Platform policies we follow

ChannelForge works through each platform's official API, with accounts you connect, so it lives under those platforms' developer terms as well as their community and monetization rules. This page says what that means in practice: what ChannelForge does and does not do with each platform's data, how it keeps channels original enough to monetize, how promotions are disclosed, and the choices made on your behalf. It explains our practice; it is not legal advice, and you remain responsible for what your channels publish (see the Terms and the Acceptable Use Policy).

YouTube#

YouTube's API Services terms are the strictest of the platforms ChannelForge uses, and they shape several features.

What ChannelForge does with YouTube data

• It uploads the episodes you approve to the channels you connect, on schedules a person set up in the app, or when a member presses a button on an episode's page.
• It reads your own channel's numbers back, to show them to you as YouTube's own numbers.
• Where you use Studio, it reads your channel's videos and comments to show them in one inbox; YouTube's titles, descriptions and comments are refreshed within 30 days or removed, and a commenter's displayed name is kept 30 days.
• The monetization tracker's and profit's YouTube readings are kept only while your sign-in is re-confirmed at least every 30 days, and are deleted 7 days after YouTube refuses it or you revoke it. Everything read from YouTube for a workspace is deleted within 7 days of the workspace's deletion.

What it does not do

• No derived metrics without Google's approval. YouTube's terms do not allow new figures worked out from YouTube data — scores, ratios, "times its usual", rules learnt from retention curves, projections — except under an extra approval for derived metrics. Until Google approves ChannelForge's use, those calculations are switched off for YouTube: YouTube's numbers are shown raw, as YouTube's. The same features — breakouts, the outlier radar, the retention loop, the hook lab, packaging tests, monetization projections — run on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Threads data, whose terms allow analysis for the account's own owner.
• No API service over YouTube. The REST API, the MCP server and webhooks never pass on YouTube's numbers, titles, comments or replies, and never let a caller make YouTube do anything. Where YouTube's words would be — a refused upload, say — they say "Shown in the app".
• No combining across owners. Data of different channel owners is never pooled: what is learnt from a workspace's YouTube data stays in that workspace.
• Other channels' numbers are short-lived. Statistics of channels you do not own are never kept more than 30 days.
• No change without consent. Every write to YouTube is one you set up: uploads on your schedule, title and thumbnail changes from the packaging lab one by one, and titles in other languages only after you connect YouTube with Allow edits.

ChannelForge's use of information received from Google APIs follows the Google API Services User Data Policy, including its Limited Use requirements. By connecting YouTube you agree to the YouTube Terms of Service. You can remove ChannelForge's access at any time in your Google account's permissions.

Facebook, Instagram and Threads#

• Episodes are posted to the Pages, Instagram accounts and Threads profiles you select, with the words and settings you choose. Facebook's and Instagram's Reels stop at 90 seconds, so they receive each episode's own short edit, and only when that edit tells the story on its own.
• The numbers ChannelForge reads back are your own accounts', shown to you. Through the REST API they go only to your workspace's own key, at your direction; MCP and webhooks carry none.
• Some of Meta's permissions need Meta's App Review first: Facebook and Instagram watch time, and Instagram's insights about other accounts for the outlier radar, wait for it. Posting and the basic numbers work today.
• Threads posts go out on your slots, at most 25 a profile a day.

TikTok#

TikTok's Content Sharing Guidelines govern how apps may post, and ChannelForge follows them to the letter:

• Every post is a person's. A TikTok post is made on the episode's own TikTok screen, never on a schedule and never through the API. The screen reads the account's details fresh from TikTok, and you choose who can see the post, from the account's own options with nothing chosen for you; comments, Duet and Stitch stay off until you switch them on.
• Commercial content is declared on that screen, as TikTok asks: your own brand ("Promotional content") or a paid partnership ("Paid partnership").
• TikTok's declaration is shown with its links, and the post is sent only once you agree to it.
• Until TikTok's audit of ChannelForge's app passes, TikTok accepts posts only from private accounts, as "Only me".
• TikTok's own limits on an account make it wait; they never use up the episode's tries.

X#

X charges for every call to its API. ChannelForge pays for the posts its workspaces make, so:

• an X post costs credits, reserved when it is queued and charged only once the post is live;
• there are daily caps for the whole service and for each workspace by plan;
• when ChannelForge's prepaid X credits run out, X posting pauses for everyone for two hours rather than fail post after post, and nothing else is affected;
• the post's text carries no link, and nothing is read back from X on a timer, so X posts show no numbers.

Bluesky, Pinterest and LinkedIn#

• Bluesky posts go out at a moment of their own a few minutes after the slot, at most 10 a day per account.
• Pinterest's guidelines ask that people choose what is pinned, so each Pin is chosen by a member on the episode's Pinterest screen — its board, its words and its link — never on a schedule. Pinterest opens once Pinterest has approved ChannelForge's app.
• LinkedIn posts are made as the member who connected the account, with the episode's own words.

Originality and monetization#

YouTube does not monetize channels whose videos feel interchangeable from one to the next, and the penalty applies to the whole channel. Templated output, readings of other people's posts and montages of unrelated clips are what that rule is aimed at. ChannelForge is built the other way round:

• Every episode is original. It is animated from code, scene by scene, with its own narration, captions, music and sound — nothing is stitched from stock footage or other creators' videos.
• Every channel looks like itself. Its own kit, its own look and palette, its own narrator, its own topics.
• Variety is measured. Each episode's setting must differ from the channel's previous episodes, and the critic sends a predictable, static video back.
• Near-duplicates are caught. Where the originality guard is on, every new episode is compared with the channel's last 50 episodes, the workspace's other channels and other workspaces' episodes of the same format — which are ChannelForge's own generated content, never shown to you. Repeated topics are set aside before any GPU time, a repeated title, opening or script goes back for a fix round, and an egregious near-duplicate is held, not charged.
• Your own footage only. Clips are made from footage you upload and have the rights to; ChannelForge never downloads videos from YouTube or any other platform.
• Outliers inspire, they are not copied. The outlier radar turns another account's breakout into a fresh-angle brief for your channel, never a remake.

The free originality checker reads a channel's titles and descriptions for the patterns that look templated. See Originality guard and checker and the Monetization tracker.

Honest metadata#

• Titles, descriptions, tags and thumbnails come from the episode and are checked with it: within each platform's limits, with a modest number of hashtags.
• The channel speaks as itself. It never presents itself as a real person, never puts invented words in a real person's mouth, and never claims to be made, endorsed or approved by a brand or organisation that did not make it. Talking about real people, organisations and events factually — history, science, news — is fine.
• Facts are sourced. Each topic carries its key facts and their sources, and the critic checks the episode's facts; an episode with a fact it finds wrong does not pass.
• Units are standard. Numbers and units on screen and in the texts follow the standards' symbols, so nothing reads as an error; see Units, symbols and facts.

Disclosing paid promotion#

When a channel is made for someone else's product, with a link that may earn you a commission:

• the link carries the disclosure "Ad · I may earn from this link.";
• the video's call to action ends with "I may earn from it." — said once, mid-video;
• YouTube uploads are marked as including paid promotion; if YouTube does not keep the mark, you are told, so you can tick it in YouTube Studio;
• posts that carry no link — on X, Threads and Bluesky — say #ad;
• on TikTok, you declare it on the post's own screen.

A channel about your own product is promotion of your own brand, and is marked that way where a platform asks (on TikTok, "Promotional content"). Sponsorships you arrange yourself must be disclosed as each platform and the law require: you add those disclosures.

Labels and declarations on uploads#

• Synthetic or altered content. ChannelForge does not switch on platforms' labels for synthetic or altered content by itself. Whether a post needs one depends on what it shows and on each platform's rules; where a platform or the law requires one, set it in the platform's own app — the Acceptable Use Policy asks you to.
• Made for children. Uploads to YouTube are declared as not made for children. If a channel's audience is children, YouTube's rules require you to say so: change the setting in YouTube Studio and let us know at support@storeswiki.com.

Choices made on your behalf#

• A human pace. Every automated write — a post, a reply, a carousel — is spaced the way a person would space it: no bursts, varied moments, never the same minute every day. Platforms flag accounts that post like machines.
• Within every quota. Each platform's daily limits are counted before a call, not discovered by being refused: YouTube's daily uploads, X's caps, Threads' and Bluesky's per-account limits.
• Only official APIs. Nothing is posted by driving a browser or by scraping; no platform credential of yours is ever asked for, only the platform's own sign-in.
• Platforms we do not offer. Snapchat and Reddit are not available: Snapchat lets only apps it has allow-listed post, and Reddit requires a commercial agreement for this kind of use.
• Your accounts, your standing. Each workspace connects its own accounts; one workspace's posts are never made from another's.

Related#

• Privacy at a glance — what is collected and why.
• The publishing engine — how quotas and the once-only rule are kept.
• YouTube, TikTok, X and Pinterest — each platform's page.
• Product videos for businesses — the product kit and its disclosures.