how do I reach a human at YouTube?

[cellio]

A long time ago, I created a YouTube account to post a video to which I hold copyright. Later, Google bought YouTube. Time passed and I mostly forgot about that video.

Recently it's attracted attention and a troll. I would like to take it down.

Old YouTube accounts no longer work; you can't sign in with them. They have a way to claim old accounts, but it is not accepting the password I used (and recorded) at the time, nor any plausible variants. I can prove it's my account; I get email when somebody interacts with it (which is how I was alerted to the newer attention).

I've long since learned my lesson about relying on third-party media-hosting services (yeah, still have a lot of pictures hosted at LJ and Google that I haven't yet cleaned up on this journal). But I need to repair this error from the past.

I could file a DMCA takedown request, but that's the nuclear option and I don't know what repercussions it will have for the account owner, i.e. me.

Does anybody reading this know a better path? No, there's no "contact us" form, and their Twitter responder doesn't do anything other than send links to help I've already read.

Comments

[hudebnik]

Google has an "account recovery escalation" procedure, which I can walk you through by phone or chat or e-mail or something. Due to COVID, they're somewhat less responsive than usual, and prioritizing public figures, but the procedure is still there. Private-message me.

You can start at http://g.co/recover; I suspect you've already tried everything on that page, but I have to confirm that you've done so before going to the next step.