Appeal a Community Guidelines Strike from YouTube
Has YouTube ever flagged one of your videos for violating it's Community Guidelines? Have you ever received a strike against your YouTube account? If this applies to you, there is a way you can appeal the case with YouTube.
Steps
- Check with the community guidelines to ensure your video didn't have any inappropriate content. YouTube has very certain rules for what you can/can't upload. As a major internet website, they always ask users to be respectful and responsible with whatever content you post on their site. They will do what they need to do to protect the integrity of the company and to protect their community of people who tune to the website.
- For example, you can't upload anything with pornography or sexual content, anything that encourage others to do things that might cause them to get badly hurt, anything that's violent or with graphic content, spam, threats, etc. If users feel your video is in violation of the Community Guidelines, it will be flagged and checked carefully by the YouTube community. If you violated the rules, the video will be removed from the website.
- Understand your options once you get the notification your video(s) were removed. YouTube only allows users to appeal a community guidelines strike one time; that's it. If YouTube decides to uphold their decision to remove your video, you will not be allowed to appeal future strikes on any videos in your account for 60 days.
- YouTube does understand that not all users intend to violate the rules; so you also have the option of waiting 3 months for the original strike to expire. If you do that; pending you don't upload any further videos that violate the Community Guidelines, the strike will expire and your account will be in good standing.
- Understand the penalties if you violate the Community Guidelines. Like in baseball, you get 3 strikes. The first is a heads up warning you to be careful. If, during your 3 month probation, the YouTube team determines you violated the Community Guidelines a second time, you won’t be able to post new content to YouTube for two weeks. If there are no further issues, full privileges will be restored automatically after the two week period.
- Each strike will remain on your account and expire separately three months after it was issued. And finally, if you get a third strike, you're done! YouTube will have no choice but to suspend your account (in other words terminate it) forever.
- Fill out the appeals form. If you honestly believe YouTube removed your video by mistake, you will be directed to a form underneath the video in question where you will be asked to provide your side of the story for why you honestly believe YouTube made a mistake in choosing to remove your video for violating the Community Guidelines.
- Submit your appeal. Once YouTube receives your appeal, they will look over your appeal very carefully and; after carefully checking the removed video and your appeal, they have one of four ways to email you of your appeal's request.
- The first is simple: They apologize for the inconvenience it caused you, remove the strike and reinstate your video.
- The second is an option where they can elect to remove the strike from your account; but refuse to reinstate your video.
- The third option is they can institute an age restriction on your re-instated video; an option where they determine your video violated no rules but the content isn't appropriate for everyone.
- The fourth: YouTube upholds their decision, the video remains down and you can't appeal any strikes for 60 days.
- Don't get a community guidelines strikes to begin with. YouTube's request is simple; they're not looking for the respect most people give to nuns, the elderly, and brain surgeons. All they simply want is for every user; no matter who they are, what they post, etc to keep their videos clean and to stay out of trouble.
