YouTube fixes glitch that wrongly removed accounts, deleted videos

YouTube confirmed all channels back online after mistaken removals.

YouTube confirmed Friday that a bug mistakenly removing seemingly thousands of accounts wrongly marked as sharing spam and deceptive content was finally fixed.

The problem started Thursday afternoon, 9to5Google reported, when non-content creators, including paid subscribers, complained that they had lost access to YouTube content.

YouTube eventually confirmed the issue in a support thread, promising that teams were "continuing to work on reinstating all removed channels" and "access to paid subscriptions" like YouTube TV, YouTube Premium, and YouTube Music.

In the thread, YouTube also clarified that the bug was similarly affecting playlists, which weren't always being reinstated when accounts were restored. Users commenting begged YouTube to also investigate videos that had been removed. But for nearly 24 hours, all YouTube could offer were reassurances that fixes were on the way.

"If your channel was incorrectly removed and reinstated, you might notice some content, such as playlists, might be missing," YouTube's support thread said. "Don't worry—this is just a delay and all your content will soon be restored."

While many YouTubers were left in limbo, comments claimed that directions that YouTube sent weren't helpful, with one user claiming there seemed to be no way to appeal. Another user claimed that some of their community posts were also removed.

"This is incredibly annoying since I pay for Premium," one commenter said.

As a message highlighted above the thread warned YouTube users that there were "longer than normal wait times" for support requests, YouTube continually asked for "patience" and turned off the comments.

"We are very sorry for this error on our part," YouTube said.

Unable to leave comments, thousands of users mashed a button on the support thread, confirming that they had "the same question." On Friday morning, 8,000 users had signaled despair, and as of this writing, the number had notched up to nearly 11,000.

YouTube has not confirmed how many users were removed, so that's likely the best estimate we have for how many users were affected.

On Friday afternoon, YouTube did update the thread, confirming that "all channels incorrectly removed for Spam & Deceptive Practices have been fully reinstated!"

While YouTube claims that all channels are back online, not all the videos mistakenly removed were reinstated, YouTube said. Although most of the users impacted were reportedly non-creators, and therefore their livelihoods were likely not disrupted by the bug, at least one commenter complained, "my two most-viewed videos got deleted," suggesting some account holders may highly value the videos still missing on their accounts.

"We’re working on reinstating the last few videos, thanks for bearing with us!" YouTube's update said. "We know this was a frustrating experience, really appreciate your patience while we sort this out."

It's unclear if paid subscribers will be reimbursed for lost access to content.

YouTube did not respond to Ars' request to comment.

Source

RIP Matrix | Farewell my friend  

Hope you enjoyed this news post.

Thank you for appreciating my time and effort posting news every day for many years.

2023: Over 5,800 news posts | 2024 (till end of September): 4,292 news posts