GuuzakaTube
05/23/17
May
25, 2017 Uploads
Did
you enjoy your long weekend? For those of you in Canada, you'll know
what I'm talking about: Victoria's Day! Except that probably no one
actually celebrates it for the sake of that queen, rather most just
celebrate the fact that they have the day off! Anyways, I have a
whole heap of things I want to discuss this entry, with things
ranging from my latest videos, Instagram issues, a brief hands-on of
a few flagships and more! So with that said, this post is going to be
very long, but you can always skip sections that aren't of your
interest, though I encourage you to read it all, of course! That way,
you get a complete understanding of all the affairs pertained to my
YouTube channel, accounts associated with it, as well as a few
non-related bits.
Ok,
so the first issue I honestly need to address is the problem I've
recently discovered with my Instagram: it's been freakin'
shadowbanned!
Don't know what that is, or never heard of such a term? Well,
Benjamin Chacon from Later.com has explained it fantastically well,
so I'll quote him here:
“On
Instagram, a shadowban hides your Instagram posts from users who
don’t follow you, which can be detrimental to growing your account
and getting more followers. More specifically, if you get
shadowbanned on Instagram and use hashtags in your post, only you and
your current followers will see your post when they search for the
hashtags you used. If someone who doesn’t follow your account
searches for one of those hashtags, they won’t be able to see your
post! Which basically defeats the whole purpose of using strategic
hashtags to grow your Instagram community.”
So!
You see why that's such a big deal now? I've used Instagram as a tool
to help my YouTube channel get some views, and it's done a decent job
at that. Of course, as you can quite obviously tell from my channel,
it hasn't turned it into a high-traffic, multi-millionaire channel,
but I have noticed the difference it has made before I started using
it, and that matters a lot to me. It's already bad enough that
YouTube themselves has “punished” channels with less than 10,000
views for being ineligible for monetization, and now this? How
annoying and frustrating is that! Now I don't want to make this sound
as if it's all about the money, and that it's the only thing I care
about; it isn't. Trust me. If money was solely the only thing I cared
about, I wouldn't have bothered putting in the time to create so many
videos and take all those photographs. It's a lot of fun to do, but
it's also a lot of work, and if I know that it pays, why not reap
that benefit? You know, fruit for your labour? I think you know well
by now what I'm getting at. I reported this problem to them with the
following message:
“My
posts are no longer showing up on Instagram to other people, meaning
that they cannot comment or like my photos. I can see my own photos
just fine, but when others search for them or a specific hashtag
pertained them, nothing has been showing up. My account has been fine
up until May 15, 2017, though I didn't become aware of this issue
until yesterday. What could be the cause of this? I have a BlackBerry
10 device for additional details.”
Probably
not the best choice of words. Not sure if it would have been a good
idea to mention the word “shadowbanning” or confront them about
it, so I just left that out. Some people that have had this problem
say that they have never responded, nor fixed the problem, so they
just resorted to deleting their account and starting again. This is
obviously not something that one should have to resort to, so it's
time to tackle three big questions: Why
hasn't Instagram opened up about this?
What
triggers a shadowban?
How
do you get rid of this sly, secretive ban?
Rather than openly stating that they will shadowban accounts with
suspicious account, or that you have broken terms of service, they
instead say that they are aware of an issue with hashtags that can
occur, and that users should try to report the error, and to continue
focusing on creating quality, original posts that follow the rules.
Surprised? Well, I'm certainly not! They don't want you to know that
you've been shadowbanned, because that would defeat the purpose of
limiting your account without you knowing! They don't even want
people to be aware that such a thing exists, hence why you have to be
very observant and smart about your account's statistics, which was
how I was thankfully able to catch this sleazy ban so quickly! They
ain't fooling me! If something smells like rotten fish, then it
probably is rotten fish. Anyways, what exactly triggers it? Violating
their terms of service (obviously); using bots to generate followers
and likes; using banned or broken hashtags on your photos; huge
surges in your activity, like say 150-200 likes, 60 comments or 60
follows/unfollows in one hour; and getting reported frequently. So
which of these have I done? None.
However,
some say that posting too many photos, especially when they have the
same hashtag, could also be a possible trigger, but if that's the
case, how many within a certain time frame is too many? I don't think
I've ever posted like 50 photos in one hour, and even when I did post
many photos within a short frame, they were all original, unique,
non-offensive and had organic users. It was all fine until the day
after the Mother's Day photo on May 14, 2017. Ironic eh? How does one
fix this ban? Here's how according to non-affiliated Instagram
experts: By stopping the use of bots and hacks, removing broken,
abused or offensive hashtags, by taking a 48 hour break and then
engaging manually and humanly (no automated replies and posters!),
and by reporting the issue to Instagram. I checked the list of banned
hashtags, and I do not happen to have banned tags that I'm aware of,
nor have I been using any cheating tools or robots, so I guess I'll
just refrain from signing in for 48-72 hours and see what happens. If
nothing happens, nor do I receive a response by June 1st,
then I guess I'll just have to axe the account and start fresh.
Really hoping that I don't have to go that route, but we'll see.
Alright, let's get another
obvious solution many of you were probably thinking of the whole
time: use Tumblr or something! Yeah,
I could do just that, and yes, I do happen to have an account. “Ok,
so what's the point of all this rambling when you could just use
Tumblr, till you get your account fixed?” Some of you may ask.
Well, I still haven't “polished” it up yet, but it would be a
good idea to do that in case Instagram keeps up with the unfair
foolishness. Tumblr is also very popular, but Instagram is even more
popular,
hence why I invested so heavily into it in the first place. Remember:
if you suspect that you've been shadowbanned, put a couple rare
hashtags on your photos and ask 3-5 people to search them up. If
nothing shows up, then you've been shadowbanned! Alternatively, you
can also use 3-5 separate devices, while you are logged out of your
account. As I've mentioned above, a drastic drop in comments and
likes over an extremely short time frame is another sign of being
shadowbanned.
So,
if you've read the story about my Instagram problems, you won't be
seeing photos of these schools right now. Maybe next week? Maybe on
Tumblr? Who knows! It's really too bad, considering how nice they and
their surroundings are. Let's just talk about the wonderful Maxwell
Heights building. This school was fun to film, walk around and
photograph due to the fact that the building itself is big, looks
fresh, modern, has many benches, an outdoor cafeteria seating area,
gardens, a recreation centre directly north of it, a fire station
directly west of it, a large track and fields east of it, and a
Walmart Supercentre directly south of it. Yeah, sounds like quite a
vibrant area, doesn't it? Well, it certainly is! And the fact that it
was bright, sunny and a little warm, made the trip even better.
Wouldn't mind coming back to visit this part of the city, but in a
different area, to shoot more videos. And on a
creepy/interesting/obvious note, I've discovered how to take better
window pictures, so you can expect to see a little more of those now
that I've mastered the secret, which should have been blatantly
obvious – get close! Like, “I can breathe on you!” type of
close! Yes, that sounds mighty creepy and unnerving, but it works! Of
course, only to be attempted when the site is closed and without
actually looking overly sketch while taking the photo or video.
Sheesh, why do I always have to say such peculiar, awkward things
sometimes? Next!
That
name though... I normally attempt to pronounce names, even if I end
up butchering them, but for some reason, I didn't end up pronouncing
this one due to laziness and nervousness. Yes, I've decided to come
clean here and tell you exactly what the reason was, so perhaps you
now have two more questions: “Why did you film your walk to this to
school instead of just showing only the school?” And “If the
audio was fine for most parts of the video, why was the part with the
school, which is also supposed to be the part most would be
interested in, axed?” Good questions! To answer the first, I
decided to film myself walking to the school so I could better
showcase some of the other streets in this neighbourhood. If I had
only showed the school, the video would have been really short and
unsatisfying by my standards, but because I also realize that some
people wouldn't want to see that, I've included a slide that tells
you where to skip to. You're welcome. I enjoyed both the walk and the
walkaround of the school. Like Maxwell Heights, it too, has that
fresh new building look. Don't know the exact date of its opening,
but it's likely less than 5 years ago. And since the weather was mild
and sunny, there were lots of people out in the nearby Coldstream
Park, playing sports, chilling, screaming and doing all sorts of
things outdoors. Yikes! Almost forgot to answer my 2nd
question about the audio! I took it out because it was no good. It
happens. A few of my other videos have had this problem, but it
thankfully hasn't occurred too often. Sometimes I'll replace the
silence with copyright-free music, but then there are also times when
I don't even bother. This was one of them. I know. Accuse me as you
will, but silent videos can surprisingly be more satisfying than you
think.
That
G though. What does it stand for? Do you care? Certainly not! Why
should you? We are here to read my rambles about this school, so
let's discuss it! Ok, well to be fair and brutally honest, this video
is approximately twelve and a half mintues long, yet only just under
four minutes of it are actually about Norman! GASP!
So
what was it about? Well, if you've seen it already, most of it is
about me wandering around some residential roads in northeast Oshawa.
Oh! Speaking of that, do you remember Grandview & Esterbrook: Taking a Closer Look at the Pond Pathway?
Yeah, a video I shot back in 2016 during the Winter that also
happened to be in the northeast area of urban Oshawa. So definitely
not my first video I've filmed up here. Anyway, Norman Goldfish
Powers had a lot fun things to film and photograph, and the fact that
their play areas weren't locked up, largely attributed to this. No, I
did not play with the children's toys, houses or what not, but there
was also this tree-pass thing that was fun to walk under. I don't
know if somebody got slack and forgot to lock this area, or if they
did it intentionally for the students to play during off-hours, but
either way, I enjoyed it for video recording purposes. Sometime after
I left, I noticed plenty of people come onto the property to play and
chill. Yep, seems like it may have been intentional based on the high
activity and vibrancy present in this part of the city. Now as you'll
learn from the kind slide I put on the video, the remaining duration
of it takes place on a part of Townline Road North, Badgley Drive and
Docking Court. Lot's of lovely detached and semi-detached new houses
in this part of the city. They are so gorgeous! And you know what
else was gorgeous? The cars! You have a lot of people with Cadillac
vehicles, Mercdes-Benz, Audi, Lexus, Acura and luxurious trims from
other common brands like Chevrolet, Ford, Chrylser and Ram. Ok, so I
didn't quite see anything like Lamborghini, Ferrari, Alfa Romeo,
Aston Martin and what not, but I did see a Porsche Panamera zipping
by on Townline Road! Wish I was able to catch it on camera, but I had
the camera turned off at that time. I actually had intentions for
this part of this video to be mainly on Townline Road, but due to the
lack of paved, raised sidewalks, and cars zipping by at what looked
like 80 km/h, I quickly nixed that idea and turned left onto a
residential road that led to the roads I mentioned above. 1000-2500Kg
of steel on tires going that fast is not worth the risk!
Flagship
Smartphone Hands-on
So
for the past few entries where I've discussed smartphones, they've
mainly been about my opinions based on watching other people's
YouTube reviews and photos. This entry is a little different: last
week, I actually went out to briefly play with the Samsung Galaxy
S8+, LG G6, iPhone 7 Plus and Google Pixel in order to get a better
feel of them. Watching other people's videos can only educate you on
so much, but in order to see how comfortable a smartphone feels, how
vibrant the screen really looks and what not, you have
to physically get out there and play with a demo unit.
That's obviously a no-brainer, but sometimes there may be certain
exotic smartphones that are not sold in your country, so these will
be an exception. You still want to arm yourself with as much
knowledge possible. Anyways! Let's get to it!
Samsung
Galaxy S8+
Probably
no need to explain considering how some of you know my smartphone
tastes by now, but I did not even bother touching the smaller
versions of these phones I tested. Why? Because phones with a
ittybitty screen and round thing in your face get sprung! Too lame?
Trying too hard? Let us keep going! This smartphone was the first one
I tested since it's supposed to be the “best” and most
interesting as many will claim. This phone indeed feels highly
premium, and the display is wonderful, rich and bright. For some
reason though, this unit's navigation on-screen buttons did not
provide a taptic response. Kind of sucked, considering that it was
supposed to make it feel more like the physical buttons from last
year, but alas! I won't know what that feels like, unless I decide to
try another unit from another store. Reminds me much of how most
Samsung Galaxy Note smartphones tend to have their styluses missing
from the store units. Sigh... Why must people be so ghetto and awful?
Is it that hard and expensive to just buy the original stylus online
or something? Anyways, I didn't find the phone to be as uncomfortably
narrow as I thought it would be, but I did appreciate the iPhone 7
Plus' broadness more. All in all, this phone left me with great
impressions, though I still wish Samsung left its physical buttons
alone. Some are saying that the Samsung Galaxy S8 Active may have
physical buttons, but will it have a 6.2” (15.75cm) screen? I hope
it will. I would like to see them be a daredevil and make it 17cm!
Why not? It's supposed to be a big, bad, rough-tough, utilitarian
type of phone, so it would be great if they did that! It would make
it look to menacing
and macho!
LG
G6
The
2nd
smartphone I briefly tested. Unlike the Samsung Galaxy S8+, this
phone's narrowness did feel kind of weird... especially when I went
to use the iPhone 7 Plus afterwards, I was reminded of how weird
these tall, narrow phones can feel. That aside, at least its got more
screen estate than the tiny, ugly LG G5 from 2016, so that's really
good. But it's also missing a removable battery. You want to know
what else is good? The display. It is gorgeous on this thing! I even
decided to briefly play Temple Run 2 on it to observe performance and
colours. Both were fantastic, though long-term performance, of
course, has yet to be seen, and you know that goes with your typical
LG and Samsung smartphone – bad! Or will that be different for the
LG and Samsung smartphones this year? Who knows. Time will tell. Oh,
I forgot to mention this for the Samsung write-up, so I'll mention it
here: both the S8 and G6 are super prone to fingerprints! Using a
case or carrying a cloth would be a very smart idea, though having
both would be even better! On a final note, I love the presence of
the dual cameras. Should've taken a picture of that, which would've
also highlighted people's lovely, unique fingerprints!
iPhone
7 Plus
Even
though I enjoyed the estate of the Samsung Galaxy S8+, this phone
felt the most normal of all the smartphones I've tested. Even more so
than the Google Pixel, which is supposed to have the same screen size
at 5.5” (13.97cm). Like the other two, this phone felt nice, but
the others were a little nicer to hold. Where's the headphone jack?
Well, you can't test retail units with your personal headphones
anyway, but seriously though: why'd they have to remove it? Ha
haaaaaaaaaa! Can't talk about an iPhone 7 without mentioning the lack
of a headphone jack! But anyways! Let's discuss that homescreen
button that also failed to vibrate too! What's going on here? First
the Samsung Galaxy S8+, and this one too? Were there too many people
pressing the daylights out of these phones, that in turn caused their
taptic engines to fail? Damn! That's serious business! I enjoyed the
feel of the mechanical button from the older iPhones, so it's again a
shame that they replaced it with a taptic engine. Worse, the iPhone 8
is rumoured to remove a physical home circle altogether! Let's just
hope they'll make up for that by making a phone that exceeds 6”
(15.24cm) and by tossing in a headphone jack and microSD card slot.
Wait, the iPhone 8 is rumoured to not have a headphone jack either!
Anyway, let's not turn this into an iPhone 8 rumour discussion, and
let's just focus on my short time with the speedy iPhone 7 Plus. Yes,
this thing launches and exits applications smoothly and quickly. I
didn't perform any scientific time comparisons, but trust me, you
know what I'm talking about if you've used or owned an iPhone 7 –
they're
fast! With
the display being 1920 x 1080 unlike the flagship Androids with 2K
resolution, it was still super good, but if you have sharp eyes like
mine, you'll notice the better vibrancy on its 2K equipped rivals.
Now let's end this with a serious question: Should
you buy the iPhone 7 Plus right now (May & June 2017), or wait
for the new iPhone coming in September this year? If
you own a 128GB iPhone 6 or 6S, then
no! Don't
bother wasting your money and time. Yes, you can sell or trade it,
but do you really want to go through that hassle when the 2017 iPhone
is coming in just under 4 months? If you're coming from the iPhone 5
or older, and need a new smartphone right
now,
that will be good for 2-4 years (maybe longer), then it makes sense
because you'll notice the speed of the newer chip easier, will get IP
67 water resistance, and the option for 256GB of storage, as well as
an option for a red, limited edition, iPhone 7 Plus (PRODUCT) RED.
Google
Pixel XL
My
time spent with this smartphone was very brief, but was enough for me
to say a few things about it. Yes, it's got big bezels, but so what?
Why does everyone bicker about that so much? I did not find them to
be as stupidly large as some people dramatically made them out to be.
Though if I did have to make a complaint about the lower bezel, I'd
say, “Why couldn’t they use that space for more screen estate, or
put capacitive buttons down there?” Oh well. A Google Pixel 2 is
coming later this year, so hopefully they'll learn from the feedback
and reviews many smartphone-oriented people have posted on YouTube
and other tech sites. As you may or may not know, Google and Nexus
phones are famous for their pure, unskinned versions of Android,
meaning that they get updated quickly and directly from Google,
unlike the other guys who have to be at their manufacturer's and
carrier's mercy. You can see that this phone has latest security
patch for the month from the picture above, which is what makes these
phones great for those who
value speed, simplicity and security.
Well, I unfortunately don't have much else to say about it, other
than the fact this phone was “secretly” made by HTC. Did you know
that? Now you know! So out of all these phones, which would I take
home? The Samsung Galaxy S8+. Obvious, wasn't it? When's the Samsung
Galaxy Note 8 coming?
Yeah, I know, yet another
lengthy blog post. What gives? Why have these entries been so lengthy
lately? Well, I guess it's safe to say that the days of where they
used to solely be about my videos uploads, and other videos on
YouTube are over. Of course, it's still predominantly about YouTube
as the blog is titled All
about YouTube after
all, but these days, I've been more vocal about other things as well,
yet while still managing to make it pertained to my Channel or
YouTube somehow. I feel that this also makes the blog more natural
and attractive to viewers, and less robotic. Speaking of channel and
uploads, I don't know if it's just me, but I find Microsoft Edge to
be a terrible,
terrible, terrible browser for uploading videos! First,
you can't drag your files. You need to manually upload them. Second,
the videos takes painstakingly
long
to upload through it, and often have a tendency to delay, lag or
increase the length of the upload time. I don't know if this is
supposed to be normal, but the delays and time reset got so bad, that
after Maxwell Heights Secondary School uploaded
after 4-6 hours when it would've taken 90 minutes through Chrome, I
cancelled the other two videos and uploaded them through Google
Chrome. Why wasn't I using trusty, reliable, speedy Google Chrome in
the first place? Because of that darn Windows credential theft
recently discovered in the browser! Ugh! I don't know if there's an
official fix yet, but I didn't feel like taking any chances, so I've
been forced to used Microsoft Edge or Opera for the past couple of
days. Learn more about it here,
here
and here
to get a better idea. Sure, you can change the download configuration
to prompt where where files should be downloaded instead of
automatically downloading, which I have since changed. You can also
exercise common sense and avoid sketchy, enticing links, but I just
decided to largely abandon my favourite browser for the time being.
Microsoft Edge's idiosyncrasies will really make you want to scream
and jump off an edge sometimes! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!
Wow, that unnecessarily dramatic! Anyways, I actually want to try and
record two gaming videos, but don't if that will get to happen, so
I'll see how that goes. There won't be any commentaries this week
either. I've been slacking too heavily in regards to gaming and
commentary videos, which also happen to be an important theme of my
flagship channel, GuuzakaTube,
so in order to forcefully get myself to drop the massive tardiness,
I've
hired a professional whipper who will start work on June 1st!
Finally! No more delaying and dragging commentaries on for weeks! No
more “gaming videos aren't a priority!” excuses. Wow, so for June
you'll finally get to see the mix of outdoors, gaming and
commentaries you've been wanting to see, but couldn't due to intense
slothfulness! Your wishes and desires are finally about to – I'm
kidding! You all knew that, and you all know how lame and cheesy I
can be, so it's nothing surprising. On a more serious note, I do
actually want to improve the diversity on my channel, so I'll work
towards that. I guess I'll also use Tumblr as a placeholder until I
can get my Instagram restored to proper functionality. Who knows.
Maybe I might end up enjoying it more anyway, since it's also about
blogging, and I believe that hyperlinks actually work too. And you
don't forcefully have to use a smartphone just to get pictures onto
the website!
