YouTube says live streaming casino games violates T&C; er, wait – nevermind!
There seems to be mass confusion within the review panel at YouTube these days. Last week, the social video streaming network suddenly deleted the channels of two major casino slots live streams, declaring they were in violation of the company’s terms and conditions. Days later, they changed their minds.
Those channels belong to Brian Christopher, of the channel BrianChristopherSlots and BrianGambles.com, and Scott “The Raja” Ritcher, owner of TheBigJackpot. Both had their channels yanked with very little notice.
Live Streaming Casino Games Violates T&C?
It all started on the morning of June 3, at 7:28 a.m., when Mr. Christopher received an email from “The YouTube Team”. Within its brief contents, he was informed that one of his videos, entitled ‘Smokin’ Hot Gems, BIG WIN Mammoth Power Slot Machine Pokies w Brian Christopher‘, had been taken down.
The email specified the breach as the video containing “violent or dangerous acts that have an inherent risk of serious physical harm or death”. Moments later, as he was trying to wrap his head around how a depiction of playing slot machines could cause “serious physical harm or death”, another email came in.
This time, Christopher was informed that “due to repeated or severe violations” of community guidelines, his entire account had been suspended. Two years of hard work. Over 1,000 videos. More than 80k subscribers and around 50 million total views. Gone…
That was about the same time that Scott Ritcher logged onto his YouTube account to find that it, too, was gone. His channel had been receiving more than 2 million unique views per month from more than 110k subscribers.
There’s Big Money In Popular YouTube Channels
Both Christopher and Ritcher had turned a costly hobby—playing slot machines—into a very profitable business. YouTubers with such high viewership can earn up to $20k a month harvesting so many unique clicks. And these two are so popular, they each have their own mass fan base, known as The Rudies and The Bomb Squad respectively. These fans followed them devotedly, watching live streams, offering advice, visiting casinos where they were to appear, even taking casino cruises with them.
All of this, gone in an instant, because it could cause “serious physical harm or death”? That didn’t sound right… and Christopher wasn’t willing to let it go at that. He immediately appealed the decision, but admits he wasn’t sure what to write in the email.
“I didn’t know what I was appealing, since I didn’t know what I did wrong,” he says. He told The YouTube Team that his channel was clean, and that he always promoted responsible gambling. A few hours later, a concise response noted that his appeal was denied.
But then…
Um, Nevermind… Casino Slots Live Stream OK!
Just as suddenly as their channels had been terminated, YouTube decided to reinstate them both. With no apology or explanation, Christopher and Ritcher were back in business.
Brian says he received a very brief email about it. YouTube said that, following a re-review of his channel, it was determined Christopher’s videos were not in violation of any guidelines.
It’s still unclear why the two were targeted in the first place. Some insist it was a sabotage campaign cooked up by one or more rival YouTubers. Others say it was one of YouTube’s many computerized algorithms that mistakenly flagged the content.
Chances are, we’ll never know why these two were taken off the air for that brief period of time. But for now, at least, it does seem that live streaming casino games is still an acceptable practice among the YouTube community.
