Will botted views and comments ruin a channel sent by a hater?

A friend of mine with 100k subscribers who averages 30k-100k views per upload has recently been sent so many fake views on his latest video along with fake comments

Does this ruin his channel? Even though he didn’t clearly ask for it or want it? Could it get him shadowbanned?

Nah, don't sweat it. If sending bots could kill a channel with 100k subs, every big YouTuber would be gone by now. YouTube's AI isn't that stupid in 2026—it knows when traffic is 'pushed' from the outside to sabotage someone.
Most likely, the views will just be purged (deleted) in a couple of days and the stats will go back to normal. The worst thing your friend can do is panic and set the video to private—that actually signals to YT that something is wrong. Just leave it, let the filters do their job, and ignore the fake comments. It won't cause a shadowban.

Yes and no. It could affect the channel but depends on the quantity that was bought. I think YT is aware some people do that to ruin other's people channel so they're careful now.

adammakonda said:

A friend of mine with 100k subscribers who averages 30k-100k views per upload has recently been sent so many fake views on his latest video along with fake comments

Does this ruin his channel? Even though he didn’t clearly ask for it or want it? Could it get him shadowbanned?

Click to expand...

Usually no, it won’t ruin the channel by itself, especially if he didn’t ask for it. The YouTube algorithm is pretty good at filtering fake views and comments, so a lot of that traffic just gets ignored or removed. The only issue is if it keeps happening a lot, it can mess with metrics like retention and engagement, which might make the video perform worse. It looks more like “suspicious activity” than something punishable. A shadowban is very unlikely if he’s not involved. Best thing to do is not react with more fake traffic, maybe clean up the comments, and just keep posting like normal.

this is why YT uses AI to clean up channels but its AI is not perfect