Our Policies
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
Our Policies
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.
Our Community Guidelines and Advertiser-Friendly Content Guidelines are what enable us to strike this balance.
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.
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.
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.
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.
We provide creators with an array of products that help them to decide how to manage their channels.
The privacy and safety of creators on YouTube is important to us, and we provide a range of tools and resources to support them.
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.
