Popular YouTuber CGP Grey has been locked out of access to his YouTube videos with an account suspension.
“After 8 years building a channel on @YouTube waking up on a Sunday morning to find your access suspended. (Videos still up though?)”, Grey said on Twitter after realizing what had happened.
“If you’ve been directed to this page for a particular product, it means your access to this product has been suspended,” the notice from YouTube read. “Your access to this Google product has been suspended because of a perceived violation of either the Google Terms of Service or product-specific Terms of Service.”
https://twitter.com/cgpgrey/status/1175681091165966336
The YouTuber is popular for creating mini informational-style videos on interesting topics and over the years has amassed almost four million followers.
Grey’s videos have mainstream appeal and don’t appear to contain any content that is edgy or content that could potentially cause an obvious problem with any of YouTube’s notorious and ever-changing rules and “community guidelines”.
In typical fashion, Google hasn’t yet responded to Grey about why the account has been suspended.
“…still haven’t heard from YouTube why I can’t access my account or what Terms of Service my channel has been ‘perceived’ to violate. Guess I’ll just try to sleep and cross my fingers for tomorrow,” Grey said.
Grey described finding his YouTube channel locked as “terrifying”, causing his day to be “derailed with high anxiety”. This echo’s yesterday’s news that modding YouTuber MxR Mods’ channel had been demonetized – in a move that channel owner Henry Liang described as “depressing” to have to deal with.
“Terrifying”, “anxiety” and “depressing” are increasingly words used by YouTubers in recent times as, despite being full-time content creators on the platform, they have little security in their livelihoods.
Yesterday, Liang talked about the dread of receiving emails from YouTube, not knowing what bad news the emails could entail. He also mentioned how Google can sometimes take weeks to reply to support emails about a problem affecting the channel.
Similar to Liang, Grey thanked fans for their support on Patreon, with the direct support from fans cushioning the blow of being at the mercy of YouTube.
GCP Grey is no stranger to the problems facing creators and their reliance on big tech platforms. Since 2015, Grey has been co-host of the Cortex podcast with podcast network co-founder Myke Hurley, about the work lives of independent creators.
Account suspensions such as these are increasingly common and YouTube’s recent chaos is leaving many creators uncomfortable with their future on the platform.
News commentators, musicians, family vloggers, political candidates, and even model creators have been affected by YouTube’s creator-hostile decision making.
UPDATE: CGP Grey’s access has been restored. According to YouTube, CGP Grey’s account was suspended for impersonating CGP Grey…
https://twitter.com/cgpgrey/status/1176195596975259648
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