YouTube mistakenly bans accounts, removes channels for spam

Over the past few hours, YouTube appears to have accidentally removed channels and banned accounts for violating its “spam, deceptive practices, and scams policy” even for users that have never uploaded videos in what looks to be a bug.

Update 10/4: As of Friday afternoon, “all channels incorrectly removed for Spam & Deceptive Practices have been fully reinstated.” Access to paid memberships have also been restored.

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

If you’re still experiencing any issues, please don’t hesitate to reach out!

Update: YouTube has acknowledged the issue and is “actively working on reinstating the channels,” as well as access to paid YouTube TV, YouTube Premium, YouTube Music subscriptions.

We’re seeing reports of channels being incorrectly removed for Spam & Deceptive Practices. Our teams are actively working on reinstating the channels.

Those that have been reinstated and are missing playlists will soon get that content restored.

If your channel was incorrectly removed and reinstated, you might notice some content, such as playlists, might be missing. Don’t worry – this is just a delay and all your content will soon be restored.

As such, it’s unlikely that the accounts committed “severe or repeated violations.”

These non-content creators have lost access to their YouTube account and cannot watch videos or listen to YouTube Music. YouTube Premium subscribers are also impacted by this issue, with playlists and other saved content not accessible when banned.

YouTube users are learning of this account ban/channel removal from emails (like the one below). There are dozens of reports this afternoon from around the world (including the US, Europe, Asia), with people understandably upset about lost access, especially to saved playlists and/or music libraries.

Per the email, users are able to appeal and we’re seeing several reports of that working, with account access restored. However, some of those people say they are currently not seeing their playlists. For others, the appeal restored everything.

Hopefully, YouTube is in the process of reverting this automatically without any user action.

We’ve reached out to YouTube for more information, but this is a pretty big oversight.