This week, many YouTube channels saw their subscriber numbers mysteriously plummet in real time.
The glitch was apparently discovered and livestreamed by BlackScreenTV earlier this week. Subscriber numbers for popular creators like PewDiePie, DramaAlert, and Tana Mongeau (who saw her own drama this week) decreased within minutes, and BlackScreenTV claimed he lost 10,000 subs in 10 seconds. H3H3 tweeted out proof as well.
https://twitter.com/h3h3productions/status/829500678196195328
As subscribers dipped into negative numbers in some cases, it seemed this was a more than just a bug. #YouTubeGlitch circulated as many people grabbed their popcorn/freaked out.
YouTube finally addressed the issue and tweeted that it accidentally caused one unsubscribe to count as two, so unsubscribing and resubscribing over and over drops the count.
Yikes! Starting Monday, in some cases, we accidentally started counting two unsubs for the price of one. We’re working on a fix!
— TeamYouTube (@TeamYouTube) February 8, 2017
This subscriber glitch has been an issue before, but not on this scale. YouTube claims that subs were not actually lost in the glitch.
No actual subscribers are lost, it’s only the count that is incorrect at the moment. We’re working to fix the numbers!
— TeamYouTube (@TeamYouTube) February 9, 2017
A YouTube rep told the Daily Dot the company is working on a fix.
