Community Guidelines strike basics

This content is about Community Guidelines strikes. If you're looking for information about copyright strikes, which are different than Community Guidelines strikes, go to our copyright strike basics.

Community Guidelines strikes are issued when our reviewers are notified of a violation of the Community Guidelines. This includes but is not limited to videos that contain nudity or sexual content, violent or graphic content, harmful or dangerous content, hateful content, threats, spam, misleading metadata, or scams.

Sometimes content is removed for reasons other than Community Guidelines violations, such as the safety of the person who posted a video, a first-party privacy complaint, court order, or other non-malicious issue. In these cases, the uploader won't receive a strike and the account won't be penalized.

What happens if you receive a strike

If a strike is issued, you'll get an email and see an alert in your account's Channel Settings with information about why your content was removed (e.g. for sexual content or violence). If you receive a strike, make sure to review the reason your content was removed and learn more in the Policy Center so that it doesn't happen again.

We understand that users make mistakes and don’t intend to violate our policies — that’s why strikes don’t last forever. If you don’t receive another strike for 6 months, your initial strike will expire.

Bad standing

Having a Community Guidelines strike on your account can affect whether your account is in good standing. If it's not, you may not have access to some features on YouTube.

Multiple strikes

If you receive more than one Community Guidelines strike on your account, here's what happens:

First strike: The first Community Guidelines strike on an account is considered a warning. If you don’t receive another strike for 6 months, this initial strike will expire.
Second strike: If your account receives two Community Guidelines strikes within a six month period, you won’t be able to post new content to YouTube for two weeks. If there are no further issues, full privileges are restored automatically after the two week period.
Third strike: If your account receives a third Community Guidelines strike before the first strike has expired, your account will be terminated.

Appealing strikes

If you believe that the content was removed without just cause, you can appeal the strike on your account.

Was this article helpful?