Chess.com URLs Marked As "Scam" By YouTube

Normally when I post a chess video to YouTube, I include the URL of the game (or puzzle) I'm playing/analyzing/etc. in the video description. But starting this morning, YouTube is removing those links (well, just the most recent one, not all the old ones). YouTube sent me an email saying this link is a "scam or spam" : https://www.chess.com/game/daily/603375833 and removed it from my description. It's just the link to the game I analyzed in the video.

I tried to post the URL in a pinned comment under the video, and YT disallowed that comment too.

Maybe staff or someone can contact YT to assure them that Chess.com links aren't scams?

I'm currently in a chat with YT support about this. Hopefully they can resolve it soon. :-)

Result of the chat:

"I will escalate this to our internal team to review again your video and description and the link that was removed."

So weird that links to a chess website would need to be escalated to a whole TEAM, but at least I got a response. :-)

Hope this is resolved soon.

After six days, I finally got this response:

"Our internal team already reviewed the external link that was removed on your video. It appears that the external link has been removed on YouTube as it was found to be in violation of our External Links Policy. Note that violative URLs posted within the video itself or in the video’s metadata may result in the video being removed.

You can check this link to learn more about our External Links Policy."

(emphasis mine)

Note that nothing in their policy explains why a link to Chess.com isn't allowed. I'm terribly disappointed and now I worry that any time I post a Chess.com URL, YouTube will delete the entire video.

I responded to the above with:

"Did they even look at the URL? It's clearly not in violation; it's a link to the world's largest chess site."

Today, YT support replied back:

"Our internal team dedicated time to thoroughly review the link and video metadata of your video."

So, I guess let this be a warning to other Chess.com users who post URLs in their video descriptions... YouTube believes links to this site are "scam or spam" and you risk having your content removed.

After the above, I inquired to YouTube Partner Support whether I should retroactively remove all my previous Chess.com links in older videos, or is it just this one game that violates a hidden policy. They responded with a longwinded email that basically says "we won't tell you". (Actual quote: "Furthermore, we are unable to check and provide further details regarding the decision to protect the integrity of our review and detection systems from abuse.")

Then they added: "Violating these guidelines may result in channel termination." Basically threatening to shut down my channel if I continue posting URLs that lead to Chess.com.

This is mind-blowing to me, since many other content creators on YouTube regularly link to Chess.com games, articles, puzzles, etc. I have no idea what to do, but I'm now afraid to post any further links.

Please advise.

Maybe post the link, minus the chess.com part. People could add it themselves.

I don't know if a URL shortener would would still get you in trouble, but it may be worth a try.

Sure, I could always put "game 12345678" or "puzzle 54321" instead of a URL, but I think the far greater issue here is that YouTube believes a link to a game on Chess.com is spam, and doubled down on that decision when I questioned them about it (claiming they "thoroughly" reviewed the link, despite that obviously being untrue).

I can think of workarounds on my own but I believe Chess.com should reach out to YouTube about this.