Hope someone from Google chimes in because this is a PR disaster in the making
I do see Grammarly ads if I search things like "practice or practise" because I write English every work day.
Well, I use Firefox account containers and auto cookie delete everywhere. So Youtube knows little about me writing English.
Many people outside the English-speaking world will never see those adds. Your search bubble is not others.
Despite that, even in the search bubbles containing Grammarly I doubt closing an account with 3 videos will do any significant PR damage to anyone.
So what where the videos about? Grammarly storing everything the user writes??? Selling it to others???
Grammarly's plagiarism self-check is to help its users avoid accidental or unintentional plagiarism by highlighting text that may need citations. If a user is using countermeasures to mask plagiarism, it's not accidental or unintentional, so Grammarly stays out of it. Grammarly is NOT a plagiarism policy enforcement tool.
Seems like the starting price is USD $12/mo, which IIRC, costs more than my Office 365 Personal subscription.
Honest question of someone using mostly local free software (as not in the cloud, as in free speech, not beer) and not living in an English-speaking country.
But it's unfair to block a guy that talked about a real flaw in Grammarly's plagiarism checker, at least pretend that you allow free speech and take down that video for a random reason specified in your ToS.
That said, with COVID-19 it really became apparent that these platforms have basically become a new public square, putting everyone in an awkward position. You can basically be ousted from the internet by just a couple entities like Facebook or Twitter and have your entire online presence torpedoed. IRL I can just go to a different bar, gym, whatever. On the internet, everything consolidates rapidly. It’s hard to argue that companies should be forced to allow things they don’t want on their platforms, but it’s clear that something has to be done here if platforms are going to consolidate this badly.
Regardless of the situation you're in, you have the ability to say, "I should have the right to free speech in this situation." Whether this belief will be validated in the reality of the situation is an entirely different matter.
I some twist of irony, this comment is against the HN TOS. So please stop.
Second, this is not a flaw or a hack but an unsuccessful attempt to use Grammarly for an UNINTENDED purpose. Grammarly is not meant for anti-plagiarism enforcement. Grammarly aims to help users avoid accidental or unintentional plagiarism by highlighting parts that may need to be cited. So it does not attempt to deal with any plagiarisms enforcement countermeasures - if someone is deliberately masking plagiarism, it's definitely not unintentional or accidental. It's trivial to overcome these particular counter-measures but that's just not what Grammarly is for.
I worry that he'll never be able to appeal and a stupid 'mistaken reading of the ToS' on his part as a minor will affect his ability to ever host a YouTube channel or have a premium account subscription.
Good luck getting a real human in Google to sympathize with your plight and restore your account. They see disclosure of security issues related to their products or their customers' products as ToS violations and appear to be unyielding and swift in silencing such content permanently.
No, I'm not being sarcastic either. I am sure some Company-Man type was the one who stumbled across it and implemented the ban.
Of course, the other lesson is one I have learned just reading tech news for years and years: Cover your bases and plan for retaliation. Even if the company in question doesn't have a history of that.
How can a minor (who cannot sign a contract) be punished (legally) for not adhering to a ToS?
Many of the folks here have tried Degoogling with less success.
While I applaud your work and clearly think the channel suspension is BS, I just don't know that I would have thought "HackerOne" when I discovered the issue.
Whether someone cares enough to pay a bounty is something else
That said, I am not a power user and my English is just passable, so your mileage may vary.
0. Use the docker version
1. use maxsize memory flag to keep the memory under control
2. set up a cron job to kill/restart it in the middle of the night, every night.
3. use a reverse proxy to hide the address at least a little bit
Their product is both ridiculously overpriced for what you get ($30/month, last I looked, for a spelling/grammar checker along the lines of what MS Word provides), a massive privacy/security violation (you have to send everything you type for the service to do its job; no corporate IT with a pulse would be okay with this), and worst of all, it's buggy as hell. Last time I tried it, it refused to work on HN even though this is a bog standard text field, and I spent a ton of time trying to get it to stop correcting things that didn't need corrected.
Check Settings → Natural Languages → Grammar → Rules for all available grammar rules.
First, Grammarly has nothing to do with this suspension and does not have any problem with the videos in question, just as mentioned in the official HackerOne response.
Second, this is not a hack or even a flaw. It is an attempt to use Grammarly for a NON-INTENDED purpose, that predictably did not work. Grammarly is not meant for anti-plagiarism policy enforcement. Grammarly aims to help users avoid accidental or unintentional plagiarism by highlighting parts that may need to be cited. So it does not attempt to deal with any plagiarism enforcement countermeasures. If someone is deliberately masking plagiarism with these countermeasures, it's definitely NOT unintentional or accidental and a whole different issue altogether, so Grammarly does not get involved with this, by design. Bypassing the tool that is designed to HELP YOU avoid getting in trouble with accidental plagiarism is not a hack but more like "bypassing" your wifi by putting your own router in a microwave - defeating the purpose rather than defeating security. So Grammarly does not care about these videos (although I think presenting this as a hack or a flaw is a little unfair).
Finally, Youtube's automated (I'm guessing) blocking often does strange things. My account was once blocked for supposedly violating Sony's video game copyright. The video in question was me driving a car on a race track, in real life. It got unblocked within a week or two, though.
Their own documentation says the product is also for teachers to enforce rules.
This poster keeps making the same incorrect claims in multiple places in this thread, even after the original author clarifed it to him.
Here is the text from the linked landing page describing the plagiarism checker feature (emphasis mine):
Our free plagiarism check will tell you whether or not your text contains duplicate content. Our Premium plagiarism check highlights passages that require citations and gives you the resources you need to properly credit your sources.
This makes it quite clear that is an authoring tool, not policing tool. Plagiarism masking is not addressed by design. It's a trivial thing to code if there was a need but the company made a decision to stay out of plagiarism enforcement (at least for now).
1. 3 years ago I conducted research on almost all online tools which check for plagiarism with free access or using a trial account. Tool, located with URL https://www.grammarly.com/plagiarism-checker was one of them because "Grammarly’s plagiarism checker can detect plagiarism from billions of web pages as well as from ProQuest’s academic databases."
2. I repeat research half a year ago and discovered, that at least 3 plagiarism checkers already have fixed the issue I described in my report, but not Grammarly.
3. I posted a case on HackerOne https://hackerone.com/reports/1282282 with the weakness type "Business Logic Errors", and did not mention "security" or "privacy".
4. Please, read again (and also look between the lines) everything that is described in the section "Impact" and my answer about the impact of the reported behavior.
5. You already have a software reviews company in your customers (I didn't know it while published my report). Imagine, that they will decide to automate plagiarism checking for all the reviews, and somebody starts to use the method I described. I will not continue this topic.
6. I posted a case to HackerOne with the intent to warn against this behavior.
7. After your team decided not to track this report as a security or major product issue, I asked permission to publish my report and got it.
8. My videos about it were on youtube for 4 months, but on Jan 5 youtube changed their ToS and on Jan 7 my channel was suspended.
So, I will try to appeal again to @TeamYouTube about my channel using your answer "Grammarly does not have any problem with the videos in question, just as mentioned in the official HackerOne response.", but think it will be a hard process.
But I am absolutely certain this is by design, and that's why there was no change. It's not a policing tool but an authoring tool. What you described in #5 is not an intended use of the product and is a violation of TOS.
[0] - https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2801964?hl=en
Thinking I might have too many eggs in one basket.
Will be detected as plagiarism
> But with ahab the question assumed a modified aspect. considering that with two legs man is but a hobbling wight in all times of danger; considering that the pursuit of whales is always under great and extraordinary difficulties; that every individual moment, indeed, then comprises a peril; under these circumstances is it wise for any maimed man to enter a whale-boat in the hunt? As a general thing, the joint-owners of the Pequod must have plainly thought not.
Won't be detected as plagiarism
> But with аhаb thе quеstiоn аssumеd а mоdifiеd аspесt. соnsidеring thаt with twо lеgs mаn is but а hоbbling wight in аll timеs оf dаngеr; соnsidеring thаt thе pursuit оf whаlеs is аlwаys undеr grеаt аnd еxtrаоrdinаry diffiсultiеs; thаt еvеry individuаl mоmеnt, indееd, thеn соmprisеs а pеril; undеr thеsе сirсumstаnсеs is it wisе fоr аny mаimеd mаn tо еntеr а whаlе-bоаt in thе hunt? аs а gеnеrаl thing, thе jоint-оwnеrs оf thе Pеquоd must hаvе plаinly thоught nоt.
Edit: Of course lack of free speech is what Trumpists complain about, too. I say the same although I would use free speech for very different content.
Thanks for using YouTube support.
YouTube's ban on “hacking techniques” threatens to shut down infosec YouTube
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20350306 (Jul 2019)
YouTube is taking down educational hacking videos
Founded by three Ukrainians -- none of whom speak English as a first language -- that can read and analyze any text you write and is chock full of security vulnerabilities. Color me skeptical.
When are we going to start regulating them?
