Abuse of private setting on ThisVid

[Lawrence]

Someone else posted about this a while ago, but I can't find the post.

Does anyone else think it's ridiculous that that guy is asking people to pay to him gain access to his private vids? It's a violation of the terms of use for ThisVids, and it's also a violation of the terms of use for Patreon, which is his payment platform.

He's obviously aware that it's a violation on ThisVid. In his profile, where he asks people to make payment, he gives the link to his Patreon page in a masked form, because he knows that if he includes the complete link, it will get blacked out, and it might flag his ThisVid account for violations.

He may not be aware that it is a violation of Patreon's terms of use.

What concerns me is that he's probably going to get caught eventually, and then his ThisVid account will be shut down. And everyone who has paid him $30 for "lifetime access" will lose access to his collection of vids.

ThisVid has no meaningful support for users. Reporting the activity to ThisVid through their contact link is a waste of time. They aren't very transparent, either. I can't find a mailing address anywhere on their website.

But Patreon might shut the guy down if it is reported to them. Their terms are pretty clear.

I wonder what would happen if ten or twenty or fifty people sent him a message thorugh ThisVid asking him to just stop collecting payments and make his vids public, explaining that it is a violation of the terms.

And warning him that if his account is shut down, people may successfully charge back their credit card payments that were made through Patreon. Guy could end up with a very large negative balance in his bank account if his ThisVid account is shut down.

[iwapmp]

And aside from all that it's just a shit thing to do. They're not even his videos...

[Lawrence]

And aside from all that it's just a shit thing to do. They're not even his videos...

Lots of his vids are really old stuff that has been circulating for years. Like, remember the one of the girl wetting her pants while sitting on a stool at a McDonalds? What is that, like ten or fifteen years old?

Looks like he has a few that I have not seen. And his profile does say that he plans "to upload around a dozen new videos per week, from old classic vids to fresh new finds."

What's kind of funny is that many of the vids he has uploaded have their polarity reversed, i.e., they have been manipulated to display as a mirror image of the original video. Captions and watermarks are reversed, making them difficult (but not impossible) to read.

And he's not the only one doing this LOL

I suspect that it is done to defeat the algorithm at ThisVid which disallows duplicate videos.