YouTube falsely striked my channel

Added: 2026-05-24

[00:00:00]So today I have another typical story of YouTube support sucking because I got a community guideline strike on my video.

[00:00:07]More specifically, I violated the harmful and dangerous content policy, which in case you're wondering is stuff that promotes illegal activities, including offering and selling services that attempt to gain unauthorized access to a secure system via hacking or fishing. Now, you might be wondering how this even happened on a Minecraft YouTuber's YouTube channel on a Minecraft video because the title of the video is exploring Minecraft's coldest world. This is what I also wondered because as you can see, at no point in this video do you see a timestamp or anything. There's no specifics on what exactly I said or what I did, which means there's no realistic way for me to know, what the issue is. YouTube has not given me any explanation at this point.

[00:00:51]And to add insult to injury, this video was rated safe for advertisers by both me and YouTube a day earlier, by the way. Now, by all means, if I violated the community guidelines, I will happily take down my video. We'll take the L, hold it high, and go about my day. But I deserve an explanation. I deserve to know exactly what I did. I need proof. I need a timestamp. I need something. When something like this happens, when the automated reviewer finds that you did something wrong, you can take action.

[00:01:17]You can request an appeal, considering this has to be a mistake, right? And the way this works is that they'll review the content within 72 hours and if everything is fine and it was a mistake, then the video gets reinstated, which as you can see was denied. And as a matter of fact, it wasn't only denied, but was denied within like the first 3 minutes.

[00:01:33]And to prove this, I got the original email about the strike at 3:06 p.m., 6 minutes after my video was uploaded. And by 3:13, the appeal was rejected. Now, give or take that it probably took me around five minutes to read this. This was about three minutes, three minutes to appeal this 40-minute YouTube video, which of course means that there was no manual reviewer who looked at this. It was just another automatic reviewer, the same automatic reviewer that strikeed my video down within the first 5 minutes of it being uploaded. Now, they let you take this policy training, which at the very least, because this is my first offense, allows you to get this expuned from your YouTube record, and you can still file this appeal, by the way. If YouTube got it wrong, that's on them, right? But the point is, I don't even know what I did yet, right? This is this is ridiculous. I have no idea what I did. And before you ask, I looked through my video frame by frame, looked at everything, and nothing reasonable stood out. Again, nowhere does it say where specifically in the video this violation happened, nowhere does it say anything of the sort. So, my journey with this either ends at this stage here where I can do nothing, or I can go on Twitter and complain about it, which is something I did. So, I went to YouTube on Twitter. I didn't give a lot of explanation at this point because I was already in contact with someone else that's more important than the team YouTube on Twitter, right? I I show them this and the first thing I get is, could you please follow us on X while we look into your channel? Follow you on X? Are you like mental? Did someone like was that an actual person that responded to that? You think I give a [ __ ] about following you when you strike down a video that I made? So, I resulted to emailing my YouTube partner manager.

[00:03:10]Now, a YouTube partner manager is something that usually creators over 100,000 subscribers can get access to depending on your standing, depending on your channel, many things. I'm one of the lucky few that gets access to a partner manager. So, of course, I email my partner manager so I can get this to someone that can do a manual review of this content because I have no confirmation just yet as to what I may have done to cause this issue. Now, I have an assumption, but remember, this is only an assumption. I don't actually have concrete information. So, I'll get to that assumption briefly, but let me let me showcase the full scale of what the support was that I got. going to blur out the partner manager's email and his name because I don't necessarily think he's at fault at this. I think this is an issue with YouTube themselves. So, let me show you what it says. Hey, blank. I just got a community guideline strike on a video that also happens to be sponsored just now. It says that I violated the harmful and dangerous content policy, but doesn't show which section of the video does this. I tried to appeal and it was immediately rejected. Is there anything you could do to help? My partner manager says, "Hi, Nico. I understand what you're saying and I know it's a somewhat complicated situation. Since I don't work in that department, it's a bit difficult for me to review that information, but if you'd like, I can escalate this to the advanced support team and they can assist you with this process. So now, even though I was hoping that my partner manager would be the one to deal with this and be able to look at that himself or whatever the hell, I guess that's not how it goes.

[00:04:34]Fine. So I of course give him the go-ahad. You know, send this escalate this to the higher ups. Let's see what happens. Keep in mind, this is a day later already. Okay, I got the strike on May 20th at 3:05. I sent the first email at 3:15. A day later, I receive a response from my partner manager and I give him the go-ahhead. Now, I wait another day and I finally get the second email chain from the YouTube partner support. This is I'm a manager from the YouTube support experience. It has brought to my attention, I'm assuming has been brought to my attention that you have contact us regarding the community guidelines warning on your channel. I'm aware that as a creator is concerning blah blah blah. I've endorsed your concern to the internal team for review and expect to hear back within a couple of days. So I'm like, okay, whatever. It's going to take a bit, but I finally I'm going to get a manual reviewer. They're going to see that this is [ __ ] and they're going to reinstate my video and everything will be fine. And of course, considering I'm making this video, I'm sure you've gathered how wrong I was. The following email, hi there. I appreciate your patience on this matter. I'm aware that this is vital to you to be resolved and thank you for giving me an opportunity to assist you in resolving whatever.

[00:05:40]Allow me to provide you with the feedback from our internal team. After carefully reviewing the video, we found that it does violate our community guidelines. As such, the video remain off the site. Content that promotes illegal activities isn't allowed on YouTube. This includes instructions on how to gain unauthorized access to a secure system via hacking. We also don't allow links to this relative content. We make limited exceptions for content for educational, documentary, scientific, or artistic context. And it goes on and on.

[00:06:04]You can read the full thing. They basically gave me the same nothing burger that the YouTube AI bot gave me when it strike the video. Content that promotes illegal activities isn't allowed on YouTube. This includes offering or selling services that attempt to gain unauthorized access to secure system. Same thing with maybe one or two words difference. I waited three days, went through my partner manager, the guy who is talking to the partner manager, and then the internal review team so I can get the same exact generic answer. Nothing again about where this happened. Nothing again about why this happened. Not a single clue as to which part of my video is supposedly harmful.

[00:06:46]No evidence, no proof, no nothing. So now I have an assumption again as to why this happened. But if I didn't know, if I had no idea what exactly violated the guidelines, how am I supposed to not do it again? Like YouTube, what am I supposed to do? Am I supposed to just guess? And this is from a creator that again has some standing with YouTube. I had access to an extra onetoone level of help and I still got screwed. Nothing was said to me. Not a single thing was given. Not an ounce of proof. Now, I have an assumption as to what might have happened, and I'm pretty sure it has to do with the sponsor of my video in that case. The sponsor for that video is called elderorado.gg. So, YouTube, for documentary purposes and for educational purposes, do not strike down this video, too, just for mentioning the name. I'm afraid to even use certain vocabulary here. So, I'm going to try and do this in the most Tik Tok way possible. El Dorado is a service where you buy and sell in-game things and they also provide protection against people that are very bad that like to not give you those things after you've paid for the service or paid for the thing. So, I promoted this brand on my channel. Now, as you can see, I'm on YouTube. There are plenty of videos about this brand and in general, most of them are doing reviews, but then you start seeing videos like how to buy from El Dorado here. This wasn't strike down. You have a video here on how old you need to be to sell on El Dorado, which again should theoretically be against community guidelines, right? There's videos about their discount codes. There's breakdowns. There's all kinds of videos that are fine. Yet, my video gets strike down. On what [ __ ] grounds, YouTube?

[00:08:20]And by the way, all of this that I'm saying about this brand, it's all an assumption that the brand deal is the issue because I have no actual concrete information from YouTube. I have no idea if I can re-upload my video without this brand deal. I have no idea if it's in minute one of the video or minute 40 of the video. There is nothing. Just a vague statement. Do you see what the problem is here, YouTube? How am I supposed to not repeat the offense if you haven't told me where the offense is? And by far the best part is that it's not even an offense. I didn't actually violate the community guidelines. So, the way I see it, I'm out a significant amount of money. I have a warning on my channel now. I'm sure my channel is going to be somewhat shadowbanned or affected by this now. I I don't really know, but I guess we'll find out. All with barely any explanation from three to four different layers of YouTube support, which is totally unjust and damages my livelihood. And by the way, this is not something that just affects me. It affects all of your favorite creators.

[00:09:17]It affects you, the viewer. It affects everybody. So, I am calling on all creators, all viewers. It is time to hold YouTube accountable. It is time to revamp these moderation systems. It is time to get rid of this stupid AI of everything and it is time for you to pay attention because without us YouTube, you are nothing. With that said, I'm going to leave my Patreon in the description below if you would like to show some support in this time. Do not super chat in the comments or super thanks or anything because YouTube makes 30% of that and I do not want them to make a dime. I don't want YouTube to be taking a direct cut from my audience's pockets. As far as ads are concerned, I may or may not monetize this video for reach purposes. But what I am going to do for sure is that I'm now uploading my catalog to Spotify. So, the first few videos of the Forever World series are there, and more are coming soon. So, check out my Spotify linked in the description below. And follow me on Instagram. That will also be below. And make some noise, guys. Let's make some [ __ ] noise. As always, good night and good luck, everybody.