In January 2013, we brought you the story of Fortress of Attitude who had their song “PS Gay Car” removed after it was misflagged for violating “TOU #4 Section H”, that is using Bots or other automated means to inflate a YouTube video’s view count. The good news is that video and its view have been fully restored only four months after the last appeal to YouTube! Granted we’re not sure which of our many appeals resulted in the video being restored since Fortress of Attitude never received any notice from YouTube that the video had been restored.

The bad news is that this is the only successful appeal we’ve seen in over a year of covering this issue. And even worse, despite the February 14th blog post from YouTube that seemed to indicate YouTube would start adjusting view counts of videos accused of bots inflation instead of removing videos; we’ve seen a recent influx of unsuccessfully appealed wrongful bots takedowns.

As much as we want to celebrate Fortress of Attitude’s victory, the reality is the bots problem on YouTube is still very real.