A strike costs you an account you may have spent months building, and the systems that issue them are automated and unsympathetic. Almost all of them come from three causes, and all three are avoidable.
Cause one: source footage you were not licensed to use
Clipping someone's video without permission is the most common cause and the easiest to fix. Work from funded campaigns, where the creator has explicitly licensed clipping as part of the terms, or from your own content, or with written permission you keep a copy of.
Cause two: music
Automated audio matching is extremely good and runs on every upload. Adding a chart track to a clip you are paid for is the fastest route to a muted or blocked post. Original audio from the source avoids the problem entirely and usually makes the clip better.
Cause three: reposting rather than editing
A trimmed re-upload with no cuts, captions or reframing is treated differently from a genuine edit — by matching systems, by moderation, and by the platform's own quality signals. Editing meaningfully is both a rights argument and a performance one.
Practical habits that keep accounts alive
- →Keep a record of what you were licensed to clip, and when. A message thread is enough.
- →Never re-upload someone else's finished edit, even with credit.
- →Use original audio by default.
- →Do not clip content whose rights are obviously contested — leaked footage, sports broadcasts, film and TV.
- →If a claim arrives, deal with it immediately rather than uploading more of the same.
The categories that generate the most claims
Music, live sport, film and television are aggressively policed and effectively off limits without a real licence. Podcasts, interviews, streams and conference talks are far more permissive in practice, and are also where the campaign work is — which is a convenient alignment.
Clip from campaigns where the licence is part of the deal.
See live campaigns