Google Removes YouTube Subscribers
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Users say causes unnecessary problems and loss of income
by Christopher Jones, Web Editor
“How could they do this? I am gonna quit,” was repeated in many videos by YouTubers, after they became victims of what is being called Google “subscriber theft.”
On January 12, 2012, the owners of YouTube passed a new policy that would: (1) Remove inactive and closed accounts from total subscriber counts and (2) Take away “fake” subscribers. This means that YouTube video publishers could lose significant numbers of subscribers that they’ve worked hard to gain. The YouTube community is abuzz about these subscriber action and some say it could ultimately lead to the downfall of YouTube.
Although this new policy started in January, YouTubers have just recently discovered serious errors in Google’s actions. Some YouTubers have lost so many subscribers that they decided to quit. One example is thedollarshort, a YouTuber who talks about the news in several recent videos. He had about 14,900 subscribers and was going to have a 15,000 subscriber special to celebrate this tremendous accomplishment. Instead, he ended up losing about 3 to 4 thousand subscribers.
He has also suffered a large decline in his views. His average view count went to about 10,000 per video to only 2,000 or lower. The more subscribers you have the higher ranked you are when someone searches your video topic. This dramatic subscriber loss led him to quit his channel
“Because of my loss of views,” explained Big Mac, “I’ve decided to quit YouTube and concentrate on my studies for school.”
YouTubers argue that Google’s removal of “fake” subscriber would not have a dramatic effect on a video publisher’s views. Some call it the worst error in YouTube’s history. Google’s new policy is taking away real and active subscribers. If a YouTube viewer is a fan of a channel and gets unsubscribed, they would simply think that the channel wasn’t uploading any videos and might not even notice that they had been unsubscribed.
Thedollarshort, is not the only victim of Google’s harsh policy. Thousand of YouTubers have reported being unsubscribed from channels they like and view on a regular basis. This is not really a problem to small YouTubers that don’t have many subscribers because with a smaller audience you have a higher percentage of viewers. The larger YouTube publishers, however, are losing money. Some of the big YouTubers earn a significant amount of money and for some it is their primary source of income. “YouTube is basically stealing their money,” said BananaSeaCow, a smaller YouTuber.
Many people believe that YouTube could become much less popular. Some YouTubers even say that this policy is Internet suicide. Greg Rogers, a regular commenter on the YouTube creators blog page wrote “I do not support the removal of inactive or closed accounts. It is unnecessary. It is removing ‘old success’. Just because it occurred so long ago doesn’t mean it should be forgotten. For example, just because Michael Jordan played over a decade ago and won so many championships so long ago doesn’t mean you can just wipe his records and take his ring.”
