I have been demonetized a couple weeks ago. First, it was a "warning" with 7 videos that were considered to be breaking "child safety" policies, like a week or two later, the whole channel became demonetized due this same "child safety" policy involving minors. Needless to say it's not right, my animations don't contain any children. The animations are pretty mild and mostly comedy based, if there's any violence then it's Tom&Jerry tier stuff with Minecraft graphics and some internet memes/themes, and sometimes some anime style fight but nothing graphic. Not a big deal and this was an insane overreaction. I don't know if this is the result of mass-flagging by competition or bad luck in a content purge, but it happened. Now whenever I log into my channel I get depressed since I have to see these 7 videos gone with black thumbnails and the "child safety" stuff. I have been working in secret for years waiting to have a good back catalogue to show my family and now I cannot show because of this. I am too devastated and lost to know what to do. Appeals were rejected, support doesn't say anything beyond "read guidelines". The supposed new system to show timecodes on the supposed violations is very vague, some didn't make sense, like it was selected by an AI or something. And they say "there may be more" anyway. It's supposedly reviewed by YT employees.
What's even more mind breaking is that there is people right now making money from my animations that had millions of views since some have viral reaction videos to them. They are adult youtubers having fun watching the videos, proving this stuff can reach older audiences and entertain them too. So how im not supposed to at least make income from these? I spent months on a single video and now im making no money while people that spend 10 minutes reacting to them are free of any trouble. There's even reaction videos to some of my deleted videos, even some by a family where a parent and his kid are having a laugh and entertained by the videos, they have comments enabled and monetization while I suffer being told my videos were harmful for children. I have lost all energy to continue. I don't know what im doing. My channel is pretty much doomed at this point. So many years working on this stuff for nothing.
I was told I can re-apply in 3 months, however, what im supposed to do? If I delete the "Removed" videos clicking the "delete-forever" thing, assuming there's no way to make YT revert their decision, and if re-apply in 3 months, would that be enough? Or do I have to delete even more stuff? How do I know which ones? deleting a video takes an huge emotional toll to me, every video reminds me of the period of time of months working on them, and you may be deleting videos unnecessarily since you don't know which ones are supposedly causing the global demonetization.
What gives me some hope is to think that if I just delete the videos that are in "Removed" mode and re-apply in 3 months it will be enough, but at the same time im afraid YT works in mysterious ways and they will reject it again for the same reason, which is puzzling since you are not told what videos actually cause this problem. They are still promoting my videos that are ok, the ones that are most loved by the audience are being recommended along the other channels on my niche. I thought my views would plummet the second I got demonetized and the channel would fade away but surprisingly it's surviving quite good after being butchered out of a relevant amount of videos and after being demonetized, picks a decent amount of views and subs. But they want me to delete these same videos that keep the channel alive??
And what's even more confusing is that the videos first got marked as "made for kids" then short after got deleted due "child safety", i've got like 4 other videos that survived in "made for kids" mode, the rest are in normal state. The channel is dead wether they mark the rest or delete the rest of my best videos.
There is really no point in trying to pivot to other niches once you build a big audience doing a certain niche, unless you are an influencer that they will follow. Im a faceless channel. My videos never had any copyright problems or reused problems, I was on a good track until this happened.
Trying to send the traffic to other platforms is also useless. The money is made in YT ads. I have already looked at this.
This whole thing is just unfair. There's people with very young audiences out there like "Pencilmation", that are uploading weird stuff on their thumbnails, and make a fortune with 20+million subs, same for "HuluWuluAnimations", "Plush Universe" and many others, and not only that, but gameplay spam channels like PrestonPlayz, BriannaPlayz, NicoBlox, Maizen... these channels are watched by kids under 13, but they never get any "made for kids" stuff, meanwhile they randomly ruin animator's channels. This is evident and obvious since like I said before, there's people making money right now from my videos by reacting to them, while im the one that actually spent months on them crafting each one and I get this treatment. I think this whole COPPA stuff was aimed to demonetize and demoralize animators so the big studios get all the watchtime.
This is taking a toll in my mind and im really losing it. I see no point in doing anything. I have no idea what to upload anymore since there's no clear way to predict if something will get marked as "made for kids", and/or deleted due "child safety".
I wanted to share my experience and hopefully someone has gone throught this. Im really losing it man this is crazy. I finally found a purpose in life and I had something to show for, now I have to hide it forever since I couldn't explain how im not making any income from these views, which is the first thing people ask. "Wow, you got X subs, look at this cool viral video, you must be making a decent living". "Nope, my videos are not monetized because they are "harmful/sexualized containing minors"". WTF. This is the message that shows up when I open YT studio on the monetizing section. Im not joking:
View: https://imgur.com/a/qHN2QB6
How im supposed to show my channel with this message? This makes me want to end it. How im supposed to wake up like this? being told I did that by YT? this is too brutal. What are they thinking with these messages?
Btw the appeal to the overall demonetization where it says you can send a video was also rejected, and I didn't send a video, the staff on the chat support said that the chat log would be the appeal itself. Now if you click on the blue appeal button on the monetization page nothing happens, it just opens the guidelines.
View: https://imgur.com/a/U4msPz6
And here's the state of my "Removed" videos:
View: https://imgur.com/a/0z4AU42
As you can see it has both the kids stuff and child safety at the same time.
I don't want to sound overdramatic but I would be lying if I didn't say what I feel.
Here's how the list of my videos look now:
View: https://imgur.com/a/Hvsnla0
Seeing this breaks my heart so much. I was able to go back to my catalogue and see the slow process, thinking how I built all of this with modest resources, lots of work and not the best health, and now half of my best videos are butchered, while I live with a constant panic attack thinking they will come back for more. It's been 2 months since it happened and nothing has changed so far but im always very anxious and having my health decline fast because of this.
Anyway sorry for the long rant but I have no one to talk to. Im hoping there's other fellow youtubers here that understand what this means. Specially if someone got to a certain level of being able to sustain themselves only to get kicked off YPP for similar stuff and if they ever managed to find a solution, even tho im afraid the dream is over and im going back to being depressed and now whenever I think of everything I achieved I will have this bad feeling of how I got so far but I have to keep it secret due this situation. I didn't even request the silver and golden plates since I wanted to surprise my family but now I will never request them because of this. I feel like there's no hope. Once a reviewer sees that big "child safety sexualized" nonsense he will just reject you. And if I delete the videos that are in "Removed" state then I feel like they will not have references to actually check what caused that and see that it wasn't that big of a deal, but again, we don't know if that even if these videos are removed from the public, not pressing the "delete forever" button and leaving them on your Youtube Studio triggers the bot or something into considering that a "relevant amount of your channel" violates the policy as they put it, but then again I pointed at how some dude got demonetized with only 1 removed video out of like 40. I have even less videos so I cannot afford deleting stuff randomly, specially when I depend on like 5 videos that pull most straffic to the site. So damned if I don't and damned if I do. There's no way to know what to do here.
Sorry again for the big post but I had to get this out of my chest. Thanks to anybody that reads this.
What's even more mind breaking is that there is people right now making money from my animations that had millions of views since some have viral reaction videos to them. They are adult youtubers having fun watching the videos, proving this stuff can reach older audiences and entertain them too. So how im not supposed to at least make income from these? I spent months on a single video and now im making no money while people that spend 10 minutes reacting to them are free of any trouble. There's even reaction videos to some of my deleted videos, even some by a family where a parent and his kid are having a laugh and entertained by the videos, they have comments enabled and monetization while I suffer being told my videos were harmful for children. I have lost all energy to continue. I don't know what im doing. My channel is pretty much doomed at this point. So many years working on this stuff for nothing.
I was told I can re-apply in 3 months, however, what im supposed to do? If I delete the "Removed" videos clicking the "delete-forever" thing, assuming there's no way to make YT revert their decision, and if re-apply in 3 months, would that be enough? Or do I have to delete even more stuff? How do I know which ones? deleting a video takes an huge emotional toll to me, every video reminds me of the period of time of months working on them, and you may be deleting videos unnecessarily since you don't know which ones are supposedly causing the global demonetization.
What gives me some hope is to think that if I just delete the videos that are in "Removed" mode and re-apply in 3 months it will be enough, but at the same time im afraid YT works in mysterious ways and they will reject it again for the same reason, which is puzzling since you are not told what videos actually cause this problem. They are still promoting my videos that are ok, the ones that are most loved by the audience are being recommended along the other channels on my niche. I thought my views would plummet the second I got demonetized and the channel would fade away but surprisingly it's surviving quite good after being butchered out of a relevant amount of videos and after being demonetized, picks a decent amount of views and subs. But they want me to delete these same videos that keep the channel alive??
And what's even more confusing is that the videos first got marked as "made for kids" then short after got deleted due "child safety", i've got like 4 other videos that survived in "made for kids" mode, the rest are in normal state. The channel is dead wether they mark the rest or delete the rest of my best videos.
There is really no point in trying to pivot to other niches once you build a big audience doing a certain niche, unless you are an influencer that they will follow. Im a faceless channel. My videos never had any copyright problems or reused problems, I was on a good track until this happened.
Trying to send the traffic to other platforms is also useless. The money is made in YT ads. I have already looked at this.
This whole thing is just unfair. There's people with very young audiences out there like "Pencilmation", that are uploading weird stuff on their thumbnails, and make a fortune with 20+million subs, same for "HuluWuluAnimations", "Plush Universe" and many others, and not only that, but gameplay spam channels like PrestonPlayz, BriannaPlayz, NicoBlox, Maizen... these channels are watched by kids under 13, but they never get any "made for kids" stuff, meanwhile they randomly ruin animator's channels. This is evident and obvious since like I said before, there's people making money right now from my videos by reacting to them, while im the one that actually spent months on them crafting each one and I get this treatment. I think this whole COPPA stuff was aimed to demonetize and demoralize animators so the big studios get all the watchtime.
This is taking a toll in my mind and im really losing it. I see no point in doing anything. I have no idea what to upload anymore since there's no clear way to predict if something will get marked as "made for kids", and/or deleted due "child safety".
I wanted to share my experience and hopefully someone has gone throught this. Im really losing it man this is crazy. I finally found a purpose in life and I had something to show for, now I have to hide it forever since I couldn't explain how im not making any income from these views, which is the first thing people ask. "Wow, you got X subs, look at this cool viral video, you must be making a decent living". "Nope, my videos are not monetized because they are "harmful/sexualized containing minors"". WTF. This is the message that shows up when I open YT studio on the monetizing section. Im not joking:
View: https://imgur.com/a/qHN2QB6
How im supposed to show my channel with this message? This makes me want to end it. How im supposed to wake up like this? being told I did that by YT? this is too brutal. What are they thinking with these messages?
Btw the appeal to the overall demonetization where it says you can send a video was also rejected, and I didn't send a video, the staff on the chat support said that the chat log would be the appeal itself. Now if you click on the blue appeal button on the monetization page nothing happens, it just opens the guidelines.
View: https://imgur.com/a/U4msPz6
And here's the state of my "Removed" videos:
View: https://imgur.com/a/0z4AU42
As you can see it has both the kids stuff and child safety at the same time.
I don't want to sound overdramatic but I would be lying if I didn't say what I feel.
Here's how the list of my videos look now:
View: https://imgur.com/a/Hvsnla0
Seeing this breaks my heart so much. I was able to go back to my catalogue and see the slow process, thinking how I built all of this with modest resources, lots of work and not the best health, and now half of my best videos are butchered, while I live with a constant panic attack thinking they will come back for more. It's been 2 months since it happened and nothing has changed so far but im always very anxious and having my health decline fast because of this.
Anyway sorry for the long rant but I have no one to talk to. Im hoping there's other fellow youtubers here that understand what this means. Specially if someone got to a certain level of being able to sustain themselves only to get kicked off YPP for similar stuff and if they ever managed to find a solution, even tho im afraid the dream is over and im going back to being depressed and now whenever I think of everything I achieved I will have this bad feeling of how I got so far but I have to keep it secret due this situation. I didn't even request the silver and golden plates since I wanted to surprise my family but now I will never request them because of this. I feel like there's no hope. Once a reviewer sees that big "child safety sexualized" nonsense he will just reject you. And if I delete the videos that are in "Removed" state then I feel like they will not have references to actually check what caused that and see that it wasn't that big of a deal, but again, we don't know if that even if these videos are removed from the public, not pressing the "delete forever" button and leaving them on your Youtube Studio triggers the bot or something into considering that a "relevant amount of your channel" violates the policy as they put it, but then again I pointed at how some dude got demonetized with only 1 removed video out of like 40. I have even less videos so I cannot afford deleting stuff randomly, specially when I depend on like 5 videos that pull most straffic to the site. So damned if I don't and damned if I do. There's no way to know what to do here.
Sorry again for the big post but I had to get this out of my chest. Thanks to anybody that reads this.
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