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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, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 04 2016, @09:21AM
(I am going to go off a tangent here)
Youtube sits around doing nothing, while content creators create value for it. It can screw over its content creators because there is no competition. There is no competition because ideally some capitalist would come invest and take advantage of the niche (i.e. create youtube's competitor) but how come they do not? This is a huge opportunity.
What if nobody really has the money to enter the market? After all, all clients will demand high-speed and responsiveness on behalf of the Youtube's competitor and this is expensive. But even if this is so, this is a textbook example of "I have a great business plan but no money, so c'mon Banks, lend me some".
But in practice the capitalism game is rigged: if you are not part of some "greater plan", like Microsoft, Google, Twitter and Facebook (for that last one such an effort was made to summarily "immortalize" it by entering it into the stock market) and even perhaps Apple, then you're out. Why? Because those are mostly spy networks, or because would like to be spy networks, or because their (true, not the strawmen in front) founders go into the same cocktail parties, who knows.
I will further the tangent and go even more conspiracy by guessing that if you owned a time machine, and you went back to 2002 or so, and you tried to put together Facebook, you would fail because the system would not let you.
Banks may lend out small sums to anybody, but big sums go only to "friends and colleagues". To do this they just type a number in a computer, and then the money "exists" and they "lend" it to you. SUCH a scam.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Nerdfest on Sunday September 04 2016, @02:02PM
Unfortunately they don't do "nothing". They have a *huge* infrastructure in place to support those videos. One of the existing competitors could step it up and compete with them, or less likely, a new one. Yes, it would take a really big investment to do it, as well as either payments by content producers and subscribers, or an ad platform. It wouldn't be easy, but it does happen.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Sunday September 04 2016, @02:25PM
There are competitors, they just aren't as well known. For example, I've posted some videos on https://vid.me/ [vid.me] because in order to sign up and post a video on youtube, I was required to turn over my phone number which I'm not about to do. There's Vimeo of course too and probably a bunch of others.
The best way to get Youtube to walk back the policy would be if some big names started posted elsewhere. Doubt that happens though.
(Score: 3, Informative) by hemocyanin on Sunday September 04 2016, @02:27PM
Apparently, vid.me gets the opportunity: https://vid.me/KEnH [vid.me] "Give us your fucking profanity ..."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 04 2016, @04:48PM
I have posted videos on YouTube with no phone number. It may have to do with making an account on Google instead of doing it on YouTube, or other Google bullshit where they convince themselves you are a bot.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Sunday September 04 2016, @06:16PM
I have too with a very old account for which I forgot the password. Last winter though, I tried making a new account to post a video and I was unable to get around the phone number thing. I probably could have if I tried harder, but it wasn't important enough to me - I just went elsewhere.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 05 2016, @09:31PM
There is no competition because look what happened to Megaupload when they tried to compete even though they didn't break any laws. and Veoah (the original, see https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111220/11021717143/veoh-still-perfectly-legal-also-still-dead-due-to-bogus-copyright-lawsuit.shtml [techdirt.com] ).