YouTube's 'wrong call' gives dealers reality check

A slew of dealers got a wake-up call last week when YouTube temporarily shut down their accounts, replacing their online videos with a warning in legalese.

YouTube quickly corrected the snafu, but the incident delivered a stern lesson to dealers: YouTube is a free service that can be taken away at a moment's notice. Nothing is guaranteed -- not even a detailed explanation.

At least eight affected stores had posted hundreds of videos on the Google-owned site, having invested thousands of hours into creating them. Many stores used the videos to educate customers about various tech functions on their vehicles and topics such as warranty plans.

But they learned last week their efforts are at the mercy of a sometimes unpredictable digital world. Mistakes can happen.

Google began looking into the situation after an inquiry from Automotive News last Monday about why the accounts for St. Charles Toyota near Chicago and other dealerships had been terminated. The accounts were restored that night.

In this case, Google said content from the dealers was apparently flagged by YouTube users or identified by the site's spam team as unacceptable. The dealerships received notices that they had violated YouTube's Community Guidelines, "which prohibit spam, scams or commercially deceptive content."

The stores said they posted nothing of the sort.

The terminations left the dealers feeling their credibility was in question, not least because of the harsh messages people saw when following links to the blacked-out videos and accounts. The statement on the dealerships' accounts said they were "terminated due to multiple or severe violations of YouTube's policy against spam, deceptive practices, and misleading content or other Terms of Service violations." 

The dealerships said that was an ominous declaration that could leave consumers wondering whether they should do business with them. 

It's still unclear why these stores were flagged. 

"With the massive volume of videos on our platform, sometimes we make the wrong call on content that is flagged by our community or identified by our spam team," a Google spokesperson said. "When this is brought to our attention, we review the content and take appropriate action, including restoring videos or channels that were mistakenly removed." 

That explanation, provided to Automotive News, leaves a lot of unanswered questions for dealers. For now it's fair to ask: Given YouTube's dominant digital presence and the invaluable role it plays in reaching consumers, does it think it doesn't have to tell dealers why they were flagged or by whom? After all, it doesn't have much competition in the video search-engine space. Where else would dealers go? 

"It's definitely a cautionary tale about trusting Google," said a dealer whose account was briefly terminated. "But unfortunately, YouTube is the No. 2 search engine. Google is the No. 1. They really have a monopoly. It's a little scary that we have no choice but to go to Google."