YouTube is fixing its recent wave of accidental spam bans

04 Oct 2024, 11:31 by Chris Thomas · Android Police

YouTube sees petabytes of daily video uploads and more traffic than any other video host in the world. It's impossible to moderate every second of content by hand. Its various policies and automated algorithms prevent spam and harmful practices on a broad scale, but do go awry from time to time and hand out punishments where they aren't deserved.

But bugs are a fact of life. Recently, thousands of upstanding creators logged in to find not only their content removed, but also their access to paid subscriptions revoked. As one might imagine, word spread quickly, and YouTube has already begun the reinstatement and repair process.

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Whether it's a major source of income or just an expressive hobby, YouTube content takes work to produce and means a lot to its creators. If you woke up and found your entire collection nuked and access to YouTube Premium revoked, a little panic is understandable.

Will you be cancelling YouTube Premium?

Apparently, YouTube Premium users across the world have been receiving emails about impending price hikes. Those in Ireland, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Italy will see higher fees across the service, including family plans, and Switzerland and Sweden will see higher Family subscriptions, with the Middle East, Singapore, Thailand, and Indonesia receiving higher Premium prices. And this is just what has been reported by users, so expect more territories to get hit (read more in the linked article). But with this change, we here at AP have been wondering how many users will be canceling their YouTube Premium plans when the higher fees drop? It's not like YouTube Premium is priced very well to begin with, with many taking issue with the cost not reflecting what you get (especially if you don't need YouTube Music) and rising fees sure won't help this situation. So, will you be one of the people dropping the service, or do you feel the higher fees are justified?

Don't let it consume you, though. Google and YouTube staff were quickly alerted, and acknowledged the issue around 11 PM EDT. The support post received a positive update less than an hour later indicating that the team had begun actively restoring both the incorrectly removed content and its owners' access to paid features.

Patience is a virtue (but waiting is a pain)

Hundreds of concerned creators quickly replied to share their experience and plead for help. If you're among them, or considering voicing your concerns, we feel for you. If your content disappeared without a good explanation recently, you probably also got some advice from YouTube on appealing for reinstatement.

It can't hurt to follow the prescribed steps, even if you're certain you're not guilty of violating the terms of service. On the other hand, don't stress too much. The fix appears to be manually implemented, and moderators should get to your account as soon as they can. Try not to bombard them with complaints; flooding the queue probably won't help, and always remember the person behind the keyboard.

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