YouTube Is Deleting My Channel - What Happened

What's up, guys? It's Graham here.

So to bring everyone up to speed with what happened, I posted a video about three weeks ago that YouTube had scheduled my channel for deletion on July 12th. This was a giant red notice that came completely out of nowhere for seemingly no reason, and I was in a panic because I knew it had to be a mistake. In fact, YouTube sent me multiple notices, both on my account and over email, that I was in violation of their comment spam, deceptive practices, and scams policies. After that date, my channel was vulnerable to immediate termination. This is something I never expected to happen in a million years because I've always been extremely careful with how I conduct myself here on YouTube.

Now, according to their notice, the reason my channel was picked up for termination was due to severe and repeated comment spam. When you click on the learn more tab, it sends you to a page that defines the spam comments as having the sole purpose to gather personal info from viewers, misleadingly drive viewers off YouTube, or perform any of the prohibited behaviors above. Now, this also includes leaving a large number of identical, targeted, or repetitive comments, which I don't do, making me believe that my channel was somehow targeted for deletion by error.

At the time I made that previous video, I had a few theories about what was going on. The first was that maybe I was just commenting way too much, and that somehow triggered a red flag with the YouTube algorithm. Like, every single time I post a new video, including this one, I do my best to respond to as many comments as I can for the first hour, and sometimes that could very well be over a thousand comments that I personally take the time to get back to. Now obviously, because I get so many comments, I'm not responding back with essays to everybody, but I will respond back with a lot of thank yous, enjoys, and "Did you smash the like button yet? Here's your reminder to do that because it really helps out my channel a ton. Thank you so much for doing that."

Now, that made me think that maybe I was just repeating too many of the same words all around the same time, and that caused the spam filter to pick up my channel as a potential target. But after speaking with several people, they always assured me that responding to a high volume of comments on my own channel would not have caused this to happen. So it must have been something else that led me to my second theory, which made up the bulk of that previous video. That would be the fake scam comments impersonating me, replying to nearly every single comment on every single video, trying to get you to send them crypto and WhatsApp. This is a huge problem for not only my channel but also the entirety of YouTube, and removing these comments is pretty much impossible.

They use automated bots to respond to hundreds of comments a minute. They use like bots to push their comments to the top of the page, and if I ban their accounts from my channel, they make a new account within minutes and start commenting again, even worse than that. If I ban that account from appearing on my channel, it still leaves all of their previous comments visible, which means you have to manually go through and remove thousands of comments every hour of the day to even begin to make a dent. I've even gone so far as to block commonly used words like "WhatsApp," but with a special character, they get around the blocked keyword within seconds.

With millions of potential configurations that they could use, I'm always going to be one step behind them. They've even begun running fake ads on my channel right below my own videos, calling themselves the "Grandstep" and "Arbitrage," which links you to a fake telegram landing page where they can get your details without you ever needing to text a WhatsApp number. Basically, they're just using my pictures to scam as many people as possible as fast as possible before they get removed, and then they make a few small changes, and they're back up within a few minutes.

My biggest concern with regard to having my channel taken down was that potentially having hundreds or thousands of fake accounts, all with my exact same name, impersonating me throughout YouTube with WhatsApp scams, was somehow affecting my own channel. If YouTube was trying to sweep up all of the thousands of spam comments with the exact same "Graham Stephan" name, it would make sense that my real verified account would mistakenly end up in that same list as well. I know that worried quite a few creators who saw my video; they were also getting the exact same spam comments and got concerned that if my channel could be targeted, so could theirs.

Now, here's where things take a slightly different turn. After I posted that video, the support and outreach from everyone was incredible. I watched every single response video people made, drawing attention to the issue of spam comments. I was contacted by so many people who I had no idea even watched my channel, and everyone was willing to help out, which I have to say means the absolute world to me. The fact that we were able to build up such a supportive community here is beyond words.

Although in that process, I was able to speak with a member of the YouTube Creator support team who told me that they would look into the issue and then report back with what they find. Now, quite a few people were asking me how I was able to get in contact with somebody at YouTube because usually, you're just limited to Team YouTube on Twitter or the Creator support chat window within your account. Well, what I was unaware of until just recently is that once your channel hits a certain point, you're assigned a YouTube support partner who aims to be the central point of contact between you and YouTube for any issues that might come up, including something like this.

I didn't even know this is a feature until recently, but maybe this is something that YouTube is beginning to roll out to help their creators with whatever issues they might have. I gotta say, the person I spoke to was extremely helpful with the entire issue, and he was just as perplexed about my channel being scheduled for termination under comment spam. Of course, I had to ask him the questions that a lot of people mentioned in my previous video.

First, they say that replying to a large amount of comments on your own channel has no merit whatsoever on accidentally flagging your channel for deletion or being flagged as repetitive spam, so go ahead and comment as much as you want because there's no problem there.

Second, they say that there was no way my channel would be accidentally mixed in with all the scam comments pretending to be me. As they explained, every channel has a unique account ID that tracks every comment you make, every like you make, and what you do on the platform. So even if another account has the exact same name and same thumbnail, it would be impossible for the two to be mistaken for the same.

Third, they said they are actively working on addressing these spam comment problems on YouTube, but they couldn't offer me any more details on this because it's all done internally and kept confidential, which I believe. But fourth, in terms of why my account was scheduled for deletion, they told me that they've been working to address all of the spam comments across YouTube and, with the introduction of a new update, one of my comments fell under their radar on a video posted by Meet Kevin titled "I Quit." In that video, Meet Kevin talks about a schedule and how we might have to start scaling back on Market open live streams; to which I commented, "I can't believe how much you've been posting and how you found the time to work it all in a day and still sleep. I think it's a good move."

Marcellus then commented, "Surprised this isn't a gram bot," to which I jokingly responded, "Message me for Bitcoin guidance. Mr. Johnson has helped me make millions. WhatsApp," with, of course, an "LOL JK" at the end, just so people know it's a joke. It's a fake number, and it's all just made up to satire all of the accounts pretending to be me posting on Kevin's channel.

Anyway, I posted that comment as just a way to make light of the situation happening to so many YouTubers—it was a moment of non-seriousness because he sees this as much as I do. Evidently, this is the comment that pushed YouTube's new spam algorithm over the edge to identify my channel for deletion. The comment was my attempted humor made with only the best intentions, and I wanted it to seem so over the top that it made it clear that these comments exist and they should be something to be made aware of.

So, after speaking with the representative at YouTube, they made it clear that the algorithm identified this comment as a mistake, and it was being adjusted to prevent false positives like this from happening to anybody else. I was also very surprised with how many other accounts reached out to me, both publicly and privately, to let me know that they also got the exact same notice that their accounts have been flagged for excessive spam comments and their channels would also be terminated around the same dates as me.

Thankfully, though, within a week, YouTube got back in touch with me to tell me that all of my channel features had been restored. My channel was not going to be deleted due to a misunderstanding, and their algorithm would be adjusted to prevent this from happening to anybody else. However, the entire experience really made me realize the importance of diversification across platforms so that way you're not too reliant on one source for your income; this is really what I've centered the entire core of everything around.

Although now, the main issue I see with this is that the main driver of traffic to everything else, including my other channels, is this. So, in addition to continuing to build out and grow and evolve here on YouTube, I think it makes sense to spend time solidifying and growing out other platforms that I've largely overlooked and neglected, just to be able to expand on what I'm already doing. Like Dave Ramsey has a following of 5.4 million people on Facebook versus my Facebook page, which I have not logged into in over a year.

So, by the way, if you want to do me a favor and follow me on Facebook, the link is down below in the description, and I promise I'm going to be better. The same thing applies to everywhere else, like Twitter, which I barely use, or TikTok, which I should probably be getting better at, and Instagram. Even though I like posting stories, I guess previously I thought that other platforms would only take away from what I'm doing here. But if anything, I was incorrect, and building out other platforms would give you more overall content and be able to bring in an even larger audience back to YouTube.

So, I think it would be a win-win all the way around. So for you watching, thankfully, this channel is safe, and your support helped bring a lot of awareness to the situation. I think the more attention we could bring to these scammers, the less effective they're going to be, and the more we could push to remove them from the platform.

Now, in YouTube's defense, their comment system worked; it just worked too well, and too many real channels were mistakenly being flagged for deletion. So that's one of the biggest takeaways here, along with, uh, well, don't try to impersonate the scam comments by posting your own satirical scam comment because, uh, that's a bad idea. Don't do that. Lesson learned.

So, thank you guys again for all of your support throughout this entire ordeal. It really means the world to me, and I will do my best to respond to as many comments as I can. So, with that said, you guys, thank you so much for watching. I really appreciate it. As always, make sure to subscribe or hit the notification bell. Also, feel free to add me on Instagram; I post pretty much daily. So, if you want to be a part of it there, feel free to add me there.

As for my second channel, The Graham Stephan Show, I post there every single day I'm not posting here. So, if you want to see a brand new video from me every single day, make sure to add yourself to that. Thank you so much for watching, and until next time!