Kurzgesagt’s 16M+ subs channel got shadowbanned in the SAME week that the monetization requirements doubled. This is NOT a coincidence. Both events mean the same for faceless channels… Here’s what YouTube’s trying to tell us by this: First of all, some quick context for those living under a rock: YouTube recently announced that from February onwards you’ll need 8k watch hours instead of 4k to earn AdSense revenue. This isn’t simply moving the bar up, though. It’s changing YouTube’s entire dynamic. Watch hours were never the hard part for faceless channels. If you can package, you can get monetized. Most people hit the threshold with 30–50k watch hours without even trying. So the “8k instead of 4k” headline isn’t the whole essence of the story. The important thing is what YouTube is actually moving toward: They’re tightening the definition of what counts as a “real” channel. Less tolerance for anything that looks like: → Low-effort production loops → Reused / stitched / borderline content → “Farm” behavior across multiple channels → Aggressive packaging with trash retention → Automation patterns that scream “not a creator” In other words: it’s not harder to get watch hours. It’s harder to build a channel that survives stricter reviews, stricter enforcement, and stricter trust signals. Put simply: NO ONE is safe. It’s tempting to think “if I just spend more on production, I’ll get more views.” But production spend does not equal more views. Views are a supply-and-demand game first: How much the platform is willing to distribute (supply) vs. how many people actually want the topic/package right now (demand). So better editing, nicer visuals and bigger budgets can help convert attention once you have it. But they don’t guarantee distribution Meaning they don’t make YouTube trust your channel. That connects back to the point above: YouTube is tightening what counts as a “real” channel. If the account itself trips trust signals, no amount of production polish will save the reach. If a channel with that much authority, production budget, and a decade of goodwill can stop being pushed without warning... Your cheap ripoff channel is definitely not safe. There's no subscriber count that buys you protection anymore. There's no track record that removes the chance of your channel getting cooked overnight by an automatic AI filter. It’s only a matter of time until you also get wiped. You and EVERY other channel linked to your IP. Including the ones you might create in the future btw. That’s the reality of the game. You gotta play into it. For Kurzgesagt this didn’t mean anything though obviously. They just had to make a phone call to YouTube’s CEO to get it fixed overnight. Even if it didn’t, they’re already rich so who cares. But for you it would mean: → Appeals rejected → Years wasted → A lost opportunity to change your life Probably having to turn into blackhat dropshipping or something lol Which is why having proper infrastructure keeps getting more important every year. The YouTube policies against AI content will keep getting stricter. When the ban waves were rare and there was no slop on the feed, a clean IP was just a precaution. Now it’s mandatory. You can no longer survive on decent content and luck. The platform is: → Screening harder on retention → Enforcing faster on suspicion → Reviewing at channel level instead of video level → Giving less benefit of the doubt to accounts that look automated Every one of those changes punishes the same thing: An account that YouTube isn't sure about. So the 2 moves that actually matter going forward into this are: 1. Building for retention instead of views. I was always advocate for having some long-form quality channels in your portfolio because I knew this was going to happen. A 20-minute video that holds 50% is worth more to your monetization than something doing 10x the views at 15%. 2. Making sure the account itself is never the reason you get the harsher read. Clean @TubeProxiess IP, clean fingerprint, one identity per channel, so when a classifier looks at you, it finds nothing interesting. And even if it finds, and you DO get terminated, at least it doesn’t spill over to every other channel of yours or anything that you might create in the future. The rules keep tightening in the same direction. Every single update has made the foundation matter more than it did the update before. If you still can’t see this, you’re just coping at this point. Protection is everything.