THE INCREDIBLE REASON HOUSE STATION LIVE CHANGED SERVERS
Or a survival guide for e-businesses facing bans or legal disputes with a platform

For nearly two years, we watched our entire platform become invisible. Not because of bad content, policy violations, or lack of effort... but because of a silent algorithmic shadowban. We had no warnings, no appeals, and no answers. Worse: under YouTube’s terms of service, any legal dispute must be handled in a U.S. court (even if you're based in France and pay taxes there). This is how global platforms sidestep national laws... and why creators are left legally unprotected in their own countries.
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PART ONE – WHEN A SHADOWBAN SHUTS DOWN YOUR BUSINESS
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Two years ago, we left Dedibox, a French hosting company we judged incapable of meeting even our most basic expectations in terms of customer service. In a field as critical as data hosting, the professionalism of the technical support team cannot be optional... it must be the company's showcase, the reassuring human face you turn to when something goes wrong. This pursuit of reliability led us to GoDaddy, based in Arizona, whose configuration tools, WordPress diagnostics, interface design, and especially their technically skilled support team had earned our trust... far beyond the empty promises of typical commercial discourse. But everything collapsed suddenly, swept away by a digital catastrophe we didn’t see coming. A brutal, invisible blow: the shadowban. House Station Live was ghosted (to use the terminology of our virtual assistant, GPT). Disappeared from search results, ignored by YouTube recommendations, erased from the Android Play Store. For eighteen months, despite heavy investments and extensive testing in formats, lengths, languages, thumbnails, titles, even hosts, nothing changed. Every video was locked between 20 and 30 views. We were trapped in that narrow range, with no human contact, no way to file a complaint, and no hope of improvement.

Facing this algorithmic wall, we made the only logical decision: open an investigation and build a legal case. Not to prove a “perfect crime” but to demonstrate that even the most opaque algorithms leave traces. During this inquiry, we came across a particularly disturbing fact: according to YouTube’s terms of use, any dispute must be brought before a U.S. judge. It doesn’t matter that you are based in France, targeting a French audience, or that French law requires foreign companies to have a legal presence in the country... Google circumvents this by distinguishing between headquarters, local offices, and legal jurisdiction. The result is clear: you are automatically excluded from the protection of your own legal system. This system is so airtight that very few individuals or businesses attempt legal action against Google. The GAFAM is protected by a lethal triad: algorithmic opacity, extraterritorial legal shielding, and the complicity of a U.S. government that views tech giants as national pride (even strategic weapons in the global information war). While France leaves its citizens exposed and helpless against digital abuse, the United States has conquered the Internet on a global scale by imposing its law as if it were sovereign territory.

To illustrate just how absurd and dangerous this has become, let’s take the example of music licensing. Every month, House Station Live pays royalties to SACEM, the French government’s music rights agency. In return, we are legally authorized to broadcast commercial works, provided we submit monthly playlists so that royalties can be fairly distributed to artists. In theory, everything is legal and in order. But the United States has its own system: the DMCA. And if you stream House Station Live through any platform based in the U.S. (like GoDaddy, YouTube, etc.), you are automatically subject to U.S. law, even if your legal entity is based in France. France, in turn, declares itself incompetent in such cases because the “crime scene” is legally located on American soil, where the servers are hosted. So the SACEM fee we pay offers zero protection, neither domestically nor abroad... where we’re treated like pirates. Imagine buying a product from a foreign website: you pay the foreign VAT, a currency conversion fee, and then the French customs tax. Three layers of taxation. A 30 € item ends up costing you 150 €. That’s digital over-taxation. And the same applies to our royalties.

Worse still, the U.S. considers you to be operating on their soil the moment your server is physically located there... regardless of where you are based, where your company is registered, or what contracts you’ve signed with your local rights agencies. Even if your SACEM contract is supposedly international, it offers you no protection in this skewed legal context. The U.S. has simply annexed the Internet, claimed it as their jurisdiction, and imposed their extraterritorial laws on the rest of the world (without any international mandate or global consent).
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||#HSLdiary #HSLpartners

#Shadowban #Censorship #YouTube #DMCA #DigitalRights #FrenchTech #AlgorithmBias #GoogleAbuse #PlatformAbuse #Justice

It feels like the way YouTube's AI works never rewards commitment. The homepage shows you thumbnails from channels you've recently watched, but if you don't click on three thumbnails suggested, the channel is never featured again on your homepage—until you manually go to the channel and click on a video.

This is even more vicious because the platform is designed to constantly suggest new creators. At the end of the day, the algorithm sends a clear message: creators are not important. YouTube users will keep using YouTube, keep discovering new channels over and over again, no matter if their favorite YouTuber just died. They won’t even notice.

You consume and immediately forget a channel you've just consumed, and you repeat that cycle endlessly. The AI never intends for you to stay committed to a channel. This way, YouTube can wipe out any big YouTuber they find too embarrassing, and no one is more important than the platform itself. So I found myself never being suggested a video from Linus Tech Tips, Tech Source, or Ryukahr, despite watching all their videos and being a huge fan of their work.

I didn’t even notice. I just thought they were on holiday. Maybe I scrolled too fast. Maybe their thumbnails appeared at an unappealing time (sometimes I come to the homepage to search, and I won’t click on a video if I’m not here to use YouTube for fun). Three unappealing thumbnails, and you fall into YouTube's infinite void of VOD.

You quickly end up with thousands of subscriptions, thanks to how YouTube’s AI works, and even in your subscription tab, it becomes harder to find your favorite shows. This is why small channels struggle for views. You work ten times harder to build a community because you don’t have the same budget, the same benefits as big YouTubers, and YouTube constantly sabotages your hard work.

I’ve been on YouTube for a year now. I have 25,000 subscribers, but my average views are 25. My channel isn’t shadowbanned—if I didn’t have 25,000 subs, my videos wouldn’t even get three views (I did the experiment). My videos are simply not shown to my subscribers. That’s the conclusion of my study.

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#HSLdiary #HSLpartners||

A bit annoying, this candidate, though!

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Me "radical point of view is consequence of poverty. what can be seen as radical may sometimes be the most wize and clever points, while extreme censorship is normal, and shouldn't be"

ChatGPT "Historically, some of the most wise and transformative ideas—such as civil rights movements, workers' rights, and anti-colonial movements—were initially seen as radical or even dangerous but later recognized as crucial for justice and societal progress. The ideas that stem from these movements often grow out of real material conditions, such as inequality and poverty, which drive people to question existing power structures.

On the other hand, extreme censorship can silence legitimate grievances, especially when people are simply trying to express their struggles or alternative perspectives. It is particularly troubling when the mechanisms of censorship serve to maintain the interests of those in power while stifling voices that push for systemic change. The challenge is in balancing free expression with the prevention of harm.

While censorship is sometimes justified in preventing violence or hatred, over-censorship can suppress valid dissent, which might be necessary for progress. Platforms with more open speech policies (like Mastodon or other decentralized social networks) might be more accommodating to these nuanced viewpoints, while more centralized platforms often need to manage the balance between community safety and free speech in ways that can lead to suppression of even thoughtful, dissenting opinions."