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Local ID: 2603.18071v3
AI Summary: gemma4:e4b
Circumventing Platform Defenses at Scale: Automated Content Replication from YouTube to Blockchain-Based Decentralized Storage
By Muhammad Zeeshan Akram
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v13/18/2026
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Circumventing PlatformEngineering DefensesLessons atfrom Scale:Authorized AutomatedYouTube-to-Blockchain Content Replication from YouTube to Blockchain-Based Decentralizedat StorageScale
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We present YouTube-Synchan [1],experience report on YouTube-Synch, a production system for automated,that large-scalereplicates content extraction andfrom replication10,000+ fromcreator-authorized YouTube channels to decentralizeda storageblockchain-based ondecentralized Joystream.platform. TheAlthough systemreplication continuouslyis mirrorsauthorized, videosthe fromsystem moremust thanstill 10,000defeat creator-authorizedYouTube's channelsanti-automation whiledefenses handling- platformAPI constraintsquota suchrestrictions as(10,000 APIunits/day), quotas,IP-based rate limiting, behavioral bot detection, and OAuth token churn.lifecycle Wepolicies report- awhich 3.5-yeardo longitudinalnot casedistinguish studyauthorized coveringbulk 15access releasesfrom andabuse. 144Our pullcentral requests,observation fromis earlya APIcoupled-defense dependencephenomenon: tothese API-freeprotection operation.layers Aare keynot findingindependent, isso thatcircumventing YouTube'sone defense(e.g., layersAPI arequotas) operationallysilently coupled:activates bypassinganother one(e.g., controlOAuth oftentoken triggersexpiration), another,producing creatingcascading, cascadingdelayed failures. We analyzeground this in three production incidents with measuredconcrete impact:impact - 28 duplicate on-chain objects causedfrom bya database throughput issues,failure, loss10,000+ ofchannels overlost 10,000to channelsa aftersingle OAuth mass expiration,mass-expiration, and 719 daily errors from queue pollution.pollution For- each,observed weover describe15 releases and 3.5 years of operation. We further argue, from the architecturalsystem's response.own Contributionsconcurrency includeand arate three-generationparameters proxyalone, stackthat withdetection-driven behavioranti-bot variancemeasures injection,impose a trust-minimizeddownload-bound ownershipthroughput verificationceiling protocolon the order of 10^3 videos/day per instance - at or below the steady-state demand of 10,000 channels. This analysis shows why priority-based triage and horizontal scaling are structural necessities rather than optimizations, and explains the survivability-over-throughput tradeoff that replacesdrove OAutha for25x channelreduction control,in write-aheaddownload loggingconcurrency. We detail the resulting architecture - a four-stage DAG pipeline, a Write-Ahead-Log fault-tolerance model with cross-system state reconciliation, and containerizeda deployment.trust-minimized Resultsownership-verification showprotocol that sustainedeliminates architecturalOAuth adaptation- canand maintaindistill reliabledesign cross-platformprinciples replicationthat atgeneralize productionto scale.extraction against other heavily-defended centralized platforms.