[persistent]

I used to work with Google's account abuse team. The company will never comment on suspensions, so you are right that you only get 1 side. Every consumer account suspension I ever looked into was due to severe abuse on the part of the account holder: folders full of child porn, account being used to spam or distribute viruses, etc. Every advertiser account that some jerk whined about being "wrongly suspended for no reason omg google is satan" was actually due to either click fraud or advertisers' sites distributing malware. Whenever you see one of these complaints you should reach for a massive, galaxy-scale grain of salt.

In this case however the account holder is being totally up front about their activities: they were using a proxy network to rip off YouTube. This is a bit like Trump committing treason on live TV and then later whining about impeachment on Twitter. What's in question is not the facts but the policy.

[ganeshkrishnan]

This is absolutely nonsense. My colleagues account was suspended for using PayPal and not Google wallet, one startup was suspended because their dev had multi sign-in, my account was suspended because of "app likeness" or whatever bullshit, people were suspended for reselling pixel, wrong credit card info, pseudo names on Google plus, dmca violation, copy right violation on YouTube, competitors hitting report, false copy right and the list goes on.

[w0land]

Out of curiosity, how did you notice folders were full of child porn? Do operators have access to mail folders and / or use to check randomly on people emails?

[persistent]

They shared it and someone reported it, 100% of the time. Complaints are verified by special contractors whose mental health is sacrificed for child safety.

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/reyhan/tech-confessiona...

[efreak]

My understanding is that hosting companies use hashes of known material in combination with automated scanning. Also, that some companies may not want to tell you much about how they do it, because the act of identifying it means looking at it, which is illegal (I have not researched this, I might well be wrong/inaccurate)

[joemi]

I'm pretty sure looking at it isn't the illegal part. Making, possessing, and distributing are the illegal bits. Maybe some other aspects too, like transporting or buying or some form of conspiring? I don't think the government (at least the US gov't) can actually make looking at anything illegal. But it's hard to look at something that's restricted in that way without doing at least one of the illegal things.

If just looking were illegal, you could shove it in someone's face on the sidewalk and they'd instantly be guilty of a serious crime.

[ubercow13]

I don’t understand, you’re saying this case is believable? That Google treats this the same as folders full of child porn?