In early August I described how my YouTube channel was demonetised in My YouTube Channel Has Been Demonetised – Part 1, where I was given 30 days to review the content and apply again. I then watched a few videos from others in the same situation, picked up some tips, cleared out a lot of crappy videos, redesigned the channel homepage and on 2nd September applied for my channel to be re-monetised. A couple of days later I received an email from YouTube telling me that my application wasn’t successful for the very same reason – I am apparently using someone else’s content. I was then given another 30 days to get my act together, being told I could reapply on 2nd October, but I’ve been busy with other more important matters, not to mention still scratching my head over being rejected, so I left it until this month, November.
Over the last couple days I’ve been delving further into the possible reasons why YouTube refuses to monetise my channel. I have to do this because the company doesn’t see fit to explain why, except that I am apparently a thief and am stealing someone else’s material, blah, blah, freaking blah.
Yesterday, while looking through the numerous options in YouTube Studio, I clicked on the Copyright button to see what I could find and lo and behold, I found two videos that had a 100% match with other people’s videos. This was pretty much a Eureka! moment because I honestly thought that I had found the culprits – in other words, someone else’s content. But this is when it gets strange, because it seems I had uploaded one of the videos (Driverguide) in question to my other YouTube channel many moons ago and it’s a channel that I use simply for private videos and don’t intend to do much with.
So yes, the very same video appeared on two different YouTube channels and clearly their algorithm picked that up, offering me the options to either request removal or to contact the other channel. So I contacted myself through internal telepathy and we both agreed to remove the video from both of my channels as it was crap anyway – problem solved.
The second video, A Global Map Of Wind etc, also resides on an Arabic channel and when I chose the option to contact them, no email address was available, so it was a dead end and I simply deleted the video from my channel, thus removing any matches to other channels.
You still with me?
But this is where I am left scratching my head. The global wind map video was simply a screen recording I had done for a bit of fun more than five years ago and had uploaded to both of my channels. I therefore have to ask myself, how can it be that the two videos are identical? The law of probabilities tells me that it’s impossible for two screen grabs of the same subject matter, taken at different times by two entirely different people on different continents, to be exactly the same. Similar, yes, but not the same. Unless of course the Arabic channel had stolen my video and uploaded it to their own channel. The end result is that I removed that video also, thus leaving no matches with anybody else’s videos and I was satisfied that I had solved the mystery as can be seen in the image above – no matches!
It’s all a guessing game!
I think YouTube expects us to be water diviners or probably telepathic, not to mention that the company insults our intelligence with every communication it sends us. Someone else’s content implies that there is an implicit match. I followed that path, found two matches and dealt with the issue, but it still doesn’t satisfy their so-called reviewers because I was turned down for monetisation yet again for exactly the same reason.
It’s not so much the monthly income that bothers me, although that is certainly welcome, but the fact that the reason for rejection is so utterly vague and repetitive without pinpointing the issue as YouTube sees it. It feels like being back in school and being told to stand in the corner for a month while you watch the rest of the kids having fun outside, but when you ask why, they tell you that you’re too stupid to understand. Added to which there’s no real channel for human interaction with YouTube support. Frankly, I’d have more luck talking to my cat.
I sincerely hope that this article thread doesn’t extend into next year and if I manage to get a result, I will of course put pen to paper as usual.
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Could you just delete your account entirely and open a new one with a clean slate and different email address?
Not practical, Bruce – I’d have to start all over again and the minimum threshold for monetisation is 1000 subscribers.
“So I contacted myself through internal telepathy and we both agreed” best laugh I’ve had in several days, thanks for that one Marc.
And yes people are treated like imbeciles. It’s no wonder so many are heading for the hills onto other platforms.
And the other thing is that since Paypal was sold or taken over or whatever happened there, they have become money grabbers too.
Now I can’t even support my favoured content producers by giving a donation without also ‘donating’ to Paypal. The thing is that pp doesn’t need my money. And I begrudge being forced to fill their coffers twice for every time I give a donation because it is no longer some small %.
During the last many months of pandemic, many of us have declined significantly in our financial position, so with even less to work with now, there is less to go around.
Why would I give more to pp?
Don’t get me on PayPal, Clissa. Trying to get sense out of that company is impossible.
Having the same problem with Amazon. When trying to review a product, I get “We apologize but Amazon has noticed some unusual reviewing activity on this account. As a result, all reviews submitted by this account have been removed and this account will no longer be able to contribute reviews and other content on Amazon. If you would like to learn more, please see our community guidelines. To contact us about this decision, please email community-help@amazon.com.” When I contact Amazon, they tell me to “Please see our community guidelines”.
Round and round in circles is par for the course when dealing with corporations nowadays.
Amazon did something similar to me.
After I wrote an innocuous 5-star review, I got an email advising me that it would not be posted for failing to meet “community guidelines”. No other info! I thought perhaps I had made a typing error and tried to posted some obscene word, not that it is my habit to do so, but I wasn’t even allowed access to the post to check.
I e-mailed CS to say that if they were not going to be more specific, it would be a terrible waste of my time to try to guess what is acceptable by posting thoughtful reviews. (I’m sure my e-mail is already in the electronic dumpster.)
I’ve been a prolific reviewer, with mostly positive input. No rants, no uninformed opinions, and nothing off topic. But I guess I’m finished with that!
I didn’t read the original post but I think part of the problem is the issues with automatic systems – A lot of YouTube’s systems are automatic – it’s understandable due to the amount of stuff, but I’ve seen actual YouTubers being reported due to questionable content, and somehow still allowed to do it.
I’m a massive doctor who fan (although more classic) and watch quite a few reviewers, and I’ve seen some have issues with specific videos because they used clips, but normally it’s fine – I think there’s time limits on how long you can use stuff, but as usual it is very vague. I’m sure I’ve also heard of people reviewing games negatively and having issues due to that. Oh and my dad has shared music videos of the eagles on Facebook, video’s that where already online, and had his account temporarily banned because he shared something that wasn’t his.