YouTube CEO says that they ‘missed the mark’ with verification overhaul

There was a big change made earlier this week on YouTube which left the creators disappointed regarding the whole situation. According to reports, YouTube decided to improve its verification system and they decided to remove the grey checkmarks that you see besides the name of verified creators. Instead, verified creators will now see a grey background beneath their name which shows that they are verified. While we don’t understand the reason behind this move from YouTube, it was believed to be some sort of a verification overhaul.

However, the overhaul meant that various creators lost their verification as they did not meet the new guidelines. The funnier part is that YouTube had not revealed what the new guidelines are. There were various reports showing that creators with 100k+ subscribers were also losing the verification mark while it is generally seen that a creator with more than 100K subscribers gets verified on the platform.

Wojcicki tweeted this morning,

“To our creators & users – I’m sorry for the frustration & hurt that we caused with our new approach to verification,” “While trying to make improvements, we missed the mark. As I write this, we’re working to address your concerns & we’ll have more updates soon.”

She later added an update to her post saying “more updates soon”: “UPDATE 1: We heard loud & clear how much the badge means to you. Channels that currently have verification will now keep it without appeal. We’ll continue reviewing those channels to ensure we’re protecting creators from impersonation.”

UPDATE 2: Like in the past, channels that reach 100k subs will be eligible to apply for verification. To better clarify how channels will qualify, we’ve updated the eligibility criteria here: https://yt.be/help/3Htg The new look for the badge will not roll out until next year.

Basically, YouTube has rolled back the verification badge update and the verification process will remain the same as it was before.