YouTube Shuts Down Popular Altcoin Daily Channel for Two Days 

YouTube is having a continually frigid relationship with the cryptocurrency space. Recently, the world’s largest video streaming service struck another blow to a crypto-based content creator.

Last week, brothers Aaron and Austin Arnold, who run the popular channel Altcoin Daily, said in a tweet that YouTube had terminated their channel. As the brothers explained, YouTube claimed that they had encouraged illegal activities to their 214,000 subscribers, and their content had violated its policies.

URGENT! YouTube has just terminated our channel claiming that we were "encouraging illegal activities"!

We are a news/opinion channel! We have never promoted anything illegal!

Appeal has been submitted. @TeamYouTube Please review this!

Plz RT! HELP!https://t.co/o5GAKLXTBc

— Altcoin Daily (@AltcoinDailyio) July 31, 2020

More Account Suspensions

The brothers explained that they have always run Altcoin Daily as an opinion channel and had contacted YouTube over a possible reversal. They also encouraged their over 27,000 followers to do the same and get their efforts trending on the social media platform. The efforts succeeded. After more than two days in limbo, Altcoin Daily reported that YouTube had reinstated its channel, and it was back to work.

This recent account suspension is underscoring a continued fraught relationship between YouTube and its crypto-related content creators. The company has been on a significant spree of terminating accounts and suspending them for months now, and many have called it out for censoring them in some way or the other without any tenable cause. 

YouTube began its account suspension and termination spree back in December 2019, when it blocked popular crypto-related accounts like stock analysis service The Moon and others. In May, industry news site Cointelegraph was running a live stream on the eve of the Bitcoin halving. Sadly, the company couldn’t complete the stream as YouTube shut it down.

While YouTube eventually reversed many of these issues, many have taken it as a sign that the service doesn’t plan to be friendly with crypto content creators.

Clearing Out the “Trash”

However, the company is also dealing with a wave of scam content being peddled across its platform. Last month, YouTube became the base of a massive VET scam that promised to give viewers double their money as they “invest” in it. A report from Cointelegraph confirmed that up to 38,000 people saw the scam go live and watched it.

Apart from the VET scam, Ajey Nagar, a Popular Indian YouTuber with 6.7 million subscribers, also recently suffered a hack. The attack happened on Nagar’s second channel — CarryisLive — where he streams himself playing video games with celebrities and fellow YouTubers.

Hackers posted two Bitcoin giveaway scam videos on the channel, with one of them featuring billionaire Elon Musk giving away Bitcoin. Nagar eventually got his account back, but only after thousands had probably watched the videos.

YouTube’s susceptibility to scam operations has put the company in some serious issues. It is currently facing a lawsuit from Brad Garlinghouse, the chief executive of blockchain company Ripple Labs, who accused the firm of failing to stop scammers and impersonators who tried to use his image in a giveaway scam.

YouTube has claimed that it isn’t liable for the content that gets posted on its platform and is hiding under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.

However, the suits keep coming. Just last week, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak sued the company for basically the same reason as Garlinghouse and Ripple Labs. With all the trouble it has gotten, YouTube might merely be trying to make its platform as safe as possible.