YouTube Verification Purge

Overview

YouTube Verification Purge refers to the change in YouTube verification requirements from having 100,000 subscribers to a much more exclusive requirements involving authenticity and prominence in September 2019. The change triggered a negative response from the YouTuber community due to many notable YouTube influencers losing a status symbol they worked hard to obtain.

Background

On September 19th, 2019, YouTube^[1] announced via blog post that they would be changing the YouTuber verification requirements to adapt to user needs and YouTube's credibility. The blog post read:

Under our current eligibility requirements, channels with more than 100,000 subscribers can be verified regardless of need for proof of authenticity. That worked well when YouTube was smaller, but as YouTube has grown and the ecosystem has become more complex, we needed a new way to verify the identity of channels and help users find the official channel they’re looking for. Our new criteria prioritizes verifying prominent channels that have a clear need for proof of authenticity. We look at a number of factors to determine if a channel meets this criteria, including: Authenticity [and] Prominence.

Notable Developments

On September 19th, 2019, YouTuber Kiwiz^[3] announced via Twitter that he received a notice that his YouTube account will become unverified despite having over two million subscribers (shown below, left). The tweet gained over 800 likes and 64 retweets in a day. As more Tweets announced that more YouTubers would become unverified in October that day, YouTuber James Charles^[4] tweeted, "I’m really sorry to the creators who are being unverified on @YouTube today. This decision is really pointless and it’s yet another change not a single person asked for 😐 PLEASE know that you are still valid as a creator and I hope that a stupid checkmark doesn’t discourage you!" (shown below, center). The tweet garnered over 49,200 likes and 1,900 retweets in a day. Many rumors surrounding PewDiePie's verification spread but his channel is not being unverified. Twitter user @EposVox^[5] explained that "YouTube did not un-verify Pewdiepie/Google/themselves, BTW. Mobile isn't showing verification checkmarks at all on channel pages so when the news broke, everyone kept looking at channels on mobile and saying that PDP, Google, YouTube, etc. got unverified" (shown below, right). That same day, The New York Times^[2] covered the incident and gather comments from Jason Urgo:

Jason Urgo, founder and chief executive of SocialBlade, a social media analytics company, said that YouTube’s changes weren’t as drastic as they might seem to creators. “At the end of the day what I’m guessing they’re going for is trying to be more in line with how other major social platforms handle verification,” he said. “On those platforms it’s more difficult to be verified.” But, Mr. Urgo added, “it’s safe to say that their relationship with creators doesn’t feel as solid as it did years ago.”

On September 19th, Twitter user @FoldableHuman posted a comprehensive thread as to why YouTubers are angry despite verification being "trivial" in the past explaining that people "hate it when you take things away from them. Even trivial things" (shown below). The initial tweet accumulated over 2,000 likes and 400 retweets in a day.

I am actually a little shocked at YouTube's lack of foresight with this. How have they not learned by now how these things go?

Thread on verification, why this isn't a big deal, and why it will be treated like one b/c YouTube are bad communicators. pic.twitter.com/baKaIBfsRn

— Dan Olson (me) (@FoldableHuman) September 19, 2019

On September 20th, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki^[6] tweeted "To our creators & users–I’m sorry for the frustration & hurt that we caused with our new approach to verification. While trying to make improvements, we missed the mark. As I write this, we're working to address your concerns & we’ll have more updates soon" (shown below). The tweet garnered over 5,500 likes and 580 retweets in two hours.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References