YouTube Actions Updates
On February 25th YouTube updated its Artificial Views Policy to a new Fake Engagement Policy - for which enforcement will start on the 15th March.
This policy prohibits anyone using services to artificially inflate any YouTube metrics, this includes:
- Views
- Subscribers
- Comments
Unfortunately YouTube have been quite vague on how this policy is being enforced, but to date we've seen ~20 users have their Gleam landing page link disabled from their video description and given a warning.
You can see YouTube's official stance on giveaways via a few Twitter responses:
These updates do not punish the app, instead they punish the creators using the app. These updates will affect anyone who continues to use any 3rd party platform that incentivizes behaviour on YouTube.
Keeping customers safe and ensuring that we're compliant with guidelines is our number 1 priority. We've been through similar changes with Facebook, Instagram and Twitter over the years - platform policy and privacy changes are an inevitable side effect of any fast growing social network.
If you're receiving this email it means that you have at least 1 active campaign running with either of the following actions:
- Comment on a YouTube Video
- Subscribe to a YouTube Channel
- Watch a YouTube Video
These Actions now violate YouTube's Fake Engagement policy and may result in a Channel Strike similar to this:
YouTube's new Community Guidelines Strike System will issue a warning for your first offence and disable the offending external link.
From today, we've removed the ability to add any Actions to a campaign that violate this YouTube policy.
Subscribe to a YouTube Channel is now Visit a YouTube Channel, we've also provided the ability to ask users to connect their YouTube account after the visit so you can see their YouTube details.
These changes will not affect any existing campaigns that you have running, but copying an existing campaign will not include the old actions.
In order to become compliant with the Fake Engagement Policy you will need to remove any Actions that are mentioned above. Existing entries will still count after removal.
This also includes any mention of asking users to Subscribe or forcing that they must be Subscribers in order to be eligible to enter via your Gleam description or Custom Actions.
With so many creators relying on Gleam these sorts of changes can often make it difficult to understand what's the right or wrong way to run a campaign.
But we're committed to supporting creators through these changes and we're planning to roll out additional features soon to make it easier for you to continue growing:
- The ability to see if an entrant is a Subscriber or not (without incentivizing them)
- Importing YouTube Comments into your campaign
- Better ways to contact and show your Winners
See Next Article
YouTube Community Guidelines Update
YouTube has made updates to its Community Guidelines and is now enforcing them via Strikes on creators who link out to certain sites via their video descriptions.