I am getting randomly ghostbanned by YouTube nowadays for some reason

**Laurelindo** · 03-16-2016 05:20 PM

Has this ever happened to you?
I have been a member on YouTube for several years, probably since 2010 or so, and I have always been a perfectly civil member, but a few days ago I noticed that a lot of my posts become invisible when I log out.
It turned out that I was ghostbanned at that point - in other words, banned and completely invisible to everyone without being able to notice it myself, which essentially means that I don't exist to those people.
I can post comments like usual, and everything seems fine, but nobody else can actually read those comments.
And the even more irritating part is that this seems to happen at complete random - some of my comments are posted and visible to everyone else, and some of them are not.
Is this a bug or something?
I seriously cannot imagine that this spam filter or whatever would block my comments in this random fashion.

I mean, I would accept if I got banned from that site if a real, living moderator could tell me why I was banned in the first place, but it seems like that entire site is managed by a program that reacts to all kinds of stupid things.
I didn't even get a warning or anything, the site was like "lol, let's make you invisible without telling you, and that's that".

**Lang** · 03-16-2016 09:51 PM

We don't know what you had said on there but, I can imagine someone had flagged or marked you as "spam". I know that there are people on that can't take criticism well online especially, on YouTube. I'm guessing that you said something that insulted someone? I know that some websites will not even tell you that you are going to be banned. A lot of websites change their Rules and terms at any time. YouTube and Google are partners so I'm sure it Rules and such as changed. I don't think it is a bug. I could be wrong, though?
I don't know you could try to take a look at this? *shrugs*

Here: https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/128036

**Laurelindo** · 03-17-2016 01:21 AM

Originally Posted by ~Stoic Beauty~

We don't know what you had said on there but, I can imagine someone had flagged or marked you as "spam". I know that there are people on that can't take criticism well online especially, on YouTube. I'm guessing that you said something that insulted someone? I know that some websites will not even tell you that you are going to be banned. A lot of websites change their Rules and terms at any time. YouTube and Google are partners so I'm sure it Rules and such as changed. I don't think it is a bug. I could be wrong, though?
I don't know you could try to take a look at this? *shrugs*

Here: https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/128036

Yeah I have checked that link, but it still doesn't seem to make any sense.
Everything seems to be literally completely random - I actually tried posting a comment on a channel that I have never visited before a while ago, and I couldn't post anything there either.
Then I went back to a channel that I frequently visit, and that channel allowed me to post a comment - but only once, and then that channel stopped publishing my comments as well, and started working a couple hours later.
It's a complete mess, and I hate it.

I have made it a habit to check every single comment that I post on YouTube from now on, and it's almost like a 50% success rate;
some of the are posted, and some of them are not, and it doesn't seem to matter at all what I am doing, or where I post them.
And yes, I do choose that "Newest Comment First" option, just to make sure that I get it listed at the top.

Guess I will have to try and contact some YouTube administrator, and hopefully get a response sometime this decade.

**Lang** · 03-17-2016 01:33 AM

Hmm.. Strange, I would try reporting the bug to the staff on there if you think it is a bug? I wish I could help you more, though.

**Laurelindo** · 03-17-2016 01:37 AM

Originally Posted by ~Stoic Beauty~

Hmm.. Strange, I would try reporting the bug to the staff on there if you think it is a bug? I wish I could help you more, though.

Yeah, I appreciate your advice.

Actually I am a fairly active poster on YouTube, I can easily post several comments in one day, because I like discussing videos with people.
So maybe I have posted "too many comments" or something, and made some program think that I am a spam bot.
Anyway, in that case YouTube should just either ask me to verify that I am a human being, or simply tell me that I have exceeded my maximum number of comments that day - something that I am actually notified about.
But I will take a break for a week, and see what happens.
Otherwise, I will just try and contact the administrators there.

**Laurelindo** · 03-18-2016 09:51 PM

Alright, now I have tested this thing for a while, and it does indeed seem totally random.
I just recently posted two comments on a video that I have never visited before, one as a separate comment and one as a reply to some other comment, and both of them were visible when I logged out.
Then I posted a comment on a video that was from a channel that I often visit, and that comment was visible as well.
And just a couple hours ago before this, one of my comments had ended up invisible.

The only explanation that I can think of right now is that I can post a maximum number of comments and then I get ghostbanned for a couple hours.
It seems like I can post anything between 5-10 comments in a row just fine (somewhere in that region - like I said, it feels kind of random), and then it stops working for a while.
Sure, it makes sense that YouTube might want to limit the number of comments per user per day, I can understand that, but in that case they could have just given a message something like "You have exceeded your amount of comments for the next X hours" or something like that.

Oh well, at least I am still able to post visible comments.

**Lang** · 03-22-2016 01:56 AM

Is it still acting strange?

**Laurelindo** · 03-25-2016 01:55 AM

Originally Posted by ~Stoic Beauty~

Is it still acting strange?

Yeah, I cannot see any consistency in anything, it seems absolutely random - my comments basically "might" get posted, and nowadays I feel that I have to double-check it every time.
I have noticed that new individual comments tend to be easier to post for some reason, whereas replies to other people's comments fail much more often.

Another really weird thing is that sometimes I cannot read my answers when I post them on my usual account (the one that is behaving in this weird way right now, which also is the one that I prefer to continue using since I have become attached to it) but if I sign in with another account then I can read it all of a sudden.
In other words, some comments are invisible only to me, kind of like a reverse ghostban.
It really is kind of stupid.

**101Volts** · 04-04-2016 02:59 AM

Sometimes when I'd comment in videos of the Minutemen (band) my comments would vanish. I wasn't spamming, I was just discussing or adding to the convenience of the video by posting song and time lists for people to click on if they wanted to hear any particular song. I realize a user can delete any comment in a video that they upload, but I don't know for sure what the case is or why someone would do that.

**Laurelindo** · 04-06-2016 03:13 AM

Originally Posted by 101Volts

Sometimes when I'd comment in videos of the Minutemen (band) my comments would vanish. I wasn't spamming, I was just discussing or adding to the convenience of the video by posting song and time lists for people to click on if they wanted to hear any particular song. I realize a user can delete any comment in a video that they upload, but I don't know for sure what the case is or why someone would do that.

Yeah, that's exactly how I feel about this.
I have actually tested some comments lately, and here are my current conclusions:

1. I can post new separate comments sometimes, like a one-time 50/50 chance - either the video will or will not accept the comment
2. I can almost always reply to a comment if it already has got several other replies (?!)
3. I can never reply to a comment that hasn't got any other replies yet

Yeah, I know - this is obviously a super-weird and ridiculous pattern that doesn't make any sense whatsoever, but this is honestly what I seem to be experiencing.

**gab** · 04-11-2016 08:12 PM

Ooooh! So that's what THAT button does.

Sorreh.

**Lang** · 04-11-2016 08:30 PM

These days, I don't even bother commenting on videos and stuff on youtube unless it is from someone I know personally.

**Laurelindo** · 04-11-2016 09:01 PM

YouTube is broken, simple as that.
I refuse to believe that a website would be this random about which posts are actually published.
I mean, I can never post visible comments if I respond to someone who hasn't got any other replies yet.
How about that?
The existence of previous replies to a comment determines if my own reply to that comment will be visible!
That's ridiculous!
And that's just one of many examples of how YouTube seems to be malfunctioning nowadays.

I have tried to find some sort of phone number to YouTube, but apparently they are those unavailable secretive types who refuse to be that easily accessible and force me to "write a mail" instead, which they will probably never respond to anyway, so I guess I will have to double-check every single comment I make from now on - at least some of them will occasionally work.