I got the following email from Youtube the other day, just hours after posting a new video:
Subject: YouTube Video Notification
Message: The YouTube Community has flagged one or more of your videos as inappropriate. Once a video is flagged, it is reviewed by the YouTube Team against our Community Guidelines. Upon review, we have determined that the following video(s) contain content in violation of these guidelines, and have been disabled:
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Your account has received one Community Guidelines warning strike, which will expire in six months. Additional violations may result in the temporary disabling of your ability to post content to YouTube and/or the permanent termination of your account.
For more information on YouTube’s Community Guidelines and how they are enforced, please visit the Help Centre.
Please note that deleting this video will not resolve the strike on your account. For more information about how to appeal a strike, please visit this page in the help centre
Sincerely,
The YouTube Team
This is not the first time I’ve had a video flagged, so I wasn’t too surprised.
Yes, I was a little concerned that this has happened but fortunately, this is the only flagged video I have on my account at the moment.
Now, there was nothing about this video at all that violated Youtube’s Community Guidelines. I know because I’ve read those guidelines.
If you haven’t, you can read the Community Guidelines here.
The strange thing is that the Youtube Community Guidelines don’t talk at all about not making videos about making money online, but…
… I’ve noticed that videos that have this in their title seemed to get flagged.
And I’m not even talking about scammy videos. I mean legit videos, like ones that I make, and other reputable Internet and affiliate marketers.
It’s like Youtube has two sets of guidelines; the publicly available guidelines, and a hidden set of guidelines.
Why do I say this?
Because the video of mine that just got flagged, supposedly by a Youtube community member, was flagged almost immediately after I had uploaded it.
Now, I have appealed these decisions in the past. I’ve appealed because there was nothing in my videos that violated the guidelines…
…and I didn’t want to suffer the restrictions that come with having a video flagged.
Also, I’ve appealed in order to find out exactly why Youtube flagged my video. I was hoping to get a specific response to my situation so that I wouldn’t do it again.
Sadly, my appeals have been rejected, and instead of telling me why my video was specifically flagged, all I got back was the same generic response as the email message above.
Very frustrating.
I guess what I’m trying to tell you is that whenever you upload an Internet marketing related video up to Youtube, you’re taking a gamble that it will be flagged.
Look, I understand that Youtube doesn’t have the resources to deal with every appeal. It’s a free service and over 48 hours of video are uploaded to the site every minute.
What I find really annoying is having my videos banned based on guidelines that are so vague that you don’t know when or how you’re breaking them.
In a future post, I’m going to share with you some strategies on how you can avoid having your Youtube videos flagged and your account suspended.
In the meantime, if you’ve had this happen to you to, I’d love to hear your experience. Leave a comment below.