YouTuber Shiey has hit out at YouTube after the platform decided to shut down his channel, for seemingly no obvious reason.

Shiey is a popular YouTuber with more than 1.3 million subscribers and has built up his following from posting hairraising videos of train surfing and dangerous physical feats. Lately, he has been uploading videos for his series in which he train surfs across Europe.

Part 1 and Part 2 of his Europe journey are still live on his YouTube channel, but Shiey recently tweeted that part 3 of the series had been taken down by YouTube because it violates the “harmful and dangerous” policy.

The removal of the video is part of YouTube’s strike system where a user is banned from uploading videos for two weeks if they violate the platform’s policy twice, and the channel is permanently removed after three strikes. Shiey says YouTube is currently preventing him from using his main channel.

Shiey tweeted a screenshot of the warning sent to him by YouTube and posted: “Interesting how they let other channels do the same thing, but not me,” and refuted the decision.

They added: “Btw part 3 was a 30 min video with 5 min of train stuff and 25 min of me walking ’round town with ice cream, camping, and swimming. Sick choice for takedown…”

Btw part 3 was a 30min video with 5min of train stuff and 25min of me walking 'round town with ice cream, camping and swimming. Sick choice for takedown…

— shiey (@shieyfreedom) October 11, 2020

YouTube does give creators the choice to appeal, which Shiey has done, but he claims that he hasn’t heard anything so far. He said that if he continued to be ignored, he would upload the entire journey as one video.

Shiey has created a back-up channel so viewers can still stay up to date with his content, to get around the strikes, and he is spreading the word in the comments on his main channel. He says he will be uploading every video that gets taken down by YouTube on the back-up.

Train surfing is illegal on most railways globally, not just because it involves skipping the fare, but because it is seriously life-threatening, whether that be from colliding with infrastructure, falling from a height, or getting electrocuted by a power supply.

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