YouTube locked my accounts and I can't cancel my subscription

h4kunamata

Easy fix, wait for the next billing, contact the bank explaining what happened, and block that and future debits. At least in Australia, this shouldn't be a problem.

mordae

I assume you have a consumer protection agency. Ping them. 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." That's textbook fraud. They'll be fined and give you your money back.

aquir

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.

0x6d61646f

the llm writing is so annoying

p0w3n3d

There are multiple topics mentioned in this article. One is quite curious, which I had missed before, I must admit: 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 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...

ddtaylor

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.

autuni

it's besides the point of the post but > 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'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").

rrgok

I bet Google is training their models on videos uploaded on YouTube. What a joke. People, start putting a license fee on your YouTube videos for AI training. Play their game.

sometimes_all

Could not get through the article because it looks like LLM generated text squared. 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. 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?

kulahan

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. 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.

shash7

Literally had a similar experience with X today. 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. 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. 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.

mnw21cam

I'm getting a 403 forbidden on this page.

lrks128

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. YouTube is clamping down on AI content because they know people hate it and leave YouTube. There is no money in generative AI. Google needs to advertise to humans and not to Rathbun. That is why Disney cancelled the Sora deal.

paganel

> I was told that if an account is linked to another account that receives copyright strikes, 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.

irusensei

I use disposable digital debit cards for my subscriptions. These can be issued by fintech companies like Wise. If something like this happens to me I'll just delete the card.

figassis

This is why you only use virtual cards for subscriptions. I have never had this issue. Even adobe couldn't get a cent over what I was willing to pay. Didn't let me cancel the account, fine. Kill the card. You don't have to beg to these companies.

eqvinox

This lengthy article is conveniently omitting what exactly the account got locked for…

perlgeek

This is the point where you send a letter to the company, stating both the situation and the remedy you want (e.g. refund of payments for inaccessible services, cancellation of the account, maybe a reasonably small amount as compensation for damages). In that letter, you set a reasonable deadline. If they don't respond within that deadline, you take them to a small-claims court. I understand that us tech bros want to fix everything online, but sadly that doesn't always work. But that's not the end of all your options.