YouTube Harassment Policy: Strikes and Terminations

The YouTube harassment policy is the rule that drama, commentary, reaction and call-out channels live closest to. Most of these channels never cross it; some cross it slowly, one video at a time, and only notice when a strike or a termination email arrives. This page explains what the harassment and cyberbullying policy covers as of October 2026, where criticism ends and harassment begins, why a pattern across videos matters more than any single sentence, and how to appeal with context instead of outrage.

What does YouTube’s harassment and cyberbullying policy cover?

YouTube’s harassment and cyberbullying policy prohibits content that targets an identifiable person with abuse – insults about who they are, threats, exposure of private information or encouragement for others to pile on. As of October 2026, the policy names in particular:

• prolonged insults or slurs based on intrinsic attributes – protected group status, physical traits, or a person’s status as a survivor of abuse or assault;
• content meant to shame, deceive or insult a minor, or that incites bullying of a minor;
• sharing, or threatening to share, non-public personal information such as home addresses, phone numbers, sign-in details or a minor’s school;
• encouraging abusive behavior such as brigading, and targeting someone as part of a harmful conspiracy theory;
• threats, stalking, staged “sting” meet-ups without police, vigilante restraint, and mocking someone’s death or serious injury;
• realistic simulations of deceased or abused people describing their death or the violence they experienced – tightened in January 2024 and again in February 2025, according to YouTube’s policy-update log;
• unwanted sexualization, including non-consensual intimate imagery.

The policy applies to videos, descriptions, comments, live streams and links to off-platform content. One oddity: as of October 2026 the policy page opens with a paragraph that belongs to the impersonation policy – a page error on YouTube’s side. The harassment rules start below it, so don’t quote that first paragraph as the definition.

Where is the line between commentary and harassment?

The line is the target: criticism of what someone did or said is commentary; attacks on who they are, or efforts to get others to attack them, are harassment. YouTube allows exceptions for educational, documentary, scientific and artistic content and for content in the public interest. It names three typical cases: debate about high-profile officials and leaders such as government officials or CEOs of large multinationals, scripted performances such as satire, stand-up or diss tracks, and content that raises awareness of harassment. It also says these exceptions are not a pass to harass – “I was joking” does not count – and that it takes a harder line on malicious insults based on protected group status, even against high-profile people.

Reaction channels face a second layer of rules – copyright and reused content – covered in our guide to reaction channels, fair use and strikes. If insults target a group rather than one person, the relevant rule is the hate speech policy; if the problem is someone’s private details or image, see YouTube privacy complaints.

Why does a pattern across several videos matter?

Because YouTube judges channels, not just clips: repeatedly targeting the same person across several uploads is named explicitly in the policy. Under a section titled “Monetization and other penalties”, YouTube says that in rare cases it may remove content or issue other penalties when a creator repeatedly encourages abusive audience behavior, repeatedly targets and insults an identifiable person based on intrinsic attributes across several uploads, exposes someone to risk of physical harm, or persistently incites hostility between creators for personal financial gain.

At the top of that ladder sits the termination rule. YouTube terminates channels for repeated violations, for a single case of severe abuse, and for being dedicated to a violation:

What happens after a harassment strike?

A harassment violation follows YouTube’s standard enforcement ladder: removal of the content, an email, and usually a warning first. An optional policy training lets that warning expire 90 days after you complete it; another violation of the same policy within the window can bring a strike. A first strike blocks uploads, live streams, scheduling, custom thumbnails, posts and playlist edits for 1 week; a second within 90 days blocks posting for 2 weeks; three strikes within 90 days may result in the channel being removed. Each strike expires 90 days after it was issued, and deleting the video does not remove it. The full mechanics are in our guide to warnings and policy training.

For context: harassment is a small share of channel removals compared with spam, which made up 2,310,181 of the 2,732,395 channels removed in the same quarter. The termination tracker shows the quarterly numbers by reason.

How do you appeal a harassment strike or termination?

Appeal by showing what the video is about – public conduct, with timestamps – and what it is not: no insults about intrinsic traits, no private data, no call to action.

1. Rewatch with the policy openNote every passage that mentions the person: what is said, about what, and for how long. Be honest with yourself about insults on looks, identity or private life.
2. Document the public contextCollect links to the statements, products or events you discussed, and the person’s public role. Debate about powerful public figures is treated differently from attacks on private individuals.
3. Check your calls to actionDid you, the title or the pinned comment send viewers toward the person? If yes, that is the passage reviewers will focus on.
4. Show moderationIf your comment section turned abusive, show that you held or removed comments and when.
5. Appeal in timeStrikes: YouTube Studio → “Channel violations” → “Appeal”, within 6 months. Terminated channel: “Begin Review” → “Start Appeal”, within 1 year, with two appeals in that year as of October 2026. Detailed walkthrough: how to appeal a Community Guidelines strike.

Video: [video URL] – removed on [date] under the harassment and
cyberbullying policy

The video discusses [person]’s public [statements / business conduct /
role as …], specifically [topic]. It does not target intrinsic
attributes: [e.g. “the criticism from 2:10 to 6:40 concerns the refund
policy announced on (date)”].

[If applicable:] The segment at [timestamp] is [satire / a direct quote]
and is labeled as such in the title and description.

The video contains no personal contact information and no call to
action toward [person]. Comments have been [held for review] since [date].

Please review the decision and lift the strike / restore the video.

If your channel was terminated, a short form text is not enough – you need to address the channel as a whole. The Appeal Kit has reason-specific templates in a short and a long version, the 5-part appeal structure and the 12 mistakes that get appeals rejected (€87, one-time, 30-day no-questions refund).

What are your realistic chances?

Honest answer: good when the video is clearly about public conduct and a reviewer can see that within a minute; poor when the channel has a series of videos about the same private person, or when the strongest moments are insults rather than arguments. A harassment termination based on a pattern is one of the hardest to reverse, because one well-argued video does not change what the channel as a whole was doing. In that situation, an appeal that acknowledges specific problems and shows concrete changes is more credible than one that denies everything. If the appeal fails, see what you can still do after a rejection.

What should you not do?

• Don’t make a response video about the person who reported you or the creator you were covering. That is how one strike becomes a pattern.
• Don’t ask your audience to report, comment on or “check out” anyone’s channel.
• Don’t re-upload the removed video with cuts that leave the core insults in place.
• Don’t delete the video before you appeal – the strike stays and the appeal option is gone.
• Don’t move to a second channel while you have restrictions. That is circumvention and risks both channels.
• Don’t write “it was a joke” without showing that the video is clearly framed as a performance.

How do drama and commentary channels avoid harassment strikes?

Build every video around a claim you can source, not around a person you dislike – that single editorial rule prevents most harassment strikes.

• Write the thesis first: what did the person do or say, and why does it matter to your viewers?
• Cut every remark about looks, voice, body, identity or private life that does not serve that thesis.
• Never show addresses, phone numbers, license plates, workplaces of private people or anything about minors.
• Keep a maximum on follow-up videos about the same private individual, and ask whether each one adds new facts.
• No calls to action toward the person – in the video, title, description or pinned comment.
• Moderate comments with held-for-review filters, especially on videos about named people.
• Run a quarterly review with the channel audit checklist.

Frequently asked questions