How to Tell If the Channel Reuploading Your Video Is a Spam Channel

You search your own title on YouTube and there it is. Your video, on a channel you've never heard of, with views you didn't get. Before you act, it helps to know who you're dealing with. A fan who doesn't know the rules is one thing. A channel built to farm views from other people's work is another.

Most spam channels give themselves away. None of the signs below proves anything alone, and honest channels trip some of them. A channel that shows several at once is rarely an innocent mistake.

Start with the channel page

Open the channel and look at what a visitor sees before watching anything. Channels made in bulk tend to skip the small jobs. They keep YouTube's default profile picture, a letter on a coloured circle or a grey silhouette. They have no banner, and the description is empty. Each takes a minute to set up, and operations running hundreds of channels rarely spend that minute. Plenty of small, honest channels skip them too, so on their own they're weak signs.

A hidden subscriber count is worth noting too. It stops anyone comparing subscribers with views, which is where bought subscribers show.

Read the titles and descriptions

This is where reuploaders tend to show their hand. Look for:

• Disclaimers such as "no copyright intended", "I don't own" or "all rights go to" in the descriptions. These lines are the mark of someone posting work that isn't theirs and hoping a sentence covers it. YouTube says such phrases don't make a use fair on their own.
• Titles built around the names of TV shows, films or bigger creators, or phrases like "full episode" and "full movie", so searches for the original find the copy.
• Links to mega.nz, mediafire.com or adf.ly. Pirated films, cracked software and game cheats are often handed out through file hosts and pay-per-click link shorteners, and some of those downloads carry malware.
• A block of keywords pasted under "Tags:" at the bottom of every description.

Look at how fast it uploads

Few people can make more than three videos a day, every day, from the day a channel opens. A channel a few weeks old with hundreds of uploads is usually reposting, generating or looping content. The other pattern is the burst. A dozen or more videos go up on the same day, and most of them sit under 100 views.

A creator moving an old library to a new channel can look like this too, so weigh it with the other signs.

Check whether the numbers add up

On a real channel the numbers fit together. Nearly everyone who subscribes watched something first, so lifetime views usually run to hundreds per subscriber. A channel with thousands of subscribers and fewer than 10 views for each of them probably didn't get those subscribers from its videos.

Look at the reactions too. Rows of videos with no likes and no comments at all are typical of channels that upload in bulk for search traffic. So is a long run of videos stuck at the same low view count.

Watch for a borrowed name

Some reuploaders go further and pose as a bigger channel, sometimes yours. They copy the name with a typo, extra punctuation or an invisible character, or add words like "Official" or "Backup". Compare the @handle and the join date with the real channel. A copy that claims years of videos but joined last month isn't who it says it is.

Score the channel in a few seconds

Checking all of this by hand is slow, and counting disclaimers across 300 descriptions is nobody's idea of a good afternoon. spam.h.ki does the counting for you. It's a free spam checker from Freedom!, and you don't need to sign in.

Paste the channel's @handle, URL or channel ID. The checker runs it against about two dozen indicators, including the ones above, and weighs them into a spam-signal score. It lists each indicator behind the score, so you can see what fired and what didn't. Every indicator also has its own page that explains what it checks and when it fires on an honest channel.

A high score marks a channel worth a closer look. It isn't a decision by YouTube, and a low score doesn't mean the channel had any right to upload your video.

What to do about the copy

Whoever runs the channel, the video is still yours. YouTube has a copyright removal request for reuploads, and a separate form for reporting a channel that impersonates you. Taking the video down stops the copy, but it also ends whatever its views would have earned.

Aegis gives you another option. We claim reuploads through YouTube's Content ID, so the earnings and viewers from those copies go to you instead of the uploader. Once you give us a link to your content, we handle the rest, including exclusions for parts you don't own, disputes, false claims and reference overlaps. We also find the copies that automated matching misses. That happens often, because reuploaders add frames, re-render, cut segments or change the playback speed. You can submit a whole channel or playlist at once, and your earnings are broken down by asset and by claim.

We accept content you hold exclusive rights to and that others often use without your permission. Gameplay, compilations, remixes and concert footage don't qualify, and neither do videos that rely on fair use. Our guide to fair use on YouTube covers where that line sits and how disputes work. Take ownership of your content explains how our team finds matches that Content ID doesn't.

Your next two steps

Paste the reuploader into spam.h.ki and see what it finds. If your videos keep turning up on channels like it, apply to Aegis with the Apply Now button on our homepage and start claiming the copies.