YouTube may suspend accounts, temporarily or permanently, from their social networking service. Suspensions of high-profile individuals from YouTube are unusual and when they occur, often attract attention in the media.
| Individual/account | Description | Date of suspension | Reason for suspension | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| That Guy with the Glasses | Channel run by comedian and internet personality Doug Walker of Nostalgia Critic. | Copyright infringement.[1] After launching a That Guy with the Glasses website in 2008, his content returned to YouTube in 2009 as part of a deal between the site and Blip.tv,[2] the website's primary video host.[3] | ||
| Wael Abbas | Egyptian journalist, blogger, and human rights activist | Complaints about graphic content, particularly those depicting tortures.[4] | ||
| Evalion | Canadian internet personality | Hate speech[5] | ||
| Uriminzokkiri | North Korean state-run website | Violating YouTube's community guidelines[6] | ||
| Toy Freaks | Single father of two | After being highlighted in a Medium article, the top-100 channel, which had over 8 million subscribers at the time,[7] was terminated for violating YouTube's child endangerment policy, which they had recently revised in response to media coverage of supposedly child-friendly videos containing disturbing content on YouTube.[8] | ||
| Logan Paul | Internet personality, actor, director and musician | YouTube suspended all advertising on Paul's channels due to his pattern of behavior.[9] The suspension was lifted 18 days later.[10] | ||
| Government of Pakistan | Official account for the Pakistani government | Suspended for copyright infringement. Account restored a day later.[11] [12] | ||
| FamilyOFive | Family vlog | Violating child endangerment guidelines.[13] | ||
| The Alex Jones Channel | Video channel run by American conspiracy theorist Alex Jones for his website InfoWars | Terminated for violating hate speech and harassment guidelines, following similar bans done by Facebook, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts around this time.[14] His channel was initially just suspended from doing live broadcasts for 90 days, and deleted four of his videos, on July 25 for violating their policies regarding hate speech and graphic content.[15] | ||
| Austin Jones | Musician | Terminated after he pleaded guilty to child pornography offenses. They initially refused to.[16] [17] | ||
| Resistance News | Channel created by Alex Jones to circumvent his ban | Ban evasion.[18] | ||
| Fantastic Adventures | Comedy channel | Violating child endangerment guidelines.[19] | ||
| Steven Crowder | Right-wing comedian and commentator | Demonetized his channels for having "a pattern of egregious actions that has harmed the broader community" following a dispute between Crowder and Vox producer Carlos Maza over alleged homophobic content. YouTube initially ruled his content was "hurtful" but not in violation of its guidelines.[20] | ||
| ThuleanPerspective | Channel run by Norwegian far-right activist and black metal musician Varg Vikernes | Hate speech. Banned hours after YouTube updated its guidelines to ban white supremacist, antisemitic, and misogynistic content.[21] [22] | ||
| Soph | Right-wing comedian and commentator | Terminated for posting a video that ended with her making death threats and telling followers to cite her in their manifestos, in reference to the mass shootings attributed to 8chan earlier in the year. Her Patreon was also terminated.[23] | ||
| 210 pro-Mainland China accounts | Suspended for involvement in "coordinated influence operations" to turn public opinion against the 2019–20 Hong Kong protests.[24] | |||
| American Identity Movement | White nationalist group, since defunct | Violating hate speech policies.[25] | ||
| James Allsup | American white nationalist | |||
| TRS Radio | Video channel for Neo-Nazi website The Right Stuff | |||
| VDARE TV | Video channel for far-right website VDARE | |||
| Red Ice TV | Channels run by far-right multimedia outlet Red Ice | Red Ice TV, which served as the outlet's main channel, was terminated for violating hate speech.[26] Their second channel, which served as a backup, was also terminated.[27] | ||
| Red Ice Media | ||||
| James Charles, FaZe Rug, FaZe Kay, Leah Ashe, and others | Multiple popular YouTubers | Accidental termination, possibly due to a bug on YouTube's end. The accounts were shortly reinstated.[28] | ||
| Owen Benjamin | Alt-right comedian | Terminated for repeated attempts at circumventing the website's terms of service.[29] | ||
| America First with Nicholas J Fuentes | Channel run by American white nationalist commentator Nick Fuentes | Violating hate speech policies.[30] | ||
| TruNews | Video channel for the far-right conspiracy theorist website of the same name | Violating hate speech policies.[31] Was temporarily suspended in November 2019 after pastor and site founder Rick Wiles accused Jews of being behind former U.S. President Donald Trump's first impeachment.[32] | ||
| David Icke | Conspiracy theorist, former sports broadcaster and football player | Promoting misleading information about the COVID-19 pandemic. YouTube a month prior banned all videos that claimed the virus was caused by 5G following a livestream where Icke did so. His Facebook profile was also deleted at the time of the termination.[33] [34] | ||
| The Iconoclast | British far-right activist | Violating hate speech policies.[35] Account was suspended in 2019, but restored on appeal.[36] | ||
| Gavin McInnes | Far-right political commentator and founder of the Proud Boys | Violating hate speech policies.[37] | ||
| Two accounts linked to American Renaissance | White nationalist and far-right personalities and institutions | Violating hate speech policies.[38] | ||
| David Duke | ||||
| NPI/Radix | ||||
| Richard Spencer | ||||
| Stefan Molyneux | ||||
| Martin Sellner | Austrian far-right activist and leader of Identitäre Bewegung Österreich | Violating hate speech policies.[39] His account was suspended in 2019, but restored on appeal. | ||
| Wiley | Rapper | Banned after antisemitic rant. Banned from Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter in July.[40] | ||
| LeafyIsHere | Commentator | Violating YouTube's policy on harassment and bullying.[41] | ||
| LensCapProductions / MrAnime / MrBryko | Anime show reviews | [42] | ||
| Baked Alaska | Alt-right activist | Unknown; believed to be caused by a video of him harassing a convenience store employee for asking him to wear a mask.[43] | ||
| Patriots' Soapbox News Network | QAnon-linked Channel | Terminated as part of a site-wide crackdown on channels that promote “conspiracy theories that have been used to justify real-world violence.”[44] | ||
| ABS-CBN News and ANC 24/7 | News media | Suspension lifted one day later.[45] It is believed that the channels were hacked to upload a Ripple livestream to promote a bitcoin scam.[46] The issue was resolved several hours later. | ||
| One America News Network | Far-right American news outlet | Violating YouTube's COVID-19 misinformation policy; suspended for 1 week and demonetized.[47] | ||
| talkRADIO | British talk radio station | Violating YouTube's COVID-19 misinformation policy; suspended for a few hours.[48] | ||
| Donald J Trump | President of the United States | Violating YouTube's policy on violence following the January 6 United States Capitol attack.[49] | ||
| LifeSiteNews | Video channel for the far-right Catholic news site of the same name | Terminated for spreading misinformation about COVID-19 and vaccines.[50] | ||
| Channels run by the Burmese military | Terminated in response to violent crackdown of protestors that occurred during the 2021 Myanmar protests.[51] | |||
| Steven Crowder | Right-wing comedian and commentator | Suspended for a week for disputing the 2020 United States presidential election results in Nevada. His main channel is also permanently removed from the YouTube Partner Program.[52] | ||
| Sebastian Gorka | Former Trump White House senior adviser, radio host | Permanent ban for Violating YouTube's presidential election integrity policy [53] | ||
| EDP445 | YouTuber known for rants and reviews | Allegations of predatory behavior had been appearing almost a year prior to termination. Just 9 days before his channel was shut down, he was caught attempting to meet a 13-year-old girl with evidence of private messages and the infamous clip of him "buying a cupcake". All videos became private on the 24th before termination 3 days later. | ||
| Ron Johnson | U.S. Senator from Wisconsin | Suspended for a week for misinformation via promoting Hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin as alternate COVID-19 treatments.[54] | ||
| RWW Blog | Video channel for monitoring site Right Wing Watch | Suspended for a day after YouTube accidentally suspended the channel for allegedly violating community guidelines. Right Wing Watch appealed to the ban which was rejected by YouTube. The channel was reinstated hours later after review.[55] | ||
| Marcelito Pomoy | Filipino singer | Suspended for violating YouTube's community guidelines following his channel getting hacked to display an Algorand bitcoin livestream.[56] | ||
| Sky News Australia | Australian right-wing news channel | Suspended for a week after uploading videos containing misleading information regarding COVID-19. The suspension also bars the YouTube channel from running its livestreams. The videos that were uploaded were removed from their YouTube channel.[57] [58] [59] | ||
| Rand Paul | U.S. Senator from Kentucky | Suspended for a week for posting a video claiming that face masks are ineffective, in violating guidelines on COVID-19 misinformation.[60] | ||
| Professor Waffle | Channel run by Jake Davidson, perpetrator of the 2021 Plymouth shooting | Removed in the aftermath of the shooting for "inciting violence".[61] | ||
| R. Kelly | Singer | R. Kelly's YouTube channel was terminated following his conviction for sex trafficking.[62] | ||
| Jair Bolsonaro | President of Brazil | Suspended for a week for violating YouTube's COVID-19 misinformation policy after saying that COVID-19 vaccine causes AIDS.[63] | ||
| Dan Bongino | Talk show host, former United States Secret Service agent | Suspended for violating YouTube's COVID-19 misinformation policy after claiming masks are "useless" in preventing the spread of the disease. [64] | ||
| Duma TV | Russian Parliament Channel of State Duma | Terminated for violating YouTube's Terms of Service in response to 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. Vyacheslav Volodin, the Duma speaker, said YouTube's move was further evidence of Washington's violation of rights and freedoms.[65] | ||
| Julien Bam | German filmmaker | Temporarily suspended after being compromised by spammers. Reinstated shortly after.[66] | ||
| German streamer | [67] | Permanently suspended for uploading to a new channel while his existing channel was under a temporary upload restriction. | ||
| Linus Tech Tips, TechLinked | Technology channel | March 23, 2023 | Linus Tech Tips, and TechLinked channels were hacked. Many privated videos were now made public and the channel started streaming deepfakes of Elon Musk and Jack Dorsey interviews. Linus Tech Tips was renamed to LinusTechTipsTemp with the handle @temporaryhandle meanwhile TechLinked was renamed to Tesla. YouTube later terminated the channels for "violating community guidelines". A response was later published on Floatplane saying that the Linus Media Group were working with Google to resolve the issue. The channels were restored a few days later.[68] | |
| Uncle Slava, video blogger[69] | Donbas political activist, Omegle/Chatroulette streamer | Fitness and criminal justice blogger, later focussing on Ukrainian issues following the 2013 Euromaidan protests including the Nazi relations of the Azov Brigade, far-right and racial problems and potential resolutions to the war in Donbas. Suspended due to his active position in favor of speaking with both Ukrainian and Donbas people using online chat services and translating these discussions.[70] | ||
| Family vlogger, parental advice company | Channels 8 Passengers and ConneXions terminated following Franke and Hildebrandt's arrest for six charges of aggravated child abuse.[71] Franke openly admitted in her content to withholding food and bedding from her children as form of punishment, and online petitions to get child protective services involved had existed since 2020.[72] | |||
| Jodi Hildebrandt | ||||
| Godtone | LoL Pacific Championship Series pro player, famous Twitch and YouTube streamer in Taiwan. | Godtone faced criticism from the ruling Democratic Progressive Party of Taiwan after mocking child pornography on his stream. He issued an apology, but his YouTube channel was suspended shortly thereafter.[73] | ||
| Monsta | Animation studio | Monsta YouTube channel was hacked and renamed into Microstrategy, resulted in its account and videos being removed.[74] | ||
| SHAMAN, Grigory Leps, Oleg Gazmanov, Polina Gagarina | Russian singers | Terminated on appeal from LRTK and to comply with EU sanctions.[75] | ||