Showing posts with label attacks. Show all posts
Showing posts with label attacks. Show all posts

Sunday, April 7, 2024

Another attack against YouTube channel through abuse of the report function

On April 7th, I got an email about a removal of content from my YouTube channel, which was a recording of multiple people teabagging other players in Destiny (for PlayStation 3) recorded back in 2015 (it took me a while, but I was eventually able to locate my backup of the video, which was an exportation from Twitch, so the original better quality version is likely still on Twitch), which came through while I was trying to get some last minute tasks done in Warframe (which unfortunately I was unable to complete before the weekly reset).  It was these particular attacks why I made it a point to back up each & every video on YouTube/Twitch & link everything over to Steam to preserve the descriptions of each video, the latter I would suspect is what lead to it getting hit with the mass of Steam trolls apparently still looking for ways to penalize me over my online content (ousting people for who they are based on their actions in games or on various sites).

Note that this isn't the first time one of these videos have been hit with a takedown in the past (the first one being back in 2015), however there was never a publication about it to WonderGamer.net because it was successfully appealed & the removal reversed.  Of course I've been keeping backups for this particular reason, specifically so it could be re-uploaded if necessary (to another site if necessary, although it should still be on Twitch regardless).

If the appeal does fail, I do intend on re-uploading the video, however it will have a different title & description if I do (at least on YouTube if it gets re-uploaded there).

As with any other case, I document everything that happens & keep logs of it to not only publicize these injustices, but also to keep track of when it happens for myself.  On the latter point, this resets the 2-year monitoring date of the thread where these attacks started on Steam, now potentially ending on April 7th, 2026, including more IP bans are likely to be placed on my personal site (after I get a chance to go through raw access logs again & see if there has been any excessive access of the site, which I haven't been doing for a while, but knew I would ultimately have to when I saw certain names popping up in my IRC logs for my Twitch channel, those logs still being kept track of here).  As I stated, this is a potential ending date, which is likely only to be extended because the attacks clearly haven't ended yet & probably won't until arrests are made.

This will likely result in a restriction on YouTube for uploading larger videos (over 10 minutes) for 90 days as it has in the past, any new videos will be held onto & uploaded at a later date if necessary, making it a point that their publications were postponed due to the attacks that lead to the publication of this new channel update in each of those videos' descriptions.

This also puts a longer hold on the lockups that are affecting public joining of my Discord channel & the increased chat restrictions on my Twitch channel back to the new 2-year date previously mentioned in this article.  This means that new Discord members on my server will need to be issued a private invite link to join (and they'll only get that if I already trust them) & the chat restriction for Twitch accounts that don't have a verified phone number on their accounts will either have to be at least 6 months old or have followed for 3 or more months (previously at 1 week & 10 minutes prior to the mass attacks coming from Steam).

Needless to say, the restrictions in place on YouTube (non-visible channel ratings, blocked comments & my personal refusal to stream to YouTube due to easy-to-manipulate standards) will be a PERMANENT restriction, given YouTube is 1 of 2 sites where trolls have managed to manipulate the report functions in their favor (the other being Steam after the attack that succeeded on January 14th, 2024, which is now detailed on my Steam profile & WonderGamer.net).  This also gives further reason why even though I've been on a waiting list for Google Fiber in my neighborhood for over 8 years (since moving to where I'm living now, there were a few years prior to that at the previous residence as well), I will be unlikely to switch to them when it does become available because I don't know that I can trust them with my payment information (probably the only exception I was going to make for paying for anything through them, but if the appeal fails, I will be looking at other options for my ISP when fiber does become available in my neighborhood)...

Regarding streaming

The lack of decent internet has been the primary reason why streaming has ended (or at least postponed indefinitely) on my Twitch channel, after switching from Xfinity back to CenturyLink (only to find they had the same problems that caused me to switch from them 4 years prior when I came back) & finding they do not offer a high enough upload rate to be effective in streaming online multiplayer games (Xfinity offering 10 mbps where I live now with the Boost plan, CenturyLink only offering 3 mbps at a higher cost), but perhaps somewhat effective for offline games.  Within a year of moving to my current residence (in 2016), CenturyLink (previously Qwest) were going door to door to tell people they were going to be putting in fiber, of course I was with Xfinity at the time & had some choice words for them when they came by to tell people; 8 years later, CenturyLink STILL has not followed through with their claim of putting in fiber in the neighborhood.

My father told me some time last year that there was a low income credit that was being offered through Xfinity, something that had me considering going back to them, but only if they weren't going to try & seek the early termination fees I had to file an FCC complaint against (their own staff telling me there wasn't a current active contract, only finding out after I had already had CenturyLink installed that they were hitting me for almost $200 in early termination fees); these fees were dropped through the FCC complaint, but Xfinity still refused to admit the actual reason for dropping them, giving another reason for it to try & save face (these details were published to WonderGamer.net in a review detailing the FCC complaint against them).  However I am finding that this credit may be a part of a federal affordability plan that may be getting killed this year, so this may kill any plans I have on going back to Xfinity if that is the case...

Unfortunately I just don't have access to a decent upload rate in my area that doesn't cost a fortune, I have to deal with what I have & this meant I was limited to uploads to YouTube for online games, which unsurprisingly is being attacked yet again (with a possible new publication regarding the attack to my personal site if it doesn't get reversed, making sure to take screenshots of each screen for it's publication if needed).

I believe it's time I contact Scripps news & ask them why gaming sites such as Steam (as well as PSN, I'll get into details about this at a later date) have not been getting the attention it should be regarding dangerous online environments for children (if it's this bad for me, you can only expect how detrimental this would be for a child).  This was previously stated in the ticket I filed with staff on Steam (apparently the only way anything that would get them to step in on it, using the report functions on Steam was getting very little done, if anything) & they were already aware of my intentions if the attacks didn't stop; while they may have been limited on Steam, it hasn't ended there, so it's time to make this a matter for the news to cover & hopefully start extending laws against social platforms to gaming platforms that also have these issues.

Pre-publication update

Before I managed to get this update published, I received an email from YouTube giving a decision on the appeal & this was that they were not going to reverse the decision against the video they decided to remove.  After spending roughly 2 hours typing all the information above, I wasn't simply going to remove it, so it's going to stay.  I will attempt to reupload the video with a different title & description.  If that fails, I will link over the video from Twitch to the Steam description since the video is still there & find another site to upload the backup to (probably adding another link to my YouTube channel to another media platform for videos that were moved after YouTube chose to allow the manipulation of their system).  There will also be another publication to WonderGamer.net regarding the allow manipulation of the report function by YouTube staff (aka Google staff).

EDIT:  Perhaps I should consider bringing up YouTube to Scripps also in regards to dangerous social platforms (they've already been mentioned on this particular point a number of times, I can still provide additional backup content regarding the matter however)...

Saturday, May 28, 2022

Anti-consumer business review submitted to the BBB (again)

I decided to take the wipe of my site & blog from Bing a step further yesterday, this by submitting another anti-consumer business review to the BBB.  This is one of the same companies that has been after me since my original attempt to stream video games on YouTube in 2016 & has proven themselves capable & fully willing to take these types of actions (even attacking the blog due to the link to the site is the same method they used in the past, however they decided to abuse the report function on Bing rather than manipulating the report function here).

Not that it's going to matter in the case of Bing, but currently this blog is still public & can be found on other search engines that aren't powered by Bing, so for the time being this company is going to remain unnamed on this blog.  Those who have been following me since my PS3 streaming days is going to know EXACTLY who this company is (another channel on Twitch actually made me a moderator on their channel when we used to play that game together on PS3 while being streamed to Twitch), this same company is discussed in the boycott discussion video highlighted on my Twitch channel in that same year.  Additionally, I will point out that I noticed a Twitch rep in my channel for quite a while a little more than a week ago (there's a reason why I have a constant IRC link on my channel's chat, so I can monitor it's activity even when I'm not streaming or on Twitch, along with the other channels that have me down as a moderator in their channels), at the time I expected somebody had filed some kind of report against my channel, but I never really saw any action taken against it (as of yet, my channel still remains free of strikes, despite numerous attempts from individuals that have had a vendetta against me after publishing a video of their poor behavior).

While there is a fair chance that it may not be the company that I submitted the review on that caused the wipe in Bing (possibly being Epic Games instead, given I did give them a directly link to the boycott on my personal site in their support survey, which clearly had an unsatisfactory rating), history gives a high likelihood that it is the same company that has been after me since 2016 due to almost identical attack patterns & they already managed to get the last review submitted to the BBB about their company for such business tactics removed by what appears to be a move of address (despite the company page saying in business for 25 years), which apparently deleted the old business page that the previous review was submitted to.  So given the circumstances & the new development of a full wipe of my site from a specific search engine, it was time to get that review public again on the BBB (or an updated review giving additional details about the database wipe of my personal site from Bing, in addition to the previous details; unfortunately the review had to be cut short due to a 2000 character limit, but the full updated review that could not be submitted to the BBB due to character length (over 5000 characters) is on my personal site regardless, along with the old BBB review & the new one that was submitted yesterday, still awaiting acceptance (or rejection, if that company is able to manipulate the BBB into rejecting it).

One additional note, the review was submitted using an email address created under the domain for my personal site, so it's going to be blatantly clear which site was attacked that resulted in another negative review of their company being submitted to the BBB.

Saturday, July 24, 2021

Free games listings for subscribers pulled

While my last update stated that I was adding additional benefits to the channel, I've realized that the termination of the Patreon page was likely a targeted attack on my channel & therefore am also pulling one of the benefits from the channel, this being the same one that I expect was used as a basis to get Patreon to terminate my account.  I find it highly unlikely that my Patreon page would get terminated only days after I started streaming again & I can think of at least 3 individuals that have aggressively attacked my channel in the past (these 3 really only being the tip of the iceberg, there were many others that have been banned from my channel in the past for smaller attacks) & because it appears the game giveaway listings were the basis on this possible attack, that benefit is getting pulled until I can get to the bottom of it (which in all honestly, I doubt I will be able to get to the bottom of, seeing as Patreon is taking the "block & ignore" approach to the situation after this case of creator victimization, which if my assumption is accurate, upgrades the situation to a matter of revictimization).

2 of the individuals I believe could have been capable of this were also Twitch streamers (their channels kind of dead as of late, but still Twitch streamers that had Partnership status...which I find ironic that individuals with that type of disposition are rewarded for bad behavior...) when their organized attacks against my channel started (one of those I have a recording from their own channel where they are organizing one of these attacks with friends over his Discord & viewers in his Twitch stream, making false reports against my YouTube channel after they found it, first taking time to search it out while still live on his own channel), the 3rd individual not expected to have the brainpower for this (a young & very childish individual) that has only managed to get himself banned over multiple Twitch accounts in many of the channels that I was supporting with hosts (and that also supported me as a streamer; that individual literally following through the hosts on my channel to attack me by name with false information in those channels for years & I have IRC logs to back up that statement over many of those known attacks, known meaning there are probably many others I'm not even aware of; at least 6 Twitch accounts that I know of were banned from other channels in attacks through this same manner, as well as a few failed attacks on my own Discord that were mostly foiled by the locks I have in place to prevent such attacks on it, resulting in bans on each of those accounts from my own Discord & eventually managing to get himself banned from the Official Fortnite Discord after I brought these attacks & the logged history of those attacks to the attention of one of their moderators).

In any case, I may bring this benefit back if I ever get to the bottom of who was behind it (already expect I know who it was, but currently unable to prove it, not that his nature of gloating, along with his friends being too verbal for their own good will eventually get that out in the open, at which point I'll be taking him to court for damages cause by slander, or at least whoever was responsible once I figure out who it was), being highly unlike that Patreon is going to reverse their decision on the matter given their reactions on Facebook against my own Facebook account, as well as their refusal to respond to  email responses sent to them over the support ticket opened when they emailed the account closure notice, but this benefit could also be brought back if Patreon has a change of heart (although my opinion of Patreon at this point is they have a heart of ice, not expecting that to thaw out any time soon).