YouTube Community Guidelines
Respect the YouTube Community
We're not asking for the kind of respect reserved for nuns, the elderly, and brain surgeons. We mean don't abuse the site. Every cool new community feature on YouTube involves a certain level of trust. We trust you to be responsible, and millions of users respect that trust, so please be one of them.
We Review Videos Flagged As Inappropriate
Okay, this one is more about us than you. When a video gets flagged as inappropriate, we review the video to determine whether it violates our Terms of Use—flagged videos are not automatically taken down by the system. If we remove your video after reviewing it, you can assume that we removed it purposefully, and you should take our warning notification seriously. Take a deep breath, read our Terms of Use and try to see it from our perspective. If you find other videos on YouTube with the same violations, please flag them so we can review them as well!
Don't Cross the Line
Here are some common-sense rules that will help you steer clear of trouble:
- YouTube is not for pornography or sexually explicit content. If this describes your video, even if it's a video of yourself, don't post it on YouTube. Also, be advised that we work closely with law enforcement and we report child exploitation. Please read our Safety Tips and stay safe on YouTube.
- Don't post videos showing dangerous or illegal acts, like animal abuse, drug abuse, or bomb making.
- Graphic or gratuitous violence is not allowed. If your video shows someone getting hurt, attacked, or humiliated, don't post it.
- YouTube is not a shock site. Don't post gross-out videos of accidents, dead bodies and stuff like that. This includes war footage if it's intended to shock or disgust.
- Respect copyright. Only upload videos that you made or that you have obtained the rights to use. This means don't upload videos you didn't make, or use content in your videos that someone else owns the copyright to, such as music tracks, snippets of copyrighted programs, or videos made by other users, without their permission. Read our Copyright Tips for more information.
- We encourage free speech and defend everyone's right to express unpopular points of view. But we don't permit hate speech which contains slurs or the malicious use of stereotypes intended to attack or demean a particular gender, sexual orientation, race, religion, or nationality.
- There is zero tolerance for predatory behavior, stalking, threats, harassment, invading privacy, or the revealing of other members' personal information. Anyone caught doing these things may be permanently banned from YouTube.
- Don't try to cheat the system. No gamed thumbnails, spamming tags, or creating dummy accounts that do things a human wouldn't do.
Please take these rules seriously and take them to heart. Don't try to look for loopholes or try to lawyer your way around them—just understand them and try to respect the spirit in which they were created. Violations of the Terms of Use may result in a warning notification or may result in termination of your account and deletion of all your videos. We decide whether we believe your violation of our Terms of Use should result in termination of your account. If you have an account terminated you are prohibited from ever signing up for another account!
YouTube is for the Community
Remember that this is your community! Each and every user of YouTube makes the site what it is, so don't be afraid to dig in and get involved!
- Have fun with the site. There's a lot here to see, and lots of folks making amazing stuff—one of them might be you! Equipment's getting cheaper and easier to use all the time, so dive in and enjoy.
- Let folks know what you think. Feedback's part of the experience, and when done with respect, can be a great way to make friends, share stories, and make your time on YouTube richer. So leave comments, rate videos, make your own responses to videos that affect you, enter contests of interest—there's a lot going on and a lot of ways to participate here.
- You may not like everything you see. Some of the content here may offend you—if you find that it violates our Terms of Use, then click "Flag as Inappropriate" under the video you're watching to submit it for review by YouTube staff. If it doesn't, then consider just clicking on something else—why waste time watching videos you don't like?
That's it! Thanks for reading!
—The YouTube Team
