I had a strange and similar interaction with Google recently. I was asked to do the Android developer verification, but then I missed a deadline at some point. Support said that I would need to create a new Google account for all of this. I said this was unacceptable as this was a Google account I had for nearly 25 years and I didn't want to create another. They said tough luck, go make the new account. Luckily, I had recently married and was making a new account for the name change. I tried to use that account, but it wanted a different phone number to use for verification, but I only have one number and you can't use Google voice numbers. I went back and told Google I cannot use the same phone number to verify and I'm not buying a burner phone to do this with. Then they just said "Ah, ok, we'll fix your original account then" and fixed the original account. This was literally a week of back and forth. Pointless waste of time.
I'm surprised you were able to get a person to address your issue.
Had similar experience. My best guess is that the account never went through the various age verification flows (since it was that old, it predated all that) and ended up being marked for deletion- I suspect that they had a bug (legal or in code) that prevented warning emails to get out. I got lucky to detect it early, since they disabled AI a few weeks before account deletion.
500000000th person discovers google is not creating youtube for you, but for them to make cash. Crazy story. Really shocking and definitely not one of the most standard complaints in existence.<p>Anyways, there's absolutely no such thing as "I can't stop paying for this". Just do a chargeback on your card. It's not a real problem.
It was after the hundredth post like this that I de-Googled my life. It was only a matter of time until something happened to my account, and I had so much of my life tied up in their services. The biggest and best change was buying my own domain and changing my email address. Now no one can ever remove access to my emails.
You probably do agree that this should not be normal. And not the expected way to get your money back? There is no blocklist option at my bank, so I'd have to do that every month in perpetuity?<p>Simply because I cannot login and cancel my account?<p>side note, these are things I feel should be:
1. Illegal: "noreply@" addresses. My inbox is not a dumping ground and email is two way, not one way.
2. Required: phone numbers on you website, easily found, that are picked up by humans.
> <i>discovers google is not creating youtube for you, but for them to make cash</i><p>This isn't the cop-out you think it is. Plenty of profit-making businesses have great customer service. Google's crap service is entirely on itself.
The article was complaining abut AI, yet written by AI
I use a kitchen knife to prepare dinner, and yet I am still appalled when someone uses a knife to stab someone. This is not hypocritical.<p>The article is partly about a _misuse_ of AI, and partly about just how bad the system around accounts and appeals is in general.
So how is this supposed to convince me to give YouTube money directly or indirectly by buying a subscription and disabling my ad blocker? Stories like this reinforce my decision to never give YouTube a single cent.
I assume you have a consumer protection agency. Ping them.<p>Put it in plain words. "I have been paying... they made it impossible to access stuff I paid for and made it impossible to unsubscribe."<p>That's textbook fraud. They'll be fined and give you your money back.
Sad story but this has been written by an LLM (to original short story has been inflated by and LLM to turn into an "article").
Speak w/ your bank and ask them to block future charges - easy.
Easy fix, wait for the next billing, contact the bank explaining what happened, and block that and future debits.<p>At least in Australia, this shouldn't be a problem.
I'd imagine if you have a card payment reverted to Google and they ban you in return, you're in a world of pain (that you are in the right probably doesn't matter).
By comparison, Goldman, the bank operating Apple Card in the U.S., has previously refused to perform that block future debits process for me; they simply didn’t have the capability. I ended up closing my account with them to stop the charges, which worked perfectly. I envy Australia’s apparent regulation to compel merchants to do so.
As an additional data point, in the UK I can just login to my banking app and remove the authorisation for a particular vendor (or, for people who don't use online banking, I could phone up to do the same thing).
I think it’s the bank that blocks the merchant here in Aus.
> <i>Easy fix, wait for the next billing, contact the bank explaining what happened, and block that and future debits</i><p>You'd also want to mail a letter to Google documenting that you're cancelling your subscription. Cancelling a payment method alone doesn't void a contract.<p>I doubt Google would do this. But there are plenty of trashy litigation-finance shops that buy up these abandoned contracts for pennies on the dollar and then try to collect. Even if you never give them any money, it would trash your credit for a while.
Same for uk. Can cancel direct debits from the bank website.<p>Things like this would probably not be via direct debit though
I some countries, however, this may penalize you, credit score wise or whatever.<p>This option, in my opinion, should truly be the last resource, after exhausting (and documenting) every other route.<p>Very important: public routes, like Twitter Support, even better (make sure every step is traceable if the only option left is, indeed, blocking debts on your credit card).
I contacted TM Bank and they would't let me do this.
Subscriptions are not a contract of payment. Your bank pre-authorizes these payments, simply ask them to remove pre-authorization. If they can't do that, then the bank is spending your money without your consent.
Might be an idea to switch to a bank or credit union that have better customer service?
Did you or did you not publish AI "music" on YouTube? This half AI written rant looks like an angry Rathbun bot. It needs a summary.<p>YouTube is clamping down on AI content because they know people hate it and leave YouTube.<p>There is no money in generative AI. Google needs to advertise to humans and not to Rathbun.<p>That is why Disney cancelled the Sora deal.
> There is no money in generative AI.<p>It's really annoying that there is so much AI generated music on youtube.
The problem though is more that you get tricked into listening to it by "creators". These people just squeeze money without adding anything positive to the game.<p>On the other hand it would be interesting if you could generate your own music spcifically for the mood you currently have.
Disney cancelled the Sora deal because OpenAI cancelled Sora.
it's besides the point of the post but<p>> <i>That argument is not unreasonable on its face. Artists should have rights. Their work should not be scraped, repackaged, and turned into infinite output without consent. But that is not the whole story. These companies don’t want to stop AI Music generation, they want to own it.</i><p>I'm not sure I agree with that assumption - flooding the market with large amounts of generated music (regardless of who does it) will decrease the value of UMG's products (real artists and AI songs) drastically to a point where I'm not sure that they would still have a viable business. While I disagree with a lot of what they do, I do assume that they have an interest in protecting music made by artists, not music generated as a product (though of course they also produce music like products with a lot of their human "artists").
> flooding the market with large amounts of generated music (regardless of who does it) will decrease the value of UMG's products (real artists and AI songs) drastically to a point where I'm not sure that they would still have a viable business.<p>This is questionable. Did generated code decrease the price of software products?
I get what you mean but I don't <i>really</i> think they are comparable, since one of them is art and the other is typically product development. Art factors in the person behind the art piece, software (or other products) does not. The value of art is tied to the skill, creativity and experience required to make it as good as it is (at least in most people's mind).<p>But also, the main claim of the advantages of code generation <i>is</i> that it will make software development cheaper, and will end up making software cheaper. This is currently not necessarily the case because the quality of the code generation is not really there to make actual (reliable) product development cheaper, but it helps a lot with rapid prototyping. Or as I see it, more things are being prototyped and never finished. What also factors into this is that there are not many incentives for big tech companies to lower their prices, because a lot of what they're offering are tools that we <i>need</i>. This is also not the case with generated music.
Generated code isn't a product but a generated song is. And it definitely reduced the value.
Price, no. Value - probably.
There are a lot of executives acting in a way that makes me believe they're less interested in viability than causing a stockmarket supernova.
Literally had a similar experience with X today.<p>Was browsing when all of a sudden my account got suspended for no apparent reason.
This was a premium account too, and I had last posted a tweet last year. I would maybe comment here and there once a week.<p>Ok cool you suspended my account. But when I tried to access my billing details to cancel the premuim sub, I got a "Something went wrong" error.<p>All these big tech companies have the same billing issues after bans/suspensions. Once they decide you're persona non grata, they don't give a f about cancelling your billing.
There are multiple topics mentioned in this article. One is quite curious, which I had missed before, I must admit:<p><pre><code> Universal Music Group is currently at the center of a growing legal fight against AI music platforms like Suno and Udio, accusing them of training on copyrighted music without permission. [...] The claim is straightforward. These systems learned from real artists without paying for it, and now they can generate songs that compete with the originals
</code></pre>
To be honest - I really doubt that Suno-like company created music they taught their systems on. The AI companies are usually using our property (text, music, code) to teach their models and then sell them to us. Quite different view than a constant admiration on how the AI helps us coding...
I'm getting a 403 forbidden on this page.
the llm writing is so annoying
> I was told that if an account is linked to another account that receives copyright strikes,<p>I still remember how mad people were when that linkage between YT accounts and Google accounts took place, and, of course, it looks like they were right. Shitty behemoth of a company.
Could not get through the article because it looks like LLM generated text squared.<p>But I assume people will have protections against this? One can just let their credit card company know to block out the next payment, or dispute the charges; I am assuming the user will have adequate proof that they aren't able to get to their subscription account.<p>While what Google is doing here is scummy, I'm assuming that multiple consumer reversals will make at least a minor dent to their financial reputation with the banks? Did this even need so much AI text?
I bet Google is training their models on videos uploaded on YouTube.<p>What a joke. People, start putting a license fee on your YouTube videos for AI training. Play their game.