Recently, YouTube's terms of service (TOS) have been changed to support the removal of harassment and bullying on their platform. While this seems to be a positive change for YouTube, much more harm is being enacted upon the community. When Google (YouTube) removes a video or carries out some other similar action on an account, that account is likely given a strike.

        A strike lasts three months, and can prevent some "simple" features from being used: monetization of content, uploading videos longer than fifteen minutes, links to external sites cannot be posted, custom thumbnails cannot be set, videos cannot be set to private or unlisted, and live events cannot be set, upon other features. While getting a strike may not prevent all of these features, they are all crucial to most YouTube content creators. This means that a single strike can set back a YouTuber by miles, if he or she is one that does take advantage of these. A second strike prevents content from being posted for two weeks, with privileges being regained if no other reports are issued. A third strike results in your account being terminated. Each strike remains for its full three months, rather than being wiped at once.

        The first issue involving this is YouTube's apparent bias towards the larger YouTubers. While they have a semi-justifiable reason to do so, carrying out little action against them and any TOS-breaking content, YouTube is one platform, with one community, with many fan bases. We all stand on the same platform and accept the same terms, and therefore should be given equal punishment for breaking said terms. Many smaller YouTubers (such as Elvis the Alien or Undoomed, as two examples) are having near immediate action taken towards reports, both of which have seen the darker side of the strikes for simply stating their opinions - yes, stating your opinion is now apparently grounds to be reported by people who disagree. Yet larger content creators such as Leafyishere (I respect Leafyishere himself, though his content and community are both fairly toxic) or Drama Alert have seen absolutely no part of this - even though most of their content revolves around targeting specific people and harassing them for entertainment purposes.

        Another result of the TOS change comes from the "trolls" of the internet. There have been reports of people rapidly reporting content, usually done by multiple accounts or by posting the idea to online forums such as 4Chan, to remove videos for no true reason. This in turn ends with the creator receiving a strike for whatever the reports were for. Google (YouTube) seems to be issuing strikes without necessarily reviewing the videos, or simply the manner in which the reports were filed (several reports rapidly within a short time span, all for the same thing, without any / with few reports before hand) towards the videos. For that matter, there have been issues in the past where Google (YouTube) has flat-out terminated videos or accounts without warning, ones that did not go against either the previous or newly updated TOS, and later reactivated after the community lashing out. This seems a bit precarious, that is, how they are choosing to go about their issuing of strikes and terminations, and the hesitation and discouragement of many possible and upcoming content creators is rapidly increasing.

        With all of this said and explained, YouTube needs to review its own policies and actions taken as of recently. A reevaluation of the terms of service, the strike policy, and the report system are necessary. The TOS allow users to take advantage of the report system, and the masses are being punished - not only the content creators. The strikes should be given more leeway to the system. The first strike should simply be a warning. That is it, plain and simple, to prevent the immediate punch to a YouTuber's usual stream of content. On top of this, to prevent as many false removals and terminations as there have been, there needs to be much more thought and dedication towards the report system. If a video is reported numerous times, the review process should be delicate and thorough. If content is removed, a thorough explanation should be given as to how the terms of service have been sufficiently broken (not a simple "one foot over the line", but instead an obvious disregard for them) and how the conclusion came to be, rather than a copy-paste line of text stating the obvious - your video has been removed.