Tips Urgent! YouTube closing our slot channels.

[dunover]

It appears YouTube are closing down slot-video accounts. Some major ones are gone, even one I had with 2 old videos (fortunately a spare account at YT.)
Whether this is because they deem the channels are commercial or there are copyright issues I don't know.

Be warned, BACK-UP any videos you have on there.

 

[psmith2020]

is this including any real fruit machine video channels

 

[dunover]

is this including any real fruit machine video channels

Not sure, haven't checked those yet.

 

[psmith2020]

but why are they closing the channels anyway as theres is now laws being broken

 

[dunover]

but why are they closing the channels anyway as theres is now laws being broken

As I said in my OP, I don't know I can only speculate. YT are a law unto themselves.

At the moment it may be accounts linked to affiliate sites only, but it will become clearer later.

 

[PaaskeDenmark]

You can open them up easily again peeps >

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[dunover]

Update: It appears YT have silently changed their T&C's to prohibit gambling-related content, or content deemed to promote or encourage gambling. This is why they are tracking down users and closing their accounts if they predominantly offer this type of content. It seems they have started with the major accounts and will be gradually eliminating them. The change came into effect this weekend and appears to be due to upsetting authorities in countries where gaming is prohibited or not advertised.

 

[YouTubeSlots]

Thanks for the heads up. I f they shut my channel down i dont care i dont gain anything from it anyway and have every video backed up incase they do.

 

[brianleeporter]

Booooooooooooooo!

What Shall I watch on youtube now!

 

[Wild Reels]

saw a few of subscribed channels have disappeared including slotjunkies ? guess i need to look for a new video uploading home - vimeo seems like the main alternative

 

[dunover]

saw a few of subscribed channels have disappeared including slotjunkies ? guess i need to look for a new video uploading home - vimeo seems like the main alternative

Yes, I have heard Vimeo is the preferred alternative now. Be seeing them in the 'winner videos' thread soon...

 

[Mackan]

Our YT channel was closed and I just finished writing a lengthy blog post about it when I saw this here.

We got several of our videos flagged in less that 24 hours which resulted in three strikes and suspension of the channel. I thought this was the works of a competitor looking to close down the channel but after reading your post it seems YT just wants to get rid of gambling content then.

It would have been a bit better if they could have been clear about the situation instead of closing down the channel on unfounded grounds which made me spend time on an appeal. If they would have just said straight out, "we don't want gambling stuff anymore" I would have just moved on. It's their site and they do with it as they please, I can't really be upset about that.

The big PITA here is not only that we have these videos embedded across the site within our slot reviews and so on and it's going to take ages to manually go in and remove all of those embeds on like 500 pages.

Here's the blog post explaining how it went down...

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[The Dude]

Casinomeister channel is up and running - but then there are no casino ads there.

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Really a frustrating situation - especially for a lot of affiliates that have gambling related channels, and are finding themselves getting shut down. These are the risks of using "free" websites - you are at their whim. And the unfortunate thing is that these few websites garner the majority of the power on the Internet. Google, Facebook, Youtube = puppetmasters. What they say goes.

 

[YouTubeSlots]

What doesn't make sense is how YouTube allow cannabis growers, And smokers to show footage everyday of their crops and show the product and how to make cannabis oil and what not yet they are not closed down even know cannabis is an illegal drug. If there going to not condone gambling they shouldn't condone drugs either. Just saying

 

[Balthazar]

Which channels are we talking about here? All the major B&M slot channels are still up, those with thousands of subscribers.

 

[Wild Reels]

the main 1 in my subs was slotjunkies, searching for it gives a blank entry for the channel now with a violation message (you can see the ! icon for the top result) - along with a casino paid advert courtesy of youtube time to run adblock on youtube again,

edit, and add gamingslots to the list....

 

[bigjohn]

What doesn't make sense is how YouTube allow cannabis growers, And smokers to show footage everyday of their crops and show the product and how to make cannabis oil and what not yet they are not closed down even know cannabis is an illegal drug. If there going to not condone gambling they shouldn't condone drugs either. Just saying

The same way everything else big business does makes sense, I'm sure it comes down to money. Somebody threatened to pull their ads or start a media campaign against youtube and they folded. If somebody who supplies youtube with money decides they don't like the cannabis related videos they will go too.

 

[Simmo!]

the main 1 in my subs was slotjunkies, searching for it gives a blank entry for the channel now with a violation message

Yes I woke up to this this morning. It's a wake-up call in more than one way

I am moving all the Slotjunkies videos to Vimeo but will take a few weeks. I already host a few on there and it works well.

I don't mind if they want to play it this way but to do it on a Saturday night with no warning is piss poor form. Does make you realise how Google controls your life though. I am going to be far more conscious of that from now on.

 

[fun4all]

Help I have a gambling related video up there that I made and I don't have in any other form is there any way for me to rip/download it? I can log into the channel etc.

I really want this video saved Can anyone help?

 

[Mackan]

Help I have a gambling related video up there that I made and I don't have in any other form is there any way for me to rip/download it? I can log into the channel etc.

I really want this video saved Can anyone help?

This should work

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[Wild Reels]

i tend to use ytd

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beware of installing junk ( do it custom install)

 

[conker]

Yep, to add to the growing list, Gamingslots channel was gone this morning when I checked. No information, no warning, no nothing. The behaviour by Google/Youtube is shocking and it just goes to show how far things have gone with them. Like Simmo's Slotjunkies channel, our videos will be back, we are just working out where. Plenty to sort out over the next few weeks anyway!!

 

[fun4all]

Thanks for the quick replys, very worried about malware on these programs though

 

[Zabier]

As other posters have said, the fact there is much more controversial and derogatory content on YouTube than the gambling-related stuff we reference and view shows this is much more politically motivated than we initially thought. I have to laugh though, Google spent years trying to get people to use its YouTube and G+ networks over other rivals and now they seem intent on kicking as many people off them as possible.

Great shout by Simmo to move to Vimeo. This episode does instil a sense of paranoia about it all though. How long until places like Vimeo et al are next? No warning as well. Appalling practice.

 

[Mackan]

I'm curious how this went down for the others that had their channels suspended.

Did you also get your videos flagged for no reason and as a result of that had the channel suspended or did you get an email saying you're no longer welcome?

 

[Zabier]

On a quick separate note, the level of efficiency that this has been carried out with over just 48 hours shows that it was clearly in the pipeline for a long period of time. It feels reminiscent to a dictatorship regime tactically targeting rebellious groups and eliminating them without just cause or warning.

 

[Simmo!]

Had a thought: all my videos carried the website URL "slotjunkies.com" on them. Reading the policy, I wonder if that's the problem as it is effectively using the video to advertise a gambling site.

 

[Mackan]

Had a thought: all my videos carried the website URL "slotjunkies.com" on them. Reading the policy, I wonder if that's the problem as it is effectively using the video to advertise a gambling site.

Do you mean you had a watermark throughout the videos, a video intro or did you use SlotJunkies.com in the video title?

We had a 3 second video intro before most of our videos with the website URL but I doubt that's the reason why we had the channel suspended. One of the videos that were "flagged" for us did not have this video intro. So it feels they just picked three videos on random to gather up the three strikes needed to close the channel down.

 

[conker]

There was a warning email about a week before that one of our videos had received a complaint or been flagged. We responded to Youtube to question it, as we felt is was probably a bot or some competitor trying to cause trouble. We heard nothing back and then Saturday night our whole channel with about 500 videos was taken down, no warning or anything.

We had an intro and in some cases an outro, but nothing while the content of the video was playing.

 

[Simmo!]

Do you mean you had a watermark throughout the videos, a video intro or did you use SlotJunkies.com in the video title?

Mine ran at the bottom of the video throughout

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.

There was a warning email about a week before that one of our videos had received a complaint or been flagged.

Same here. Never have them but had one about 3 days before on some innocuous RTG game.

 

[The Dude]

There was a warning email about a week before that one of our videos had received a complaint or been flagged. We responded to Youtube to question it, as we felt is was probably a bot or some competitor trying to cause trouble. We heard nothing back and then Saturday night our whole channel with about 500 videos was taken down, no warning or anything.

We had an intro and in some cases an outro, but nothing while the content of the video was playing.

Draconian and purposely arrogant - that's what it is. The power they think they have - the more aloof they become. The only warnings I've received for the Casinomeister channel were from dickbots that claimed I was infringing on copyrights (using select film excerpts) - but all of these are in the pubic domain and I shot each one of them down.

Here we are seeing another level hand greasing. If you have the deep pockets, I'm sure these ignorant greedy bastards will oblige.

This is one reason why I warn people not to invest so much in utilizing other people's websites. Always be prepared to have your site banned if the wind shifts into another direction. I mentioned this at the GiGSE a couple of years ago when some companies were discussing how you should dump all sorts of investments into social networks like Youtube and Facebook. I advised them of my trepidation, and they looked at me like I was smoking some reefer.

 

[PaaskeDenmark]

I am really upset about this now. As I had actually planned releasing a nice slotter youtube channel GRRRRR of course this would be referring to my website etc But wanted to get a youtube channel out there as seems people around loves watching these and I would had been happy to provide some fun.

 

[PaaskeDenmark]

It is funny to see how come all those yout tube channels who shows slots from Casinos etc also linking to websites. How come they are still up?? Also it is illegal recording inside at Casinos so Youtube are actually breaking the law there?

 

[conker]

I am really upset about this now. As I had actually planned releasing a nice slotter youtube channel GRRRRR of course this would be referring to my website etc But wanted to get a youtube channel out there as seems people around loves watching these and I would had been happy to provide some fun.

Consider yourself lucky that you didn't waste lots of time and effort building it up. You can now spend that effort elsewhere. Granted, Youtube was the busiest of video sharing sites, but it certainly isn't the only one.

 

[Mackan]

It is funny to see how come all those yout tube channels who shows slots from Casinos etc also linking to websites. How come they are still up?? Also it is illegal recording inside at Casinos so Youtube are actually breaking the law there?

I'm pretty sure it's not against any law to record videos or take pictures inside any casino. It is however against the rules that the casinos themselves put in place. So no laws are being violated when filming inside a casino.

As far as some channels staying up while others are taken down that's just the way it is when it comes to Google. They are never consistent with their actions and some has to suffer while it's business as usual for others.

 

[vinylweatherman]

They could have shot themselves in the foot. In the UK there has been an outcry over the uploading of these "beheading videos" onto these major US run social sites. In return, these sites have used the "free speech" argument in explaining why it isn't down to them to censor content, no matter how offensive it is to some.

By censoring a bunch of innocuous slot videos in violation of their previous hands off policy and the BS about "free speech", they could yet again face having their fingers burned by the EU courts as Google had recently over the "right to be forgotten" principle, which Google initially resisted on the grounds that they were merely a search engine for finding content that was already in the public domain. However, Google ALREADY censor search results from content already in the public domain on behalf of other big US corporations.

So, it's slot videos today, but they may have opened to floodgates because the UK is about to launch a crackdown on the promotion of terrorism. Some of the videos are ALREADY illegal under UK law, those that "glorify" acts of terror, yet so far the content remains as they are not illegal under US law.

They could also face action in both the EU and US under competition law if they are only taking down some channels, but allowing others to remain, as this would distort market competition due to the dominance such sites have on the internet.

Apart from all this, it's yet another demonstration of the serious flaw in the idea of "the cloud", where we should all be keeping our data, instead of trusting it to the traditional model of our own PC hard drive and personal backups. Like Megaupload, those who put their trust 100% in "the cloud" of Youtube and had no local backups have probably lost years worth of content, whereas those who kept local backups at least have the ability to upload the lot to an alternative video site, and hopefully adjust their sites accordingly so that they can restore business as usual in a matter of days.

 

[Mackan]

They could have shot themselves in the foot. In the UK there has been an outcry over the uploading of these "beheading videos" onto these major US run social sites. In return, these sites have used the "free speech" argument in explaining why it isn't down to them to censor content, no matter how offensive it is to some.

By censoring a bunch of innocuous slot videos in violation of their previous hands off policy and the BS about "free speech", they could yet again face having their fingers burned by the EU courts as Google had recently over the "right to be forgotten" principle, which Google initially resisted on the grounds that they were merely a search engine for finding content that was already in the public domain. However, Google ALREADY censor search results from content already in the public domain on behalf of other big US corporations.

So, it's slot videos today, but they may have opened to floodgates because the UK is about to launch a crackdown on the promotion of terrorism. Some of the videos are ALREADY illegal under UK law, those that "glorify" acts of terror, yet so far the content remains as they are not illegal under US law.

They could also face action in both the EU and US under competition law if they are only taking down some channels, but allowing others to remain, as this would distort market competition due to the dominance such sites have on the internet.

Apart from all this, it's yet another demonstration of the serious flaw in the idea of "the cloud", where we should all be keeping our data, instead of trusting it to the traditional model of our own PC hard drive and personal backups. Like Megaupload, those who put their trust 100% in "the cloud" of Youtube and had no local backups have probably lost years worth of content, whereas those who kept local backups at least have the ability to upload the lot to an alternative video site, and hopefully adjust their sites accordingly so that they can restore business as usual in a matter of days.

This is probably why they decided to go the route of pretending that the slot channels had their videos flagged which resulted in channel suspension rather than actually making a clear statement saying that they no longer tolerate gambling related content on the site.

By doing this they can just say "hey, we're not censoring anything, we're just weeding out spam reported by our users".

At this point it seems only a very small part of the gambling related channels have been taken down so it will be interesting to see how they are going to deal with all the ones that remain.

 

[vinylweatherman]

This is probably why they decided to go the route of pretending that the slot channels had their videos flagged which resulted in channel suspension rather than actually making a clear statement saying that they no longer tolerate gambling related content on the site.

By doing this they can just say "hey, we're not censoring anything, we're just weeding out spam reported by our users".

At this point it seems only a very small part of the gambling related channels have been taken down so it will be interesting to see how they are going to deal with all the ones that remain.

If they have done this, and get caught, they could be in even MORE trouble with the EU as they would be corruptly knocking out some businesses in favour of others in violation of fair trade laws. They may think they will not get caught, but Google got caught secretly collecting WiFi data during their street view project, and suffered heavily for this in the German courts. The EU court has decided that even though these are US companies, it's EU law that applies when they are offering their services to EU citizens within the EU. Microsoft were the first to suffer, and were forced to unbundle Internet Explorer from the Windows OS in EU markets so that other third party browsers stood a fair chance. Microsoft effectively have to advertise the most popular alternatives to the user whenever a new OS install is configured, and the user must make a conscious choice as to which browser becomes the default. In the US, you just get IE as the default, and users have to hunt down and install any alternatives themselves.

 

[bonustreak]

Yep we were closed down as well over the weekend.. We got a warning about using 3rd party music in our Microgaming slot reviews so we went in and edited out all music on Thurs.. Friday we were terminated for
having a spam/ inappropriate content with our Good Girl Bad Girl video slot... That is crap since the girls are animated on the reels and not naked!!

 

[YouTubeSlots]

I am surprised that my channel is still up but i don't advertise any site on it except in the comments section so that may be why mine hasn't gone yet but im not holding my breath.

 

[vinylweatherman]

Yep we were closed down as well over the weekend.. We got a warning about using 3rd party music in our Microgaming slot reviews so we went in and edited out all music on Thurs.. Friday we were terminated for
having a spam/ inappropriate content with our Good Girl Bad Girl video slot... That is crap since the girls are animated on the reels and not naked!!

It seems to show it's not about you having the music after all, as no sooner did you remove it, they found another excuse to close the channel.

They are being deliberately evasive about the real reasons behind this, but I can't see it being driven by user complaints as they seem to be making out as this would be a steady stream of reports, not a sudden avalanche of this magnitude.

If it's about using the channels to promote gambling venues to viewers, why not say so and get channel owners to remove all such linking and advertising.

Maybe if you act fast, you can create a new channel without any advertising/affiliate linking, nor third party music, and then see if this gets shut down.

 

[Simmo!]

re: Vimeo

Conversation between me and Vimeo today:

Hi there. I spotted an ambiguity between

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and

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pertaining to gambling content. The former doesn't mention it while the other says you can't "promote" it.

I have a PRO account and want somewhere to upload unique videos I have created of slot machines. Many contain a text URL of my website. The videos are "Private" and I am using Vimeo as a hosting platform for the videos which I embed in my site. Is this acceptable?

Hi,

Thanks for reaching out!

However, our Terms of Service state clearly (

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) that,

You may not upload, post, or transmit (collectively, “submit”) any video, image, text, audio recording, or other work (collectively, “content”) that:

Promotes fraudulent schemes, multi level marketing (MLM) schemes, get rich quick schemes, gambling, cash gifting, work from home businesses, or any other dubious money-making ventures.

[gambling] videos are not permitted on Vimeo at any account level, on any privacy setting, and you’ll need to remove them. Again, sorry for any inconvenience this may cause you.

So that's that then

 

[conker]

I reckon there is an opportunity here for casino/slots affiliates and enthusiasts to work together to find an affordable, gambling friendly system that we can all use and all put into. I think if there was enough interest the hosting charges would be minimal. I suppose the problem is who builds it and how do you make it fair!

 

[Mackan]

I just noticed that BigWinPictures had their channel suspended as well.

Hopefully they kept a backup of their videos and can get them online again somewhere else.

 

[The Dude]

Conversation between me and Vimeo today:



So that's that then

No gambling?

Can you ask them if they allow "beheading" videos?

 

[The Dude]

I reckon there is an opportunity here for casino/slots affiliates and enthusiasts to work together to find an affordable, gambling friendly system that we can all use and all put into. I think if there was enough interest the hosting charges would be minimal. I suppose the problem is who builds it and how do you make it fair!

Sounds like a job for MeisterTube

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[dunover]

I sense an opportunity here for someone with a server. There must be tens of thousands of slot videos looking for a home.

 

[Zabier]

That's unfortunate about Vimeo. It looks like this is something that the powers that be are taking fairly seriously then. In the midst of adversity, opportunity and innovation thrives.

 

[Captureking]

My channels are still up. just finished downloading the smallest one with 31 videos, then there's the task of another channel with 120 videos then there's the daunting task of 240 videos. grrrrrrrrr

Im using

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very quick and simple.

Just hope i have enough storage space for them all.

 

[conker]

Sounds like a job for MeisterTube

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I clicked the more button, am I that stupid.....