My monthly losses from the disabled monetization feature amount to approximately $40,000-$50,000. Not to mention the frozen funds ($40,000 ) that YouTube is holding and will most likely not return to me. Since, two weeks later, not a single real person has contacted me. I still have to pay salaries, and I'll keep paying them because I'm not going to destroy everything I've spent so long building. We'll get through this somehow. Most channels have been active for over 3-4 years without a single violation, yet YouTube can disable monetization without warning and even take away a whole month's worth of honestly earned money. Thanks, guys, for the excellent service and how you treat your creators. This is exactly the level of communication you'd expect from a corporation with $60 billion in annual revenue. @TeamYouTube @YouTubeInsider

YouTube is breaking insane revenue records for 2025 - $60 billion.. But instead of making creators lives easier or rolling out useful updates, they're leaving the platform to a broken AI moderation system, turning our lives into a nightmare. This "Inauthentic Content" wave must stop.

I get the skepticism towards automation, but there's a massive gap between AI-generated slop and our production. My team is 30 real people: artists, minecraft content-creators (blockbuster mod), scriptwriters, and editors. We build every video from scratch. In a niche where it's often tempting to chase views with horror-bait or weird romantic themes, we've made a conscious choice to stick to family-friendly videos. Calling manual creative labor inauthentic just because it's optimized for a format is a joke. Where does this gatekeeping end? It's easy to judge from the sidelines, but dismissing a legitimate business model just because it doesn't fit your aesthetic is pure elitism. We're talking about Minecraft and SHORTS. Also, can we stop labeling everyone with multiple channels as an automation owner? If managing a large team and a complex pipeline is automation, then every animation studio in Hollywood is an automation business. There's no slop in providing jobs for 30 people and grinding every day.

If anyone is interested in an update on my situation regarding "Inauthentic Content" and the demonetization of 8 channels: All channels are still without monetization, except for one where the appeal was accepted. Keep in mind that the first channel was disabled back on March 26. My losses from this whole situation amount to approximately $100,000. I still haven't received any response from YouTube, and my MCN hasn't received a response from YouTube either. YouTube support basically ignoring us. By the way, TeamYouTube messaged me on X 3 weeks ago and said they'd opened a case for me - but in the end, I was told that I already had another case open and that I needed to wait for a response to that one. Do I even need to mention that I've been waiting for a response to that other case for a month now? @TeamYouTube @YouTubeCreators

YouTube's "Inauthentic Content" policy is hitting established channels with no warning. What's happening: Channels with 4 years of clean history are being demonetized overnight Appeals are getting rejected even when creators show full production workflows No specific explanation is given, just the label "Inauthentic Content" Creators can't reapply for 90 days Teams and salaries are at risk in the meantime

> I wrote my first post three weeks ago about demonetization due to Inauthentic Content > YouTube messaged me on X and said they opened a case for me > In that case, they told me I already had a case open, even though five new channels had been affected since then > I posted updates about this situation every few days > The first case has been pending for three weeks without a response @TeamYouTube thank you for your excellent communication and willingness to resolve your creators issues..

People have been asking me how I managed to submit a successful appeal for the "Inauthentic Content" demonetization. I got only ONE channel back, but the exact same appeal failed on 7 of my other channels. It honestly feels like pure RNG right now. But I'll break down exactly what I did, just in case this helps someone else out there. 1. Show your face in the first 30 seconds and within the first 30 seconds, show your channel page with the URL, as well as your Earn page with the URL. Your script should look something like this: Hi, I'm the creator of the *...* channel - here's the link to the channel and monetization page. My monetization has been disabled due to "inauthentic content". I want to file an appeal because *...* - (this is very important: explain why your content is authentic, how much time and effort you put into it, how many people worked on the video, who exactly this content is intended for, and why people appreciate your videos) 2. Next, I demonstrated the video production process. Since we create Minecraft videos, I included clips from our minecraft content creator, our editor (showing his workflow in Premiere Pro), and our thumbnail maker, so he could demonstrate how he creates thumbnails. Four people appeared in my appeal, and their faces were clearly visible. 3. I also added subtitles to the appeal, right on the screen. Make sure they are clearly visible, especially if you speed up your video, as YouTube's AI may misinterpret the words in your appeal. 4. My appeal lasted 4 minutes and 59 seconds. I also sped it up so that I could demonstrate the video creation process in as much detail as possible. 5. Keep in mind that we're actually creating the videos from scratch. Each video has to be recorded in Minecraft first and then edited in Premiere Pro. 6. Even the most well-prepared appeal has only a 10% chance of being accepted. As you can see, we've had 1 out of 8 appeals accepted. I wish you all the best during these difficult times, and I hope you find my post helpful.

My appeal was ACCEPTED - this is the second time I’ve filed the exact same appeal.. I literally just reused the old one! Thank you so much. BUT WHAT ON EARTH IS GOING ON? btw, 7 other appeals on other channels were rejected

The day didn't even get a chance to start properly. The biggest channel, where they approved the appeal literally 3 weeks ago - got demonetized AGAIN. They also rejected the appeal on the animation channel with Shorts. -$55,000 in just ONE DAY.

If you want to see how completely insane and pointless YouTube AI moderation and demonetization for "Inauthentic Content" has gotten.. Just watch this video from Steven - @stevenyjsong We're COOKED. This is literally a Black Mirror episode.

The most frustrating part about this whole AI moderation mess, the "Inauthentic Content" demonetization, and all the channel bans is this: YouTube isn't fixing the real problems and isn't punishing the real violators. I'll explain below. Let's start with one of the oldest issues: fake strikes. If you've been on YouTube for a long time and ran multiple channels in different niches, you know exactly what I'm talking about. Fake strikes are used both to extort money or simply to ban a competitor channel. Of course, you can appeal these strikes, but it will ultimately ruin your channel anyway, since they could remove dozens of your videos at once and keep doing so indefinitely. We even had our own channel taken down by fake strikes from competitors back in 2020, and we were never able to get it back. Another sad thing is the big companies that create actual brainrot content and exploit romantic themes popular characters to hook kids. Back in the day, they used to make straight-up sexual thumbnails and racked up tens of billions of views (remember Elsagate?). You've definitely seen these channels - the ones where they hire actors to run around in costumes of famous cartoon characters and film absolute trash. Almost all of these channels belong to just a handful of companies that employ thousands of people. And every single time, they somehow avoid bans and demonetization. Oh yeah, they might say they demonetized some of them. But you know what these companies did next? They started using their own copyrighted tracks in the non-monetized videos, then filed copyright claims on their own videos so they could monetize channels that were supposed to be demonetized. YouTube obviously knew about it. By the way, I should also mention that because of these fake strikes and mistaken bans from YT, a lot of people desperately looked for protection and ended up in shady MCNs. Those networks would then scam them out of money or take a huge cut of their revenue for doing basically nothing. But that's a whole different story. I also want to mention a terrible policy: taking away creators earnings from the previous month when monetization is disabled. I understand when they take money from those who re-upload TV shows, movies, anime. But when a creator has been earning money for several years without any violations, treating them this way is OUTRAGEOUS. I could also talk about the trashy ads that pop up on youtube from google ads (kids can see them too), the aggressive pushing of premium, TV ads have become even more aggressive lately even though YouTube is breaking profit records - for example, making $60 billion in 2025, or the heavy promotion of Shorts, even though it's not the most useful format.. especially when YouTube keeps talking about "protecting viewers, especially children." But instead of solving these real problems, YouTube keeps creating new ones for its creators.

demonetizating funny videos

Many channels related to animation, minecraft, and so on were also affected. YouTube is completely ignoring the situation, ignoring DMs, ignoring emails, and sending out the same AI-generated responses to everyone.

I can't even imagine how many hundreds of millions of $$$ creators have lost in the last few months because of YouTube's broken AI moderation. And throughout all this time - zero comments from YouTube's CEO, zero comments from the YouTube team. It's a complete betrayal of their creators. I just don't understand what's going on.

Today, our 7 channel was disabled from monetization due to Inauthentic Content. The funny thing is that they disabled these same channels back in December for "harmful content involving minors" - of course, that was nonsense, and we even managed to get monetization back through appeals without any problems. But this time, it seems the last remaining human support staff in YouTube have been laid off, and only AI agents are left. And unfortunately, they're broken.

YouTube Ask Studio rated our channel as Elite (9.5/10) At the same time, YouTube's AI moderation disabled our monetization due Inauthentic Content I have no words. @TeamYouTube

And then they'll disable your monetization because of Inauthentic Content 🤦‍♂️ Don't forget how YouTube promoted the “Remix” feature - so you could create shorts from your long videos. And then the creators suffered because, as a result, their monetization was disabled.

Why my views start exploding every time YouTube disables my monetization? Are they just trying to break me mentally?

Even during hard times, you still gotta find ways to lift the mood. This "Your channel is 2 years old!" celebration from YouTube popping up right next to "Channel no longer monetizing" is just too funny.

Today, monetization was disabled on this channel due to inauthentic content. I haven’t even received my first payment, even though I need to pay my employees’ salaries. We have three artists who draw animations by hand, as well as an editor and a minecraft content creator and scriptwriter. Many people have written to me saying that this is a really high-quality channel and praising our team. I don’t understand how I’m supposed to continue my work on YouTube if they disable my channels’ monetization every single day. I pay people’s salaries, I have a large team, and YouTube disables my channels without warning and takes away the money I’ve earned, literally driving me into debt. I can’t imagine what small creators are supposed to do if even I, a major partner with a huge team, can’t get in touch with YouTube support. Channel Link - youtube.com/@maizencartoon?s… @TeamYouTube