I got my YouTube account suspended and lost access to my channel.
That happened because of a single Community guidelines strike.
This video has been removed as a violation of YouTube’s policy against spam, scams, and commercially deceptive content.
This strike claimed one of my videos about PS4 emulators for PC is scam, even though quite the contrary, the video described those emulators being scam and warned other youtubers to avoid downloading any software claiming to be PS4 emulators. Normally, you don’t get banned right away for a single community strike, and can appeal it in the video manager.
This account has been suspended due to multiple or severe violations of YouTube’s policy against spam, gaming, misleading content, or other Terms of Service violations.
The problem is I cannot access YouTube because my access is suspended, thus can’t use any of YouTube features. So the first thing to do is to gain back YouTube access. Follow the link, submit the form stating that blocking you was probably an error and wait. In my case, I waited over 8 hours but finally got my access back.
We have re-reviewed the circumstances of your suspension and have concluded it is appropriate to reinstate your account. This means your account is once again active and operational.
Then I followed the process of appealing the strike, and also asked my devoted viewers to submit feedback to YouTube, telling I’m not a spammer and the video is not scam. Unfortunately, YouTube decided to reinforce the strike, and I got suspended once again! For a single strike!
After further review of the content, we’ve determined that your video does violate our Community Guidelines and have upheld our original decision. We appreciate your understanding.
So I had to follow the process again to get my access back, only now I can’t appeal that video anymore.
Thank you for your account suspension appeal. We have decided to keep your account suspended based on our Community Guidelines and Terms of Service.
So think twice before appealing any community strikes. They will go away in 6 months, but your account won’t be in good standing for this half a year, with some important features temporarily unavailable to you. After you are unsuspended, you will see that all the old videos on the channel are rejected. Don’t worry, the videos will get back to normal after a short while, except for that single one under strike. All this is actually very depressing. I put a lot of effort and most of my free time into my channel. And I spent almost a day struggling with YouTube to prove my innocence – I would be better creating more content, and not fighting bogus claims. Unfortunately, YouTube is so overwhelmed with shitty spammy uploads, that they tend to block legit videos just to be of the safe side. You also can’t open any more accounts or upload more content while you are suspended. You also cannot get content off the blocked channel. This means, any stupid soccer mom who accidentally stumbled upon your video and doesn’t like it because you don’t enforce family values, can with a click of a mouse flush all your hard work down the drain. Other video hostings are also not an option – you really want to be big on YouTube, not some spin-off. So make sure you do regular backups and have them uploaded to a reserve channel on another Google account.