YouTube clarifies that it won't terminate an account because it's not making money

YouTube has confirmed that it will not be terminating any channels that don’t make money or are not ‘commercially viable’.

The platform confirmed this in a tweet saying that the terms of service gives YouTube no new rights to terminate an account only because it does not make money. YouTube also said that it will, though, have the power to discontinue certain features for such accounts.

To clarify, there are no new rights in our ToS to terminate an account bc it’s not making money. As before, we may discontinue certain YouTube features or parts of the service, for ex., if they're outdated or have low usage. This does not impact creators/viewers in any new ways.

— TeamYouTube (@TeamYouTube) November 11, 2019

This confusion began when YouTube updated its terms and conditions this week. Under the ‘Account Suspension and Termination’ section,  Google stated that at its “sole discretion”, any Google account that it thinks is not “commercially viable”. The clause read:

YouTube may terminate your use of the Services, or your Google account’s access to all or part of the Service if YouTube believes, in its sole discretion, that provision of the Service to you is no longer commercially viable.

YouTube has been sending emails and showing a pop-up notification to its users already. The new policy is scheduled to come in to place from 10 December. YouTube says that the new terms will improve readability and transparency and it “does not change the Google Privacy Policy, nor the way we collect and process your data”.