Compliant by construction
A social link locker that tells your visitors the truth
Send people to your YouTube channel, your Discord, your Telegram, your profiles. What Keyway will not do is tell a visitor we verified a subscription — because no platform lets anyone verify one, and this page explains exactly why for each of them.
Platform by platform
Each of these is available as a step. Each is a visit, and each says so on the page your visitor sees.
YouTube
Visit a channel or watch a videoThe Data API once exposed a subscription check. Google removed it in 2020 after it was used almost exclusively for exactly this — gating content on subscribes. Nothing replaced it. Any tool claiming to verify a YouTube subscription today is either wrong or is asking the visitor to hand over an OAuth token, which is a far bigger ask than the download is worth.
Discord
Open a server inviteGuild membership IS checkable — but only through a full OAuth authorisation where the visitor grants your application access to their account. For a free download that is wildly disproportionate, and Discord's developer terms prohibit using it to gate rewards. An invite link that opens is the honest version.
Telegram
Open a channel or groupA bot can check membership of a channel it administers, but only for users it has already seen, and only after the visitor has interacted with the bot. Threading a web visitor through that is fragile in practice and still lands on the incentivised-engagement problem.
X
Visit a profileFollow-relationship endpoints moved behind paid API tiers and remain restricted. There is no path for a third party to check whether a specific visitor follows a specific account.
Instagram
Visit a profileThe Graph API exposes aggregate follower counts to an account owner. It has never exposed "does this particular person follow you" to a third party, and Meta's platform terms prohibit incentivising follows.
TikTok
Visit a profileThe public API covers content and analytics for your own account. There is no follower-relationship check available to a third party, and the platform guidelines prohibit follow-for-reward mechanics.
What your visitor actually sees
Under every social step on a Keyway unlock page there is a small line of text. On a visit step it reads “You confirmed this yourself.”On a code step it reads “Checked by us.”
That single line is the whole difference. It costs nothing, it is unambiguous, and it means a visitor who wonders whether they are being played gets a straight answer instead of a spinner. There is also a short explainer on every unlock page, one click away, spelling out that subscriptions and follows cannot be verified by anyone.
From a conversion point of view this is not the sacrifice it sounds like. The visitor who was going to complete your steps still completes them. The one who was about to close the tab because it smelled like a scam sometimes does not.
The setup that works
Having built the compliant version, here is the arrangement that gets the most out of it:
- One visit step, not four. Every additional step costs completions. Pick the destination that matters most — usually the community, because it is the one with recurring value.
- Add the invitation note. "Subscribing helps a lot, totally optional" under the button converts better than a requirement would, because it reads as a person asking rather than a gate demanding.
- Add a code step if engagement is the real goal. A code spoken at 4:12 in a video is a genuine filter — it cannot be completed by someone who did not watch, and unlike a subscribe click it cannot be undone thirty seconds later.
- Say what the file is. Use the title and description. The single largest cause of abandonment on any locker page is a visitor who is not certain what they are working towards.
The analytics show completion per step, so you can see exactly which one is costing you and remove it.
Questions about social steps
So a social link locker does nothing?
It does the thing that actually works: it puts your channel in front of someone at the exact moment they want something from you. That is a real, measurable increase in traffic to your page. What it cannot do is force a subscription — and neither can anything else, no matter what its landing page says. The steps still direct attention, which is what most creators actually wanted.
But other tools say they verify subscriptions.
They say it. Ask any of them which API endpoint they call. There is no answer that survives the question, because the endpoints do not exist. What those tools actually do is exactly what Keyway does — open a link and wait — with a "verifying…" animation over the top. We would rather show you the same mechanic without the animation.
Can I still ask people to subscribe?
Yes, and you should. Every link step has an optional note underneath it where you can write "Subscribing genuinely helps — completely optional." Most people who wanted your file will do it. The difference is that it is an invitation your visitor can trust rather than a claim they can catch you out on.
What if I want a step that is genuinely checked?
Use a code step. Say the code in your video, put it in a pinned comment, post it in your community — somewhere only people who actually engaged will see it. Keyway checks it against a salted PBKDF2 hash server-side and rejects a wrong one. That is a real gate, it costs a visitor two seconds, and it correlates far better with genuine engagement than a subscribe click ever did.
Will using a social link locker get my channel in trouble?
Directing people to your channel is normal and fine. Requiring a subscribe in exchange for something is what the platform rules prohibit — that is sub4sub territory, and it is enforced. Keyway is built so that the compliant version is the only version available: social steps are visits, the optional note is an invitation, and nothing in the interface lets you claim otherwise.
Build one with steps you can defend
Your channel gets the visit. Your visitor gets a straight answer. Nothing here needs an API that might disappear next quarter.