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YouTube is shaving off more of the smaller channels from its monetization program:
YouTube is tightening the rules around its partner program and raising the requirements that a channel/creator must meet in order to monetize videos. Effective immediately, to apply for monetization (and have ads attached to videos), creators must have tallied 4,000 hours of overall watch time on their channel within the past 12 months and have at least 1,000 subscribers. YouTube will enforce the new eligibility policy for all existing channels as of February 20th, meaning that channels that fail to meet the threshold will no longer be able to make income from ads.
Previously, the standard for joining YouTube's Partner Program was 10,000 public views — without any specific requirement for annual viewing hours. This change will no doubt make it harder for new, smaller channels to reach monetization, but YouTube says it's an important way of buying itself more time to see who's following the company's guidelines and disqualify "bad actors."
[...] The new, stricter policy comes after Logan Paul, one of YouTube's star creators and influencers, published a video that showed a dead body in Japan's Aokigahara forest. Last week, YouTube kicked Paul off its Google Preferred ad program and placed his YouTube Red original programming efforts on hold.
Anyone under 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 total hours watched annually would probably be making a pittance anyway. This change could allow YouTube to put more human eyes on the unruly but popular channels, so it can censor suicide forest vlogs (NSFW) in record time.
Today Youtube sent out the following message to a number of customers:
Today we are announcing changes to the YouTube Partner Program (YPP). While our goal remains to keep the YPP open to as many channels as possible, we recognize we need more safeguards in place to protect creator revenue across the YouTube ecosystem.
Under the new eligibility requirements announced today, your YouTube channel, [Name] is no longer eligible for monetization because it doesn't meet the new threshold of 4,000 hours of watchtime within the past 12 months and 1,000 subscribers. As a result, your channel will lose access to all monetization tools and features associated with the YouTube Partner Program on February 20, 2018 unless you surpass this threshold in the next 30 days. Accordingly, this email serves as 30 days notice that your YouTube Partner Program terms are terminated.
Apparently niche content and low volume community channels, is not as profitable as hosting porn.
Who knew?
Previously: YouTube Changes its Partner Program -- Channels Need 10k Views for Adverts
Related: YouTube's "Ad-Friendly" Content Policy may Push one of its Biggest Stars off the Site
Google Fails to Stop Major Brands From Pulling Ads From YouTube
In Attempt to Achieve YouTube Stardom, Woman Accidentally Kills Her Boyfriend
YouTube Cracks Down on Weird Content Aimed at Kids
1600 Vine Street
(Score: 1) by anubi on Thursday January 18 2018, @10:21AM
I get the idea they are crowdsourcing the work.
By having US do it. You know, like Microsoft has us doing product testing. We still can't open email attachments without risk.
So, if a content creator is doing nothing but wasting all of our time with catchy clickbait, the ones so influenced may click onto the content, only to find its a load of filler, and click away, making it really hard to get someone to spend their time on the channel. This will drop the bottom out of incentives to upload clickbait crap.
I can't tell you how many times I have clicked onto something on YouTube, only to be faced with first several minutes of useless head bobbing, followed by endless waiting for little nuggets of info reminiscent of trying to watch the news on TV. Many senile old men will outdo them on a useful information transfer per hour basis.
However, given the power of JavaScript, I can see JavaScripts showing up in ads, whose sole purpose is to "watch" a YouTube content, directing the video stream to dev=null, so the content creator will get his brownie point, and will go undiscovered until the hapless user, wondering why his internet is so slow and his caps are reached so fast, discovers that his problem is that he hasn't implemented a Script blocker yet. While some script writer gets paid a fortune for use of his copyrighted and secretive work running in the background of countless machines, wasting bandwidth.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]