So, we all know how YouTube has been, apparently, stealthily unsubscribing people from various channels over the past few years. This is a pretty well documented trend that is quite the annoyance for most users of the site, especially when compounded with how the site now no longer seems to wish to show people some, or possibly all of the uploads from channels they subscribe to. I swear I miss half the content from my favorite people until days later when I see it as a related video to something else with a “new” tag, click it, and realized “bloody hell this was uploaded 2 days ago why didn’t I see this?!?”
Well, that’s annoying enough, but this is downright strange: I’m quite certain YouTube is re-subscribing me to channels I’ve unsubscribed to!
In this case, it’s the channel “Xbox On”, formerly known as Xbox UK. For a little while, I enjoyed the content being produced for the channel, including the “Worlds Hardest Achievements” videos. Eventually though, I got tired of the content (among other things) and decided to unsubscribe from the channel. Done and done, no more of their videos in my feed, I could save time scrolling and watch something else.
That was maybe, what, a year ago or more? I can’t even remember. Whatever the time frame, the fact remains I’m certain I unsubscribed from the channel.
Move to this morning, and me doing the usual scroll through my subscriptions seeing if there is anything good to check out as I get my day started. That’s when I notice in my feed a “Worlds Hardest Achievements” episode on Overwatch.
…What? Why is this in my sub feed? Why am I seeing this? I go to the channel and sure enough I’m subbed to them again! Needless to say, I fixed that issue quickly, but the question is why was I subscribed again?
I’m quite certain I didn’t consciously click subscribe on any of their videos, as they tend to not pop up as suggestions for me anymore (I made sure to tell YouTube’s systems I didn’t want to see them by clicking “not interested” when they were suggested (which yes, is an option)) and I certainly haven’t gone out of my way to watch any of the vids in the past year or so, let alone intentionally click subscribe.
I’m certain I unsubscribed way back when, and I know I haven’t seen any of their videos in my subscription box recently, so I don’t think this is just me thinking I had unsubscribed and not actually done it.
I have no clue on why this happened, but I do have an idea.
Something I’ve noticed recently is YouTube will have you subscribed to a channel – the videos will show in your feed – but when you look at that channel or videos on it it will look as if you are not subscribed. It’s like their database is messed up, which could well explain the reports of people being unsubscribed from channels.
Anyway, if it works where you can be subbed to channel, but the system says you aren’t, why can’t it work where the system has you subscribed to a channel you once were, but no longer are? What if the data for what channels you used to subscribe to sticks around, and the flag somehow gets reset?
An interesting proposition, and nothing beyond the realm of possibility. I would want to think Google and YouTube would have a better back end structure to everything they do, but given the sheer size of the operations, errors like this wouldn’t be surprising – I’ve personally seen databases do crazy things all becuase of one byte being off. A similar error on a per-account base in YouTube’s systems would be nothing abnormal when you really think about it.
It’s worth noting I rarely unsubscribe from channels, and this would still be the most recent one I would have stopped following. Perhaps that has something to do with why it was this channel? Who knows.
Still, this is some strange stuff. I haven’t seen it happen with any other channels I can think of, but I’ll follow up if I do see it happen again.