YouTube apologized for blocking the channel Lofi Girl, which broadcasts relaxing music around the clock. After two years of continuous streaming, the channel went silent due to a complaint. YouTube later reinstated it and confirmed that the complaint was “offensive.”

The channel is one of the most popular in its genre with over 10 million subscribers. It has two continuous streams of slow instrumental music. The Relaxation/Study and Relaxation/Sleep mixes are constantly updated and together have accumulated around 21,000 hours of playback.

Lofi Girl is famous in popular culture. The anime-style screensaver of a schoolgirl sparked memes and Halloween costumes. Even the Oscar-winning actor Will Smith created quarantine parody of her. 

When both streams went down, fans declared the death of “a very important part of YouTube culture”. Someone wrote that the channel helped them get through a lot of stressful study times. Others, however, were able to joke that the anime girl “finally prepared for the exams.”

The founders of the channel thanked fans for their support when Lofi Girl was reinstated. At the same time, they were “shocked and disappointed” that false claims are not looked at more thoroughly.

“We put in our best efforts to maintain high-quality livestreams around the clock for our audience and ensure they comply with streaming policy, leaving no reason for them to be taken down,” they wrote on Twitter.