Tell HN: YouTube and how my wife lost 7 years of work
495 by jdhendrickson | 179 comments on Hacker News.
I just wanted to share an experience as a warning to fellow users of hacker news and in the hope that somehow someway 7 years and countless hours can be recovered. I've never posted anything like this, but this is the only place I have any hope of a human response after youtube deleted 700 videos created for internal training for our company. My wife started a company that helps people transition from colleges in their home country (for instance the IIT system in India) by translating their credit system into the American educational credit system. She utilized a youtube channel with unlisted videos to explain to internal employees the nuances of difficult evaluation types, for instance how to determine for CEGEPs in Quebec the difference between upper secondary and post secondary. Another example would be how to award credits for MBBS programs from U.K modeled educational system (West Africa, India etc). Youtube sent her 3 strikes in one week. On videos that were 4 years old, indicating cyber bullying. These videos were unlisted and literally contained only incredibly dense, rather boring videos covering the nooks and crannies of various educational systems and how they relate to each other. When she responded, she received an auto reply that stated you get a reply within 2 business days. No further response despite repeated requests within the system, then tweets, and finally submitting a new appeal form from scratch to which the reply was nothing can be done because too much time had passed. This content was incredibly time intensive to create and was basically another job on top of her position as CEO. As a small company this was a devastating blow. Her work youtube account is now removed. Personally the cynic in me speculates that google cleans out low hanging fruit, using metrics, and there was nothing in the content that triggered the bot at all, just a case of over 700 somewhat lengthy videos that were getting almost no traffic, and they get to delete them and hide behind the byzantine garbage fire that is their "support". If you work for the youtube division and can help, I'm begging you please send me a message or reply to this post, it seems this is the only way to rectify this kind of problem. If there is anyway to download the videos that is all we are asking for. -jdh