There are some concerns circling today for fans that follow the times of PewDiePie, the Swedish YouTuber that has amassed a monumental following over the years with this videos that have occasionally been punctuated with controversial moments.
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His most recent video is, thus far, the worst-performing video in metrics leading some to presume that he has been shadowbanned on the platform, meaning only direct links to his YouTube videos would actually work.
Granted, worst-performing is still a dream for many viewers; his video titled ‘97% of people can’t tell what this is’ had garnered 73K views on YouTube 3 hours after posting, where the standard is far closer to around half a million views within the same time frame.
This has led to speculation that the popular, if controversial, figure has thus been shadowbanned; Felix Arvid Ulf Kjellberg himself pinned a comment onto the video to stymie the growing uproar before it spiralled too far out of control, stating that it’s a bug, and not a ban.
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Creators are currently attempting to band together and see if they can pinpoint precisely where this is coming from.
The idea of one of the most popular YouTube figures being shadowbanned may seem absurd, but for those that have closely been following the YouTube team in their arguably consistent disasters, such as giving copyright strikes to users playing their own music in a stream, or deleting Google accounts for people that use too many emotes in YouTube Gaming Live (at the streamers bequest) makes the news as it broke believable.
YouTube, to many fans of the video platform juggernaut, has been readily cutting off their noses to spite their face, often to the disappointment, if not outright frustration, from their maneuvers that make little sense and appears to result in an overall detrimental experience for fans on an international scale.
With Felix Arvid Ulf Kjellberg himself stating that it doesn’t appear to be the case, as confirmed by the YouTube team, this mistep doesn’t appear to be intentional at the moment.
It does, however, call up the idea that a platform could remove an person’s entire existence (and source of income) on a whim, if not due to sour relations no longer being maintained between creators and staff at YouTube.
With the recent litany of misteps that have been taken from YouTube (and even Twitch if we look at the strange case of Dr. Disrespect) it may be time for the personalities to bond together and craft their own form of interaction.