacklists Boycotts Downloads Games Reviews

On 7/11/2016, I was broadcasting Dragon Ball XenoVerse for the first time on YouTube, only to have the broadcast cut short & a strike thrown on my account for what is currently still an unknown reason.  As I was replying to somebody in the chat, I got an error trying to reply to them.  I copied & pasted the reply & attempted to send it again, getting the same error.  Before I could do anything beyond that, the popout chat window displayed the following:

At that point I immediately ended the stream, shut off the game & my PlayStation 3, started working on this matter, which I've been at all day since it happened.

First thing I had to do before I could do anything else was acknowledge the violation, although I'm going to be frank here, I don't agree with it, particularly because it's still unclear why it even happened.  After I clicked on the I Acknowledge button, I went to my Video Manager to find out why it happened; the video still said processing, so I wasn't able to determine what caused it from that archived broadcast.  The next step I took was I went to look at the email.  The following email was sent:

When the video finally finished processing, I unfortunately couldn't get the reason for why I got the strike, all I got was an error that the video was too long to save (which was a direct results to having my longer videos right revoked due to the bad standing status caused by the strike.

Considering this, I couldn't find a way to appeal the video, not that I really cared about the video anyways because I was intending on deleting it myself after the stream ended.  I did eventually find an appeal option on the account status page, which I filed an appeal through, however that page stated that I needed to appeal both the video & the strike; considering I don't actually have an option to appeal the video due to the error it threw after YouTube revoked my longer videos rights, the appeal on the strike will likely fail (faulty penalty & appeal system if you ask me).

The appeal itself pretty well states that I don't even know why the account received a strike; I can't get the details from the video if it didn't save because the strike penalties revoked the ability for it to save & therefore made viewing of the reason why it happened inaccessible, so the appeal probably won't go anywhere as a results of it.  After I filed the appeal, I spent several hours typing up a very detailed list of possibilities that may or may not be the reason it happened on the Discussion tab of my channel, because at this point I'm still not sure why it even happened:

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Towards the end of the comment binge (while I was proofreading it, editing errors & adding some additional information), I decided I needed to change the information on the About tab regarding a 6-month delay in new content on the channel due to a violation for an apparent unknown reason:

After all this was done, it became pretty obvious that it was not worth streaming to YouTube if this was going to be the result of it.  It was a standard gameplay live video of Dragon Ball XenoVerse that resulted in a 6-month strike on my account for an unknown reason.  At this point gameplay broadcasting won't EVER be done on my YouTube channel again & I honestly think continuing to use the site for anything other than viewing would be a big mistake, so I'm looking for alternatives to take my videos elsewhere at this point.  One downside is the fact that I use Steam, which means I need YouTube to be able to link videos over from it, however this situation has told me that even if I have to forgo sharing of videos on Steam, it would be worth it so I don't have to deal with this type of abuse.

The last thing to mention was the description of the broadcast:

NOTICE:
Streaming is currently being done here rather than Twitch while I wait for a pending appeal to process on misdetected media in the video that caused "audio vandalism" (auto-muting) to happen. Whether streaming of this game continues to be streamed here over being done on Twitch will depend on whether those mutes continue to happen on Twitch & if I start running into the same problem here. Archived broadcasts of this game will not be made public & will be deleted after they are aired; taking highlights from the archived stream before it's deleted is possible if there is something I want to save.

NOW PLAYING:
Dragon Ball XenoVerse (PS3)

FURTHER INFORMATION:
- Official: http://www.dragonballxenoverse.com
- PSN: https://store.playstation.com/#!/en-us/games/dragon-ball-xenoverse/cid=UP0700-NPUB31619_00-DRAGONBALLXV0000
- GameSpot: http://www.gamespot.com/dragon-ball-xenoverse
- Giantbomb: http://www.giantbomb.com/dragon-ball-xenoverse/3030-46319
- Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_Ball_XenoVerse

CHARACTER PLANNING:
http://www.tinyurl.com/WG-DBXc
This is a spreadsheet I've provided to my friends who I play the game with, which can also be used as a form of wishlist in the game. Character planning will change as I progress through the game & more equipment, skills & items become available.

PERSONAL REVIEW ON PS3 VERSION OF DRAGON BALL XENOVERSE:
http://www.wondergamer.net/reviews/dragon_ball_xenoverse.htm
(counter doubles as link on Bandai/Namco forums about spammers in the game)

Looking further into reasons as to why this happened in the first place, I still believe the most likely reason is all the trolls that subscribed to my channel, more than likely just to harass me over anything I posted on it (which is why I had to lock up permissions on the site, disabling display of video ratings & forcing moderation of comments).  However the key to understanding what happened my be what is stated in the email:

Video content restrictions

It's not okay to post large amounts of untargeted, unwanted, or repetitive content to YouTube. If the main purpose of your content is to drive people off of YouTube and onto another site, it will likely violate our spam policies. In addition, misleading descriptions, tags, titles, or thumbnails designed to increase views are not allowed. Tags should only be placed in the appropriate tag section and not in the description. Learn more.

Getting into the root of that email:

In any case it looks like the targeted video on YouTube that gained the strike was not the one that got under the skin of YouTube enough to throw a penalty, so it was a misdirected flag that caused confusion & in the long run, had an appeal filed showing that confusion that probably won't do a bit of good.  The fact of the matter is this is unprofessional punishment, especially since they couldn't even target the correct video & just decided to throw it on whatever was running.  I intend on taking my videos elseware & closing my account; I had most of the originals backed up from before I even uploaded them to YouTube & I downloaded most others that has any importance that I expect will be needed in the future, so either I will take them to another community site or I will attempt to find a player I can embed into my site that will allow me to publicize them without shortsighted retaliation from management of those sites who can't see the full picture.

One final comment was left on YouTube regarding this matter after I figured out what was the cause of it, which I expect will probably get retaliation from YouTube, but at this point I can't say I care too much...

What will be a problem is if the entire Google account gets banned & I intend on taking them to court if it goes that far.  As for the little fuckers who stalked the channel looking for an opening to report a video that had nothing to do with the videos displaying their griefing to the world, I'm considering opening an Internet Stalking case with the Internet Crimes division of the FBI, then they can subpoena YouTube for the information on those little shitstacks & I'll make sure this gets in the media when it's all said & done with.

7/12/2016 Update

As I was finishing up another comment for the Discussion tab on my YouTube channel, I noticed I had a new email in my inbox; this was an email stating that the appeal was accepted.  After this I needed to verify that the account was back in good standing, it was:

After reading the email, I decided to drop the last comment & make an update about the appeal being accepted to my About & Discussion tabs.  The email did state that the video wasn't "appropriate for a general audience" however; after going over the video, I couldn't see anything inappropriate about it except perhaps somebody took offense to the character name of Vengeful Mohican.  There was nothing racist intended with this name, it was just that the character's appearance reminded me of the movie The Last of the Mohicans when I created him, so I used a descriptive nickname for the name of the character.  If the devilsuit that the character was wearing had anything to do with it, that was added afterwards & if I had the ability to change the name afterwards (something Dragon Ball XenoVerse does not allow), I would have to something more appropriate.

Bottom line is I won't be broadcasting to YouTube anymore after this situation happened; broadcasting will continue on Twitch unless I can find a decent alternative that isn't going to auto-censor your videos based on media detection (and I'm going to use that term lightly, since the pending appeal on Twitch that had me attempt to stream on YouTube is a misdetection of some other song not in the game).  I have also removed mention of broadcasting to YouTube from my Twitch channel, as well as removed the embedded YouTube live video app from my Live Gameplay page, seeing as I won't be broadcasting gameplay through it anymore.  Videos will continue to be uploaded to YouTube, but I'm going to be looking for an alternative to run them (perhaps from this site if I can find a player plugin to use).  This review once noticed by YouTube staff will very likely cause retaliation, however I guarantee that any relation will have another review written on it, so their actions will also be made public along with the griefers in whatever game I may be playing (and recording) at the time they may be complaining about what I have uploaded.

I do not believe for a second that the appeal itself was the reason why it was accepted, because it was a poor reason stated with obvious confusion & not really accurate to the matter since I didn't know the facts when it was filed.  What I do believe made the difference was what was being stated on the Discussion tab of my channel, as the appeal processed very quickly after I mentioned the internet stalking, filing an Internet Crimes case against it & a subpoena being sent to YouTube for those individual's personal information.  Given the account is back in good standing after the appeal has been resolved, I've cleaned up what was stated on that tab, however left behind one final statement regarding the appeal being accepted, the account being back in good standing & a follow-up statement stating the possibility of what might have been in the video that somebody may have taken offence to.  The fact of the matter is the email that was sent when the strike hit the account would point more towards the griefer videos than the one that took the hit, so I'm more than certain it is the griefers that have started stalking my channel after their actions were made public & they're doing all they can to get the channel taken down, but the result will be that YouTube gets more of a reputation for pushing the already victimized gamer further into the victim slump, as I can move those videos elsewhere & I don't need their service to continue posting videos of these griefers in action.

UPDATE:  At this point it has been confirmed the source of the attacks is retaliation from Bandai/Namco in response to the primarily negative review about Dragon Ball XenoVerse, which was linked to a thread started on their forums requesting a change to the game to help mitigate griefers & the attacks came from a number of videos of that extensive griefing (spamming) that were linked over to the thread, which were followed to my channel so they could flag any legitimate gameplay videos/streams with copyright violations.  Further information regarding this unbusiness-like retaliation can be found here.

So the title of this review to some degree is incorrect, but the attacks started with the negative review against the game & the target of those complaints was the link to the review in the description of those streams.  Originally I thought I would have to change the title of the review, but it is still relevant to some point as the complaint was abuse of the YouTube report function targeting the review itself (which was linked over in the description of stream), not the actual stream itself.

Last updated 10/9/2016


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