Thread by @pronounced_ing

So someone is pretending to be me on @YouTube, using my name & photo and posting racist videos. Anyone know how to report this? youtube.com/channel/UCk5cl…

Thanks all! I've reported them for impersonation and we'll see if we can get it taken down.

https://twitter.com/pronounced_ing/status/1070327873863630849

You have GOT to be kidding me, @YouTube. Someone is using my name and my photo to post hateful, racist videos, but you say this isn’t impersonation? Let me spell it out for you.

Internet companies: ENFORCE YOUR OWN POLICIES AND TERMS OF SERVICE.

I don’t like shaming companies publicly but you know what? Let’s make an example of this. Someone is impersonating me online and @YouTube refuses to enforce its own terms of service and do anything about it.

https://twitter.com/pronounced_ing/status/1070659046208884737?s=21

I’m fortunate: I have a big megaphone to speak about this and am sure I can get this fraudulent account taken down. But for someone with a smaller platform? They’re probably SOL. That’s wrong. @youtube should apply its terms of service whether you have 90K followers or 2.

I cannot emphasize this enough: a good first step in protecting users, decreasing harassment, and fighting hate speech and abuse is INTERNET SERVICES ENFORCING THEIR OWN EXISTING TERMS OF SERVICE. Looking at you, @youtube @twitter @facebook.

Also, fun fact: impersonating someone is illegal and punishable by jail time!

We see this over and over: people report obvious harassment, abuse, and other behavior clearly in violation of companies’ *existing terms of service* and those internet companies throw up their hands. How many of you have reported threats and been told it didn’t violate TOS? Yup.

Internet companies like @twitter @YouTube @Facebook need to enforce the policies they already have on the books. For everyone’s safety. Until they do, I guess we gotta make this a Thing.

So hey @YouTube, gonna get some lawyers involved here, as this is pretty clear-cut. Speak soon!

Oh, and for those asking “why would someone impersonate you like this?!”—excellent Q. Sadly, there’s a long history of men harassing me (and many, many other) Asian women on the internet. This is part of it. thecut.com/2018/10/when-a…

Oh HEY there’s more than ONE impersonating account. Cool.

https://twitter.com/docstymie/status/1070662124077240320?s=21

If you’ve dealt w/ a similar problem—reporting harassment/abuse/violation of TOS and got no response, please post about it. Let’s show this isn’t a one-off problem: it’s systemic.

You may recall, for example, that the suspect in the recent package bombings harassed someone on Twitter, was reported, and no action was taken. time.com/5436809/twitte…

also PLEASE stop telling me I need to tag @TeamYouTube instead of @YouTube. This is not the problem. I reported the impersonation directly via YouTube's form *for reporting impersonation* and received the reply that there was no violation here.

The issue is not that I tagged the wrong handle. The issue is that @YouTube (and @twitter and @facebook, etc.) don't enforce their own policies. I'm tagging @YouTube *because* it's the company's public-facing account, and they should be publicly called out about how they fail.

Well well. So it WAS impersonation after all, @YouTube? All it took was reporting it, screenshots, publicly shaming you, and having my publisher start to look into it? And what about the people who don't have the resources to do that? FIX THIS. ENFORCE YOUR OWN TERMS OF SERVICE.