Since my last upload, like many channels around the globe, I noticed that my likes and dislikes where rolling back, and on a simple refresh, they would disappear. Interestingly, even though Likes and Dislikes (alike 🙂 ) were ‘disappearing’ from newly uploaded videos, YouTube analytics kept the correct amount stored deep inside its guts. Here is a good Example : On my latest video (watch it by the way) GIGABYTE RADEON RX 6700 XT 12 G, YouTube reports 51 likes and 1 dislike. But if I go look at the video engagement Analytics, I can see that I received more than twice the engagement and in fact my video did gather 111 likes and 3 dislikes. I did not worry too much since I knew YouTube had deployed a new Like/Dislike feature on several channels and would eventually be fixed, if indeed it was the cause of that bug.

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👍👎 In response to creator feedback around well-being and targeted dislike campaigns, we’re testing a few new designs that don’t show the public dislike count. If you’re part of this small experiment, you might spot one of these designs in the coming weeks (example below!). pic.twitter.com/aemrIcnrbx

— YouTube (@YouTube) March 30, 2021

BUT! As I was refreshing my page and watching in despair my Likes rolling back in time, I also noticed that my subscriber count was decreasing. And by a lot! I am well aware that people may unsub, close their account, etc… but all these are clearly tracked by YT analytics. If someone decided to unsubscribe from your channel, you can see where and when he/she did so and when. If an account has been closed, Analytics also keeps track of it. But there is another reason for loss subscribers referred as “Other” by YT analytics, and it really doesn’t say much, other that “we did it” (YouTube).

Strange indeed, especially knowing that I never purchased any subscribers from any website or used bots of any kind. My channel is rather small, reaching 25k subs, not exactly a mammoth, but I can proudly say that it is 100% organically grown. Neither pesticides nor fertilizers used! Digging into my analytics a little deeper, took a look at my “lost subscription” graph, and that is the moment when I understood this could be in fact part of the same “Like/Dislike bug” . Since the 6th of April (2021), YouTube algorithm (or whatever automated script they are using) is removing subscribers from my account in mass. I have had this account running and building for 5 years and a half, and never did I see something like this. Here for some context :

See that green line ? This is the “Other” category which removed my subs.

  Here you can clearly see the spike in sub loss. I have brought this up to YouTube obviously, but they seem to acknowledge only the Like/Dislike part of the problem. A Google search will quickly show that I am not the only one affected by this, and indeed, Subs are also heavily affected. This past week alone, I have lost about 110 subs for no reasons other than…. well “other”.

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UPDATE

I think I might have figured it out.