Community Guidelines are the rules of the road for how to behave on YouTube. These policies apply to all types of content on our platform, including unlisted and private content, comments, links, Community posts, and thumbnails. This list isn’t complete. If your content violates our Community Guidelines, your channel will get a strike.
Note: We may remove content for reasons other than Community Guidelines violations. For example, a first-party privacy complaint or a court order. In these cases, your channel won't get a strike.
What happens when you get a strike
When you get a strike, you're told via email. You can also choose to have notifications sent to you through your mobile and computer notifications, and in your channel settings. We’ll also tell you:
- What content was removed
- Which policies it violated (for example harassment or violence)
- How it affects your channel
- What you can do next
If your content violates our Community Guidelines, here’s how it affects your channel:
Warning
We understand mistakes happen and you don’t mean to violate our policies — that’s why the first violation is typically only a warning. You only get one warning, and this warning remains on your channel. The next time your content is found to violate the Community Guidelines, you'll get a strike. Sometimes a single case of severe abuse will result in channel termination without warning. If you think we made a mistake, you can appeal the warning.
First Strike
If we find your content doesn’t follow our policies for a second time, you'll get a strike.
This strike means you will not be allowed to do the following for 1 week:
- Upload videos, live streams, or stories
- Start a scheduled live stream
- Schedule a video to become public
- Create a Premiere
- Add a trailer to an upcoming Premiere or live stream
- Create custom thumbnails or Community posts
- Create, edit, or add collaborators to playlists
- Add or remove playlists from the watch page using the “Save” button
Your scheduled public content is set to “private” for the penalty period duration. You have to reschedule it when the freeze period ends.
After the 1-week period, we restore full privileges automatically, but the strike remains on your channel for 90 days.
Second Strike
If you get a second strike within the same 90-day period as your first strike, you will not be allowed to post content for 2 weeks. If there are no further issues, after the 2-week period, we restore full privileges automatically. Each strike will not expire until 90 days from the time it was issued.
Third Strike
3 strikes in the same 90-day period results in your channel being permanently removed from YouTube. Each strike will not expire until 90 days from the time it was issued.
Note: Deleting your content doesn't remove a strike. We may also issue a Community Guidelines strike on deleted content. You can learn more about when we retain deleted content in our Privacy policy.
If your Official Artist Channel gets a Community Guidelines strike, the channel will be suspended and become a standard channel. Learn more.
What to do when you get a strike
We want to help you stay on YouTube, so remember to do the following:
- Learn about our Community Guidelines to make sure your content follows our policies.
- If your channel got a strike, and you think we've made a mistake, let us know. You can appeal the decision here.
YouTube also reserves the right to restrict a creator's ability to create content at its discretion. Your account may be turned off or restricted from using any YouTube features. If this happens, you're prohibited from using another channel to get around these restrictions. This prohibition applies for as long as the restriction remains active on your account. Violation of this restriction is considered circumvention under our Terms of Service, and may result in termination of your account.