MeLikeBigBoom
Liking YTtalk
Hey there,
I wouldn't normally post something like this if I wasn't a victim of it myself, but Spam404 has lately been rummaging through the internet for even the slightest violations of the YouTube ToS (You can find their website easily by Googling Spam404). Last Thursday, I woke up to find out that they had found an extremely old video of mine that had tags in the description, and subsequently SHUT MY CHANNEL DOWN. There was no warning or notification, I just woke up to all my hard work gone. Luckily, throughout the whole day I fought for my channel back, writing to YouTube about all the unusual things about my termination and how it is false and possibly malicious. That next morning, I had it back, thank god.
Though others haven't gotten it as lucky as me. If you view the takedown list on their website, you will see that every day videos and channels are shut down for simplistic violations like tags in the description, most of which are in very old videos. ONLYUSEmeBLADE with over 600k subscribers was shut down last week, and hasn't gotten it back. ItsCodComedyDaily with 80k, the same thing. Now that I have gotten my channel back, many people have been tweeting me asking if I can help them get theirs back, tons of people every day.
For that reason, I can't stress enough about how important it is that you guys check for any sort of ToS violation in ANY of your videos. Spam404 will search your channel with extreme precision, and in my instance, they found ONE violation, which apparently means that YouTube shuts my channel down instantly.
The most common violation that I've seen is putting tags in the description of your videos. That is an easy thing for Spam404 to spot, and they will strike your channel for it. Simply search for "Tags" in the search bar of your channel, it will also search for that keyword in the description. In my instance, I put the word "TAGS:" before my chunk of words in old videos, so this made it easy to find which videos had tags in the description, and even easier to remove them.
Additonally, like or favorite incentivization is against ToS too. Many channels have been shut down by Spam404 for this. Saying like "At 250 likes I'll post a special video" or "If I get enough favorites I'll do a giveaway" will count as incentivization and can be flagged.
It's a shame that it has to be taken so seriously, for us to be consistently afraid of getting our channels taken away for accidental violations is just wrong. But as of right now, Spam404 is in no wrong by doing what they're doing (Unless they're using bots, which violates section 4-H of the ToS, but that's hard to prove) and for now we just need to play it safe and be 100% sure we're not breaking ANY rules. Make sure to read up on the YouTube ToS, Partner Program Policies, Community Guidelines, and Copyright Policy just to make sure.
If anyone has fallen victim to Spam404, if you get in touch with me I should be able to help out. Be safe!
I wouldn't normally post something like this if I wasn't a victim of it myself, but Spam404 has lately been rummaging through the internet for even the slightest violations of the YouTube ToS (You can find their website easily by Googling Spam404). Last Thursday, I woke up to find out that they had found an extremely old video of mine that had tags in the description, and subsequently SHUT MY CHANNEL DOWN. There was no warning or notification, I just woke up to all my hard work gone. Luckily, throughout the whole day I fought for my channel back, writing to YouTube about all the unusual things about my termination and how it is false and possibly malicious. That next morning, I had it back, thank god.
Though others haven't gotten it as lucky as me. If you view the takedown list on their website, you will see that every day videos and channels are shut down for simplistic violations like tags in the description, most of which are in very old videos. ONLYUSEmeBLADE with over 600k subscribers was shut down last week, and hasn't gotten it back. ItsCodComedyDaily with 80k, the same thing. Now that I have gotten my channel back, many people have been tweeting me asking if I can help them get theirs back, tons of people every day.
For that reason, I can't stress enough about how important it is that you guys check for any sort of ToS violation in ANY of your videos. Spam404 will search your channel with extreme precision, and in my instance, they found ONE violation, which apparently means that YouTube shuts my channel down instantly.
The most common violation that I've seen is putting tags in the description of your videos. That is an easy thing for Spam404 to spot, and they will strike your channel for it. Simply search for "Tags" in the search bar of your channel, it will also search for that keyword in the description. In my instance, I put the word "TAGS:" before my chunk of words in old videos, so this made it easy to find which videos had tags in the description, and even easier to remove them.
Additonally, like or favorite incentivization is against ToS too. Many channels have been shut down by Spam404 for this. Saying like "At 250 likes I'll post a special video" or "If I get enough favorites I'll do a giveaway" will count as incentivization and can be flagged.
It's a shame that it has to be taken so seriously, for us to be consistently afraid of getting our channels taken away for accidental violations is just wrong. But as of right now, Spam404 is in no wrong by doing what they're doing (Unless they're using bots, which violates section 4-H of the ToS, but that's hard to prove) and for now we just need to play it safe and be 100% sure we're not breaking ANY rules. Make sure to read up on the YouTube ToS, Partner Program Policies, Community Guidelines, and Copyright Policy just to make sure.
If anyone has fallen victim to Spam404, if you get in touch with me I should be able to help out. Be safe!
