The YouTube gambling community isn’t massive, but its biggest channels have tens and sometimes hundreds of thousands of loyal and active fans, which allows them to broker brand deals with big-time casinos, gambling-machine manufacturers, and online gambling sites in Europe. After his channel was taken down, Christopher spent days trying to renegotiate deals he had made with casinos throughout his tour.
“YouTube doing this stuff absolutely jeopardizes my business relationships,” Christopher said. “I’m in contact with the casinos I was supposed to visit, I’m trying to put them at ease and continue on Facebook. I know I haven’t lost my brand … but it’s tough.”
Christopher’s channel was reinstated shortly after he spoke to The Atlantic, but other popular gambling channels have received permanent or temporary bans, or have had features, such as the ability to live stream, revoked.
Thebigjackpot@thebigjackpotli@SusanWojcicki My 1 year old channel with 100,000 Subscribers just got removed today without any notice or just cause, & 2 WEEKS BEFORE my $100K SLOT PULL promoting my YouTube Channel! Please help! #Positive #Educational #Fun @TeamYouTube @YouTube #TBJSTRONG #TBJnumber1
“I’ve spoken with other channels, no one knows what’s happening,” said Christopher. “No one has any facts, including myself. No other channels know how to prevent this. They’re scared, they’re deleting videos saying ‘maybe these are ones that YouTube won’t like.’ They’re afraid to go live.” He added that even after he received an email saying his appeal was granted and channel reinstated, he wasn’t given any explanation for why the initial deletion occurred.
Gambling YouTubers have taken to group chats, Twitter, and private messaging over the past several days, trying in vain to figure out why their channels are suddenly being targeted. “What I find awkward is no one is 💯 sure what’s going on. Everyone is just speculating,” one user wrote on a forum thread discussing the issue. “Also I don’t get how hard it is to contact anyone from YouTube it’s like their friggin invisible.”
Kim Hultman, a Swedish YouTuber who runs the gambling channel LetsGiveitaspinTV said that he was mid live stream when he found out YouTube shut down his channel.
“I checked my channel and it was gone. YouTube had shut it down completely. No notice,” he said. “I appealed and said I’ve been doing this over two years, I don’t understand why you’d decide to shut me down right now. They sent another generic mail saying we reviewed your appeal.”
“This is my full-time job,” he added. “You spend so many years to build it up and they can just erase it with one button.”
Since the first wave of bans, YouTubers said that they’ve felt a familiar wave of panic, knowing that they could be next. Though many attempts to diversify, YouTube’s platform is unique and many creators have been unsuccessful in their attempts to build audiences on other platforms to a similar scale.
“You need something like YouTube to help people find your channel,” Raja, who runs the YouTube gambling channel Raja Slots said during a live streamshortly after his channel was deleted, then reinstated earlier this week. “We have explored other options, but those other platforms aren’t going to help grow a channel.”
LetsGiveItASpin@LetsGiveItASpinStill no reply about @YouTube from @TeamYouTube , it’s a shame they decide to shut an entire section and keep us in the dark.
Christopher said that he hopes YouTube will soon realize the effect that even the smallest platform or policy changes can have on creators like him.
“I just hope that YouTube comes through,” he said. “I just hope that they will open a dialogue with me … I made them a ton of money over the past few years. For them to just close up shop with zero way of communication is a slap in the face.”
Article Appeared @https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/06/gambling-channels-are-the-latest-victims-of-youtubes-arbitrary-moderation-process/562157/