Things to Avoid Getting YouTube Channel Terminated

YouTube offers unlimited opportunities for growth and building connections, a huge audience, and a vast potential audience for showcasing and expressing your creativity.

There's no limit to what you can do on YouTube as long as it's legal and within YouTube's community guidelines.

It doesn't matter how many subscribers you have, or what reputation you have as a creator on YouTube, if you cross the YouTube community guidelines, you risk getting your YouTube channel terminated.

We've put together a list of things to avoid getting your YouTube channel terminated. Take a look at the guide to find out what you should avoid.

Can a YouTube Channel or Account Get Terminated?

YouTube is very serious about its community guidelines and terms of service.

There is no compromise for anyone when it comes to what’s allowed and what’s not allowed on the platform.

YouTube is also a platform that puts a lot of effort and resources into making sure YouTube is safe for everyone regardless of any classifications.

If you have been creating content on YouTube, you would also know how strict they are when it comes to copyright violations, and content moderation.

So yes, a YouTube channel or account can get banned in an instant.

For severe infringements, you might not even be allowed to create another account on YouTube at all, even from a different email addresses!

You can always appeal your account termination, but unless YouTube withdraws the termination, you will be unable to use, own, or create any YouTube channels or accounts.

You will get an email from YouTube that will explain why your channel got terminated.

Here are some of the main reasons that can land you in trouble and get your YouTube channel terminated, or suspended!

1. Breach of Community Guidelines

With great power comes greater responsibility and YouTube is one platform that stays true to it.

As the social media platform is so huge today that almost everyone you meet will have a YouTube account, and will be a regular user on most case scenarios.

To make sure that YouTube stays safe from social evils like hateful content, targeted attacks against a person, shaming, cyber bullying, racism, and all kinds of negativity, there are stringent community guidelines in place that need to be followed by creators on YouTube.

Any video, audio, comment or text that violates any of the community guidelines can result in a community strike.

If you have a YouTube channel where you post abusive, hateful, or harassing videos and comments even after receiving warnings, you will end up getting your account terminated.

YouTube also zero tolerance against predatory behavior, spam and pornography, and any channel that is found to have even one instance of such content is considered as a severe case of abuse, and immediately banned without warning.

Content that features hate speech, harassment, or impersonation are also terminated immediately!

When you breach community guidelines for the first time, you will receive a one week ban from posting anything (videos, comments, and community posts).

Repeated violations will result in second community guideline strike - two week bans, and three strikes and your account will be terminated.

If your channel has been terminated for Community Guidelines violation, you will receive this email:

"This account has been terminated for violating YouTube's Community Guidelines.”

2. Copyright Violations

YouTube is all about original content, and considers every creator as equal to the other.

To make sure that content published by a creator is not stolen and reuploaded by another user illegally, YouTube introduced strict copyright checking mechanisms.

That’s why you see a processing tab when you upload a video.

This is the YouTube’s copyright tool checking the video to see if there is any copyrighted content (audio, and video) from another creator in your YouTube video.

If it does catch an instance of copyright infringements, you will get either of these warnings - copyright claim or copyright strike.

While copyright claim (mostly given to audio tracks used in a video) is harmless to a great extend and only disables monetization from that particular video, copyright strikes are severe.

With just one copyright strike, you lose access to monetization program, maybe get temporarily banned from live streaming, and even end up limited access to certain features.

Ideally, you need to make sure that there are no active community strikes on your YouTube channel, as you only get two more chances.

Get three active community strikes and YouTube will terminate your account immediately!

This is the message you will get for getting terminated for copyright strikes:

"This account has been terminated because it is linked to an account that received multiple third-party claims of copyright infringement.”

3. Harassment and Bullying

Just like the real world, you would come across all kinds of people on YouTube as well.

Fortunately, like the real world judiciary system, you have means to deal with such threats on YouTube through the “Report” button.

You can report all forms of harassment and bullying to YouTube immediately, and it does not necessarily have to be harassment and bullying through videos only.

Adding bullying comments or harassment replies to a comment are all considered as offences that go against YouTube community guidelines and terms of service.

They are also severe enough to get your account terminated.

This is applicable not just to creators who upload videos on their YouTube channel, but the audience too.

While creators will end up getting their creator powers taken away, viewers will end up having no access to YouTube through account that harass or bully other users and creators on YouTube.

If your account is terminated for harassment and bullying, you will receive this message from YouTube:

"This account has been terminated due to multiple or severe violations of YouTube's policy prohibiting content designed to harass, bully, or threaten.”

4. YouTube Terms of Service

YouTube has a dedicated terms of service that are displayed to you when you create an account.

If you didn’t read it back then, you can always go back to YouTube Terms of Service with a quick search and go through some of the major terms and conditions they have.

Failing to meet any of the YouTube Terms of Service is considered as a severe policy violation and can result in a temporary ban or permanent termination from YouTube.

YouTube will of course notify you of the action they intend to take, and in some occasion, even grant you enough time to fix the issues.

Failure to do so will however result in a temporary or permanent ban and that too without a second warning.

If your YouTube channel or account is terminated for terms of service violations, you will receive this message from YouTube:

"This account has been terminated for a violation of YouTube's Terms of Service.”

5. Google Terms of Service

YouTube, being a product of Google also takes Google terms of service into account.

You might wonder how you will be violating a Google’s terms of service through a YouTube account right? Well, the short answer is actually the other way around.

If your Google account is suspended for any Terms of Service violation, and you have a YouTube channel associated with that terminated Google account - you lose access to your YouTube account as well.

You can get your Google account suspended for terms of service violation if you create too many Google account or ask a phone number to verify and unlock it.

If your YouTube account is under your primary e-mail address, it is important to not abuse some of the Google features, and go through the Google Terms of Service to know the key points if you are unsure about it.

If your YouTube channel got terminated for Google Terms of Service violation, you will see a message like this:

"This account has been terminated for violating Google's Terms of Service.”

6. Other Reasons

If you did not go through YouTube Community Guidelines, Terms of Service, and Conditions, here is  a quick recap of some of the other reasons that can get your YouTube account terminated with immediate effect:

Spam, deceptive practices, and scam - Any YouTube channel that uploads content of spam nature, deceptive practices, and scam or misleading content or comments can get terminated.

Hate speech - Any and all forms of hate speech through a YouTube channel or comments is against YouTube community guidelines. Any content or comment that promote hatred or violence against individuals or groups will get their account terminated.

Nudity or Sexual Content - Explicit videos that are meant to be sexually gratifying or having nudity are against the community guidelines and will be terminated.

Violent or Graphic Content - Violent or gory content that’s meant to shock or disgust viewers will result in channel termination. Any content from a channel that posts or encourages others to do violent acts will be immediately terminated.

Impersonation - You are not allowed to copy another channel layout by name, profile, and banner to trick others into thinking you are someone else. Impersonating another creator’s name, channel profile picture, about me, community posts, title and description to confuse viewers will result in channel termination.