• by Alex Weprin , December 14, 2018

In a notice to creators on the platform, YouTube says it is taking actions to remove a significant number of spam accounts. In the open letter, YouTube told creators: “You may see a noticeable decrease in your subscriber count as we remove spam subscriptions from your channel.”

The company says while it regularly tracks and removes spam accounts, “we’ve recently identified and fixed an issue that caused some spam not to be removed,” spurring on the mass removal of accounts. 

YouTube says affected creators will see a banner on their Studio page in the next few days. Channels that drop under the 1,000 subscriber threshold to join the YouTube Partner Program — the program that allows channels to monetize through ads — will be removed until they organically pass 1,000 subscribers again, at which point they can reapply.

On Thursday, YouTube also released its latest quarterly Community Guidelines Enforcement Report, which it says will now include data about channels and videos that were removed for violating community standards.

From July-September 2018, the company says it removed 1.67 million channels — 80% were considered spam, misleading or a scam. 

In addition, YouTube says it removed more than 7.8 million individual videos, with 72% removed for being spam, scams or misleading, 10% for child-safety concerns, and 10% for sex or nudity. The company says 74.5% of the removed videos were taken down before receiving a single view, thanks to its automated flagging technology.