On YouTube, the easiest way to get your channel terminated automatically — no appeal, no strikes, no warning, nothing — is live streaming. In fact, I'm amazed that in 15 years I've live streamed thousands of hours on YouTube, and I never had one unlucky thing happen on a live stream that caused me to get terminated.
But recently, a friend of mine told me his brother's channel got terminated automatically from a live stream they were doing that was unlisted. In that unlisted live stream, they were just sharing with their community in Discord — so again, not publicly visible unless you had the link. What he said happened was that some guy in the Discord server may have had some adult websites open on his Windows — not even pictures, just the URL — that popped up into the live stream at some point. Or maybe there was a single picture at some point, or a single cam girl might have popped up very briefly. And here's the crazy thing: almost instantly, his channel — which was monetized and had thousands of subscribers — was taken down and terminated, with no strikes and no history of policy violations. The appeal was automatically and immediately rejected. The key lesson for me to take out of this is that it's better not to live stream.
My Feet Pictures Lesson From Twitch
Live streaming has bitten me before too — well, I've had a few things happen in the past on different platforms, never anything on YouTube. But on Twitch, I had a similar thing happen a few years ago where I didn't know about this one adult fetish. I was asking my audience for ways I could make money online, and they said, well, I don't know — and then they were telling me about selling pictures of my feet, which I was like, I don't understand what y'all are talking about. What do you mean? That's ridiculous. So then they gave me some websites, and I went to some of those websites, and I was a bit naive. But literally, they were just pictures of feet. Some of the feet had some things going on. And my channel got taken down on Twitch automatically. I don't think anyone sat there and reported it.
If This, Then Termination
What you need to understand is that these platforms have AI running all the time, scanning your channel and scanning when you're live. And the AI is a yes/no: is this there, or is it not? It has certain things it's trained on, and if it sees those things, it has rules. And the rules say: if this, then channel termination. There's no room for error. There's no "whoops, sorry about that." It's if this, channel termination.
Now, perhaps if you were a giant YouTuber and you were live streaming, and somebody accidentally slipped something onto your channel, you might have a chance to get it back. But the problem is, realistically, for smaller YouTubers, there's very little incentive to put human intervention into the equation and get your small channel back. You've already flagged the AI algorithm, and the way I see it, they just figure there's not much incentive to give you a second chance.
The Week Bots Took My Channel Down
I had a channel get taken down before. It was mass reported by bots, and it took me a week to get the channel back. My appeal had no action on it. It took a while, but I kept badgering Team YouTube on X. I kept mentioning that I've had 15 years on YouTube, and I only had one single community guidelines violation across more than 20 channels and thousands and thousands of videos — only one single violation. And this was a clear case where bots reported my channel for illegal activity, and there was no illegal activity. I pissed off someone who has a bunch of bots, and they just attacked my channel with them.
Here's the thing, though: that all happened while I was live streaming. I've never had a channel taken down just off of posting videos. So I'm actually a bit hesitant and skeptical of live streaming at this point, because it seems like it's easier to attack a channel with bots when you're live. YouTube sees that there might be some urgency to a live stream, whereas with a regular upload, there's time for the AI to run through and scan the entire video before you publish it publicly. A live stream is immediately public, and it seems to me YouTube is a bit harsher with things that happen on live streams, because a live stream could violate policies and go out there before they get a chance to take it down.
Run Your Videos Through AI Before You Upload
So going forward, I don't think I'll be doing much live streaming on YouTube. Even though I've live streamed for years, and so many people live stream, it's just the variability — the ease of having something happen while you're live. And here's the thing, too: if you're doing videos, you can run your videos through AI first. I'm trying to see if Gemini could actually scan my video frame by frame. Right now, it can scan my transcript word by word, and before I upload any of my videos to YouTube now, I check them through the AI. Because I'm already doing it anyway — I'm already generating the transcript, and I'm already generating blog posts on my website at jerrybanfield.com — I might as well just scan it for community guidelines violations. And there never are any, but it gives me peace of mind knowing that I've already scanned it before it's even uploaded and hits YouTube.
It also seems to me YouTube is a bit more forgiving if you go to upload a video and they give you a strike on it at upload time. Not that that's ever happened to me. The only strike I ever got was on a video that was more than a year old — I think it was two years old. They retroactively struck a video from two years before: after I changed the metadata, the algorithm ran it through again. At the time I uploaded it, it wasn't a violation — or at least it wasn't detected — and then two years later, they re-scanned it and flagged it. So what I do now is run my video through AI first, then upload it, and then leave it alone after that. Just in case they ever change anything in the matrix, my videos don't have to get re-scanned by a new person or a new AI that potentially has different rules I might not even have known about when I uploaded.
Videos Beat Live Streams for Most YouTubers
I know I was actually making videos earlier this year talking about how great live streaming was. And live streaming can certainly be great for revenue if you have a big community that drops a bunch of super chats, or if you're doing eight-hour-long gaming streams and people watch an hour or two on average. But for most YouTubers, videos are the way to get an audience, to get views, and to monetize. Almost everybody who comes to jerrybanfield.com and, for example, buys the chat membership or drops a tip found me through videos. I just built this new jerrybanfield.com chat, too.
You've got the ability to talk to me and schedule a call if you're a YouTuber. I would suggest it especially if you just had something like a copyright strike, a community guidelines strike, or you got your channel terminated — talk to me. I've built millions and millions of followers and over a billion impressions across all different platforms. I've gotten a terminated channel back before, and I've seen other people through all kinds of stuff and helped them. You can schedule a Zoom call with me in advance, or if I'm live, you might be able to jump in and talk to me immediately as well.
And if you're going to have a business system online, generally, getting views on videos is faster. The other day, I filmed 120 YouTube shorts in two and a half hours. Meanwhile, if I'd done a live stream instead, the most views I would probably have gotten on any of my channels is a couple thousand views on that stream. So which would you rather have: 120,000 views from a thousand views per video on average, or a thousand views total? That's the choice.
Look at MrBeast — he almost never live streams, which to me is a good example. With everything he knows about YouTube, he almost never does a live stream. He tested and did some live streams in the past, but I imagine for his own legal safety and such, he almost never live streams anymore either. Good learning opportunity.
So be very careful. You need to have total control over your screen and total control over what's being said. You could even get banned and terminated from YouTube playing video games or having a guest on. I'm amazed at all the times I streamed games on YouTube, given everything everybody said in my chat and in my Warzone lobbies. Maybe the AI wasn't as thorough back then, but it seems pretty thorough now. You've got to make sure everything being said, all the time, is within the YouTube terms. And uploading videos is the way to do it — it's the way to be certain of that. I share a lot more lessons like this one in my YouTube Coaching playlist.
If I figure out a way with Gemini to scan my video frame by frame to make sure nothing in the frames is an issue — and with a talking-head video, there's pretty much zero chance there's an issue — that's one more layer of certainty. Because you don't want to put all this work into your YouTube channel and have it terminated because of one dumb accidental thing happening that you were simply caught unaware of.
If you enjoyed this, come over to jerrybanfield.com. I'm there, and I have deep experience with YouTube. You can chat with me — one single payment — and talk with me on demand when I'm available, or schedule a Zoom call with me in advance. I've also got a community: join the Jerry Banfield Family on Skool, and I will help you be a full-time YouTuber or make your hobby much more effective.
I hope to see you on jerrybanfield.com soon.