Samay Raina’s ’masterstroke’: Deleting India’s Got Latent episodes on YouTube may be a clever idea; here’s why

Samay Raina, the host of YouTube channel ‘India’s Got Latent,’ recently deleted all his videos after a heated controversy erupted following Ranveer Allahbadia comments on the show. YouTuber and podcaster Ranveer Allahabadia had made a guest appearance on the show where he made inappropriate remarks that drew widespread backlash. After the video went viral, several complaints were registered against him across India.

The 31-year-old YouTuber, Ranveer Allahabadia, on February 14 sought Supreme Court's intervention, seeking to club multiple FIRs lodged against him. This comes two days after Samay Raina in a post on X announced that he deleted all Indias Got Latent videos.

Clarifying that his only objective was to make people laugh and not hurt anyone's sentiments, he stated, “Everything that is happening has been too much for me to handle. I have removed all Indias Got Latent videos from my channel.”

What happens to the money YouTuber Samay Raina earned from millions of views?

Since the videos are no longer available on Samay Raina's YouTube channel, the important question comes up about what happens to the money earned from these deleted videos.

YouTube's monetisation policies

According to YouTube's channel monetisation policies, anyone who earns money on YouTube and violates any of the social media platform's policies, YouTube may take action and penalise users. As per the policy, the platform needs time to investigate the incident and act on the earnings that need to be withheld, adjusted, or offset.

YouTube doesn’t clearly describe the case of self-deletion of videos. However, it clearly implies that nothing happens to the money earned from the viral videos which has been already transferred to the bank account, even if the monetised videos are deleted.

Clever idea to delete India’s Got Latent episodes?

YouTube policy mentions that the user is “no longer entitled to earn any revenue if their channel is terminated. We may also withhold unpaid earnings and refund advertisers or viewers for purchases where appropriate and possible.” Making a clever move and infact a masterstroke, Samay Raina made sure the overall visibility of the channel doesn’t get affected except for disabling viewers' access to India’s Got Latent videos.

He removed all the episodes from the playlist to evade from YouTube action against violation of policies. He thus retained his channel to ensure visibility on YouTube and earn revenue in future.