Tell HN: YouTube gave my username switzerland to a half government organization

38 points by faebi 122 days ago | 9 comments

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 122 days ago |

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

sureglymop 121 days ago | |

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.

KomoD 120 days ago | |

> but my user handle is gone.

Did you ever have it? When they introduced handles you had to specifically claim that name, otherwise you get @(name)-(random), it doesn't matter if you had /Switzerland as a channel url.

leros 120 days ago |

I'm sure their terms of service allows them to do stuff like this

_trampeltier 119 days ago |

So Switzerland Tourism asked Youtube gor it?

hermanzegerman 122 days ago |

Who cares? It's not your platform, you're just an user

Grimblewald 121 days ago | |

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.

UqWBcuFx6NV4r 119 days ago | |

…they obviously care, hence the post

plenty of other people would care, too.

You cared enough to respond.

faebi 121 days ago | |

It's a soft reminder of that