Last updated on July 31st, 2024
If you think you may have be shadow banned on YouTube, here’s a checklist.
YouTube Shadow Ban Explained
- Being “shadow banned” implies that your YouTube channel has been banned, but they didn’t tell you. Otherwise you would be notified of a ban.
- Who could do the banning?
Well there’s algorithms and humans who run the YouTube platform. Both could conceivably take some action. - Since there are millions of channels, you’re more likely to get banned by the algorithm than a human (unless you’re big).
- What kind of banning penalties (shadow or notified bans) could there be?
a. Artificially throttled views
b. Content not running ads – no Adsense.
c. Content refusing to upload.
d. Content deleted due to copyright (music, movies, etc.)
e. Content deleted due to Terms of Service violation or legal issue.
f. Channel deleted entirely.
g. Not permitted to start new channel. - Assuming you’ve gotten no notifications via email, text message, or within the YouTube system, OK, you’ve not been notified. So “something” is happening behind the scenes. You could say it’s shadow. But is it shadow banned?
- Have you verified your identity via cell phone?
- What if people don’t want to watch your videos?
Statistically, most people don’t want to watch most YouTube videos. After all, 99% of all YouTube channels have less than 10,000 subscribers? - It takes time to succeed on YouTube.
There are amazing stories of people succeeding on YouTube very quickly. But these are amazing stories because they are unusual. - If you’re focused on YouTube shorts, they are very hit or miss. Most die in a few hours.
- If you’re focused on livestreams, it’s hard to get traction unless you’re already big.
- Most successful YouTube channels publish regularly.
- Most successful videos have people watching a significant part of the video. Look at audience retention.
- Maybe someone at YouTube just doesn’t like you, personally, but just didn’t tell you. And they’ve gone out of the way to personally select your channel for harm out of millions of channels. If this is true, I’m sorry. It’s very unlikely, but sure, it’s potentially possible. If so, then yes, you’ve been shadow banned!