This should give creators a helping hand in knowing just how many fans they really have

Jun 10, 2014 11:23 GMT  ·  By

The stats displayed on YouTube aren’t necessarily the most accurate ones available out there and the company knows this, which is why it has decided to clean up shop just a little bit.

On June 16, the Google-owned company will start removing suspended accounts from all the channel’s subscriber counts, which means that people may soon notice a minor drop in subscribers. Since these are not active members of the community, there shouldn’t be any impact on the number of views or watch time, the company said.

“Subscriptions are one of the clearest ways you can see how you’re doing on YouTube. When people subscribe to your channel, it’s a signal they like what you’re doing and want to see more. We know your subscribers are hard-won, and that’s why we recognize big subscriber milestones with things like access to programs at the YouTube Space and our Creator Rewards program,” starts off the company’s announcement.

YouTube explains that the platform-wide cleaning is necessary so that creators know that when the number of subscribers on their channels grows, it’s because there are real fans interested in what they’re posting, who keep watching and supporting them.

The company compares the new effort to the ones that are already underway to keep the numbers straight for the views section, for instance.

“On June 16, we’re going to remove suspended accounts from all channels’ subscriber counts. This means some of you will notice a minor drop in your subscribers. To be clear, these are not active viewers, so you shouldn’t see any impact on your views or watch time,” YouTube’s Katie Hushion, Operations Specialist, clarified the situation.

From there on out, YouTube will implement an automated system that will remove suspended accounts from subscriber counts as they occur. The company prides itself in building a system that will allow the reversal of such changes in case some accounts get suspended by mistake.

The new effort should help keep YouTube’s metrics clean and spam free, which is particularly handy not only for the company, but for content creators as well, since they’ll be able to make an accurate assessment of the interest in the videos they’re posting.

YouTube has recently announced a few changes that would benefit content creators, including the introduction of a new feature that would allow them to receive funding from viewers without the the need to use any third-party tools to be crowdfunded.