YouTube to roll out ‘second chance’ feature for banned creators

In a company blog post, the YouTube team said, “As the heart of the creator economy, YouTube provides an incredible opportunity for creators to build not just an audience but a business. There are now more than 3M channels in the YouTube Partner Program, and over the past four years alone, we’ve paid out over $100B to creators, artists and media companies. Given the scale of the opportunity, we know that our long-held approach of enforcing lifetime terminations can be difficult for creators. Our approach is to allow creators to appeal a termination decision if they think we’ve gotten it wrong. Appeals are evaluated based on a number of factors, including whether the policy in question is retired from our Community Guidelines. The majority of appealed decisions are upheld, meaning many creators reached the end of the road. We’ve heard loud and clear from our creator community that they want more options to return to YouTube. So we’re happy to share that we’re introducing a pilot program to offer some qualified creators an opportunity to rebuild their presence on YouTube. Starting today, some previously terminated creators will have the opportunity to request a new YouTube channel. We know many terminated creators deserve a second chance – YouTube has evolved and changed over the past 20 years, and we’ve had our share of second chances to get things right with our community too. Our goal is to roll this out to creators who are eligible to apply over the coming months, and we appreciate the patience as we ramp up, carefully review requests, and learn as we go. Not every type of channel termination will be eligible.”