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Policies & Guidelines

As a YouTube Creator you’re part of a community, working together to protect the community and keep YouTube a positive place for creating, sharing, and watching. Everyone has a part to play in making YouTube what it is.

Why Policies & Guidelines exist

Our Policies & Guidelines are designed to keep our community of Creators, viewers, and advertisers protected, and to encourage Creators to take responsibility for their part in this effort. They set out what is and is not allowed on YouTube, and apply to all content across the platform.

We believe that a broad range of perspectives is key to a diverse, informed, and engaged society. That's why we have policies and guidelines, ranging from content to behavior to copyright, to help build a safer community for Creators, viewers, and advertisers.

We want you to have the opportunity to create, share, and connect on YouTube. And we want to create a platform where Creators, and viewers—feel protected.

Our Policies & Guidelines are designed to create a space that supports Creators, protects creative ownership, and enables them to realize their potential.

Simply put, without policies there’s no way to maintain a system that allows Creators to make money through their channels. All monetizing Creators who are publishing content on YouTube must already be part of the YouTube Partner Program, and abide by our Community Guidelines and Monetization Policies.

If Creators want to monetize their content by running advertisements, you need to follow our Advertiser-Friendly Content Guidelines, in addition to our broader Monetization Policies.

However, you can use non-ads monetization tools such as Channel Memberships and Super Chat on videos with ads turned off, as long as they adhere to YouTube Partner Program Guidelines.

Read our monetization policies

Read advertiser content guidelines

What policies do you need to know when you’re creating content?

YouTube policies are all about what content Creators can, and cannot, post on their channel. Let’s take a look at some of these key areas, so you know what you need to know.

Community Guidelines help make YouTube a welcoming community for viewers, Creators, and advertisers. Content that violates these guidelines is not eligible for monetization, and will be removed from YouTube.

Read our Community Guidelines

We remain committed to our openness as a platform and to ensuring that spirited debate and a vigorous exchange of ideas continue to thrive here. However, content that threatens individuals, or uses hate speech, is not allowed on YouTube. We believe our Hate & Harassment Policies contribute to our mission by making YouTube a better place for anyone to share their story or opinion.

Our Hate & Harassment Policies have been developed with input by Creators and a wide range of external industry & policy experts from all sides of the political spectrum, and in consultation with numerous experts in subjects like violent extremism, civil rights, and free speech.

Read our hate speech policy

Read our harassment & cyberbullying policy

We have several policies in our Community Guidelines that are directly focused on how we treat misinformation on YouTube.

Read the misinformation policies

Read the spam, deceptive practices, & scams policies

Protecting kids and their privacy is a number one priority for us at YouTube, and we have a number of policies, products and practices in place to help us and our creators to do this.

Explore the YouTube Kids app

Read our Child Safety policies

Learn about supervised experiences

Read what we're doing to protect kids on YouTube

Made for Kids

We ask Creators publishing content where children are the primary audience, or where the video is directed at children, to mark their content as ‘Made for Kids,’ to ensure you’re complying with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) and other applicable laws.

This is important because if you don’t set your content appropriately, there can be consequences on YouTube, or legal consequences under COPPA and other laws.

More on Made for Kids

To start earning money on YouTube, you first need to apply for and be approved for the YouTube Partner Program (YPP). Every creator who meets our threshold can apply for YPP, but you do need to meet some of our guidelines to be considered.

If you’re already a Creator making money on YouTube, it’s important that your channel follows all of YouTube’s monetization policies. These include YouTube’s Advertiser-friendly content guidelines, Community Guidelines, Terms of Service, Copyright, and Google AdSense program policies. They apply to anyone in, or looking to apply to, the YouTube Partner Program -the program Creators must enroll in to earn money on YouTube.

Advertiser-friendly content guidelines

Want to make money on your videos with ads? Then your content must also meet certain criteria. These are the specific rules regarding what content can run ads, run limited ads, or should have monetization turned off.

Our policies apply to all portions of a Creators' content (video or live stream, thumbnail, title, description, and tags). Examples of content that may not be suitable for ads are Violence, Adult content, Harmful or dangerous acts, Hateful & derogatory content, Sensitive events etc.

AdSense

The AdSense program is how YouTube partners get paid for monetizing their videos. Make sure to follow the AdSense policies, and YouTube’s Terms of Service, which are the terms and conditions that all users and Creators agree to when using YouTube.