Policies and guidelines
When you use YouTube, you join a community of people from all over the world. The guidelines and policies help to keep the YouTube community safe, fun and enjoyable for everyone. Watch this video for an overview of the various guidelines and rules that apply to content on YouTube.
Community Guidelines: YouTube's rules of the road (Part 1)
Things to bear in mind
To post content to YouTube, it's important to understand and follow:
- YouTube's Community Guidelines: These guidelines determine what content is allowed on YouTube and help make YouTube a safe place to foster community.
- Copyright: In many countries, when a person creates an original work they automatically own the copyright to it and have the exclusive right to use the work. If you upload a video that contains copyright-protected content, your video could get a Content ID claim or get removed due to a copyright removal request.
If you've successfully uploaded a video and want to monetise on YouTube, you'll also need to follow:
- YouTube Channel Monetisation Policies: The YouTube Partner Programme is designed to give creators the ability to make money with ads. When you apply, you'll go through a standard review process to check whether your channel meets our policies and guidelines.
- Advertiser-friendly content guidelines: These guidelines determine if your content is suitable for advertisers so that you can share revenue from ads. Ad-friendly content is appropriate for most audiences and does not feature sensitive content such as sexually suggestive content or drug consumption.
If a video violates these guidelines, you can report inappropriate content.
We recommend
There are a lot of rules and guidelines! We recommend that you watch YouTube's Rules of the Road playlist before you start your journey as a creator. Detailed descriptions of all these policies will be available at the YouTube Help Centre whenever you need more info.
Next: take a look at copyright tips