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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: 3, Insightful) by gnampff on Sunday September 04 2016, @09:37AM
"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."
It could only hurt them if their content is 'not "advertiser-friendly" or contained "graphic content," or "excessive strong language."' and if they are in it solely for the money. For the rest of them the world will keep turning at regular pace and nothing is changing.
It probably comes as a shock to people like this guy but there are people out there that just use YT as a distribution platform for creative/informational/useful/etc content. Content that they just wanted to get out there or that serves the purpose of advertising for (the skills of) the people that created the videos rather than the purpose of delivering a mildly entertaining filler between ads.
If I have to decide between providers of mildly entertaining fillers between ads and advertisers then my vote goes to advertisers. As much as I dislike ads I do see the necessity for them to keep the whole thing running. And I hate the spam videos of the big attention whores on YT a lot more than the occasional short ad.
Maybe that would change if YT stopped trying to direct me to oh so trending videos and people all the time when all I wanted to see is a talk/tutorial on some C++ template trickery or a speedrun from Awesome Games Done Quick.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 04 2016, @01:27PM
I post stuff onto YouTube and only have a few viewers who find it interesting. Few but still more than one. I don't go spamming links to videos to people who won't be interested. My target audience are the few who are interested in that sort of stuff. So I don't put unrelated/trending tags or fake titles or thumbnails or do the rest of the crap that makes youtube shittier (why is youtube search so crap though?).
In theory I'm eligible for monetisation but I'd probably only get a fraction of a cent every month, so I'm not going to bother putting in my real personal details to do so.
So guess who is paying for all that. The advertisers for other videos. Not mine. So if the advertisers truly aren't pleased with YouTube because of DeFranco then YT should care.
That said I find it peculiar that the advertisers would care. Or that all advertisers would care negatively. Youtube should just have multiple categories and market the category to advertisers accordingly. If they aren't doing that already, but if they are, why the fuck are they doing this?