YouTubers entire strings can be demonetized by mistake for months

Samantha Lee / Business Insider

• A lot of YouTubers has been mistakenly demonetized over the last year, the platform robbing their videos of the opportunity to make money while retaining them on the site.
• YouTubers, which has a lot of fans and who is counting on making money on the platform, protested vocally against the phenomenon in order to recover the monetization.
• Three YouTubers who were mistakenly demonetized told Insider that, when they were demonetized, they had no opportunity for immediate appeal or opportunity to recover their lost profits, which sometimes represent thousands of dollars.
• Visit the Business Insider home page for more stories.

Jake Sandt is like all normal Missouri students: going to class, eating at Panera and maintaining an active presence on social media. The 18-year-old stands out from his peers with his YouTube channel JakeyonceTV, where he mainly runs videos that recap and "spread tea" on the hit reality show "Drag Race".

The Sandt channel, which now has more than 63,000 subscribers and over 19,200,000 viewers, has raised enough money to finance his university journalism and buy gifts for his family, he told Insider. . But then, the rare financial security that Sandt had created in universities via YouTube had collapsed in an instant.

Sandt, like many creators in recent months, has found himself demonetized without warning, unable to continue reporting income on which he had relied on the content machine that he had built . But Sandt did not dodge the rules or conditions of use of YouTube: it was mistakenly demonetized for weeks without any possibility of recovering the lost profits.

The life of YouTubers is disrupted without notice, and they can not do anything to join the company.

Jake Sandt (left) and Queen "Drag Race", Naomi Smalls (right).YouTube / JakeyonceTV

Sandt first learned that his channel had been demonetized by email.

"My heart has fallen," he says.

According to Sandt, YouTube has alleged that it violates their policy prohibiting the reuse of content already present on their platform. The platform still maintained its publicly posted videos on the site, despite content regulations that Sandt had violated. YouTube just deprived him of his ability to make money out of it.

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Sandt, who often includes modified clips of "Drag Race" and other online shows in his commentary videos, says that all of its content is transformative and falls under the US law on fair uses, but that Sandt does not. Did not have the opportunity to appeal the decision rendered. by YouTube.

Unlike the three-position copyright system used to patrol copyright infringement on the platform, YouTube's monetization system issued no warning before suspending creators for 30 days before being able to present a new demand, thus depriving them of their ability to earn money for a long time. of time.

For Jake, the decision was almost catastrophic for his finances. "It changed everything," he said. "I felt like I had to keep everything, I did not go, I did not really buy, my parents helped me a lot."

Other creators have had similar experiences.

Alex Beckham, the creator of "Man on the Internet," a channel broadcasting video game lyrics, said that he had also been demonetized without notice. "It just happened," he says. "I was sent an email saying," Hey, you can not broadcast live anymore ", and 20 minutes later, another email came to explain that Oh yeah, we removed the monetization because of the reused content.

"It was a very stressful day where I did not sleep very well," recalls Beckham. "I thought" Oh my God, oh my God, how am I going to pay people who work with me for all these videos? "I'm not really a lone wolf, I've got a cast and an important crew. "

The creators were left screaming in the void of YouTube

When youTuber, 78, David Hoffman, appears on the screen in his videos, he usually uses this backdrop, which is at home. Hoffman was demonetized for nine weeks before YouTube realized that it had inadvertently prevented him from earning AdSense profits, which accounted for one-third of his revenue.David Hoffman

David Hoffman, a 78-year-old YouTuber, turns the content of his decades-long film career into YouTube videos that make up one-third of his revenue. Like Sandt and Beckham, Hoffman has been demonetized for what a YouTube support email called "duplication." He wrote physical letters, made calls and repeatedly sent an email to the company's support team.

"I understand that you wanted to know more about why your monetization on your channel was disabled," wrote a member of the YouTube support team to Hoffman in an email. "Unfortunately, we can not provide you with specific details about the guideline that your content has violated and we also can not tell you where your channel is not compliant. YouTube YouTube Partner Programs. "

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Although the live person on the other end of the support team told Hoffman that he was no longer eligible for YouTube's partner program, the overall decision was considered an error more than two months later, and Hoffman was finally monetized again without ever receiving any explanation. .

"I was depressed," Hoffman told Insider. "I did not want to do it anymore, I felt that the enormous power of the network was falling on my head without warning and without recourse, almost as if you had been fired from your job and dismissed from your office. and you do not know why and you can never talk to anyone. "

Many YouTubers felt that their only choice to challenge demonetization was to make the problem public.

"Undertale the Musical", a photo of Man on the Internet, has been viewed more than 10 million times on YouTube.Screen Capture / YouTube / Man on the Internet

Sandt and Beckham also found that communications with YouTube about their demonetization were confusing and opaque – which led them to turn to public calls for help.

"The only way to get an answer from them is to make it public, otherwise they do not respond," said Sandt, who spoke publicly about the incident on Instagram Live, YouTube and Twitter, where he tagged @TeamYouTube – YouTube's main method of paradoxical communication with aggrieved creators.

The only response from YouTube was to point Sandt in the direction of the page that explains the decision.

Nearly three weeks later, YouTube tweeted to Sandt that demonetization was a mistake.

Similarly, Beckham made a video explaining his situation and posted it on Twitter, also mentioning @TeamYouTube and sending him by e-mail. He was called back within 24 hours.

His high-level tactics worked. "I do not remember any other time when monetization was recovered as quickly for a channel," Beckham said.

"I was expecting to open the door to a wear and tear war with YouTube," said Beckham, who has nearly 280,000 subscribers. He estimates he lost between $ 150 and $ 200 during his brief suspension.

YouTubers does not have the ability to recover lost money by mistaken demonetization

Despite the many accidents caused by Google and YouTube, the creators have not been offered the opportunity to recover their lost funds.

A YouTube representative told Insider that the company would not reimburse the creators for the money lost during a bad period of demonetization because it can only calculate the amount of revenue generated by the channels.

In an attempt to correct the mistakes made, YouTube has launched a new pilot program that will allow creators to submit a video call internally, in response to demonetization decisions, explaining their "process of creation "and the implications of their chain. The platform says that it will come back to them within seven days.

Prior to the pilot project, there was no specific way to appeal the demonetization decision outside of a new application within 30 days, to make stories and tag @TeamYouTube, or to contact the general YouTube support email. The new YouTube program apparently tries to transfer calls already launched on the platform to an internal process.

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YouTube does not specify whether it uses an algorithm at any point in the demonetization process, but points out that at some point in the cycle, users examine marked accounts. For Sandt, Beckham and Hoffman, a live person looked at each account and mistakenly determined that they had reused the content without giving an original spin, a YouTube representative told Insider.

Whether the error is algorithmic or not, Sandt, who claims to have lost at least US $ 1,000 during his demonitized period, says that experience has taught him a valuable lesson: " do not trust AdSense, do not do it. " As a result of the demonetization, Sandt has been striving to diversify her revenue streams, creating a Patreon where users can pay to access her videos sooner.

"No matter how large this audit is because they can simply remove it," Sandt said. "No matter how much effort you have made and the quality of their system, you need to have backup plans, you need to have multiple platforms."