YouTube's mission is to give everyone a voice and show them
the world — and openness and free expression are at the heart
of this. Our platform is a place where a broad range of
perspectives are encouraged, and we don't shy away from
disagreement and debate.
jump to a section
jump to a sectionOur Policies
How Community & Ad-Friendly Guidelines work
Our policies help us maintain a responsible business that
viewers, creators and advertisers can rely on in order to
continue to thrive on YouTube.
As with any system, we sometimes make mistakes. That's why
appeals
are an important part of our processes. Creators are notified
when their videos are removed due to policy violations or when
they may be suspended from the YPP, and can appeal if they
disagree with our decision.
Content that violates our Community Guidelines is flagged by a
mix of
automated detection and human reporting —
most of which is detected automatically — and we go to great
lengths to make sure that violative content isn’t widely
viewed, or even viewed at all, before it’s taken down.
Exceptions can be made when content has a clear educational,
documentary, scientific or artistic
(EDSA)
context, including content that is in the public interest.
Brands rely on us to protect their business interests when
they're advertising on YouTube.
To help support this, we have a set of ad-friendly guidelines
that creators in the
YouTube Partner Programme (YPP)
need to follow in order to have ads served on their channel
content and earn a share of the revenue.
How we support creators
Since 2007, we've been paying eligible creators every month
through our revenue-sharing model, the
YouTube Partner Programme.
For a creator to be eligible for the YPP, they must meet a
higher bar for what they share on YouTube. Creators have to
follow the
YouTube monetisation policies
and we review each applicant's channel before admitting them
to the YPP. We also demonetise videos that violate our
advertiser-friendly guidelines, and suspend creators from
the YPP for repeat offences. With this model, creators have
a long-term incentive to reinforce YouTube's safety and
follow our policies.
We also provide creators with an array of tools to manage their
content and communities:
Manage Experiences
Channel guidelines help creators to set what kind of
conversations they want to have on their channel.
Creators can hold potentially inappropriate comments for
review, hide certain individuals, block words, assign
moderation privileges and more.
How YouTube Partners with Industry Experts to Combat Abuse
Content that's meant to praise, promote or aid violent
extremist or criminal organisations is not allowed on
YouTube. We rely on many factors – like certain government
and international organisation designations – to determine
what constitutes criminal or terrorist organisations.
We're also a founding member of the Global Internet Forum to
Counter Terrorism
(GIFCT), where we work with other tech companies to keep terrorist
content off the web and provide training and other resources
to smaller companies facing similar challenges.
Explore more
New tools to protect creators and artists
How we're helping creators to disclose altered or synthetic
content
Testing new ways to offer viewers more context and information
on videos