Tell HN: YouTube gave my username switzerland to a half government organization
20 points
22 hours ago
| 2 comments
| HN
I had the username @switzerland since 20.03.2006. Swiss tourism had another username since 17.10.2006. Now recently google gave my username away to swiss tourism without any notification. Their other username was fine for literally 20 years.

Worse, the app still showed my username for a long time meanwhile youtube.com/@Switzerland already showed that of swiss tourism (Schweiz Tourismus) and I was not aware of that. Hence, I lost it some months ago.

Why do I tell you? You might loose your username and you aren't even aware of it.

faebi
21 hours ago
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Interesting https://www.youtube.com/Switzerland is still mine, but my user handle is gone. https://www.youtube.com/@Switzerland goes to swiss tourism but they have the handle @switzerland
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sureglymop
11 hours ago
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This is unsurprising. They do this a lot with especially short usernames. I recently saw an interview with a German youtuber (@dima) where they talked about how youtube gave them this channel. In that case the channel still contained private videos and information of the previous owner, which I find somewhat shocking.

Easy fix: use youtube without a channel, e.g. using newpipe or yt-dlp.

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hermanzegerman
21 hours ago
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Who cares? It's not your platform, you're just an user
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Grimblewald
8 hours ago
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Precisely, and for a platform that markets itself as "your videos your platform" this is an important point to raise and remind folks of. Youtube is not yours or your friend. Avoid unless being paid, or deriving other value somehow.
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faebi
18 hours ago
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It's a soft reminder of that
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