A 15-year-old YouTube channel was suddenly deleted without warning or explanation

Artemy Pavlov, founder of music software developer Sinevibes , has had a YouTube channel for 15 years to promote his company's products. However, on February 3, 2025, this historic YouTube channel was suddenly deleted without even a single warning.

“Zero warnings”: Longtime YouTuber rails against unexplained channel removal - Ars Technica
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/02/youtube-briefly-banned-15-year-old-channel-with-no-strikes-and-wont-say-why/

'Our YouTube channel has been removed due to 'spam and deceptive policies'. This is the most inexplicable moment in the history of our brand on social platforms. We only post original product demos and never anything else,' Pavlov wrote in a post to Bluesky on February 3rd local time.

According to Pavlov, Sinevibes' YouTube channel had been running without any issues for many years and had never received a warning before. In the removal notification email, YouTube said the channel had violated its 'policies on spam, deceptive conduct, and fraud,' but did not say which videos had violated the policy.

Sinevibes' YouTube channel posts 5 to 10 videos and up to 40 to 50 comments per month, but Pavlov claims that they are promotional videos for its products and do not contain misleading or deceptive content. In addition, the thumbnails are automatically generated by YouTube, and the channel has never received a copyright infringement claim, warning, or negative report.

'This is a really terrible day for an independent and fair software brand,' Pavlov told Ars Technica about YouTube's decision to remove the channel without warning. 'We have never been involved in anything remotely shady, we have never taken any fraudulent money from anyone, and we have thousands of customers who support our brand.'

After seeing Pavlov's post, Ars Technica contacted YouTube to find out why the channel was deleted. They said that the channel was suddenly restored about three hours later. A YouTube spokesperson confirmed that the Sinevibes YouTube channel was restored through the normal appeal process, but this was unusually fast, as it usually takes several days to several weeks to review an appeal.

Pavlov posted on Bluesky that the channel has been restored.

At the time of writing, the Sinevibes YouTube channel can be viewed without any problems.

Sinevibes - YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/@Sinevibes/videos

In an email to Pavlov informing him of the channel's reinstatement, YouTube said, 'We sometimes make mistakes when trying to do the right thing. We apologize for any inconvenience caused by our mistakes,' acknowledging that mistakes occur in the process of making YouTube a safe space. Ars Technica asked a YouTube spokesperson what content on Sinevibes' YouTube channel triggered the deletion and whether there was really no warning before the channel was deleted, but the spokesperson declined to answer, saying the issue has already been resolved.