This week, YouTube permanently deleted the channels of ASMR creators including ItsBunniiASMR, Slight Sounds, Roseasmr, Simoneasmr, Nananightray, and Janina Wilhelmsen, with no prior warning. Appeals have not reversed the decisions.

YouTube says the bans were triggered by external links to content violating its nudity policy, not the ASMR content itself. Affected creators say they kept their YouTube presence entirely separate from adult platform accounts. Either way: hundreds of videos gone, archives inaccessible, income erased, no meaningful path to appeal.

Bunnii, whose channel had 227,000 subscribers and over 55 million views, built her YouTube presence as a free resource for people who couldn't afford therapy. "There are people who really do depend on this kind of content to get a good night's sleep, deal with insomnia, or manage mental health issues like anxiety, PTSD, and depression," she said.

This is also a gendered problem. ASMR is a female-dominated genre, and as creator Slight Sounds put it: "No matter what you do as a woman in ASMR, someone is going to find it sexual." YouTube's enforcement punishes creators for how viewers choose to sexualize their content, not for anything the creators themselves did.

YouTube's "sexually gratifying" standard has existed since 2019. A nearly identical wave of bans followed a 2022 ASMR policy update. The problem isn't that creators keep crossing a line; it's that the line is invisible. As Bunnii said: "Deleting channels with no warning is scary. I'm sure any of us would have complied given one."

Sign this petition to demand YouTube restore these channels, implement a genuine human-review appeals process, and publish specific, objective ASMR content guidelines that do not hold creators responsible for how others choose to sexualize their work.