Because verification isn’t visible to users on mobile devices, many fans initially believed that PewDiePie, the YouTuber with the most subscribers, had also lost his checkmark (he has not). Some, noticing that Jake Paul, a YouTube star with nearly 20 million subscribers, was also suddenly missing a checkmark, believed he too had been unverified. However, YouTube confirmed that he had actually lost the checkmark previously, when he changed his handle to a joke name.

YouTube will replace the existing checkmark with “a new look” that is intended to make the “official channel of the creator, celebrity or brand” identifiable, the company wrote in a blog post.

YouTubers said that the most disappointing thing about losing their checkmark was that they’d suddenly be second-class citizens on a platform that some had dedicated years of their lives to. Unverified YouTubers’ comments don’t show up prominently in the comment sections of other videos, for example. Isaiah Shepard, a 19-year-old YouTuber with 2 million followers who goes by Steezy Kane online, said that he felt as if the change would make it harder to meet people and network. “To see a check next to my name, it made everything feel more legit, it made me feel like a creator,” he said. “It makes you stand out from accounts fans make with the same name.”

YouTubers also worried that the change would affect their view counts. Verification can impact a YouTuber’s placement in search results and losing it could make it hard for fans to identify the YouTuber’s authentic channel. Losing a checkmark, and the cachet that comes along with it, can also affect the way brands perceive a YouTuber. “I used my verification to set myself aside from everyone else. This could impact my business,” Ms. Jones said. “Either people won’t think I’m legitimate or they won’t see me in the light they saw before. It will definitely affect my brand deals.”

YouTube said part of the reason it unverified so many creators was to make it easier for users to root out impostors. “Our new criteria prioritizes verifying prominent channels that have a clear need for proof of authenticity. We look at a number of factors to determine if a channel meets this criteria,” a blog post announcing the change reads. Before the change, any channel with more than 100,000 subscribers could apply for verification. Now, the channel must not only belong to the real creator, artist, public figure or company it claims to represent, but it must also represent a well-known creator, artist, public figure or company that is “widely recognized” outside of YouTube or has a strong presence online.

Creators interpreted this as just another sign of YouTube seeking to become more corporate and abandoning its roots. “If you’ve been watching YouTube lately, you can see,” said Luke Meagher, a 22-year-old YouTuber with 270,000 subscribers who was informed he would be losing verification, “the trending page went from all influencers to Jimmy Fallon, Vevo, professional music videos.”