A message circulating online claims that YouTube has announced that it will delete all accounts in December – except for those who share a status on their channels.

Recurring Chain Letter

The warning is nothing more than a chain letter which has circulated since at least 2008. It continues to circulate in 2015, barely changed from the original. Let’s first take a look at a version from 2009:

ALL YOUTUBE CHANNELS WILL BE REMOVED IN DECEMBER

Dear Youtube users, This is a real letter from our Youtube Service Team, Rober and Angela.We are putting this because there is too much fake accounts, and robotsin our Youtube community.In order to get rid of them, we are going to delete every account that did not repost this bulliten, or send this all to all of your friends in a message.

BE WELL AWARE, that if you do not send this or repost it, your account will be deleted permanately. Sorry for the incovience! By the way we added some new features on Youtube, if you you reposted, and is gratified by us, Do not change the content inside, or else you will also get deleted.
– Youtube Service Team

Now compare it with the 2015 version, which adds an additional opening paragraph to the original:

All accounts will be deleted this december.

Paste this on your channel to save your channel from being deleted, don’t change this info or your channel will be deleted. It’s because there’s 1,000,000 fake accounts. Sorry for this – Youtube

Dear Youtube users, This is a real letter from our Youtube Service Team, Rober and Angela.We are putting this because there is too much fake accounts, and robotsin our Youtube community.In order to get rid of them, we are going to delete every account that did not repost this bulliten, or send this all to all of your friends in a message.

BE WELL AWARE, that if you do not send this or repost it, your account will be deleted permanately. Sorry for the incovience! By the way we added some new features on Youtube, if you you reposted, and is gratified by us, Do not change the content inside, or else you will also get deleted.
– Youtube Service Team

Not-So-Official

Both versions of the message above are so rife with spelling and grammatical errors, that it is virtually impossible to have come from YouTube.

Rather than going into a dissertation of everything grammatically wrong, we’ll mention a few notable points. First, YouTube stylizes the name with a capital “T” which is not done in the letters above. One would imagine that YouTube would at least get their own company name right. Further, there has been no such announcement this year (or any other) on the official YouTube Press Room page.

History

The bogus letter seems to reappear toward the middle or end of each calendar year. Take a look at this appearance in October 2011 or a similar sighting in October 2009. Still earlier is this occurrence from October 2008. In 2015, we are seeing the chain letter in the form of a graphic, shown below.

Bottom Line

YouTube is not deleting all accounts in December. The message which makes this assertion did not come from YouTube, and it is riddled with spelling and grammatical errors. The fake message dates back to at least 2008.