YouTube Did it Again — Channel Terminated Without Warning
YouTube is a fantastic platform that provides a valuable service. I enjoy watching YouTube videos, and I have channels I regularly watch without exception. Some of my favorites are: Sail Life, Less Junk, More Journey, Gone with the Wynns, Flight Chops and steve1kinevo.
YouTube typically is the last thing I see each night as I drift off to pleasant dreams.
Except, sometimes YouTube is a nightmare.
For the second time in my life, YouTube has terminated one of my channels without a warning or notice.
I awoke one morning recently to find an email in my inbox that killed all the hard work and effort put into placing my videos on YouTube.
Now my videos were not the result of significant investments in equipment or years of effort in creating daily videos and content, hours of video editing, and abandoning other opportunities to do a business out of YouTube.
My videos were not crucial to a business or income stream. They were just videos to help people learn or feel better about life.
Let’s Agree It’s Their Ball, and They Can Take it Home.
As a kid, I remember playing football with a friend in my backyard. We were keeping score, and I was ahead. Suddenly he grabbed the football and said he was taking his ball home. Game over.
As he quickly stormed off, I can still remember watching him march angrily away and thinking, he was right; it was his ball, and judging by the shrinking size of his body, he was going home. We used my football from then on.
We all should acknowledge that YouTube provides a free service with its platform. They also offer a revenue share for content creators, through AdSense, that work hard to build their channels. Some earn large sums of money from that relationship, most earn some, and the majority make little to nothing. But the opportunity is there.
I’m confident the process of managing all sorts of videos that are uploaded must be daunting. In one minute, 300–500 hours of new video content are pouring into YouTube.
Filtering all of that material has to be a daunting task, so automated actions must undoubtedly take place.
Those automated actions might be warnings or, in my case, a complete termination and loss of access to all my uploaded videos. Indeed inadvertent errors could occur, and what if they do?
YouTube says you can lose your account with no prior notice, “A single case of severe abuse (such as predatory behavior, spam, or pornography).”
They also say, “When a channel is terminated, the channel owner gets an email explaining the reason for the termination.”
Here is what I received this time.
“We have reviewed your content and found severe or repeated violations of our Community Guidelines. Because of this, we have removed your channel from YouTube.
We know this is probably very upsetting news, but it’s our job to make sure that YouTube is a safe place for all. If we think a channel severely violates our policies, we take it down to protect other users on the platform — but if you believe we’ve made the wrong call, you can appeal this decision. You’ll find more information about the policy in question and how to submit an appeal below.”
I Must Have Done Something Wrong — Right!
A mistake I made with my latest channel that was terminated was to create sub-channels under the primary one. When the primary channel was terminated, everything disappeared. Dumb move on my part.
One sub-channel was for long-form aerial videos I captured from the airplane to share with my granddaughter. Another was meditation ASMR videos I created from driving footage to help people relax and sleep. Another was dog rescue videos of our flights to transport shelter rescue dogs from kill shelters to adoption. Another was of conservation videos I captured as a non-profit pilot. At least that’s what I remember since I can’t access the account anymore.
For any of the music on those videos, I have a valid license. The only linking I did from a YouTube description was to the video’s original content if the video was part of something else I had written or published. For example, this video goes with that post on my blog.
I can’t recall a single video on my now former channel that would have violated YouTube’s spam, deceptive practices & scams policies.
Yea, I Didn’t Learn a Damn Thing
In 2012 I had another YouTube channel terminated. In that case, it was for a video on my business channel at the time. I wrote about the experience in 2012.
That experience was another case of no warning, no notice, just termination, and loss of access to all my uploaded videos.
Ironically in 2012, I wrote about the episode and said, “YouTube is well within their right to enforce whatever rules they want, and the YouTube community guidelines don’t say anything about the rules being a fair and reasonable policy. It’s their ball, and they can take it and go home any time they want.”
Sound familiar nine-years later?
The lesson was lost on me, and I fell into the same termination trap, yet again.
In my 2012 tumultuous experience, I filed an appeal and never heard a thing back.
This time I filed an appeal and have not heard a peep back either.
How Safe is it to Build a YouTube Business?
My short stack of videos will never change the world. I can’t help but feel concerned for all the people out there who have poured their hearts, souls, time, and money into building a YouTube channel as a business or source of needed income?
One day they wake up and find everything they have worked so hard to create is gone. “So sad, too bad” seems to be the YouTube philosophy.
Some big YouTube channels went poof as well. Look at this and this. and
The StartupBros woke up one morning to the bad news email. In their case, they had over 2-million views on over 200 videos.
The good news is they were able to get their channel reinstated.
The case of Alex Howlett from Boston Basic Income is almost exactly like what I’ve experienced this time, with the exception of reinstatement.
Alex detailed his termination experience, and all of the emails and chats I’ve received are nearly identical to the communications I’ve had.
I have to admit it was a bit irritating to submit my appeal, receive a notice I should talk to my G Suite administrator (me), and chat with G Suite support that says, sorry, that is YouTube’s issue.
A Problem Without a Good Solution
I believe there is no sense in wasting a perfectly good mistake. Surely we can learn something from an terrible experience that can help us moving forward.
So as I sit here and ponder what helpful insight can be extracted from my latest YouTube account termination. I suppose it is make peace that you can always lose your YouTube account at any moment and make sure you have a backup plan or a second-place you’ve posted all your videos like Facebook or Vimeo.
None of those caveats will be hunted down by people excited to create their YouTube channel and grow their business. Unfortunately, there will be a new daily crop of disappointed old farts like me.
To anyone reading this after having their YouTube account terminated, my condolences.
