According to SPUNJ, the popular casters and analysts Chad “SPUNJ” Burchill, Jason “moses” O’Toole, and Janko “YNk” Paunovi’s CS:GO podcast Talking Counter has been permanently taken down from YouTube. They produced a total of 28 episodes and distributed the podcast across several platforms. Program 28 with SPUNJ, YNk, and special guest Conner “Scrawny” Girvan was published on YouTube on February 1. One listener warned that the channel had been banned while they were listening to the episode. As a result, SPUNJ tweeted a screenshot of the ban notification.
The channel has been taken down due to “severe or repeated violations” of YouTube’s Community Guidelines and the removal is permanent, meaning that they won’t be able to access, possess, or create any other channels with the same email. When trying to access Talking Counter’s YouTube channel, the platform displays a message saying the channel has been removed due to violating the Community Guidelines.
In cases like this, YouTube never discloses the reasoning for the ban and only mentions that the channel in question has violated the Community Guidelines. SPUNJ said he never received any warning emails from YouTube.
“I’d also like to add there were no warning emails (at all) regarding vulgar language in previous episodes,” SPUNJ said. “So I don’t even think it was the use of profanity… baffled.”
Since SPUNJ commented on the issue on Twitter, an official YouTube account has joined his thread and asked for the channel’s official URL. It’s unclear if YouTube will revert the ban and it would likely only be done in case the removal was a mistake.
If YouTube doesn’t bring back the Talking Counter channel, SPUNJ, YNk, and moses will have to release Talking Counter only on Spotify, Google Podcasts, and AnchorFM moving forward, unless one of them creates a new account and try to upload the podcast on YouTube again.
Dot Esports has reached out to SPUNJ for comment.
