YouTube suspended my account

This post was written to be a counterweight to all the top Google search results telling people that a suspended (or terminated) YouTube account equals a lost account.

Yesterday when I was putting together a motivational YouTube playlist my YouTube account suddenly got suspended:

It was very surprising because all of my uploads are old and I hadn’t commented on any videos the last couple of weeks.

I didn’t really care that much to begin with because I’ve never been a very active YouTuber. But a few of my videos are important to me so it was still very inconvenient.

Despite reading about a lot of people who sent appeals in vain I deciced to at least try. So I wrote a reply telling them I had no idea why the account got suspended. And that all of my uploads are old and that I’ve never left a comment that can be interpreted as spam or untruthful.

Then the waiting and the uncertainty started:

I really hate waiting and uncertainty. You always ask yourself what you did wrong and what you could have done differently.

I checked my inbox quite often the rest of the day. And 26 hours later I finally received the following:

Hooray, my account is open again!

So what did i learn from this? I learned that:

1. I’m always going to backup my videos. All of them, always. (I did manage to recover a few using Wayback Machine, but it’s such a hassle.)
2. I’m going to stop using this account for leaving US related political comments. Because I have actually left a few "leftist" comments the last couple of months .. These days that’s enough. Maybe a right wing crazy person in the US complained and some how got my account suspended? I don’t know. But I wouldn’t put it past them.
3. Perhaps I triggered some kind of automated defence routine when simultaneously opening a lot of browser tabs with videos i had already seen? (Because I was putting together a playlist.) I would expect that anti DDoS measures like this require hundreds of requests and only blocks IPs. But who knows. In the future I’m going to be a little more careful.

If you experience YouTube suspending your account and you read this, you have my sympathy. Try and think if there could be a reason for it. If so, say you’re sorry and beg for forgiveness and a second chance. If not, don’t be afraid to tell YouTube they made a mistake. Good luck.

And remember to be respectful and polite when typing up your reply. Even if you’re really really angry with them.