YouTube is looking to help creators avoid a wider range of penalties with their uploads, by expanding its pre-publish checking tool to cover more types of potential violations.
YouTube’s pre-publish checks tool, which it first launched back in 2021, analyzes the content of your upload for a range of potential violations, including copyright concerns and ad suitability, before you publish your clip.
That helps creators avoid any penalties that are likely to be applied to their content after publishing, which can be great for maintaining awareness of potential copystrikes and related issues, which can not only reduce your money-making capacity, but can also see your channel hit with penalties.
And now, YouTube’s expanding its pre-publish checks to community guidelines violations as well, adding another element to its proactive alert system.
As explained by YouTube:
“We know how much effort you put into your content, and that sometimes, Community Guidelines violations are unintentional. To help you avoid the frustration of a removal or strike, we’ve been testing a new feature that checks for some Community Guidelines violations in the video upload flow, similar to Copyright and Advertiser-friendly Guidelines checks.”
YouTube says that the updated checking process will now also include Community Guidelines violations for some users (at this stage), giving creators the chance to update their videos before upload if they want to be safe.
“If the video is flagged by our automated systems, you’ll have the option to make changes to the video before publishing. You can also choose to publish the video anyway as-is, but the content may be restricted and could result in a Community Guideline strike if a violation is confirmed after it’s live.”
It’s still in testing, with YouTube working to refine these recommendations, so you may not see it in your checking options as yet. But the idea is that this will eventually enable creators to avoid more potential penalties and restrictions as a result of violations within their content.
YouTube says that the system is not perfect, and there will still be some elements that it can’t catch, so creators do need to maintain awareness of its guidelines and rules when posting. But for instances where you may be hit with a penalty without realizing that you’ve violated the rules, this could be a good early catching system to help you avoid frustration and impacts.
“Our goal is to give you more control and transparency into how YouTube’s policies apply to your videos so you can make more informed decisions and avoid potential issues in the future.”
Again, it’s in limited testing as YouTube refines the system, but it could be a handy checking process in future.
You can read more about YouTube expanded pre-checking process here.
