Cyclops Joe got hijacked and is banned from YouTube

[Moondog]

Last week YouTube channel Cyclops Joe (@CyclopsJoeVideos) got taken down by YouTube. I reached out to him to find out what happened, thinking he might be temporarily suspended due to his often profane humor. But I found out it was worse, his Gmail was hacked and some Crypto scammer group had hijacked his channel, posting scam livestream videos.

Joe's reaching out to YouTube to clear up the issue and recover his channel and get copies of his videos. But YouTube doesn't have a customer service phone number nor a simple customer service email. Try Googling and you'll discover there is no way to get a hold of a human at the company!

Joe tried contacting YouTube on Twitter, but they've been ignoring him. They think he may be the Crypto Scammers. Through an unfortunate series of events, he ended up getting banned and ignored by YouTube. I don't have any contacts at YouTube either (my channel's tiny compared to his). I've tried what I could do by contacting YouTube on his behalf through their HELP Chat (which is probably an AI bot or foreign Call Center).

What I can do at this point is get the word out about his situation.

 

[treelogger]

But YouTube doesn't have a customer service phone number nor a simple customer service email.

YouTube definitely does have a customer support department for content creators, with multiple levels of support and escalations. I know a few people who have worked there. They spend many hours per day on the phone. No, there is no "1-800-you-tube" phone number, nor is it done via an e-mail address; given the scale of YouTube, it's much more structured, and done via intake forms on a help web page, and via chat bots.

Try Googling and you'll discover there is no way to get a hold of a human at the company!

Yes, lots of people who hate the FAANG (a.k.a. MANGOS) say stuff like that. I'm not saying that dealing with customer support at any company is easy, and Google may actually be worse than average, but there definitely are ways to communicate with humans there.

They think he may be the Crypto Scammers. Through an unfortunate series of events, he ended up getting banned ...

I rather suspect that he contributed to the series of unfortunate events.

 

[Gawernator]

Sad he got involved with them... 2FA should be a basic common sense measure for any "influencer" with important accounts. He fell for a crypto scam. They are not skilled hackers and did not hack anything.

 

[Gawernator]

Also I don't say that to crap on the guy, it sucks but saying "hacking" is dishonest and more like fear mongering. Social engineering would be more accurate. He gave up access in some way, it's not like they have NSA hackers that got the encryption to YouTube unlocked.

 

[Moondog]

Also I don't say that to crap on the guy, it sucks but saying "hacking" is dishonest and more like fear mongering. Social engineering would be more accurate. Yes, it's more accurate to say he got Phished.He gave up access in some way, it's not like they have NSA hackers that got the encryption to YouTube unlocked.

Yes, it's more accurate to say he got Phished but nobody says, "My account got Social Entineered" do they?

I've revised the thread title to be more accurate to the terminology that YouTube uses.