How getting banned from YouTube was the best thing that ever happened to me
Yes, you heard that right, my YouTube account has been banned for life and yes, this incident has actually changed my life for good.
TL;DR
The key takeaways from this experience are:
- You only have 1 chance to appeal so if you blew that up, you had officially broken up with YouTube, no question asked.
- If you are a heavy YouTube user like me, chances are your life is about to get better.
Disclaimer
- This post is, by no means, trying to disgrace or question YouTube and/or Google’s technology and the ability to operate its business. In fact, Google is one of a few companies that I really admire for their culture and mission to change the world.
- Instead, I will focus on how much impact it has on my life and what I have done to overcome this. Hopefully, the post will offer a little insight into how giant tech companies (and their AI) are controlling and defining our lives.
- All the events and stories shared here are 100% real and not exaggerated. The only intents are to share this unique experience and to give hope to people whose accounts also got banned without any clear reason.
What happened?
As I was watching videos from my favorite channels on a lovely afternoon a few weeks ago, I noticed that my account has been signed out auto-magically. Little did I know that YouTube had decided to ban my main account, together with all the linking ones, from using its services forever.
I thought that luck was on my side as I quickly found a helpful little appeal form asking me to explain myself and to provide any supporting information (as if I know what was going on).
Now, this is the exact moment I want to stop anybody out there from simply submitting a question (like I did) asking why the account got banned. Instead, please at least do these:
- Make sure that you read this comprehensive guide to get a feel of how serious the matter is.
- Try to recall what you have done that might violate YouTube’s policy (yes, the one that might only be read when things hit the fan). For example, you might have watched some random videos or subscribed to random channels. Or maybe, the account was hacked and I highly suggest changing the password as soon as possible anyway since your Gmail and Drive might be at stake.
- Whatever reasons you can possibly think of, try your best to be concise because the appeal text box has a limitation of only 1000 characters (not words).
Consequences and butterfly effect
To no surprise, YouTube is the largest video platform in the world serving nearly 2 billion users with 400 hours of video being uploaded every single minute. There will surely be bots and fake accounts created for purposes of gaming the system by increasing likes and views which in turn generates more revenue for the channel’s owner. It is simply impossible for YouTube to hire more engineers to investigate each and every account activity out there.
The solution here is to have an Artificial Intelligent (AI) to oversee and analyze all the activities going on in the platform. In case the Intelligent decides that your account looks suspicious (without giving any reason) and should be removed from the system, the implications are but not limited to:
- You will not be able to watch YouTube as a logged-in user with functionalities like commenting, following, or subscribing.
- Even though you can still use YouTube without signing in from the computer, it is not possible to do that using the YouTube app on your phones or tablets.
- Thinking about starting your own YouTube channel and getting paid by displaying Ads? It will now exist only in a parallel world.
- In case you wanted to apply for a job in Google and their background check notices that you have been banned from using YouTube, what would the chances look like now? (seriously, I want to know the answer to this question)
- If you have some memorable videos on YouTube, thinking that you can download it anytime, well, it is time to think again. Once the ban takes effect, not only that you can no longer log in, your channel will also be taken down together with all the videos and subscribers that you may have.
Life for the first 7 days after the break-up
I have to be honest that it was an unsettled feeling for the first 7 days. My mind was filled with never-ending questions:
- Am I a bad person?
- Was my account hacked?
- What exact policy did I violate?
- Can I still get my account back?
- When is my Gmail’s turn?
- In the future, how can I create my own brand without a YouTube channel?
The feeling was as real as ending your 10-year relationship. Your loving partner only gives you a one-sentence explanation and kicks you out of the house without even giving any of your stuff back. It is a dark cold rainy night and you try knocking on the door with all your might to at least have a conversation or maybe say sorry if it may help in any way.
Now, suddenly all my childhood memories flashed back to the time where a little innocent boy got accused by his own brother and cousins of eating the ice-cream secretly. Fast forward a few decades later, the now grown-up man is experiencing the same familiar feelings: confused, helpless, and resentful.
Life after the first 7 days
Congratulations on making it this far after all the negative and toxic thoughts playing inside our little minds. Please remember that any event (even misfortune) happens for a good reason that either teaches us a lesson or pushes us in the right direction.
You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards — Steve Jobs
More free time generated
Suddenly, I felt like days were getting longer and time was flying slower. It is kind of awkward staring at the computer screen not knowing what to do. No more suggestions nor notifications from YouTube.
While the void left behind was unbearable, I just knew that this is exactly the moment for me to make a change.
Instead of watching an endless number of videos talking about the same things, how about creating my own content, to share my life experience with the world? Certainly, I cannot become a YouTuber (duh?), I can become a writer, and Medium is undoubtedly my platform of choice.
To the one who is reading this post, nice to e-meet you here :)
Fresh content on YouTube feed
Ironically, YouTube is still my favorite place to keep myself up with what is happening around the world as well as to acquire more knowledge for my own career. This time, I do it with purpose. I know which channels to look for and which skills I need to brush up.
I get to choose what I want to watch, not what is recommended for me to watch.
A very nice side effect is that my YouTube feed is always fresh and I have been discovering more and more interesting topics that I will never encounter otherwise.
Something that I notice lately is that there are surprisingly a lot of self-made eCommerce gurus out there, promoting their get rich quick courses. It somehow reminds me of the Gold Rush era in the last century where the richest people were the ones that sold the shovels.
Appreciate other things in real life
The nature of my job requires me to spend most of the time online. As a result, I started to ignore the simple things that once kept me happy. It has been a while since the last time I took a slow walk down the street, realizing how bright and clear the sky was. Man, I cannot believe how I have missed all these good things for the past few years trying to climb up the corporate ladder and impress people I don’t like.
The pandemic and rejection are such an amazing combination to reset myself. To be thankful for what I have. To find out a way to give back to the world. No matter how cliché that may sound, those are my exact feelings at this moment. I picked up my phone to call my parents, got in touch with my old friends, and now I am brushing up my writing skills.
Realization moment of how our identities are defined
It is no surprise that our data is being controlled by these big tech companies like Facebook, Google, Apple, Amazon, and now TikTok. So are our identities.
Most of the platforms nowadays require you to link up your mobile number for security purposes. In a way, unless you can change your phone number easily, your real-life identity is directly connected to the identity on the Internet. All of your activities are tracked, from your search behavior, contacts, habits to interests. The list goes on.
If one day, the platform, that you rely so much on, decides to blacklist your identity, what the impact will be on your real-life one?
Please be aware that you are prohibited from accessing, possessing or creating any other YouTube accounts.
If it does not terrify you yet, let’s imagine for a second that your Gmail account is now banned. It means that you will suddenly lose access to countless other sites that you logged in with that email previously. Your prospective employers will have no way to reach you. Your clients will not know where you are. Your long lost friend will lose you forever.
It’s just like you have vanished from the world effectively.
Final thoughts
Wow, such a long roller coaster ride, isn’t it? Just so you know that this can happen to anyone or at least, I am not alone in this journey. Below are similar things that happened to some YouTubers with almost 1 million subscribers.
This experience of being an outlier in Google algorithm is definitely not fun at all but in a way, helps me (and hopefully you) realize that “AI is taking over the world”. I mean, it is quite obvious that Google AI picked up some of my actions and considered it to be harmful to the community. It then asked me to appeal and also rejected my (one and only one allowed) appeal 30 seconds later with a templated answer.
To be fair, I totally understand the use of AI to help detect potential spam in order to keep the platform clean and pure so let us not come to the conclusion so quickly that YouTube is not doing a good job. In fact, managing such a popular platform is not an easy task after all.
So if I am allowed to, my humble 2-cent advice to those big tech companies is to invest a bit more on their support team and maybe let the users know what kind of rules they had violated. It may not be convincing, but at least there is a closure!
