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Google has failed to convince major brands (such as AT&T, Verizon, Enterprise Holdings, Volkswagen, and Tesco) to continue advertising on YouTube, following the "revelation" that ads can appear next to extremist, homophobic, anti-Semitic, raunchy, etc. content. From Google's Tuesday response:
We know advertisers don't want their ads next to content that doesn't align with their values. So starting today, we're taking a tougher stance on hateful, offensive and derogatory content. This includes removing ads more effectively from content that is attacking or harassing people based on their race, religion, gender or similar categories. This change will enable us to take action, where appropriate, on a larger set of ads and sites. We'll also tighten safeguards to ensure that ads show up only against legitimate creators in our YouTube Partner Program—as opposed to those who impersonate other channels or violate our community guidelines. Finally, we won't stop at taking down ads. The YouTube team is taking a hard look at our existing community guidelines to determine what content is allowed on the platform—not just what content can be monetized. [...] We're changing the default settings for ads so that they show on content that meets a higher level of brand safety and excludes potentially objectionable content that advertisers may prefer not to advertise against. Brands can opt in to advertise on broader types of content if they choose.
The growing boycott started in the UK:
On Friday, the U.K. arm of the Havas agency, whose clients include the BBC and Royal Mail, said it would halt spending on YouTube and Web display ads in Google's digital advertising network. In doing so, Havas UK CEO Paul Frampton cited a duty to protect clients and "ensure their brands are not at all compromised" by appearing alongside or seeming to sponsor inappropriate content. The decision by a global marketing group with a U.K. digital budget of more than $200 million to put its dealings with Google on "pause" followed a recent controversy over YouTube star Felix "PewDiePie" Kjellberg, who lost a lucrative production contract with Maker Studios and its owner, Walt Disney Co., over "a series of anti-Semitic jokes and Nazi-related images in his videos," as the Two-way reported. As the BBC reports, "Several high profile companies, including Marks and Spencer, Audi, RBS and L'Oreal, have pulled online advertising from YouTube."
Google's Chief Business Officer Philipp Schindler also promised to develop "new tools powered by our latest advancements in AI and machine learning to increase our capacity to review questionable content for advertising".
(Score: 5, Funny) by Ethanol-fueled on Sunday March 26 2017, @02:09AM (14 children)
The Left eats themselves from the inside.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 26 2017, @03:38AM (7 children)
There is that. But also they changed something fundamental last year. The producers are saying their ad rev dropped like a rock last September or so. Many of the smaller ones switched to patreon/paypall to get people to donate. One I watch fairly regularly switched to click bait sort of videos to game the system and keep viewership up.
This is the second or third time they have done something like this. The content producers are getting sick of it. Then on top of that if they make a slightly 'off color' joke they get regulated into 'SJW' hell. Suddenly having to pander to people that is not normally in their audience just to make youtube happy. Pretty much all of the ones I watch have 'the video' where they are talking about money from youtube. Many were doing 'ok' some VERY 'ok'. Now not so much. They are not taking care of their content producers and they are starting to resort to shocking things to say to attract viewers. Eventually they will just say 'screw that' and move on. The advertisers are reacting in kind. They do not want their brands associated to that (positive or negative). Many of them make sure everything is 'on brand'. So yeah I could see them saying 'uh dont want to be associated to that'. As the shocking things seem to be 'political' these days with one side calling the other 'nazis' (with no clue what a nazi is other than someone they dont like). There is also a concerted effort to harass celebrities who step out of line.
I have taken to if it says 'trump' or 'hillary' in the title I just say 'not interested'. The whole site went bonkers and thought I wanted to hear all of that junk 24/7. Hell, I voted for the guy and I do not want to see it all the time, positive OR negative. Unfortunatly the trending list is still pretty much unusable. Where in the past it was usually pretty good. My 'home feed' has mostly calmed down to pre-2016 style videos with that one thing.
Frankly these douchebags are ruining the freedom of the internet. Using https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rules_for_Radicals#The_Rules [wikipedia.org] this to discredit anyone. Google has gone from 'do no evil' to 'do what we perceive as good' even if that means censorship and spitting on the very things we built the internet around. They have an idea what is 'good' and do not see that they are actually doing evil. They honestly do not see that the very tools they create can then be used upon them. They somehow think they will only ever have the power. It is pure narcissism at its finest. Just watch. Google will say it is not their fault and again double down and blame the very people that make youtube a success. They are making the classic mistake of a big business thinking they know what the customers want instead of listening to their customers. You can make the argument that the advertisers are the customer. But not really. We the viewers kinda are. But we are also the product. But we have a big say in what we want to see.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 26 2017, @03:55AM
The trending list is a joke. It seems to be full of sponsored content, easily and obviously identifiable by having under a million views. Meanwhile, controversial videos (like a certain Content Cop) that make the list get removed fast, even if they have over 10 million views.
Here's trending:
https://www.youtube.com/feed/trending [youtube.com]
It looks better than when I checked it a month ago, but not by much.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by SomeGuy on Sunday March 26 2017, @04:17AM
I gave up on the idea of posting videos to Youtube (not that I had that many) a while back when they introduced that retarded autoplay mis-feature. After my videos it was playing videos that I didn't approve of, while keeping the the page title the same as if it were still my content. Fuck no. They didn't fall in to any of the categories described in the story, they just sent the opposite message I was trying to send. Sure, each person could turn it off. But go to a new computer or open a new private window and there it was again.
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 26 2017, @11:50AM (2 children)
> Hell, I voted for the guy
>
> Frankly these douchebags are ruining the freedom of the internet. Using https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rules_for_Radicals#The_Rules [wikipedia.org] this to discredit anyone.
Ah yes, the saul alinsky under every rock conspiracy fantasy.
Of course you voted for trump.
Even when the nut job hard right think they are presenting as sane, the crazy always leaks out...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 26 2017, @06:49PM (1 child)
Great job proving his point. Tool.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 26 2017, @06:53PM
He used rule #5. "Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon. There is no defense. It’s irrational. It’s infuriating. It also works as a key pressure point to force the enemy into concessions"
He does not want to see it because he thinks it benefits him somehow.
(Score: 2) by Wootery on Monday March 27 2017, @02:02PM
It's a pity there's no more 'web-like' solution than YouTube recommendations. Or if there is, no-one uses it. Instead, essentially the whole world of free-to-view Internet videos is locked away in the incestuous YouTube ecosystem. YouTube doesn't link outside YouTube.
There's nothing stopping you hosting your video on your own site and going with an advertiser who's ok with your content, but you'll never be discovered if you're not on YouTube.
Exceptions exist -- DemocracyNow and TED don't primarily use YouTube, for instance -- but they're very much exceptions to the rule. Not to mention that, of course, they're large organisations and not mere individuals. Additionally I don't think either is ad-funded anyway.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Monday March 27 2017, @04:16PM
> Frankly these douchebags are ruining the freedom of the internet
Now that I think about it, the major brands are doing the same.
"We don't want to be associated with content we don't like" means "Google, start censoring".
Of course it's their money and they are free to put or retire it however they see fit. But it seems strange that conglomerate with business practices that usually echo mafia ones (which is not shocking as decades of laundered drug money possibly went to those conglomerates) and whose expert in communication pull every dirty trick in the books, don't want a viewership with the same attention span of a mollusc to associate the ad they are skipping with a video THEY WANT TO SEE and complain to a company whose video portal pushes clickbait. So hypocritical that I suspect the aim is, again, censorship of the internet and a technototalitarian society.
The only video google should pull are that billion or so which have a totally unrelated thumbnail and/or have content unrelated to the title.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 26 2017, @04:17AM (5 children)
> The Left eats themselves from the inside.
Yeah, its totally being politically correct not to run ads that pay for content that pisses off some of your customers.
Stupid liberals. only snowflakes worry about making money. Real alphas simply demand money and betas pay it.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 26 2017, @05:19AM
its totally being politically correct not to run ads that pay for content that pisses off some of your customers
We've reached the point where inevitably someone, somewhere will be offended by damn near everything. There are people that get offended by the very advertisements made by the companies pulling them. At this point we may as well get the FCC involved to police everything as they've done with broadcast television since people can't handle anything on their own anymore.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by chromas on Sunday March 26 2017, @08:34AM (3 children)
Well, hooray then. No more ads anywhere because all content pisses off some of your customers. But seriously, are you going to stop buying Diet Double Dew or watching Disney movies just because their ads played on Rapey the Clown videos? Videos that, assuming they piss you off, you won't be watching anyway?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 26 2017, @11:38AM (2 children)
> No more ads anywhere because all content pisses off some of your customers.
Ah, isn't binary thinking great?
You can make nazis and fart noises moral equivalents and then we can all finally see that nazis really aren't so bad.
> Videos that, assuming they piss you off, you won't be watching anyway?
Its not about watching the videos. Its about spending money with companies that turn around use some of it to pay for those videos. I don't know about you, but as a jew I have zero interest in sending my money to people advocating for my death.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 27 2017, @12:27AM (1 child)
Ah, isn't binary thinking great?
He simply responded to the argument being made.
You can make nazis and fart noises moral equivalents and then we can all finally see that nazis really aren't so bad.
Straw man.
I don't know about you, but as a jew I have zero interest in sending my money to people advocating for my death.
I have zero interest in sending my money to people who support mass surveillance. I have zero interest in sending my money to people who support things like the TSA. I believe both groups are reprehensible authoritarians, and I'm not even slightly exaggerating. If we play this game consistently, ads are going to disappear from Youtube entirely (good, I say). But we're not being consistent, so only things that offend particular people will get removed or have their ads pulled.
And why is it always about nazis? Pro-nazi videos are far from the only types of videos that have their ads pulled, and usually the system is at least partly automated and it's impossible to see how decisions are made or to have mistakes fixed. I can't see why anyone would be in favor of such a crazy system.
(Score: 2) by Wootery on Monday March 27 2017, @03:26PM
If we play this game consistently, ads are going to disappear from Youtube entirely (good, I say).
If that happens, YouTube will either die, or switch to a new revenue stream. Which do you propose?
(Score: 5, Interesting) by ShadowSystems on Sunday March 26 2017, @02:35AM (14 children)
I can visit Youtube as a guest (not logging in) & view hours of uninterrupted content that includes foul language, bouncing boobs, gratuitous violence, & damn-near every depravity imaginable (don't look at me, I was searching for porn I swear! I have no idea how that cat video got there!), and never. ever. ever. see a single bloody ad.
But the moment Youtube throws up a "content warning! You need to sign in to see this" & I log in, I'm *FLOODED* with ads.
Every. single. video. from the point I log in gets me swamped in ads.
To add insult to injury it's often the EXACT. SAME. AD. every single time.
How many times do I have to skip an add about a car insurance company? You're obviously not basing it on my profile data or you would know I'm *BLIND* and can't drive any longer.
So if I refuse to log in I don't get shown ads, but if I do log in then you flood me with them. Please remind me what benefit I get out of logging in?
It's obviously not targeted ads because your aim is completely fekkin' wrong.
I've tried to set my Google ad prefs but the pages are such a fustercluck navigation that I can never get to anything that plainly gives me a set of clearly identified check boxes with clearly labeled options.
"Check box: Do you want to see ads about auto insurance? Currently unchecked." would be fekkin' helpful.
I tend to refuse to log in. I'll skip the video that generated the content warning, do a search for the video title, find a non-blocked copy elsewhere (on Youtube!), & keep going.
No ads, no crap, no fuss.
Log in, get ads, get annoyed, & eventually get so pissed off that I close the Youtube tab to go elsewhere.
Case in point for the logging in thing: go watch episodes of Foamy the Angry Squirrel.
You can watch the first three or four SEASONS worth of them in a single playlist without ever getting an ad, but the moment the "Jumprope" one gets to the front, up comes the content warning & out come the ads.
Search for the episode, launch it from the other Youtube search result hits, & OOPS no more content warning, no ads, & no crap.
Unless & until Youtube fixes the content system to *actually* flag content that includes foul language, violence, sex, drugs, etc, it's utterly useless for anything other than to get you to log in so they can maul you with ads.
As Foamy would say, "Fuck that! I've got better shit to do!"
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 26 2017, @02:42AM
Adblock can be used on YouTube and no videos refuse to load because of it... Currently. I'm waiting for the day YouTube Red gives way to YouTube Scriptwall.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 26 2017, @02:44AM
Here's what I do... If an advertisement gets past Scriptblock/uBlock on any website, I either don't go back to that site again or never do business with the advertiser.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 26 2017, @03:01AM (2 children)
youtube-dl gets around the "content warning! You need to sign in to see this" nonsense, last I looked. Youtube's built-in video player is garbage, honestly.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 26 2017, @03:29AM
You can also change youtube to listenonrepeat in the URL.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 26 2017, @07:33AM
The embedded URL gets past the content warning as well.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 26 2017, @04:10AM (4 children)
If you get ads on youtube you're using the internet wrong.
(Score: 1) by ShadowSystems on Sunday March 26 2017, @04:42AM (3 children)
And if you can't maintain a cell signal on your Apple phone it's because you're holding it wrong?
Jackass.
I use IE11 because I have to, not because I want to; everything else causes my Screen Reader Environment (SRE) to crap itself.
FireFox causes an intercept error with something inside the SRE that causes the SRE to no longer be able to read the screen. Solution is to shut down the browser, reboot the SRE, & use a different browser. Yes I've told the devs, given a copy of the error logs, & have yet to hear back.
PaleMoon isn't accessible *at all*. They physicly *removed the functionality* from their fork & claim it's to "ensure compatability". PM can KMMFA.
Safari on Windows sucks so bad it's not even funny. When it takes *minutes* to finish doing whatever it's doing between launch & giving me control, locking up my system until it finishes, I uninstalled it rather than keep fighting with it.
Opera can't seem to make up it's mind if it wants to let my SRE use it's native keyboard shortcuts or if the browser wants to co-opt them for it's own use. Try to get the SRE to read a web page & it's a crap shoot if the key command works or not. Again, uninstalled it rather than keep taking the migraine meds.
So that leaves IE11 on my Win7Pro64 box. I don't have much of a choice.
This also explains why I can't use any of the plugins mentioned earlier. If they don't have a version for IE then there's SFA I can do to install them.
So please, nice anonymous coward, tell me again how I'm using the internet wrong?
Perhaps you MIGHT want to THINK about your answer before you knee-jerk your head up your ass, M'kay?
*Sigh*
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 26 2017, @04:53AM
You can use a proxy to block the ads.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 26 2017, @07:33AM (1 child)
I noticed that all the ads went away after using the hosts file at the following link. It's old school but it works great and browser independent...
http://winhelp2002.mvps.org/hosts.htm [mvps.org]
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 26 2017, @08:37PM
It's so nice to see you again, APK!
I thought you'd crawled back into your hole permanently.
Please stick around and post all your ridiculous drivel so we can go back to laughing at you to your face instead of behind your back.
Kisses, honey!
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 26 2017, @04:22AM
You might need to buy insurance for your kid. Think you don't have a kid? Maybe youtube knows something you don't know. (perhaps you'll meet him next week)
Also, you could have a car that you just keep parked at your house. It still needs insurance for flood, fire, and theft. Maybe you keep a Buggati Veyron to show off a bit. Maybe you keep a minivan to sleep in. Maybe you use a car for the radio and CD player. Maybe you need a car for the 12-volt car power sockets, since that is the only adapter you have for charging your cell phone.
(Score: 5, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 26 2017, @06:35AM (1 child)
you watch videos of bouncing boobs on youtube even though you've gone blind? old habits die hard.
(Score: 3, Touché) by darkfeline on Monday March 27 2017, @03:43AM
One guess as to how he ended up blind.
/joke
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 2) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Sunday March 26 2017, @07:36AM
Do you uses something like privacy badger?
I found that ads did not display on a lot of websites if you disabled tracking.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Dunbal on Sunday March 26 2017, @03:32AM (10 children)
a tougher stance on hateful, offensive and derogatory content
Who gets to decide what is hateful, offensive or derogatory? Are there clear, published guidelines? Or is this another "we'll make it up as we go along" trips down censorship lane?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 26 2017, @03:38AM
It's simple. Say if you are CNN none of your videos get blocked, but if you put up a video that discusses the same topic as one of CNN's videos, and you point out why they are wrong, you get flagged.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by takyon on Sunday March 26 2017, @03:47AM
It's YouTube. You know, 400 or so hours of video uploaded every minute, and rising? ContentID was a compromise with big IP corporations like Viacom. You are lucky if your fair use rights are respected. So edgy YouTubers in the gray area are going to get rekt regardless of how "clear" (as mud) the guidelines are. At least there are degrees of how you can get screwed. Losing 96% of ad revenue because of being labelled inappropriate is not as bad as being banned entirely.
You could move to vid.me or Dailymotion or whatever, but the amount of people watching your videos is going to decline a lot, along with the revenue. YouTube has yet to fuk users over enough to get them to switch services, but this could do it.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 26 2017, @04:20AM (5 children)
> Who gets to decide what is hateful, offensive or derogatory?
The people paying to run the ads.
Its their money, you don't think they should get to chose what they spend it on?
If you don't pay for my speech that's censorship!!! ::rolleyes::
Entitled prick.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 26 2017, @04:42AM
But the point is that they don't watch every video to decide. Instead, they rely on automated systems that look for certain phrases, or identified audio, or whatever else. This means that the advertisers don't really decide, the people who write the assumptions in the algorithm do. And just like any heuristic, there will be shortcuts and false identifications an all sorts of problems. Then, they probably supplement the algorithm with tests by people who actually have time to sit through and categorize various videos, and the kind of people who do that usually can because they have some sort of agenda (whether they believe it is beneficent or maleficent).
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Dunbal on Sunday March 26 2017, @10:14AM (3 children)
Its their money, you don't think they should get to chose what they spend it on?
No. If they're afraid of the RISK of advertising on an open platform like youtube, they should spend their money elsewhere instead of shutting down youtube. It's kind of ironic. Eventually when nothing but sanitized content is available on youtube, no one will use youtube anymore. And advertisers will be throwing money into a vacuum like they do on TV today. The best bit is - no one actually watches/cares about the ads. Talk about the tail wagging the dog.
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Sunday March 26 2017, @10:45AM
That's exactly what they're doing. They're saying "we won't spend money on your platform while it does X"
If enough companies do this then the advertising income drops, and google either comes up with a way to appease their lost customers, or they shut down.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 26 2017, @11:43AM (1 child)
> The best bit is - no one actually watches/cares about the ads. Talk about the tail wagging the dog.
Man, that is some crazy-ass motivated reasoning. No one cares about the ads? Tell that to PewDiePie.
Hell, you clearly care about the ad money or you wouldn't be trying to argue that this is a bad idea.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 27 2017, @12:33AM
Maybe he doesn't care about the ad revenue but does care a bit about debunking the arguments of the perpetually offended.
(Score: 3, Informative) by chromas on Sunday March 26 2017, @08:41AM
YouTube Heroes [knowyourmeme.com].
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 26 2017, @01:51PM
The whole thing is a red herring. We all know what countries the supposedly "offended" players do business in, and who they are willing to get in bed with. They have no problem doing business with Nazi's, they just don't want their main stream customers to know that.
Note that AdSense already has the requisite feature set for avoiding religious or political content (which almost all hate speech is). So at most it is a question of accuracy regarding their filters, not the lack of them.
My guess is that the players making the beef are involved in some kind of price fixing scheme, and any hooplah going around about this issue is related to that in some fashion.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 26 2017, @03:35AM (1 child)
I never see ads on youtube.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 26 2017, @05:55AM
Neither do I, since I subscribe to YouTube Red.
(Score: 2) by bradley13 on Sunday March 26 2017, @07:51AM
It has been observed many times: "Outsource Your Marketing, Outsource Your Reputation and Ethics"
Whether it's your ads appearing to endorse the wrong videos, or a website getting the wrong ads, it's two sides of the same coin. The automated ad networks allow both sides to hand over their ethics and reputation to anonymous bidding bots.
As a relentless ad blocker (through Brave or uBlock+Ghostery plus a hosts file), I suppose I never see the things, so I just cannot imagine how they can be worth the cost in money and reputation.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.