Alright, so just wanted to clear the air about something – I am NOT banned from YouTube. Sorry for any misunderstanding, and thank you for your attention to this matter! ~DSG
Honestly, this is such a stupid thing to be talking about, but let’s go ahead and clear the air. Here’s what actually happened —
Like many people, I watch stuff on YouTube. Because YouTube is owned by Google, it uses some sort of secret algorithm to feed you content that YouTube thinks you will enjoy. Don’t ask me how it works; that’s YouTube’s trade secret.
For whatever reason, YouTube thinks (or thought) I liked movies. So YouTube recently started showing me TONS and TONS of shorts that contained clips of scenes from movies and TV shows. Like TONS of shorts.
I started wondering – who is posting all these clips, and WHY are they doing it? Many of these clips are short (maybe 10 seconds to 30 seconds) and they aren’t even from movies I’d ever want watch. Many also had weird filters applied to them, so the video looks artificial.
Being a curious person, I decided to try an experiment — I figured I would upload a movie, create some clips from it, and see what happened. Now I am not an expert content creator by any means, but I know one thing — YouTube doesn’t allow porn/nudity, so I intentionally chose a movie from my personal library that did NOT (to my knowledge) contain any nudity — Borat.
If you haven’t seen it, Borat is fucking hilarious. It’s a comedy. And it’s completely mainstream….in fact, guess what? You can watch the whole thing on YouTube, and there are plenty of scenes/clips from Borat already on YouTube.
So, of ALL the movies in my library that should be safe to use for making clips, I figured Borat was as safe as it gets.
But apparently I was wrong. Here’s what happened — I started uploading Borat to YouTube so I could edit it into some clips. I set the upload to PRIVATE, because I knew YouTube would scan it for copyrighted content, and I didn’t want to get a strike. Because the video was set to private, that meant it would never be publicly visible (making the whole video public was never my intent — I just wanted to create short clips from it, which is fair use).
I never got a chance. The upload was scheduled to take about an hour, so I just walked away from my computer and figured I’d mess around with the video after it finished. Instead, I got two automated emails from YouTube which came in while I was away from my desk.
One of the emails said it blocked Borat for copyright reasons. I didn’t care about that because I never actually published the thing; I just uploaded the video file privately so I could then make clips from it. Since I never published the video, I wasn’t worried about getting sued for copyright infringement. Sticking a video (which I legally own) on YouTube without making it public isn’t a copyright issue.
But the other email was kind of shocking — even though I never even published anything from Borat, YouTube decided to NUKE my entire channel for “severe or repeated violations” of their sex & nudity policy. What the actual fuck? No warning, nada. Just my entire channel gone.
Killing my channel for a sex/nudity violation was CLEARLY a mistake on YouTube’s part, so I “appealed” explaining I had no idea Borat contained ANY sex or nudity, much less “severe” sex/nudity. If you Google “does Borat contain any nudity”, this page shows up: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0443453/parentalguide/
According to the IMDB page, it ranks Borat as “severe” in the sex & nudity department, with this comment: “Borat shows two photos of a naked man with complete full frontal nudity.”
Uh, does it? I haven’t seen the movie in years, but I don’t recall seeing any photos of a naked man in Borat. The ONLY sexual part I remember is when Sacha Baron Cohen is wresting with his manager on a hotel bed, but anything graphic is blurred out, so that scene doesn’t contain any nudity at all. So, I figured my appeal would resolve this.
Maybe an hour later, I got another automated email saying my appeal was denied. Hmmm.
Now here’s where things get really strange — the Borat incident happened on January 13, 2026. I honestly was getting bored with posting stuff on YouTube, and I never made a dime from it, so I didn’t care that much.
But then on January 22nd, I got another email from YouTube (sent to an alt Gmail I rarely use). That email said they removed the YouTube channel associated with that alt account, even though I never used it and (to my memory), it didn’t even have any content on it. I think it’s possible the channel may have had some old news clips from some case I worked on, but I hadn’t touched it in YEARS (like 10+ years).
At the bottom of this email (which, again, was sent to an old alt Gmail, not my main one which is davidsgingras@gmail.com) there this odd little line:
When your YouTube channel is terminated, you are prohibited from using, possessing, or creating any other YouTube channels. This applies to all of your existing channels as well as any new channels you create or acquire, or in which you prominently feature.
First of all, how the FUCK do you “possess” a YouTube channel? Second, whoever wrote this stupid email apparently failed to read the CONTRACT that applies to this situation (YouTube’s Terms of Service). That contract says NOTHING even close to what this email claims.
Rather, under the heading “Effect of Account Suspension or Termination”, YouTube has this to say:
If your Google account is terminated or your access to the Service is restricted, you may continue using certain aspects of the Service (such as viewing only) without an account, and this Agreement will continue to apply to such use.
Uh, okay….so if Google nukes your account (which is what happened here), I am allowed to “continue using certain aspects of the service“. Obviously this says ONE thing I could do is “viewing only”, but it does not say anything about me being banned from appearing on anyone else’s channel. I don’t see anything even close to that anywhere in the YouTube TOS.
Also keep in mind — the weird email I got from YouTube seems to say I can’t “possess” other channels, but then it seems to imply that it’s perfectly fine for me to use someone else’s channel, as long as I don’t “prominently feature” in that channel (appearing for part of one video out of hundreds hardly seems like being “prominently featured” on the channel).
Having said all that, it’s worth mentioning this point — I never actually violated YouTube’s Terms of Service, so YouTube actually does NOT have a valid contractual basis for taking ANY action against me, much less action that isn’t allowed under their Terms of Service. Moreover, to the extent YouTube has posted things in place of my old videos stating they were removed because they violated the TOS, that’s simply false. Nothing I ever published on YouTube violated any part of their TOS, and YouTube’s actions are COMPLETELY contrary to its own stated policies about how sex/nudity violations are handled.
Having said ALL that, I’ll end with this — I honestly don’t care about YouTube. I know YouTube gives some people the chance to earn a living, but I was never one of those people. I posted videos to try and help educate people, and YouTube automated system made a mistake and kicked me off.
Yawn. Don’t care. But at least let’s get the story straight.