Solved "This channel has reached its review limit" Dropped.

[JimmyTehFreak]

Woke up this morning to see my entire channel unlinked - AGAIN. This happened last summer when I was asked to supply proof that I had permission from myself to post my own content on my own channel. It took them TWO MONTHS to relink me and, instead of offering to recoup any of the lost already-earned revenue - they bumped my percentage up.

Checking my Freedom Dashboard I have this notice
"This channel has reached its review limit and we cannot accept it due to deemed violations of YouTube’s Community Guidelines or Policies."

We had been partnered since January 2016 and currently have one (false) copyright strike that is a week from being removed following counternotification, and a trademark issue that the claimant has agreed to withdraw (email submitted to support). There are no other issues pending, age-restricted content or violation notices in my youtube account, copyright page, gmail or notifications.

Why does this continue to happen with your network and why does it only seem to happen on months where we've had our largest growth - the last being last summer RIGHT as we had peaks in views, minutes watched and new subscribers? This was a record month for minutes watched and subscriber growth - so its only natural freedom takes the money they already pocketed and drop our account so they don't have to pay out the creator.

 

[LW]

Support will mainly have to look into what has happened here as they have access to more channel Data than us Forum Members.

Just to make sure, is your channel actually unlinked from Freedom! or is it just the Freedom! Dashboard messing up? Please double-check the Partner Status on your YouTube Features page just to be sure. As of Freedom! just unlinking you because they want to keep their money:

• Freedom! usually only unlinks accounts violating YouTube's policies or Copyright policies, in your case it looks more like a Copyright unlink.
  
  • Freedom! does not get money from channels with Copyright issues so no earnings were withheld.

 

[JimmyTehFreak]

Support will mainly have to look into what has happened here as they have access to more channel Data than us Forum Members.

Just to make sure, is your channel actually unlinked from Freedom! or is it just the Freedom! Dashboard messing up? Please double-check the Partner Status on your YouTube Features page just to be sure. As of Freedom! just unlinking you because they want to keep their money:

• Freedom! usually only unlinks accounts violating YouTube's policies or Copyright policies, in your case it looks more like a Copyright unlink.
  • Freedom! does not get money from channels with Copyright issues so no earnings were withheld.

We are no longer partnered and YouTube states monetization as disabled.
Channels with copyright issues don't necessarily go unmonetized channel-wide. The rest of our channel was earning and ads were still served. Our copyright issue is with a video that was taken down before publishing - and considering that takedown was almost two weeks ago and is over halfway through the counternotification process - they waited a hefty amount of time to decide to just burn the house down.

This happened to me last summer as well, after two MONTHS of hassling support (which goes to show their 24-36 hour response time is crap since it took several weeks and personally finding twitter accounts of support staff assigned to the case to get a single reply) the issue they decided to drop us over was whether "I had permission to post __________ content from the owner" - which was me. I even had to make a video to prove to them I owned my own series.

 

[zeke morgan]

Woke up this morning to see my entire channel unlinked - AGAIN. This happened last summer when I was asked to supply proof that I had permission from myself to post my own content on my own channel. It took them TWO MONTHS to relink me and, instead of offering to recoup any of the lost already-earned revenue - they bumped my percentage up.

Checking my Freedom Dashboard I have this notice
"This channel has reached its review limit and we cannot accept it due to deemed violations of YouTube’s Community Guidelines or Policies."

We had been partnered since January 2016 and currently have one (false) copyright strike that is a week from being removed following counternotification, and a trademark issue that the claimant has agreed to withdraw (email submitted to support). There are no other issues pending, age-restricted content or violation notices in my youtube account, copyright page, gmail or notifications.

Why does this continue to happen with your network and why does it only seem to happen on months where we've had our largest growth - the last being last summer RIGHT as we had peaks in views, minutes watched and new subscribers? This was a record month for minutes watched and subscriber growth - so its only natural freedom takes the money they already pocketed and drop our account so they don't have to pay out the creator.

We are no longer partnered and YouTube states monetization as disabled.
Channels with copyright issues don't necessarily go unmonetized channel-wide. The rest of our channel was earning and ads were still served. Our copyright issue is with a video that was taken down before publishing - and considering that takedown was almost two weeks ago and is over halfway through the counternotification process - they waited a hefty amount of time to decide to just burn the house down.

This happened to me last summer as well, after two MONTHS of hassling support (which goes to show their 24-36 hour response time is crap since it took several weeks and personally finding twitter accounts of support staff assigned to the case to get a single reply) the issue they decided to drop us over was whether "I had permission to post __________ content from the owner" - which was me. I even had to make a video to prove to them I owned my own series.

I'm sorry to hear that your channel has been unlinked - however if this was because of a deemed violation of guidelines / policies then Freedom / YouTube does have the right to remove your channel from the MCN - while this can be annoying it is there to protect the MCN legally against any lawsuits pending from encouraging users who have strikes / claims on their channels - that's why you will almost always see a channel that has strikes / claims against it being dropped by any MCN. If this was due to a claim, even a false claim the MCN still has to protect itself and you to a certain extent from this, as for this happening when you have your highest growth that seems purely coincidental, as LW001 has already noted if this was brought about by a community guideline / policy breach then it is rather likely that YouTube will ask for the oustanding revenue from your channel to be repaid.

In regards to your channel being unlinked earlier and Freedom not offering to recoup you any of the revenue - I have to say this is their standard practise as if you are unlinked they no longer have access to your individual monetisation logs as such they wouldn't be able to know what amount is outstanding to you. As such offering a increase in future earnings is one way to compensate for this - I haven't heard of any other MCN offering this to partners who get unlinked then rejoin. If you do wish to talk about this matter further then I would say either submit a ticket to the support team via www.support.tm or email them at [email protected] , if needs be send me a copy of the ticket ID via a PM and I can ask one of the people I know in support to look into this for you.

 

[JimmyTehFreak]

Hi Zeke,
Thanks for your response. I have already submitted a ticket (#246573). While it makes sense that an MCN must protect themselves legally - how can they claim that I have been deemed to have violated YouTube's guidelines and policies when my account standing page on youtube says that, under community guideline status, that I am in good standing and have no guideline strikes.

Additionally - DMCA claims happen, especially for review, news and critique channels - this isn't new. There have been strikes in the past - and all get sorted and dropped - in this case why would the network pull the link halfway into the dispute process?

And for the earlier unlinked issue - company policy or not - the MCN admitted that the lost revenue and unlink was due to an error on their end and in no way was I deemed to have been at fault. The compensation that they ultimately offered was a bump in revenue share to "help recoup the losses".

 

[zeke morgan]

Hi Zeke,
Thanks for your response. I have already submitted a ticket (#246573). While it makes sense that an MCN must protect themselves legally - how can they claim that I have been deemed to have violated YouTube's guidelines and policies when my account standing page on youtube says that, under community guideline status, that I am in good standing and have no guideline strikes.

Additionally - DMCA claims happen, especially for review, news and critique channels - this isn't new. There have been strikes in the past - and all get sorted and dropped - in this case why would the network pull the link halfway into the dispute process?

And for the earlier unlinked issue - company policy or not - the MCN admitted that the lost revenue and unlink was due to an error on their end and in no way was I deemed to have been at fault. The compensation that they ultimately offered was a bump in revenue share to "help recoup the losses".

Hello Jimmy

Thank you for getting back to the query some promptly and setting out your query in a nice and easy to read manner - this is greatly appreciated. In regards to your first part, I have no idea why this would not show up against your account, I do know that sometimes it takes a while for the YouTube dashboards to change following this, and that it could of been more to do with the policy side of things rather than the community guidelines per say. Unfortunately I have no way of checking on this for you, though if you wanted some more clarification on this you might be able to contact YouTube about this directly and they should be able to shed some light on this.

I completely agree that DMCA claims can happen and are not exactly new, I know I've come across plenty of people that have been claimed against whilst helping out on the forums. As for pulling the plug during the dispute process I can only hazard a guess about that one - It could have been that YouTube informed them of a the 'violation' and they pull the plug prematurely or that they were not aware you were disputing this. Again I can only guess about this.

As mentioned before once a channel become unlinked with the Freedom Network, they (the Network) no longer has access to your payment or revenue information, as such they are unable to guesstimate your earnings to pay back to you - hence why they increase the revenue share for the future in order to recoup earnings you may have lost.

Once again I do apologise for any inconvenience this issue may have caused you, also I shall pass on your ticket info to a support agent I know, and hopefully this should be sorted out as quickly as possible for you

 

[JimmyTehFreak]

I have never, EVER, had the means or ability to contact YouTube directly. That has never been an option offered to me and emails only get form-responses - usually having nothing to do with the email I originally send. Youtube has never had reason or obligation to respond to small channels. Considering MCN's don't do any premium ad revenue work or increased search visibility work as they had in the past - the only reason to ever give a portion of your revenue to an MCN is for protection - which they stopped doing in 2014 as content creators now handle this themselves.

It's bothersome that this MCN, who - lets face it - can only really act as a liaison now since they offer nothing else in exchange for a cut of your revenue - can (and in my case has - twice) sooner drop you before communicating with you over issues - pull the plug instead of working with me to better generate for them.

Thank you for forwarding the info on - though I have no confidence whatsoever that anybody will get to it sooner than if it was just standard procedure - since that would enforce bad business practice - I can also hope that your contact is not Pierre - as he burned the bridge last time by ignoring my ticket for three weeks and only picking up the slack after repeated attempts to get a new agent assigned.

 

[zeke morgan]

H

I have never, EVER, had the means or ability to contact YouTube directly. That has never been an option offered to me and emails only get form-responses - usually having nothing to do with the email I originally send. Youtube has never had reason or obligation to respond to small channels. Considering MCN's don't do any premium ad revenue work or increased search visibility work as they had in the past - the only reason to ever give a portion of your revenue to an MCN is for protection - which they stopped doing in 2014 as content creators now handle this themselves.

It's bothersome that this MCN, who - lets face it - can only really act as a liaison now since they offer nothing else in exchange for a cut of your revenue - can (and in my case has - twice) sooner drop you before communicating with you over issues - pull the plug instead of working with me to better generate for them.

Thank you for forwarding the info on - though I have no confidence whatsoever that anybody will get to it sooner than if it was just standard procedure - since that would enforce bad business practice - I can also hope that your contact is not Pierre - as he burned the bridge last time by ignoring my ticket for three weeks and only picking up the slack after repeated attempts to get a new agent assigned.

Hello again Jimmy

I understand where you are coming from regarding the MCN, they really should do 'more' for a channel in regards to protection and should try and act as an advocate on behalf of channels regarding any claims / strikes or violations that may arise. While this may be an ideal concept, and certainly something I would aspire to if I owned / operated a MCN I don't think it will catch on, and could lead to MCN's being bogged down dealing with everyone's queries / issues. In regards to them taking a cut of the revenue, every MCN has to make money somehow, even YouTube's own partnership programmes sets you on a 55% 45% split.

As for my contact no this isn't Pierre, and I'm sorry to hear that he has burned bridges with you in the past, and not dealt with your previous support query. As for passing your ticket info on I can't say whether or not this makes it get seen to quicker or if it has any effect on it getting dealt with quicker but its as far as I can handle them, and I think it helps bringing it to the attention of the support staff

 

[JimmyTehFreak]

In an update, after a rude dealing w/ Freedom's twitter account (seriously, does no one check these staffers resumes) the account that was considered "review limit reached" is now under review again. It's a shame it still sits behind my subchannel that's been under review since January and there's consistently 0 agents actively reviewing channels according to the Information portion of the page - but it's a start. I've begun looking at other MCN options while they pretend to figure this out.

 

[LW]

In an update, after a rude dealing w/ Freedom's twitter account (seriously, does no one check these staffers resumes) the account that was considered "review limit reached" is now under review again. It's a shame it still sits behind my subchannel that's been under review since January and there's consistently 0 agents actively reviewing channels according to the Information portion of the page - but it's a start. I've begun looking at other MCN options while they pretend to figure this out.

I hope you'll be able to get this resolved or join another MCN. Regarding Twitter I don't know what was so wrong about their statement and what was so disrespectful in it. They just told you to be patient and contact Support. I don't know what would be wrong there, at least they actually replied... Leaving the Tweet here for future reference:

https://twitter.com/mcnfreedom/status/846649356543414272

 

[JimmyTehFreak]

I hope you'll be able to get this resolved or join another MCN. Regarding Twitter I don't know what was so wrong about their statement and what was so disrespectful in it. They just told you to be patient and contact Support. I don't know what would be wrong there, at least they actually replied... Leaving the Tweet here for future reference:

https://twitter.com/mcnfreedom/status/846649356543414272

When pointing out that the last time I had to deal with them you waited two months - maybe don't tell me "waiting more is good for you" - that's what was rude and disrespectful about their statement.[DOUBLEPOST=1491724307][/DOUBLEPOST]Update - strike retracted, freedom notified within an hour - but 5 days later ticket is still being ignored. Freedom's 24-36 hour support, something they used to BOAST about as a selling point - has been absolutely awful for a long time now and I wonder if the higher ups even know somethings wrong.[DOUBLEPOST=1491855105][/DOUBLEPOST]As for the **** awful support ticket system - I've been bounced through 4 "assigned" members of support - the latter two not even bother to type a message - leading me to believe this is exactly like the summer of 2016 where I kept being assigned to Pierre even though he hadn't signed on in months and was offline due to computer issues - as he claimed on twitter the very second he was confronted.

I was told on twitter that my ticket has been reassigned to a "specialist department" - and then support.tm goes down and has been inaccessable for the day.

If you can't operate a good business - don't pretend to. Don't boast about non-existent support and work on your weaknesses.