Lazy AI moderation is destroying YouTubers’ livelihoods after 12m+ accounts deleted
YouTube has deleted over 12 million channels in 2025 alone, with an increasing wave of creators reporting wrongful terminations due to AI.
Various creators have claimed to have had their YouTube channels deleted by AI moderation with no warning and despite no wrongdoing.
Apparently, these AI moderation tools are then instantly denying any appeals with no human intervention.
Despite this controversy, YouTube CEO Neal Mohan says the video platform will soon expand its AI moderation tools.
Horde of YouTubers report their channels inexplicably deleted by AI
This has resulted in these creators losing their livelihood and jobs overnight with no explanation and very few ways to appeal.
Animator Nani Josh had his YouTube channel with 650,000 subscribers deleted back in mid-November as it was flagged as “spam.”
While the animator’s original content has been removed, he claims channels that stole his content remain on the site:
“My life’s work is gone, while thieves using my content stay up.
“My appeal was rejected in 5 mins. I desperately request a proper human review. My content is original, not spam.”
Similarly, competitive Pokémon YouTuber SplashPlate had his channel deleted after somebody re-uploaded his content.
The AI saw the re-uploaded content and then reported SplashPlate’s original, watermarked video as stolen, and his channel was terminated.
YouTube then doubled down on that termination in a follow-up email, claiming its external team had “exhausted all efforts.” Yet, the channel has since been reinstated following further human review.
YouTube defends number of accounts deleted by moderation system
While battling to get his account back, animator Nani Josh was also critical of the fact that YouTube has deleted over 12 million accounts in 2025 alone.
The creator questioned the platform’s methods: “Are we really supposed to believe 12 million creators all violated policies?”
“Did every one of them get a fair human review… or is YouTube’s AI just wiping out channels whenever it feels like it?”
Yet, YouTube’s official Twitter account defended this number, claiming it was inflated by a Southeast Asian scam:
“You’re right that over 12 million channels have been terminated this year, but it varies. For example, 20.5M channels were terminated in Q4 2023 alone.
“Channels terminated doesn’t = Creators terminated, sometimes a scammy account can have hundreds of channels.
“This quarter, the spike in terminations was largely due to a specific financial scam out of Southeast Asia that led to millions of terminations.”
Despite these examples and other channels incorrectly being labelled as AI and spam, Mohan believes YouTube’s AI tools will remove low-effort AI content.
The YouTube CEO told TIME magazine:
“AI will make our ability to detect and enforce on violative content better, more precise, able to cope with scale. Every week, literally, the capabilities get better.”
Some have a lot of confidence in AI; Elon Musk believes his AI can defeat World Champions T1 at League of Legends.
Yet, it’s difficult not to doubt AI when glaring errors still appear to be commonplace.
YouTuber SpooknJukes had a video demonetised as AI flagged a clip of the creator laughing as “violent graphic content.”
He appealed the decision only to have the automated system automatically deny the request.
Is AI moderation deleting YouTube accounts legal?
Charles ‘MoistCr1TiKaL’ White, one of the platform’s biggest creators with 17.5m subscribers, has been very vocally critical of YouTube’s AI usage.
Moist criticised Mohan’s comments about AI, labelling the CEO’s claim that AI will bring back the old days of YouTube as:
“A very interesting perspective, one you can only achieve by huffing endless amounts of glue to deteriorate your brain to a level of delusion I find almost enviable.”
Along with his tangent, Moist questioned the legality of AI moderation both flagging accounts and then denying the appeals.
Oleksandr, owner of the Chase Car channel, argues that YouTube are breaking European Union laws.
Paragraphs five and six of section 20 under the European Union’s Digital Service Act (DSA) reads:
“5. Providers of online platforms shall inform complainants without undue delay of their reasoned decision in respect of the information to which the complaint relates and of the possibility of out-of-court dispute settlement provided for in Article 21 and other available possibilities for redress.
“6. Providers of online platforms shall ensure that the decisions, referred to in paragraph 5, are taken under the supervision of appropriately qualified staff, and not solely on the basis of automated means.”
According to this, using automated services to give decisions follwing complaints with online systems would go against the DSA.
Oleksandr himself has already been challenging YouTube on this matter.
Following his terminated YouTube channel being reinstated following human review, it was then deleted again by AI moderation.
Oleksandr took this case to a legal team and despite YouTube defending its actions, it was ruled that his account had been wrongfully terminated.
However since this out-of-court matter was resolved, YouTube still has not recovered the channel despite Oleksandr winning this legal battle.
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