This happened to a friend of mine last May ane he still can't figure out what went wrong.
First he got this letter.
We'd like to inform you that due to repeated or severe violations of our Community Guidelines (https://www.youtube.com/t/community_guidelines) your YouTube account has been suspended.
After review we determined that activity in your account violated our Community Guidelines, which prohibit spam, scams or commercially deceptive content (https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2801973?hl=en).
He had never used his YouTube account, didn't even know he had one. He has a gmail account so he assumed youtube probably came with that but his gmail has two factor authentication and nobody attempted to log into his account via gmail so it couldn't be a hacking situation.
He had never logged into YouTube, never posted a video or even viewed one, let alone made a single comment. When he wrote in to ask what in the world that was all about they never did tell him. Just wrote this instead ---
Hello,
Thank you for your account suspension appeal. We have decided to keep your account suspended based on our Community Guidelines and Terms of Service. Please visit http://www.youtube.com/t/community_guidelines for more information.
Please do not respond to this email. Replies to this email will not be processed. Please refer to our Help Center for more information.
Sincerely,
The YouTube Team
First of all you are dealing with people (usually hired from overseas with no brain power) who just click a button & could care LESS about what you have written.
That's the problem with people these days. No respect, no healthy communication skills, just buttons & ignoring.
Nothing irks me MORE than mindless IDIOTS & people who are passive aggressive & use ignoring as a weapon.
I feel for your friend, especially since he didn't do anything.
The same thing happened to me with my YT account years ago.
I had one video on there from years ago long before EVIL GOOGLE bought them out.
Never had any problems, barely got any views, but it sold a product meant for 18+
Without warning they accused me of violating their T&C.
I was FURIOUS with their accusation when I did nothing wrong.
They also ignored me & didn't answer my question.
This is the PROBLEM with Google & people should STOP just looking at YT as being EVIL & look at the company as a WHOLE.
They control what you see in your search engine (if you use them still which I do because I've tried the others & didn't like them) & they control whether your business makes it on page 1. It used to be fairly easy to make money online before, now it's VERY difficult.
If they find out you are against them they can just push a button & your site is GONE. There goes your business & livelihood.
Who knows what else they do that we are unaware of.
The bottom line is they have way too much power & they control the net & the net is made up of US.
Just like back when MS was taken to court because they stopped us from being able to use other products on our computer.
When's the LAST time the US gov't has gone after Google??? NEVER!!!
But other govt's have.
That's what I got too. They won't look into my appeal because it was for copyright claims, yet Ic an't know what or from who... no ability to counter.