WBK01

🚨 YouTube is finally changing its termination policy! (+nuance) As of today, YouTube has decided to start experimenting with a new way of keeping a person’s YouTube channel alive. They’ve started testing a new option for creators facing immediate termination due to certain spam policy violations to self-correct and save their channel. Now, it's important to state that they're specifically targeting channels that are violating the spam policies. We're not talking about channels that violate other types of policies. And if you're not 100% sure of what spam policies are, here are 3 of the most common practices that violate this policy: 1. Automated or synthetic mass-production: Using automated tools or AI to churn out high volumes of similar content with minimal changes. Example: Channels that use the exact same background music and repetitive AI-generated imagery across many videos, with each video reading out an AI-generated script. 2. Scraped content: Re-posting material from other websites or platforms, or other videos, without adding anything of your own, such as original commentary, educational value, or unique editing. Example: A channel that takes popular clips and re-uploads them in their entirety without any transformative editing, reaction, or educational breakdown. 3. Malicious clickbait: Using maliciously misleading titles, thumbnails, descriptions, or imagery to trick users into clicking on a video that does not deliver what was promised. Example: Uploading a video for which the title offers a full sports match, but the video shows only a clip. These are direct quotes from YouTube’s own policy page. How it works is as follows: If you’re part of the experiment (not everyone currently is), and your channel is up for termination, you’ll have a 30-day window to rectify the situation and sort out your channel. You’ll be able to do this through one of YouTube’s 3 options: Option 1: Fix or remove specific videos. You’ll be able to review your content and use YouTube Studio tools (like the video editor) to edit or delete individual videos that violate their policies. Option 2: Remove all videos. Delete all uploaded videos on your channel to immediately unlock it. Option 3: Submit an appeal. If you believe a mistake was made and your channel complies with their policies, you can file an appeal. Once the violative content is removed and you pass a review, your channel will be unlocked. If, for some reason, you get rejected, you can still use the manual “Remove All Videos” option as long as you are still within the 30-day window. From my perspective, I believe this experiment is great and helps protect genuine creators, even if I’m already seeing the many ways through which people will abuse this system, especially to build a channel to high subs and then just sell that channel. It’s against the terms of service, but I’m already smelling the abusers from a mile away. Regardless, this experiment is a fantastic step in the right direction for protecting creators.