Killed then Reborn: RickRoll

“This post has been removed due to terms of use violation”

Goodnight sweet prince?

Youtube killed the Rick Astley fuelled misdirection craze today, only to go back on their actions and reinstate the video that has over 30 million views.

Earlier today the original RickRoll video was removed, the only thing remaining being the message: “This video has been removed due to terms of use violation”.

Video:

Embedded Content

A Google Spokesperson said:

“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.”

Neowin

Also, contacting Rick Astley’s manager:

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 now, at least, it appears the popular meme is safe.