Update: As of November 11th, Markiplier has posted a video confirming that Susanne Daniels, Global Head of Original Content at YouTube, reached out to Mark personally over the phone and assured him that YouTube was taking the matter very seriously. She also told him that the majority of the Google accounts were reinstated, and the rest will be reinstated by the end of the week. Lastly, she gave Mark her personal contact information to reach her if he had any further issues.
Mark also cited a Reddit post made by a software engineer at Google who broke down the steps YouTube had taken to resolve the issue, as well as admit that it was the fault on YouTube’s end for the rejected appeals.
ORIGINAL - Markiplier has firmly stated that although he appreciates the apology and efforts made to resolve the issue thus far, he will not stop pushing YouTube until every account has been reinstated and ensure that the same thing will not happen again.
You can watch A Heist with Markiplier on YouTube here.
Hundreds of fans of Markiplier, a YouTuber most known for his gaming videos and comedy sketches, got their Google accounts banned after "spamming emotes" during one of his YouTube Livestreams.
Here's the context: Mark had partnered with YouTube to host a "choose your own adventure" series called A Heist with Markiplier, where his audience can choose what decisions he makes in highly produced videos with fictional storylines, featuring 31 total possible endings. He hosted a Livestream on YouTube where he asked fans to vote on choices in a similar manner for this series by having them spam emotes, red emotes for one choice and green for another.
Unfortunately, and for reasons that are still unclear, this triggered YouTube's auto-detect system for spam. Hundreds of accounts in Mark's 'community' have been banned. Some of Mark's moderators recognized the issue and are continuing to help both Mark and his fans get the information they need to reach out to YouTube to reinstate these accounts. Being banned from your YouTube account is one thing; it means not being able to continue being a paying member for the creators you support and loss of access to your own uploaded videos, watch history, playlists, and much more. However, these fans' Google accounts were banned, meaning they lost access to their emails, photos, documents, and everything they had backed up on their Google Drive.
There is an appeal process to reinstate your Google account, but fans' appeals were being denied without explanation. Many fans shared screenshots on Twitter as evidence of their appeal getting denied, which Markiplier then used in a video.
Markiplier made a video about the debacle on November 8, calling for YouTube to take action and reinstate accounts to every banned fan. In a just under nine minute video, Markiplier ranted about the situation, explaining that this issue is personal to him, not only because his community is hurt by YouTube's actions, but because back in 2012 his Google AdSense account was auto-banned and his appeal got denied, leading him to make a new channel and losing his old videos in the process.
Mark's main concern was that the appeal decisions were being made by people who work for YouTube, not a computer or a bot, yet people were getting their appeals denied for no apparent reason. One especially weird scenario was that one fan's comment, featured in the video, showed screenshots that their appeal had been accepted and their account unbanned, only to be banned again 30 minutes later.
YouTube had been reaching out to fans individually on Twitter to troubleshoot the issue, but ultimately stated that if their appeals had been denied, then there was nothing else they could do.
However, in response to Markiplier's video addressing his concerns, YouTube had announced that "the accounts have been reinstated" and that they're investigating as to why the situation occurred in the first place. However, not all the accounts have been reinstated, and Mark wasn't about to accept YouTube's answer without a thorough explanation.
In light of this situation, Mark also gave advice to users who watch or host Livestreams on YouTube, not to use emotes or encourage the use of them and not to spam for any reason until this issue is fixed.
There have been no further comments made by YouTube at this time.
Source: Markiplier, TeamYouTube