YouTube has always maintained a “three strikes and you’re out” system for enforcing their community guidelines. Violations of YouTube’s policy against spam, hate speech, sexual content, violence, and more would result in a total of 3 strikes, with punishments like live-streaming bans for 90 days.
Now? Things have changed. In order to make things more straightforward and transparent, the three strikes will be:
- Strike 1: One-time warning + offending content will be removed from YouTube. The offending channel will receive a one-week freeze, and be unable to upload any new content to YouTube, including live streams + any other channel activity. The first strike will expire after 90 days.
- Strike 2 within a 90-day period: 2-week freeze
- Strike 3 within a 90-day period: Channel termination
YouTube promises that their email + desktop notifications on strikes will be clearer, and will provide more info on what policy (or policies) were violated, so you will know at a glance. As always, you can appeal any strikes on your channel. Check out YouTube’s blog post for full details.