UPDATE: YouTube has fixed the problem and reverted the subscriber counts to normal.
Some are calling it the biggest glitch in YouTube history. Major YouTube stars are losing as many as 100,000 subscribers in a matter of five minutes.
The person who found the glitch went from 29,000 subs to -1,500. (Yes, it’s actually gone into negative territory.)
The glitch is very simple and allows anyone to lower the subscriber count of any channel. When you unsubscribe from a channel it counts as -2 from the subscriber tally. So if you unsubscribe and resubscribe repeatedly, you can slowly bring down a YouTuber’s sub count. And now that many people know the glitch, trolls are quickly removing popular channels’ subscribers.
The guy who found the glitch , BlackScreenTV, is doing a livestream, watching the subscriber counts of major YouTube channels plummet. He’s calling the event the “end of YouTube.”
YouTube’s most popular content creator Pewdiepie did a livestream on Wednesday to freak out over the glitch. He earns about $12 million a year off his subscribers, which are rapidly disappearing.
YouTube needs to quickly find a way to freeze this problem and revert the subscriber counts back to normal, or many people will lose a huge chunk of their livelihoods. YouTubers have been complaining to YouTube for months about mysterious drops in subscriber counts, but the company has long insisted nothing was wrong.
According to YouTube, the glitch started on Monday and they are working to fix it.