YouTube isn’t known for their unbias moderation policies, but in addition to that their algorithm is frequently making mistakes that hurt their creators and viewers. This time, YouTube’s algorithm screwed up in a big way by banning thousands of fans participating in Markiplier’s live stream.
The bans came after Markiplier solicited votes from his fans by asking them to spam the chat during an interactive movie called “A Heist” were they would help choose the path the movie took. To make matters worse, users appealed the bans and almost all of them were rejected by the YouTube moderation team.
YouTube eventually responded to the issue by saying they were “looking into” the issues with the moderation staff denying the appeals and the algorithm mass banning legitimate live stream chat messages. According to Markiplier many of the accounts have now been restored by not all of them.
If you look at it from a glass half full perspective, at least this happening to a large non-controversial account might make a broader audience take notice to YouTube’s terrible approach to moderation.