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YouTube Channel TERMINATED?! How to Appeal & Get Your Account Back... - YouTube
Channel: StartupBros
[0]
- What's up my friends!
[1]
If you are watching this video,
[2]
then your YouTube channel has
probably, just been suspended.
[6]
This just happened to us,
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and obviously, it's a huge bummer,
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you're probably very angry right now.
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And it took us quite a bit of effort
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to get the channel back.
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(glass window shattering)
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The good news is, we did
get the channel back,
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it took like 15 or 16
days, so over two weeks.
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- (indistinct) where are you?
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- And it took quite a bit of effort.
[24]
We did a lot of research
and our approach changed
[26]
a little bit as we did
more and more research.
[28]
So, in this video, I
wanna help you guys out,
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anyone whose channel's been terminated,
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let's talk about what we've figured out
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how our approach changed
and what we'd recommend
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for you to get your channel reinstated.
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Now, if you're a YouTuber whose channel
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hasn't been suspended yet,
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and you've somehow
stumbled into this video,
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I would highly recommend going
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through the next video I'm gonna make
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which is all about how to back up
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your current YouTube channel
and mirror your content out
[52]
to other platforms,
[54]
just to make sure that YouTube
doesn't have the ability
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to rob you of all of this time,
[59]
and energy, and money
that you're investing
[60]
into their platform.
[62]
But, if you've already
been robbed of all of that,
[64]
and you wanna get your channel back,
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here's a step-by-step strategy,
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exactly what I'd recommend for you,
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to give you the best odds
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of getting your channel reinstated.
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The first thing you
need to do is figure out
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what exactly happened in your situation?
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YouTube's not gonna give you
a whole lot of information
[80]
outside of the original termination emails
[82]
that they give you.
[83]
So the wrong move here is to freak out
[86]
and start tweeting at YouTube
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and filing appeals, and emailing people,
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slow down and figure out what
your defense is gonna be.
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You have to structure your
defense before you go at YouTube.
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And that's what, you know,
we made that mistake.
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The first appeal that we've
filed was not a good appeal.
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It didn't address anything
about the YouTube guidelines,
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it didn't address anything
about the Terms of Service,
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it basically didn't get responded to.
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And, you know, we found out later that
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that original appeal actually got denied.
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So we permanently got
terminated from YouTube
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only because that extra
research that we did
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that helped us, you know,
better structure our defense,
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that's the only reason our
second appeal got through
[125]
and actually got our channel reinstated.
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- And the truth, shall set you free!
[131]
- So, it's really important
that you go through
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and actually look at
the YouTube guidelines,
[135]
the terms of service
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and figure out what may have
happened in your situation.
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Obviously, most people
aren't gonna spend six hours
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or however long it
would take to go through
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the entire YouTube guidelines
and terms of service.
[146]
- By clicking Agree, you
are also acknowledging
[148]
that Apple may show your math
[150]
to the butthole of another
iTunes user. Oh, boy!
[153]
- There's a really good
resource that we found,
[155]
it's just some random WordPress blog,
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but I'll link to it below.
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And that's the best resource we found
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for interpreting the YouTube
guidelines and terms of service
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that also talks about a
lot of the common reasons
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why people get their channels
terminated and suspended,
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and basically really
helped us in structuring
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our defense and getting
our channel reinstated.
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So spend at least 30 minutes
going through that website
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and figure out what
your defense is gonna be
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before you start going at YouTube.
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Again, our first appeal was a mess,
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and it wasn't very good,
it didn't address anything
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about the terms of service or guidelines.
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So I don't even know if it got looked at.
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- Delete!
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- But after we spent a
few hours going through
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and researching, we found
three or four different things
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that might have happened
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to trigger our channel getting terminated.
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And one of those probably did happen
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because the second appeal we wrote
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that one did get accepted,
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that one got our channel reinstated.
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So you've gotta go through and figure out
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what may have happened in your situation.
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For our situation, personally,
we found that YouTube
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will very frequently shut
down channels automatically
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for using the word hacking to much.
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So, all of our videos about negotiation,
[224]
ha (beep) and productivity, ha
(beep) and mindset ha (beep),
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all of those may have triggered
our automatic termination,
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so we made sure to address that
inside of the second appeal.
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Another thing that we saw
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was a lot of cryptocurrency
channels being shut down
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for different coin offerings
and things like that.
[240]
So we made sure to address,
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"Hey, we may have talked
about cryptocurrency,
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but we've never done
anything with a coin offering
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or anything like that."
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So you need to figure
out in your situation
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what may have happened,
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address those three or
four different points
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and hope that one of
those guesses is correct,
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and that the appeal
actually gets looked at.
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But you do need to slow down,
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form of defense before
you do anything else.
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Once you know what your
defense is gonna be,
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now, it's time to go
to battle with YouTube.
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You need to go in and file your appeal
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using the official form
that YouTube gives you.
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I'll put a link to that below.
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And you need to really closely
follow the directions here.
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It says, for instance, that
you need to use your channel ID
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and not your custom URL,
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which, you know, we found that through
[283]
going through our browser history
[285]
and just looking at the
URLs with YouTube Studio
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and things like that,
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I'm sure there's other ways
to find your channel ID.
[292]
But you're looking for
your actual channel ID
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not your custom URL,
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and that's pretty much the only rule.
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You get 1000 characters to
actually write your appeal,
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so you need to make every word count
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and every character count.
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We spent over an hour writing our appeal,
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just going through and pruning words,
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and figuring out how we
could get extra information
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into there, to make sure
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that we could communicate our points
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and get our channel reinstated.
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From my research, there's
basically two ways
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to write this appeal and
structure your defense.
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You can deny everything and say,
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"Hey, this is just an
algorithmic screw up,
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get a human to take a look at this,
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and you're gonna see
that this was a mistake,
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the channel needs to be reinstated."
[329]
That's the preferred route,
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if you can go that way, that's great.
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Option number two, is to figure out
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what you actually did wrong
and and repent and say,
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"Hey, please give me my channel back.
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Please give me another shot,
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I know what I did was wrong,
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but I'm never gonna do
it again in the future."
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And basically just grovel to them
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and beg for the channel back.
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Now, which route you go for
[349]
is obviously gonna depend
on what your channel
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was actually terminated for
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and if that termination
reason was actually valid.
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In our situation, we had
never even received a warning,
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we never had a video taken down,
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never had a strike either
copyright or community guidelines.
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So we knew that our situation
[366]
was just an algorithmic screw up,
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and it just needed to be addressed
and corrected by a human.
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But your situation may be different,
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don't just copy our appeal.
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At the end of the day,
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you need to address what
YouTube thinks happened
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in your situation, on your channel.
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So you need to figure out, what
does YouTube think happened?
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- I mean, come on. I know you,
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you know you!
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And I know you know that I know you.
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- And I wouldn't recommend
just picking one,
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you know, find three or
four different things,
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and try to include all of
those inside of your appeal,
[400]
and hopefully, you'll guess right
[401]
and figure out what YouTube
[403]
actually thinks happened
in your situation.
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Now, once you file your appeal,
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you're gonna get a reply in your email
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that just lets you know that your appeal
[410]
has been received and
they're gonna work on it.
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But you don't wanna give up now,
[413]
you wanna keep on trying to make noise,
[415]
and ultimately, try to
get some humans attention
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inside of YouTube, to actually
take a look at your case.
[421]
So the next move I'd recommend
is emailing creator support.
[424]
If your channel was large enough
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to have access to creator support,
[428]
now is obviously the
time you wanna use it.
[430]
So, go check on YouTube's support page,
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I'll leave a link below,
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and you can figure out if you have access
[436]
to creator support.
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If you do, get in touch with them now.
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Every single time I've
reached out to creator support
[442]
in the past six years,
[444]
as of, you know, mid 2020,
[447]
I've only gotten responses
from real human beings.
[450]
So, creator support is an awesome way
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to get in touch with an actual human
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and have people just
take a look at your case.
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Now, the people inside of creator support
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can't actually override the decisions
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of whatever moderation team
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is taking down all of our accounts.
[465]
They can't override those decisions,
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but they can at least hold
your hand through the process
[470]
and let you know what's
going on with your case
[472]
because outside of creator support,
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you're not gonna get any updates at all,
[477]
outside of your channel
actually being reinstated.
[479]
A lot of people never get
any reply on their appeal
[482]
so, you know, creator
support is a great resource
[485]
to just make sure that your
case is on the right track
[488]
to getting, you know, a
human to actually review it.
[491]
Now, this goes without saying,
[492]
but be nice to these guys,
[493]
I can only imagine the type of hate
[495]
that all these YouTube support
agents get every single day
[498]
with all this content moderation
[499]
and censorship and stuff going on.
[501]
- How may I help you?
[503]
- You can start by wiping that (beep)
[506]
dumb ass smile off your
rosy (beep) cheeks.
[510]
- So be nice to these
guys and keep in mind,
[512]
although, they probably
can't help you out too much,
[514]
they might be able to hurt you,
[516]
so no reason to piss these guys off,
[518]
no reason to get angry at these guys.
[520]
- Ma'am?
[522]
- Could you give me a second, sir?
[525]
- Ultimately, creator
support's responsible
[527]
for taking down your account.
[529]
So, be nice to them and maybe
you can get a favor from them,
[532]
but you'll at least get a response.
[533]
So emailing crater support is a great,
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third thing to do here.
[537]
The fourth thing you wanna do
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is post on the YouTube's support forums.
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All we're trying to do here
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is get our case in front
of a real human being
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to take a real legitimate look at it.
[548]
- Thank you prosecutor, I will
now consider the evidence.
[552]
- And it's clear from my research
[554]
that the employees on the
YouTube support forums
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do have the ability to
escalate your appeal,
[560]
and make sure it gets looked
at by that right person.
[563]
So, it didn't help us in our situation,
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you know, specifically,
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but it could make the
difference in your situation.
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And if you scroll through
YouTube support forums,
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you'll see many, many channels
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that the only way they got reinstated
[574]
was through making a post
on the support forums.
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So, I would recommend you do the same,
[579]
if you wanna, just copy our post,
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kinda the structure and
everything that did get a reply.
[584]
But, you know, the
YouTube's support forums,
[586]
they have the ability
to escalate your case
[588]
and it's another place that
you wanna make some noise.
[590]
The fifth thing I would do
[592]
is start tweeting specifically,
the @teamyoutube account
[596]
and kinda creating, a
please help SOS tweet
[600]
for your audience, your fans
to go in and start retweeting.
[604]
And if you get enough retweets on it,
[606]
you will start to get
replies from @Teamyoutube.
[609]
And they do have the
ability to escalate cases.
[612]
It wasn't really helpful in our situation,
[614]
but again, it's just another way
[615]
that we can start making some waves
[617]
and try to get an actual
person to look at our case.
[620]
The next thing we can do,
the sixth thing we can do,
[623]
is start to make noise on our
own platform, our own website,
[627]
our own social media networks.
[628]
If you have your own audience,
[631]
you wanna start riling them
up now, and making some noise.
[634]
As I've been saying many, many times,
[636]
Google and YouTube, they are not dumb,
[638]
if you have your own fan base,
[639]
they want you sending that
traffic to their platform
[643]
where they can control your fan base
[645]
and sell them ads and things like that.
[647]
So start posting on your website,
[649]
start riling up your audience,
[651]
and create a little campaign around it.
[652]
I've seen people create
petitions and things like that.
[655]
Ultimately, you just need to
prove to Google and YouTube
[658]
that this is gonna be worse
[659]
for YouTube than it is for you basically,
[661]
that your audience is gonna
stay by you rather than YouTube.
[664]
So, show YouTube that
through your own audience
[667]
and through your own website.
[668]
For us personally, this is
where our journey ended.
[672]
Once we published, you know,
part two, all of the updates,
[675]
which was a pretty scathing,
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you know, review and
rebuke against YouTube,
[680]
it was a very harsh critique.
[682]
And we've since taken it down,
[684]
but 20 minutes after we
posted that very harsh update,
[688]
we got an unsolicited email
from someone named Lei,
[691]
in YouTube's support team,
[692]
and Lei basically got involved and said,
[695]
"Hey, I'm gonna make sure
that this gets looked at
[697]
by the right person."
[699]
And once Lei got involved,
it was less than 24 hours
[702]
before our channel was reinstated.
[703]
So, it just goes to show you
[705]
what we're really trying to do here,
[707]
is get someone's attention
inside of YouTube
[710]
and get them to advocate for you.
[712]
You need someone to just go
to the right person and say,
[715]
"Hey, I know this
channel, it's a mistake."
[718]
And that's all we're trying to do.
[719]
So, Lei was that person for us.
[721]
And I assume that Google
[722]
has some type of sophisticated
listening software
[725]
that detected our new blog
post right when it went live.
[729]
So, once Lei got involved,
all was well in the world,
[732]
and we basically got our advocate.
[734]
But even if YouTube did
not reinstate our channel,
[737]
we were not gonna give up.
[738]
The next thing on our list
[739]
was to start contacting
different journalists,
[742]
and podcasts, and radio shows,
[744]
and seeing where we could be interviewed,
[746]
and find people that wanted
to tell this story about,
[749]
you know, YouTube censorship, essentially,
[752]
or algorithmic, you know,
moderation, whatever.
[755]
And it's very clear,
[757]
looking at all of the different
channel reinstatements
[760]
and terminations that have happened,
[761]
if your channel starts getting picked up
[763]
in major publications, major newspapers,
[766]
major blogs, and things like that,
[768]
you are so much more likely
[769]
to quickly get this thing looked at.
[771]
So, obviously, there's
like a PR team at Google
[774]
that has the ability to
escalate these cases as well.
[777]
So, our next step was to really try
[779]
to start creating bad PR for YouTube
[782]
through other people's platforms,
[784]
and, you know, telling this story
[786]
so that we could either get
our channel back or leverage it
[790]
to rebuild some of the
audience that we were losing.
[793]
So, one of our next moves was to literally
[794]
just start kinda mail bombing.
[798]
I don't wanna say bombing.
[799]
- You said bomb?
[800]
- I said it's not like I have a bomb.
[801]
- You said bomb on an airplane.
[802]
- What's wrong with saying
bomb on an airplane?
[804]
- You can't say bomb on an airplane!
[806]
- Bomb, bomb, bomb,
[807]
bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb,
[808]
bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb,
[809]
bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb!
[810]
You gonna arrest me?
[810]
- So one of our next ideas
[811]
was to literally just start sending mail
[813]
to random people and finding someone
[816]
that again, could just open
it up, read our situation,
[819]
and go hand it off to the right
person inside of the company
[822]
to actually get our case looked at,
[824]
because we knew that once
someone took a look at it,
[827]
it was gonna be clear
that it was a mistake.
[828]
And luckily, that was
the situation for us,
[831]
and we did get our channel back.
[832]
So, we're happy campers now.
[834]
So that's all the different
things we had guys,
[836]
and luckily, we got our
channel back by step six.
[839]
But that's eight different
things that you can try
[842]
to get someone's attention
inside of YouTube
[844]
and get your channel reinstated.
[847]
I wish you the best of luck with it!
[848]
And guys, once you do
get your channel back,
[850]
make sure you check out,
[851]
like the first thing I did
when we got our channel back,
[854]
was I went and backed up the
entire database of our videos
[857]
and I put them on other websites.
[859]
I backed them up on different platforms,
[861]
and now we're kind of impervious
[863]
from YouTube terminations, right?
[865]
'Cause at least our content
will live on on other places.
[868]
So make sure you check out the new video
[869]
I'm gonna be doing next week,
[871]
that's all about how
to backup your content
[873]
and how I recommend that
you actually distribute
[875]
your YouTube videos.
[877]
But, that is all for today, guys.
[878]
Good luck getting your channel back,
[880]
I wish you the best of luck
[881]
and let us know if there's
anything we can do to help,
[883]
or if you have any questions,
[884]
we did a lot of research on it.
[885]
So, let us know and best of luck!
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