YouTuber angry after ‘big snail’ video demonetized for “nudity”

Popular wildlife YouTuber Emzotic hit out at the platform after a video of hers about a snail was bizarrely demonetized and flagged by YouTube’s review system. 

Over the years, YouTube has expanded to encapsulate a whole range of creators from music to comedic skits, video games, and much more. 

Anything to do with animals has always done well on YouTube, and as such, wildlife creators are constantly showing off their pets, making videos on exotic animals, and showing how viewers can help care for their own. 

The videos are, typically, pretty harmless, but Emzotic, who has over 700,000 subscribers on the video-sharing platform was hit with a strange strike from YouTube’s review system because of her thumbnail. 

Instagram: Emzotic

Emzotic makes videos with a wide range of animals from dogs to snakes, and beyond.

The YouTuber revealed that a video she’d made about a Giant African Land Snail was demonetized by the platform after the thumbnail was flagged under the ‘sex and nudity’ policy.

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In the thumbnail, Emzotic is holding the snail towards the camera, with the caption ‘So big!!’ written underneath in bold letters, which might raise a few eyebrows but it’s not all that explicit. 

“@YouTube if your team could NOT sexualize my animals, that would be wonderful,” the YouTuber tweeted. “My snail is not nude. I am not nude. Nothing about my video, or the thumbnail is explicit. What shall I put? ‘Possibly large, but still wholesome snail’?”

Despite her frustrations, the YouTuber did have a little fun with things too, offering up a revised thumbnail that had snail emojis dotted all over. 

She even joked about starting a ‘SlowlyFans’ for the snail given how the thumbnail had been flagged upon review.

The YouTuber hasn’t received a strike against her channel for the video, which could have led to wider issues, but demonetizing a clip is a blow to any creator.

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It remains to be seen if she’ll be able to get things straightened out moving forward and if YouTube will move to tweak their system a little to avoid similarly strange warnings.