YouTube has started to purge fake subscribers in a bid to filter the video streaming platform from spam accounts. YouTube in a blog post warned the YouTube content creators that they may see a big drop in their subscriber count as a result of this crackdown. As per the blog post, the filtration started on 13th December and will continue till 14th December. The blog post said:
“Heads up that on December 13-14, 2018 you may see a noticeable decrease in your subscriber count as we remove spam subscriptions from your channel.”
The Google-owned video streaming platform regularly verifies and filters the legitimacy of accounts and this check has led to a steep decline in subscriber count for many YouTube content creators. YouTube in the blog post went on to say their effort to remove spam account should assure users that the following that they’re building is organically built with legitimate subscribers and the main motive behind this is to identify and stop this spam activity that various channels use to make them look more popular than they actually are. The blog post further explained that the technology and tools they use to filter the subscribers are industry leading.
The main takeaway from this post is that the only the spam subscribers will be removed from the channels which will not affect the ‘watch time’ of the channel since spam subscribers do not actively engage with the channel’s content. Secondly, if a channel’s subscribers fall below the YouTube Partner Program (YPP) threshold of 1000 subscribers, then this will result in the removal of their channel from the program.
