Hey, Doug Walker here. We are doing a video addressing why are videos have only been fifteen
minutes here on YouTube. And as some of you have noticed, keeping on eye on YouTube recently.
A lot of YouTubers, some very well known some not so well known have suddenly have had their
channels deleted or they have been having their monetization taken away. That means
they can't get paid for the videos they have been putting up. And a lot of them are saying
they are not getting answers why this just happened out of no where and it's a big questions
mark and YouTube has given no answers. And you might be thinking at home, YouTube, that's
a big organization, clearly they must have done something wrong. Speaking as people who
have been hit by this as well, they are not lying. This is a real thing and we don't usually
go into behind the scenes business stuff because we feel its not professional to do but this
kinda effects you too. So this is one of the reasons we are talking about this. On January
5th, at 8:57 PM we got an e-mail from YouTube saying that monetization and other account features have
been disabled. Two hours later we were finally able to get into our account to see what apparently
affected us. We found out that we had a strike from Studio Ghibli, the japanese company,
not the American Disney part of it against, My Neighbor Tortoro. The Disneycember review
of My Neighbor Tortoro which is completely in Fair Use. Which by the way you can see
on three separate other YouTube channels right now they haven't gotten hit. Now you might
be thinking Oh, thats the reason. Well, we have gotten strikes before on League of Super
Critics, we have gotten two and we have never lost these features before. When you get one
strike your videos are limited down to fifteen minutes which is what's going on now but not
these other features. So as of now with one strike, the only features we can use is thumb
nails, we can make custom thumbnails and the wonderful YouTube editor which I'm sure you
all know how fantastic that is. So you might be thinking, maybe they changed the rules
on strikes. Well, if they did they never told anyone about it. So, we went to YouTube's
partner support and we said what's going on here, why can't we monetize our videos. We've
gotten strikes before and we resolved them. We are coming up on three weeks with no answer
from YouTube what so ever. And if you look on their site, they say they will respond
in one business day. One business day now means three weeks. They forgot to tell you
that but were letting you know this right now. And going it could be even longer than
this. Ok, what if it is the strike, we can't get a clear answer. We just want to clear
as much as we can. We tried to go through the traditional route, we tried to file the
DMCA counter claim which you can do through YouTube. Ever single time we did this and
we did this for a couple days we always got a server error. So then we contacted YouTube
asking why we are getting a server error. This is a separate email from the one saying
why we getting monetized. They sent us a form email again, not able to talk to a person
and they said don't use that route use these other means. So, they are already acknowledging
this other route doesn't work. Whatever, we have other means. One was a link we can't
use because we have these limitations. So the same day we sent them an e-mail the manual
way because they said that's one of the ways you can do it. We put down all the information
needed, as well as overnighted a physical letter to make sure this was getting to them
because that was an also a way they said this would work. Both said we were missing information.
We looked over it, we followed it to a T, nothing was missing. So, we had to think outside
the box because clearly this is making no sense. We have two managers on the YouTube
account, one logged in to do the way we tried and one of the other managers logged in. The
other manager that logged in got a completely different form. 100% different. And to make
things even better, they said the characters, the amount of letters you can put in has to
be 250. You can't go over that. So, you have pretty much the length of a tweet to make
your legal case about why you're in the right. The counter DMCA notice is in effect after
going through this incredibly broken system. But we have yet to talk to a human being and
were coming up on three weeks of getting no mentization. No money for any of the videos
that we put out. Past and present, all videos we are making no money right now. The only
way we have gotten any contact to YouTube, like a human being, is with contacts from
other people. And even then nobody has given us a straight answer, nothing has been consistent.
Nobody knows whats going on. Ok, so this is the part that concerns you. We have over 350,000
subscribers on YouTube. We've been around for years, if this can happen to us with no
explanation with no reason why and weeks of no pay, no explaining any of it. What chance
do people have putting up their family videos have. What chance do we people just starting
off, monetizing or trying to make a living or whatever have against this. Everything
being done right now is through the algorithm. There is no human being looking over any of
this and it seems like the only way to get attention and get them to do something is
to escalate it. A lot of YouTubers are now making videos saying this has happened and
we don't know why because they were trying to do the same thing, they were trying to
go the professional route of trying to talk to YouTube. Trying to get answers and none
of them have been answered. Even the channels that were lucky enough to be put back, if
the channel was deleted and put back, if they weren't getting monetization, they were put
back YouTube has never explained what happened or what they could do to not have this happen
again in the future. That is Scary! For years we put up with this idea that YouTube makes
it where you are guilty until proven innocent and that's not just, but at least they made it
clear these are the rules this is what you have to do. We didn't like following them,
but it's still in the grand scheme of things a young business when you really look at it.
So many changes are happening and studio heads are trying to bully them so they are making
changes and trying to figure it out. Fair enough, but now nothing is making sense. Rules
are just being made up and they are not being explained to us. And this is for anybody,
not just big channels. Anyone can get taken down. These rules and everything was put in
place to stop people from running full movies and pirating stuff. Fair enough, you have
to do what you have to do. But now we are at a point where it's just abuse. People are
not looking at these anymore, they haven't looked at them for awhile, but now they aren't
even following their own rules. If you have any videos on YouTube right now, make sure
they are backed up. Make sure you have them stored somewhere on your computer because
they can disppear at any point and they don't have to tell you why. You know companies make
mistakes and its fine. Were a company and we make mistakes, everybody does but when
your doing this and your now doing anything to change it. Your not explaining why, your
pretty much let everybody know that this is how we do things and this is right. This is
just, we can do whatever we want. If we want get rid of someone showing their family movies
and we don't have to explain why, we can do it now. It's totally ok. If we want to take
someone who is making a living now on YouTube, as many people are and get rid of their monetization,
just destroy their entire channel, it is totally fine with them and they dont have to tell
you why. So, that's the reason you haven't seen many Steven Universe Vlogs, Bum Reviews,
because we have been busy with this. We have gone almost three weeks with no pay for any
of our videos. And in my opinion, until we get monetization back on this channel and
these other channels or channels that have been deleted are put back or at least given
an explanation or anything, it's pretty much saying YouTube can do whatever it wants and
we are ok with it. Just as we make money off of YouTube, YouTube makes money off of us.
We were in a situation we were forced to accept and we accepted it because the rules were
in place and they seemed to follow it. But now their not even following there only rules.
YouTube's support is no existent right now. Right now you need to be very cautious, we
can't say how because even we don't know how. You need to be very careful. Here's the thing,
anyone can change. They can come around and say hey, this mistake happened we are fixing
it and we are on top of it. Here is the new rules and we will do our best to follow it.
We have been changing our content a lot in order to fit YouTube's rules. And even doing
that now hasn't worked. But we aren't told why because we aren't even told what the rules
are anymore. YouTube's system is not only broken but its made to be abused. We are still
going to do Nostalgia Critic videos because we know you guys really want to see those
even though we aren't making anything on them right now we are still going to do them. Stuff
like Steven Universe's and the Bum reviews, real thoughts, we got to hold off until we
figure this out. Until we are allowed to make a living again. YouTube's system right now
is run on automation. Everything from small complaints to stuff that can shut a channel
down. No human being is looking at them until its escalated so thats why we are forced to
talk about this. Like I said, there is a whole mountain of other issues that's going on with
YouTube that we can't talk about here because we only have fifteen minutes. We just wanted
to keep this focused and give you guys fair warning what is going on with YouTube right
now and how your channel is at risk. So, hopefully this gets resolved, hopefully YouTube wakes
up and starts treating people and channels fair and just again because their lively hoods
are dependant on it now. You can't just wait weeks and weeks with no answer when people
are now dependant on this to make a living. We are going to have links below to other
channels that are going through similar issues right now because there are quite a few. We
hope this gets resolved, we hope that so many of these problems that are going on with YouTube
get fixed, but as of now we are forced to deal with a broken system and this is the
best we can do. This is the best we are allowed to do. So guys thats about it, an explanation
of whats going on and be cautious. Be very very cautious. Back up all your videos if
you have them on YouTube and just be very very careful. I will talk to you guys later,
take care.