Some Google/YouTube Quirks And Tricks

Two of these are from yesterday, the last of which has relevance to recent subject matter.

Talking To Yourself 
I’d taken it for granted that you could create a sock puppet account and talk to yourself on YouTube.  I finally got bored enough to actually prove that you certainly can.  All you need is more than one Google account that each has gone through the process of generating a YouTube channel.  The initial Google sign up probably has the most practical value in generating a separate email, so Tina’s Tasty Tangerine Tarts doesn’t have to use tinatthompson443.com and funnel business email to tinathetastytartmaker.com.  (Don’t worry, that’s a fake address, I would never “out” Tina’s real address of tinathetastytart.com).  Once you register with YouTube you can alternate between the two and argue with yourself, maybe first presenting a strawman argument, or have some heroic separate identity come to your defense or chat about the weather.  I’ve proven that even if the recovery email and phone # registered is the same that Google doesn’t tell you that this is suspicious and you’re not allowed to do it.

Changing Google Identity
You can also change your preexisting identity if you don’t want to bother with multiple accounts.  Signing out, signing back in, signing out and signing in again and again is a huge pain in the ass, so this is understandable for the minimal  effort inclined.  I’ve seen this before, but just yesterday I saw the change made on a noteworthy personality.  Jake Lebowski has now opted to go with the name, Walter Carr.

When I first read the comments that included the words “agent” and “code” I was suspicious since pretty much nobody buys into his PhraseShopping dialogues.  At least he didn’t put up any triple digit numerology or finish with his copyrighted sign off of, “Thoughts?”.  However, the style was obvious enough that the Jake non-fans picked up on it and Harry Butts quipped, “W-Alter ego”.  So for fun I thought I’d show how easy it is to prove it's the same person, or trained helper monkey.  The downside to this is that your prior activity stays up and the new name is simply substituted for the old name.  All you have to do is click on the avatar from either Blogger or YouTube and you can look at previous blog post activity.  Here’s an obvious Jake triple digit Serena Williams screenshot.

  

There’s not much point to changing your identity in this way unless you change your style and delete all your previous activity.  Every post ever made in the FTFM blog now shows as Walter Carr.  Not much point, except that people being basically lazy might not ever take the time to check.

Muted Comments
A more sensitive person than me would maybe cry, “Foul!”, but I use it as a learning experience.  Some videos are so hugely popular that within hours there are thousands of individual comments, sorted mostly by the top comments default filter that keys on the most liked comments.  I have had several well received jokes get muted.  I’m not sure if an individual can be singled out.  What I’ve seen has identified that entire blocks of comments have been muted based on how old they are.  This should be a good thing so if there’s somebody has a good point that it doesn’t get lost with all the clutter from the previous activity.  The research is ongoing.  I haven’t figured out if it’s automatic based on YouTube algorithms or based on the author doing something.  So far my dozen or so comments that were muted have been turned back on and my fragile ego massaged by getting more of those precious 👍’s.

Copyright Infringement.
Purely for entertainment I was watching a video from a channel I subscribe to yesterday.  As this was one of those really popular ones that get hundreds of comments in a short time, since I didn’t post my joke of the day until 45 minutes after the vid went up I checked to see if anybody had noticed.  And less than two hours after the vid went up:

This video contains content from The Guardian who has blocked it on copyright grounds.

Isn’t that interesting?  Videos of cartoon babies peeing in each other’s faces takes damn near two years to get something done about it.  But when a news source gets wind of copyrighted content being used Google is all over that instantly.  I don’t deny the right of Guardian to block this, however it is worth noting that Elsagate videos that make money for Google are slow to be pulled down and the legal cost of getting sued for copyright issues is handled immediately.  Google is definitely a business.