ASMR has been part of the YouTube platform for over a decade now- I was a child when I started watching ASMR content to help with stress, insomnia, anxiety and general relaxation so I feel especially qualified to comment on YouTube’s belief that this content isn’t user-friendly for all.

The lack of regard for the ASMR community within YouTube’s guidelines is appalling considering the size of the community and ever growing popularity of the genre. There are thousands and thousands of ASMR creators, some of whom have millions of subscribers and ASMR videos across the platform have amassed billions of views. However, many creators are constantly demonetised, given strikes or even having their channels terminated (sometimes without receiving the three strikes YouTube’s own policies state will be given before termination). 

These decisions are often made by YouTube’s AI based technology and a lot of the time, once reviewed by a human, are overturned but since this process can take days, creators are losing out on income due to errors made by YouTube and are not compensated in these cases. 

There are some ASMR triggers especially targeted by YouTube’s guidelines such as ‘mouth sounds’ which are an extremely significant part of the genre. When human reviews are completed on videos which have been flagged as going against guidelines, an advantage should be that this allows for context to be taken into consideration and human judgement to be used to determine whether or not content is sexual/has those intentions however, it seems that this context is absolutely irrelevant to the YouTube team and the presence of mouth sounds is, most of the time, enough to penalise a video even if it is blatantly clear that the content is in no way inappropriate. This applies to multiple other triggers including something as simple as the sound of breathing. 

It is an extremely harmful assumption for ASMR creators that this content is inappropriate, an assumption that YouTube persistently perpetuates by marking videos as going against “sex and nudity” guidelines despite the fact the creator can be fully clothed showing 0 skin and making it completely obvious that the content is to trigger ASMR only. It is also an issue that affects female creators almost exclusively despite the fact male ASMRtists make the same content which indicates an underlying issue of sexism and how women are viewed by YouTube compared to their male counterparts. 

YouTube are also massively inconsistent with their enforcement of these guidelines and what can actually be considered an issue. Sometimes the exact same video can be posted twice and be removed with a strike one time but remain completely monetised with no issues the second time. Human reviews on videos can also have different outcomes depending on the reviewer (and their understanding of ASMR content). Or creators who are putting out sexualised content can continue to do so without any repercussion but other channels creating ASMR with no inappropriate intent can be banned from the platform. This not only leaves creators open to suffering from people with malicious intentions who may want to mass report the videos of a specific channel but also causes confusion and a lack of the direction and clarity needed in order to know what they should or shouldn’t post. 

Many ASMRtists on YouTube are creating this content as a full time job and are therefore having their main source of income impacted and sometimes completely taken away by these issues and it shows a lack of care/concern by YouTube towards its users (a theme that is also clear from most interactions with “creator support”). With more and more channels getting unfairly terminated and videos being constantly demonetised recently I believe it is finally time to attempt action. 

ASMR was created with the intention to help people and provide a safe space for relaxation. As a community, we are asking that YouTube revise their guidelines or their review processes in order to reduce and prevent the strong bias against ASMR content and the issues faced by ASMR creators. So please sign this petition and also raise it with Team YouTube, creator support, CEO (Neal Mohan) etc. as best you can in order to help those that have helped us sleep all these years!❤️