YouTubers, naturally, are mad about it.
YouTube recently mass- deleted hundreds of videos with endorsements for a service called EduBirdie. The service in question will actually write essays for academics. While the service itself is not against the law, it is against YouTube’s policies on “academic aids“. Not to mention the fact that getting caught using one usually isn’t a terribly good thing for any student.
The BBC investigation concluded that over 250 channels were promoting EduBirdie, with over 1400 videos and a total upwards of 700 million views. The videos in question ran the gamut for YouTube topics, from pranks, to video games, to fashion and dating. After the investigation was published, YouTube informed the channels that if they didn’t remove the videos containing EduBirdie plugs, it would remove them for them.
Needless to say, YouTubers weren’t happy about the resultant purge. One channel lost 138 of their videos to the kerfuffle. One channel, To Catch a Cheater, had videos taken down as they were editing them to remove the endorsements, according to the BBC:
One channel, To Catch A Cheater, said 49 of its videos – a year’s worth of work – had disappeared.
AldosWorldTv said it had lost more than 30 videos, and questioned why he had been able to post so many videos containing the adverts.
TwinzTV, a US-based pranks channel posted on Twitter that “YouTube deleted 138 of our videos without any explanation”.
According to the investigation, EduBirdie was paying several YouTubers directly for the endorsements. The site was also promising that said essays would be original content rather than plagiarized content from the internet. The Ukranian site’s statement to the BBC admits that everything the investigation dug up was true, but passes the blame to the YouTubers:
We cannot be held responsible for what social influencers say on their channels.
We give influencers total freedom on how they prefer to present the EduBirdie platform to their audience in a way they feel would be most relevant to their viewers.
We do admit that many tend to copy and paste each others’ shout-outs with a focus on ‘get someone to do your homework for you’, but this is their creative choice.
Normally, the source of YouTuber discontent is due to a change on YouTube’s part, usually for the worse, in all honesty. This might be one of the few times where thinking about what they were endorsing might have been key, instead.
Source: Gizmodo
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