On January 31, 2019 YouTube disabled monetization for our channel, but they never officially informed us about it, never sent an email, never warned of it prior, there were no guideline breaches we were aware of, other than a couple of copyright claims, part of over 900 videos we uploaded over the years. This came unexpected without any warnings, after we committed six years of work to this channel, YouTube can do better.
The status YouTube page however informed us vaguely about, reused content, stating, in most cases, you can’t reupload somone else’s content unless you get permission first.
This is remarkable since we did post content with proper permissions or licenses for almost all the over 900 videos we uploaded since 2012. A petition for YouTube should enable monetization for Climate State, has since be signed by 728 people from around the globe.
Because Climate State is the largest not corporate owned climate science channel in the world, we often get asked to upload content for other entities, or people grant us permissions following our inquiry.
A support page further explains,
Reused content. This is content that doesn’t provide significant original commentary, or educational value. It may also mean that we’ve identified that large portions of your channel either completely match other content, or are noticeably similar. Examples include:
- Third-party videos stitched together with minimal to no changes
- Third-party content compiled without a narrative
- Content uploaded somewhere else first
- Content uploaded many times by multiple users
Because monetization suspension is so vague, we deleted almost 300 videos from our channel, many videos by NASA, which were only marginal edited, or content posted with proper license but we knew were not only shared by us. We are aware that other channels upload our videos, but we have no control over those channels.
Since March we request a channel review, waiting now over four months but YouTube is not finishing their review.
We ask YouTube to communicate to us why exactly they disabled the largest privately owned climate science focus channel of their ecosystem, and why our channel review is stuck for months.
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Because we want to continue creating climate change related content we ask people for support, we are currently dependent on public welfare only and our Patreon‘s.
