Google secretly deletes inactive YouTube accounts

Many YouTube content creators are scrambling to bring their subscription numbers back to where they were prior to this purge.

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If you’re a YouTube content creator, like we are, then you may have noticed your subscribers has dropped substantially. Don’t worry - you did nothing wrong. Unfortunately for content creators, Google has decided to remove inactive YouTube accounts from its database today.

The YouTube inactive account purge occurred at 1am PT this morning, and Shacknews’ YouTube channel was hit particularly hard as we lost over 1,000 subscribers as a result. As a result of today’s purge, an average of 1% to 2% of subscriptions have been lost by content creators. YouTube itself lost 40,000 subscribers, while PewDiePie lost 613.000 subscribers.

YouTube has yet to make it public knowledge that it deleted inactive accounts today, but if you look on Twitter, many users are sharing information as to how many subscribers they lost in today’s purge. That's not all as a number of stat-tracking websites have been crashing for the majority of the day due to the purge.

If you’re a YouTube content creator that was hit with today’s purge, feel free to share your experience in the Chatty. Hopefully Google will reverse its decision to remove inactive accounts, or at least reconsider what kind of account is inactive.

Also - if you have yet to subscriber to our YouTube channel, now would be a fantastic time.

Senior Editor
From The Chatty
  • reply
    June 28, 2016 2:10 PM

    Daniel Perez posted a new article, Google secretly deletes inactive YouTube accounts

    • reply
      June 28, 2016 2:21 PM

      I saw some you-tubers in tears because they reached a Sub goal only to have it being taken away. Not sure if it's worth crying over, but it does suck. Personally I think Youtube should just flat out delete any channel dedicated to Minecraft Let's plays, if they want to do something useful in the YouTube community.

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        June 28, 2016 2:31 PM

        But all of our value in society is based on subs, follows, and likes.

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        June 28, 2016 2:34 PM

        [deleted]

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          June 28, 2016 2:35 PM

          "It's as if a million 10 year olds cried out, and then silence"

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        June 28, 2016 2:52 PM

        What do they actually lose with getting more accurate viewer count? Sure losing 1000 off your subscriber ticker sucks but they weren't watching your content anyways and not generating and income for you.

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          June 28, 2016 2:55 PM

          [deleted]

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          June 28, 2016 10:15 PM

          The only ones who will lose will be people who sell product placement based off of those numbers.
          The people buying these placement spots will get better value.

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            June 28, 2016 11:48 PM

            Only clueless marketers buy off sub counts. You take previous views, engagement, frequency of uploads, and brand alignment into account when working on a price. Subs for show, engagement for dough.

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        June 28, 2016 3:21 PM

        Those people need to reevaluate their priorities.

    • reply
      June 28, 2016 3:09 PM

      I reached out to Virus for comment.

      "How does it feel knowing that you made Greg Burke cry?" I asked the Googler.

      "Greg who? *shrug*," replied the heartless executive.

      #InactiveSubsMatter

    • reply
      June 28, 2016 3:30 PM

      Hydraulic Press Channel wasn't hit too bad, so it's all relative. Make sense that older channels are going to be hit harder than newer ones.

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      June 28, 2016 3:50 PM

      [deleted]

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      June 28, 2016 3:50 PM

      my noby noby boy video i took 7 years ago better still fucking be there

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGJ6Y-P34-c

      oh man it is. crisis averted.

    • reply
      June 28, 2016 4:16 PM

      This is a good thing.

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      June 28, 2016 10:19 PM

      User counts should always be active users not people who signed up at some distant time in the path.
      Maybe Google should alter YouTube so that subscriptions are almost removed from your account after 2 years if you haven't watched the groups videos in that time. This would stop zombie accounts being counted as active users on channels.

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        June 28, 2016 10:43 PM

        Yah, I'm not sure how this is "Unfortunately for content creators". Your subscriber numbers just became more accurate.

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          June 29, 2016 12:08 AM

          A lot of people have their egos wrapped up into how many follows/subs they have.

          You are right. I want to know how many people are actively watching Shacknews content.

          Losing subscribers hurts the people who make "I just hit 13000 subs!" celebration videos. They are fragile, special, little butterflies and Google hurt their feelings today.

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      June 29, 2016 1:27 AM

      What pissed me the most is that I had just got 1k subscribers, which I consider my biggest goal 'til now, and YouTube removed 50 subscribers. Those accounts may have been inactive also, but if they subbed then it means I worked to get them, for sure I'm not the person who would bot his subs.

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      June 29, 2016 3:02 AM

      It's only right to remove inactive subscriptions - having followers that is no longer active is not a follower... it's an old dusting account with no user. All it means is that your subscription number was wrong to begin with, and its corrected with the purge..

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      June 29, 2016 3:32 AM

      [deleted]

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      June 29, 2016 5:26 AM

      Google is becoming more like Hooli everyday

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