YouTube made headlines earlier this week with a wide-scale purge of cryptocurrency videos. Just as suddenly, the Google-owned company seems to have reversed course, labeling the purge a “wrong call.”
Content creators who use YouTube to publish information about cryptocurrencies were in for a rude awakening this week when they discovered that many of their videos had been removed with no explanation. In some cases, creators even received strikes for some of their content.
Nugget’s News founder Alex Saunders tweeted about his experience:
“Hi @TeamYouTube with over 100 videos removed & 2 strikes in 24 hours I have still not even received an email from you. This is really scary. We’ve hired new staff. I have a wife & baby to support. I can’t fix the problem if I don’t know what I’ve done or who to communicate with!?”
Following appeals from multiple creators, YouTube reversed course and issued the following statement to Decrypt:
“With the massive volume of videos on our site, sometimes we make the wrong call. When it’s brought to our attention that a video has been removed mistakenly, we act quickly to reinstate it.”
Unfortunately, not all creators have seen their videos reinstated, and for some it has gotten worse since the reinstatement. Chris Dunn, who runs a cryptocurrency channel with 200,000 subscribers, told CoinDesk that YouTube removed his videos a second time, after reinstating them, and even went on to delete a video they had not removed during the first round.
Much of the issue, as well as past issues other content creators have experienced, is that YouTube failed to communicate anything. As Saunders said above, it’s difficult to a address a problem without knowing what the problem is. To make matters worse, bungling the “fix” only makes the original issue that much worse.
Episodes like these make a strong case for Dave Rubin’s recently launched Locals.com, aimed at giving creators far more control over their own content and brand.