Pokémon Go YouTubers unfairly suspended after suspicion of child pornography

'CP' in video description may land account suspended

Two Pokémon Go-related YouTube accounts were out of the blue for a short time because a YouTube algorithm mistakenly labeled them as child pornography. The two YouTubers, Brandon Martyn (Mystic7) and Nick Oyzon (Trainer Tips) announced that on Twitter and their – now recovered – YouTube accounts.

The YouTube accounts of Martyn and Oyzon are popular; Trainer Tips has over 800,000 subscribers and Mystic7 has 1.7 million.

Martyn and Oyzon initially received no explanation from YouTube about the specific reason why their accounts had been deleted. It was only after their own research that the YouTubers discovered that the fault lay with an algorithm.

Both YouTubers regularly used the abbreviation ‘CP’ in the titles of their videos; ‘combat power’ or CP is used in Pokémon Go to indicate the power of a Pokémon.

Videos with that abbreviation are noticed by the YouTube algorithm that looks up inappropriate videos, because it can also represent ‘child porn’. The algorithm probably closed the YouTube channels on that basis. Van Oyzon even closed all Google accounts, including his email address.

In a video that Oyzon posted on YouTube, he pointed out that this problem had been known for some time. Among other fan accounts for the wrestler CM Punk and the Disney game Club Penguin would have been removed from the air earlier because of the confusion with the abbreviation.

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