No YouTube No More, Part 1

I'm writing this partly as a site and channel update and partly as a public service announcement for other creators.

photo by WikiImages

What happened?

I've been using YouTube for years as a consumer.  Last October, I decided to try my hand at making videos.  They weren't great, but I was having fun.  More importantly, they got me back into drawing and working on my next children's book after a long, long dry spell, and when I added in the storytime aspect, I felt like I was creating something for my future grandchildren and beyond.  I'd gotten modest views, engagement on a poll for what to read next, and even my first like!  I was enjoying myself and felt like part of a community of fellow creatives.  Then, out of the blue, I got this email on January 13.

No warnings, no strikes, just complete and permanent removal.  But it wasn't just my channel, it was my account, the account I'd been using for years with all the history, subscriptions, and likes, that I'd purchased movies and TV shows on, that still had 2 months of an annual YouTube Premium subscription left.  I couldn't access YouTube or YouTube Music, which I'd also heavily used and built up a history with and created playlists in, with that account.  I reviewed the Community Guidelines.  I couldn't see what I'd violated, so I must have fallen afoul of "Keep in mind that this isn't a complete list."  

I filed the following appeal that evening after work:

Hello,

I’m appealing the termination of my channel for alleged spam or deceptive practices, which I believe may be a misunderstanding or automated enforcement.

My channel features original illustration content and readings of public-domain children’s stories. I do not sell products, run promotions, or engage in deceptive behavior.

I did occasionally include a “Buy Me a Coffee” support link, intended only as optional viewer support, not as spam or misleading redirection.

I have never received any prior warnings or strikes, and no specific videos were identified. If any descriptions or links violated policy, I would gladly correct them.

I respectfully request a human review and reconsideration.

Thank you,

Brian Crowell

Draw With Brian / Storytime With Brian

The very next morning, I found the following email in my inbox:

Kudos to the human reviewer(s) who so quickly got my account and channel back.  I felt vindicated but also deeply disquieted.  How could it go from being so egregious that it required not only the channel but the account to be deleted permanently but that within hours, I was found to have not violated any terms of service?

I started researching and found that there were others like me, removed without warning or explanation and amidst confusion as to why.  I certainly hadn't intended to nor knowingly engaged in spam, deceptive practices, or scams.  Had they pulled back my channel, told me what I did wrong, I would have happily fixed the problem.  I couldn't think of what I'd done that I hadn't seen done by other more well-established channels that I watched.

 

I discussed the matter with ChatGPT.  Without any clear guidance from YouTube, we could only speculate.  Our best guess was that I had too many external links and possibly mentioned Buy Me a Coffee too often.  We established a plan of how to fix this and make sure that if this ever happened again, it didn't take my account down with it, discussed below.  Alas, six days later before I had gotten very far, I received another email.

Odd, I thought they'd already reached a decision on my appeal.  I filed a final appeal:

Hello,

I understand and accept your decision not to reinstate my channel. I am not requesting restoration of the channel or its content.

I am respectfully asking whether my Google/YouTube account access can be restored for personal use (watching content, YouTube Premium, YouTube Music). The channel removal has resulted in loss of access to paid consumer services unrelated to content creation.

I have no intent to upload content again and am not attempting to circumvent enforcement. I am simply requesting account access for normal viewing and services.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Brian Crowell

As I post this, it's been over 2 weeks since that second takedown.  No word from YouTube and my account is still inaccessible.  If it's ever restored or there's a final resolution, I'll provide an update.

Now, if this second takedown hadn't taken place, what would I have done?

What would I have done (differently)?

Here's the PSA part.  If I had it to do all over again, knowing now that YouTube can kill off not only your channel but also your account without warning or (much) recourse, I would have started off with a throwaway account, by which I mean an account that didn't have any paid services tied to it, completely separate from my viewing and purchasing account, and with no view or listen history that I cared about.  And barring any specific guidance on why my channel was taken down, I would have had fewer external links.

However, at the time of the first takedown, I already had 3 months or so of uploads, watch history, engagement, that first like.  I didn't want to wipe it out and start over again.  I also didn't want to appear that I was trying to evade enforcement, so I was taking a measured, aboveboard approach.

First was to create that throwaway account and then start to build some history with it.  Watch some YouTube, like some videos.  That was created and in progress.

Next would have been to convert the channel to a brand channel.  This allows multiple managers and separates the channel from a personal Google profile.  I hadn't gotten that far by the time of the second takedown.

After the conversion, I would have added the new account as a manager, and eventually moved it to be the primary channel owner, later removing my original account from the channel.  This would have preserved everything that was there and removed the future risk of an account I cared about getting nuked, as it has been.

On the content side, I was going through videos, making edits and starting to cut out external links on the ones that needed that.  Again, I don't know that was the problem, but it was something I could try.  I was going to systematically take down old videos and replace them with the updated ones as they were ready, and sanely go through and update BMAC posts to point to the new videos.  It was going to suck not only for my time but also for the loss of history on each video that had to be replaced, but it was better than losing the whole channel.

What now?

The channel's gone.  It's not coming back.  Even if YouTube wiped the slate clean, let me start over or even pick back up from where I was, I've lost trust in the platform and don't see myself using them again as a creator*.  It may not seem like a big deal to someone who's never gone through it, but it's been an emotional rollercoaster.  To be accused of wrongdoing, without any specifics but so bad as to require complete annihilation without the option to fix the problem, then to be fully exonerated, and then to have that exoneration overturned has been draining and upsetting.  There's the stigma of the accusation and takedown, the confusion over what I did wrong.  There's the loss of that digital identity and its history, plus the very real financial loss of purchases made under the account that are no longer accessible.  And there's the loss of the channel and all the time, effort, and cost that went into making it, and the joy that came from it.  This is not the way a platform should treat their users, without whom they wouldn't have a product to monetize.  

What's next?

I'm going to save what's next for Part 2.

*In fact, after a couple of weeks without Premium, I'm not sure how much I'll be using them as a consumer going forward, either, but I'll talk about that in Part 2, also.