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http://www.vox.com/2016/9/2/12746450/youtube-monetization-phil-defranco-leaving-site
Prominent YouTube star Philip DeFranco is known for his candid, often satirical delivery and his willingness to cover everything from celebrity gossip to memes. As his audience has grown, he's won awards for his informal news series and formed partnerships with major platforms like TMZ and SourceFed.
But on August 31, YouTube disabled monetization for at least 12 of DeFranco's videos. The official reason provided to DeFranco was that his content was either not "advertiser-friendly" or contained "graphic content," or "excessive strong language." DeFranco frequently swears in his videos, and regularly refers to his followers as "Beautiful Bastards." The demonetization means DeFranco will not be able to run ads (read: make money from ads) on any of those videos, and also means his channel is considered to be in violation of YouTube's community guidelines.
"I've seen channels dinged now for talking about depression and anti-bullying. And I've also seen channels like CNN include footage of a Syrian boy covered in blood, after his house was reportedly bombed, and right next to the video is a nice little ad for sneakers. So you get the question, 'Why me and not them?'" he said.
DeFranco pointed out that internet fame doesn't lead to a sustainable full-time income for the vast majority of "celebrities." If YouTube starts cracking down on content for not being "ad-friendly" enough, it could hurt these middle-tier vloggers far worse than a more major figure like DeFranco.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by tekk on Sunday September 04 2016, @07:27AM
Now obviously this move is bad for Google, but I really have to wonder why, and how they came to this conclusion? It had to be asked for by advertisers, because these are advertising guidelines, not video removal ones.
Advertisers had to be coming to them complaining about ad placement, but where exactly are these advertisers going to go, Vimeo? They shouldn't really have any teeth in this situation because, quite simply, there is no other video site out there, relatively speaking.
So now Google has gone and put their content creators (that is, the people who generate the revenue) in a tough spot in response to toothless threats from advertisers?
It just has to be something really dumb: Google's bored with YouTube and wants to kill it off, or, more likely, this wasn't actually asked for by advertisers. It's all about pushing the people on the site towards using Youtube Red. I imagine that Google makes a hell of a lot more per person off the direct payments from Red than it does from the ads, especially with the growing popularity of adblockers dragging the average down so hard (the advertising value of someone with an adblocker is $0.00, skewing that figure.)
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 04 2016, @07:33AM
> I really have to wonder why, and how they came to this conclusion?
Unintended consequences of poorly considered policies. Simple as that. That's basically the history of all human organizations in a nutshell. No need for a conspiracy.
Since it is an utterly normal event, what matters is how well Youtube responds to the problems. Do they double-down due to managerial rigidity or do they come up with something more sensible that takes into account the revealed problems? Time will tell.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 04 2016, @09:17AM
Why? Profit motive. Google is all about profit, which makes them just like almost all companies.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Marand on Sunday September 04 2016, @10:24AM
I really have to wonder why, and how they came to this conclusion?
Same reason as every other large corporation that decides to encourage or enforce "soft" censorship: appeal to the maximum number of people by carefully crafting every message to avoid offending anyone.
You see it with adverts every time one deliberately shows a just-right balance of gender and ethnicity. You see in film, where the creators are careful to stay safely within that PG-13 range to maximise potential audiences. You see it in television every time a show avoids religion, nudity, and sex because it offends the overly puritan and prudish general public. You see it every time a site like Twitter or Facebook shuts down a user for saying the "wrong" things, not because they're illegal, but because they're unpopular.
It doesn't even have to be outright blocking, since you can implement policies like this and let the chilling effects do the work for you. Who needs government censorship when private companies are so much more conservative, and so much better at it?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 04 2016, @02:25PM
Don't we all just love the lowest common denominator?
Bland food is best food!
(Score: 2) by Marand on Monday September 05 2016, @12:52AM
Bland food is best food!
Great comparison, because many restaurants do exactly this with their food. Franchise restaurants suck for getting spicy food, because their "spicy" dishes are lowest-common-denominator spicy, with just enough heat to make someone that never eats spicy food feel the burn. Someone that actually likes spicy food, like me, just ends up disappointed.
Also happens with local Thai, Mexican, etc. places that offer spicy food but give the white people weaker meals with less heat. (Though if you argue over it and push for something spicier, I've noticed they often decide to be wise-asses and try to overdo it just to fuck with you...Then get disappointed when you like it that way.)
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 05 2016, @12:56AM
As they say, freedom of the press belongs only to those who own one. This has been a concern for a long time and is even more pronounced today with the growth of massive media conglomerates. The Internet could have put an end to it as it made the costs of owning a metaphorical press small, but we still wind up in the situation that a small number of major sites like YouTube are visited by large numbers of people. There is a de facto cartel in media both traditional and new, and this is a situation which should be intolerable to any society that enshrines freedom of speech and of the press among its core values. Media monopolies and cartels should be broken up and punished at least as vigorously as any other such anti-competitive behaviour.