YouTube confirms "Rickroll" removal was a mistake, brings back video

A YouTube spokesperson has confirmed to Neowin that the "Rickroll" removal that we reported on earlier today was a mistake.

In an email statement to Neowin a spokesperson confirmed accounts are occasionally marked as spam and mistakenly taken down:

"With 20 hours of video uploaded every minute to YouTube, we count on our community members to know our Community Guidelines and to flag content they believe violates them. We review all flagged content quickly, and if we find that a video does violate the guidelines, we remove it, on average in under an hour. We also have a team that is dedicated to identifying and removing spam from YouTube.  Occasionally, an account flagged by users or identified by our spam team is mistakenly taken down. When this is brought to our attention, we move quickly to take appropriate action, including restoring videos that had been mistakenly removed and channels that have been mistakenly suspended."

Earlier today Neowin reported that the original "Rickroll" video, that had clocked up 30 million views to date, was removed with the text "This video has been removed due to terms of use violation". It appears the users account which is linked with the video was mistakenly disabled.

Neowin also spoke to Rick Astley's manager Tony Henderson earlier today who said he was disappointed the video had been removed briefly. "I have not told Rick yet as he is driving to the French Alps to practice his rolling (sorry i meant skiing) I don't think anyone should or indeed can, stop people having fun on the net, there are more urgent concerns on the internet that need sorting," he said in an email to Neowin. 

For those not familiar with the term "Rickroll" or "Rickrolling", it's a famous Internet meme involving the music video for the 1987 Rick Astley song "Never Gonna Give You Up". The phenomenon began at Internet image board 4chan and soon spread more widely. Internet users typically send the URL of the video to another user and the practice results in the person being "Rickrolled".