YouTube creators may see a slight drop in their subscriber numbers beginning next week.
On June 16, Google’s video platform will be removing suspended accounts from all of its channels’ subscriber counts in an attempt to free its site from spam and abuse.
From the announcement:
This means some of you will notice a minor drop in your subscribers. To be clear, these are not active viewers, so you shouldn’t see any impact on your views or watch time.
Acknowledging that subscriptions are one of the most accurate ways for a channel to gauge its success, YouTube says it wants to ensure subscriber numbers stay “meaningful” and represent a clear picture of a channel’s true fan count.
Once it has completed scrubbing the suspended accounts, YouTube claims it will have an automated system in place that removes suspended accounts from subscribers counts as they occur.
According to the announcement, “If something goes wrong for one of our viewers and their account is suspended in error, these changes are reversible.”
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