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YouTube revictimizes users for publishing game-griefing evidence videos

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On Aug. 5th, 2025, I received another strike on my YouTube channel, which appears to be a continuation of the coordinated attacks from Steam trolls starting in 2023.  It is now 2025, nearly 2 years from when this started & somehow my local police still don't want to make any effort towards what is clearly criminal actions...

The started with me having an appointment with my doctor, to which I had to push off an appointment my friend was trying to set up to have one of his systems repair by a customers that was dumb enough to plug the external hard drive into his computer & format the drive...  After the appointment, I noticed an alert through the YT Studio app on my phone that stated that another one of videos had been removed from my YouTube channel.  Unfortunately I didn't get a screenshot of this one, so I had to get a screenshot of it from the actual website:

It wasn't until I was working on publications regarding this matter that I got the email regarding their actions:

In the mean time I was getting screenshots ready for this publication, fully expecting YouTube would just allow the harassment to continue by supporting the attack & rejecting the appeal (as has been proven over several instances of these attacks over the past several years).

A little backstory regarding this particular video, it was originally uploaded to be used in a report to the staff of Evolve (the F2P Stage 2 version at this point), as well as to Steam management. (I couldn't say whether anything came of it, outside of what we are seeing now from YouTube, apparently protecting those that are breaking ToS over other services by penalizing people who wanted evidence to support their violation reports).  This screenshot (an export from the actual video) shows the original thumbnail that was on my Twitch channel:


Clicking on this image will take you to the original video on Twitch

This shows the dangers of uploading videos to YouTube, regardless of what the reason is for.  It's been advised by the staff of these games to provide videos as evidence when you report people for breaking their Terms of Service in those games, but YouTube is making it clear that they don't agree with this advisement from these companies by penalizing those users when the evidence is uploaded to their service.  Of course as stated before, this could be organized attacks that know how to manipulate reporting procedures (like Steam trolls, being able to successfully do so with Steam staff for decades, now being successful in their attempts with YouTube) & laidback staff on the services you upload the videos to just decided they don't want to deal with the mass of bogus (or twisting the truth to support their malicious agendas) reports.

Getting back to the issue at hand, after getting a number of screenshots ready & backing up all information regarding this particular successful attack supported by YouTube, I made it a point to get a few new posts made on the blog, as well on the YouTube channel.  The first one (on each site) was to inform followers that there had been another strike issued against my account & that the actions by YouTube staff had been appealed.

While trying to juggle the multiple tasks necessary to get this new article ready (expecting YouTube was going to reject the appeal) & getting prepped for further fallout (setting another video that went along the same lines of this video to private, although not quite to the same extent as seen in this one, as well as updating statements to the linked videos on Steam about the attack & having to set certain videos to private), I finally got the appeal filed:

The full appeal stated:

This video was originally uploaded to be used in a report of racism to Steam & Evolve Stage 2, as well as showing that I wouldn't play with toxic people like this. The game has since been shut down, so I'm fine with the video being deleted, it was only left up to show the mindset of the person making the statement (shown by the speaker next to their name in the video when the comment was being stated). Seeing as a strike is being placed on my account in response to documentation of actions by another user for reporting purposes, I need to appeal at least the strike. Provided the strike is removed (and considering there is no way to track the profile of the person who did it), I am willing to delete the video from YouTube myself, if not just left deleted after the strike is removed.

Getting a confirmation of the appeal being filed when I finished:

Unsurprisingly, YouTube staff took less than an hour to reject the appeal, the first alert I noticed being through the YT Studio app on my phone again (this time getting a screenshot):

As I started to get the second posts ready to publish to my blog & the channel (detailing the rejection of the appeal), I noticed the email come through on my phone:

I expected they were going to make me go through the revictimization training again, how when I attempted to access it after filing the appeal, this is what I saw:

Apparently because I had done it in the past (the date shown being during the last successful attack by Steam trolls when their toxic internet stalking & mass-harassment infected YouTube), it wasn't going to let me take the steps necessary to get the penalties dropped.  This unfortunately brings up the question as to whether they will drop after the 90 day period or just stay in effect indefinitely.  Additionally, if YouTube was willing to allow another attack on another (almost) decade-old video, who's to say we'd even get through the next 90 days before the organized criminal actions by these aggressors managed to get another one flagged?  Ultimately, the criminal actions by these users may actually succeed in a forced account termination as a result of slack management of the YouTube platform.

The more I see this happen, the less reason I see for having a YouTube channel at all.  If the channel gets closed, I probably wouldn't be crying too much about it, because it's becoming more trouble than it's worth.  However the account is tied in with my phone & a full ACCOUNT termination would be pretty damaging, to the point I expect I would be looking at a pretty hefty lawsuit against Google for contributing to this criminal behavior in supporting said attacks.

There's also one major point I need to point out & it's issues like this that has DESTROYED any trust I have in YouTube.  Unfortunately Google is the company that owns YouTube & that also affects any trust I have in Google, which is the primary reason I REFUSE to put any payment information on their platform (when I went to pay for Disney+, I backed out of the app on my phone when it tried to get my credit card & paid directly through the Disney+ website through my PC instead).  Needless to say, any apps I have on my mobile (or streaming) devices are free download only, I won't put my payment information on a service I can't trust & since Google is the parent company of YouTube, I can't trust any them either.  I also have fiber through another company in my neighborhood now, so the proposed lifting of that boycott if Google Fiber became an option where I live is not longer a factor (and even further solidified after yet another successful attack supported by YouTube staff).

Unfortunately, because I stick primarily to Samsung S-Series phones, this means I'm stuck with an Android system & therefore the Google account is necessary (even if I don't use YouTube).  Of course if it gets to the point that YouTube just takes a massive dump on their platform & allows a full account closure, I will need to start looking at other options (like iPhones, which will be contributed to the actions of YouTube & Google staff alike)...

 

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