On August 24th, 2022, popular YouTuber CoryxKenshin, one of the most successful black creators on the platform who is famous for his gaming content and reaction videos, posted a surprising video that addressed his recent issues with the YouTube algorithm and how he feels the YouTube policy team was putting his channel down because of possible discrimination in comparison to other popular YouTubers of similar popularity and size on the platform.  

After posting a video playing the popular horror game “The Mortuary Assistant”, Cory’s video was age-restricted by the YouTube Policy team for breaking community guidelines. What was unusual about this incident, however, was that other popular content creators like Jacksepticeye and Markipliar, posted similar videos covering the game with the same scenes and content, and their videos were not age restricted. When Cory appealed for the age-restriction; his appeal was denied. 

Cory tried to resolve this issue and contacted his YouTube representative to clear up confusion on the problem and remove the age-restriction. His YouTube rep Presented the policy team with a clip from Markipliar’s video that was not age-restricted to show that there was a mistake made. Instead of age-restricting Markipliar’s video, they used that to justify Cory’s innocence and removed his age-restriction. Cory was furious that his videos were so heavily scrutinized when he was trending, while other creator’s videos remain untouched. He sent an email to the policy team addressing his frustration with their carelessness and told them he felt there was some underlying racism and or favoritism used against him to bring down his channel.  

The Policy team quickly tried to cover up this mess and avoid the harsh accusation by age-restricting all the other videos on the Mortuary Assistant. However, Cory was not pleased with this avoidance of his concerns, so he posted the video addressing the events and his battle with YouTube. This was extremely surprising to viewers because Cory has always been an unconfrontational figure who avoided drama in the community and tried to spread positive messages. He addresses this himself and explains that he didn’t want to kindle any controversy, however he felt that being silent for any longer about issues like this would be wrong. He expressed that similar issues like this one have surfaced in the past, where he would take a break from posting for long periods, but then as soon as he would post again and become #1 trending, YouTube would copyright claim a video from back in 2019 that they didn’t feel the need to copyright when he wasn’t active.  

Cory says in his video, “These situations always coincide with the uptick of growth, and it always just comes off as ‘We can’t let this black guy get too high up.’”, he also comments, “I believe there is some racism involved within the policy team, and YouTube in general doesn’t care about black creators. They have their favorite creators.” 

He talks about patronage and special messages YouTube sends out about black creators and diversity, and he shares that all that feels insulting and condescending on YouTube’s part and is just them pushing the black narrative to pat themselves on the back, and making it seem like black creators need outside influence to help spotlight their channels. Cory states, “All this communicates is that black people aren’t good enough on their own skill, on their own content, on their own talent, and we gotta give them a spotlight, we gotta come down and raise them up so they can get some spotlight action. How about YouTube saves all that fake patronage, all that fake pandering that you guys do, when you have a black creator, coming to you repeatedly saying ‘Why am I being treated differently than other creators’, fake! Its fake, that’s what it is.” 

Other YouTuber’s have since responded with their own videos supporting Cory and relaying concerns they share about YouTube’s values and policies. YouTube has not yet responded to the outrage from fans and creators alike, but hopefully these issues will be addressed soon, and efforts are made to prevent these issues in the future.