from the post-100-10-sec-vids-and-have-100-friends-press-play dept.
The YouTube Partner Program (YPP) has changed its rules, and two Soylentils wrote in to tell us about it:
YouTube Channels Need 10,000 Views for Adverts
New channels will have to get 10,000 views before they can be considered for the YouTube Partner Program, the firm announced in a blog post.
YouTube will then evaluate whether the channel is adhering to its guidelines before letting it carry adverts.
It will help clamp down on content theft and fake channels, YouTube said.
"After a creator hits 10k lifetime views on their channel, we'll review their activity against our policies," wrote Ariel Bardin, vice president of product management at YouTube.
"If everything looks good, we'll bring this channel into YPP [YouTube Partner Program] and begin serving ads against their content. Together these new thresholds will help ensure revenue only flows to creators who are playing by the rules."
Stay on message, Citizen. Wrongthink is not allowed.
YouTube Makes Changes to Partner Program
YouTube is making changes to the YouTube Partner Program. YouTube will make it easier to report a channel impersonating another channel. It will also stop serving ads on channels with less than 10,000 views:
Starting today, we will no longer serve ads on YPP videos until the channel reaches 10k lifetime views. This new threshold gives us enough information to determine the validity of a channel. It also allows us to confirm if a channel is following our community guidelines and advertiser policies.
[...] In a few weeks, we'll also be adding a review process for new creators who apply to be in the YouTube Partner Program. After a creator hits 10k lifetime views on their channel, we'll review their activity against our policies. If everything looks good, we'll bring this channel into YPP and begin serving ads against their content. Together these new thresholds will help ensure revenue only flows to creators who are playing by the rules.
At first, I thought the 10,000 view limit was per video. But it's actually the total amount of views on all videos on the channel. It remains to be seen whether the channel review that takes place after the 10,000 view threshold will be "hands on" enough to actually identify the content YouTube wants wiped away... before it can be used to scare advertisers away from the platform.
Also at The Verge.
Previously: Google Fails to Stop Major Brands From Pulling Ads From YouTube
Related Stories
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".
Google has recently used humans and machine learning to review YouTube videos in a quest to label offensive content, and has found that the software does better "in many cases":
Google has pledged to continue developing advanced programs using machine learning to combat the rise of extremist content, after it found that it was both faster and more accurate than humans in scrubbing illicit content from YouTube.
The company is using machine learning along with human reviewers as part of a mutli-pronged approach to tackle the spread of extremist and controversial videos across YouTube, which also includes tougher standards for videos and the recruitment of more experts to flag content in need of review.
A month after announcing the changes, and following UK home secretary Amber Rudd's repeated calls for US technology firms to do more to tackle the rise of extremist content, Google's YouTube has said that its machine learning systems have already made great leaps in tackling the problem.
A YouTube spokesperson said: "While these tools aren't perfect, and aren't right for every setting, in many cases our systems have proven more accurate than humans at flagging videos that need to be removed.
Controversial, offensive, hateful, violent content that does not obviously breach YouTube's guidelines will be allowed to remain, but will often be demonetized as well as de-emphasized by not being recommended/suggested, making such videos much harder to find. Comment sections and likes may also be disabled for these videos.
YouTube will also suggest curated playlists for certain keywords, because anti-terrorism propaganda artificially propped up by a megacorporation is definitely going to dissuade and not alienate budding terrorists. Maybe the new online jihad will be fought in the comment sections of the curated videos. Better disable the comment sections on those ones too.
Previously: Google Fails to Stop Major Brands From Pulling Ads From YouTube
YouTube Changes its Partner Program -- Channels Need 10k Views for Adverts
Google Taking New Steps to Fight Terror Online
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.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Gaaark on Saturday April 08 2017, @03:56PM (3 children)
This dual submission reminded me of how i hate twitter in the news: news sites always tell you what the tweet says, and then they post the tweet as well.
Hate that. Tell me once and let me get on with my day.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Saturday April 08 2017, @04:03PM (2 children)
If the source is twitter, you will also know it's so adjusted to not offend anyone that it stops being a really useful outlet of information..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 08 2017, @04:13PM (1 child)
Ah, poor little snowflake can't handle tweets.
Rage against the machine!!!
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 08 2017, @06:47PM
Something like this [indy100.com]???
The world is my expense
The cost of my desire
Jesus blessed me with its future
And I protect it with fire
So raise your fists
And march around
Don't dare take what you need
I'll jail and bury those committed
And smother the rest in greed
Crawl with me into tomorrow
Or I'll drag you to your grave
I'm deep inside your children
They'll betray you in my name
Sleep now in the fire
The lie is my expense
The scope of my desire
The Party blessed me with its future
And I protect it with fire
I am the Nina The Pinta The Santa Maria
The noose and the rapist
And the fields overseer
The agents of orange
The priests of Hiroshima
The cost of my desire
Sleep now in the fire
For it's the end of history
It's caged and frozen still
There is no other pill to take
So swallow the one
That made you ill
The Nina The Pinta The Santa Maria
The noose and the rapist
The fields overseer
The agents of orange
The priests of Hiroshima
The cost of my desire
Sleep now in the fire
(Score: 2) by Flyingmoose on Saturday April 08 2017, @04:00PM
At current payout rates that's only $15-20, so it's not like you have a huge channel to start getting paid.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Saturday April 08 2017, @04:01PM (10 children)
Won't this increase the barrier to entry level significantly?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 08 2017, @04:22PM (1 child)
Unlikely.
10,000 views still pays peanuts, about $76 under ideal conditions [quora.com] (e.g. no one used adblock).
If you are so hand-to-mouth that you couldn't afford to get to 10K views without that $76 then you've got such big problems that you probably weren't going to make it anyway.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Saturday April 08 2017, @04:51PM
Makes one almost wonder why they taken this long..
(Score: 4, Informative) by richtopia on Saturday April 08 2017, @04:55PM (2 children)
I doubt it. Until you have a lot of views producing content for YouTube is a charity affair. Wikipedia states the payout is $2.09/1000views. So the barrier to entry looks to be around twenty dollars.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YouTube#Partnership_with_video_creators [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by takyon on Saturday April 08 2017, @05:32PM (1 child)
What I've read suggests that the $/views can't be pinned down to an exact number, although $1-2/1000 views is a good estimate. It depends on the types of ads used (you can put unskippable or 5 ads on a 10 minute video if you wanted) and could also depend on clicks or demographics. Content aimed towards kids, like toy unboxing/surprise egg [theverge.com] junk or creepy superhero skits [tubefilter.com], tends to be more valuable. And to make it, all you need is costumes, props, toys, and maybe an incoherent plot. Even better: you can buy the toys for your child slave to unbox or review, make your YouTube $$$, and then return them to save money!
Adblock also factors in. A certain % of the audience will block ads and lower the $/1000 views. Kids on their parents' iPads might not be doing that as much. They may even like the ads. YouTube could be training a generation to be susceptible to advertising.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1) by anubi on Sunday April 09 2017, @10:06AM
I believe the most profitable YouTube videos involve a cat. [youtube.com]
And that was only one example. Millions of views. And the star actor will work for a can of tuna.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Saturday April 08 2017, @04:58PM
Won't this increase the barrier to entry level significantly?
Perhaps I'm missing something, but I don't see how this would "increase the barrier to entry" at all.
Anyone can post videos on YouTube and, assuming they're not contravening the TOS [youtube.com] (whether the YT TOS is appropriate is a different discussion), they can post whatever they want.
That's a pretty low barrier to entry IMHO, and the change being made doesn't modify that in any way.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 2) by takyon on Saturday April 08 2017, @05:41PM (2 children)
People starting from absolute zero on YouTube might get 10-100 views per video. Then they'll post something that hit the algorithmic jackpot, or was particularly good clickbait, or otherwise went viral in some way or by being mentioned by a trendmaker, getting anywhere from 1,000 to millions of views while gaining more subscribers. Once you have a bulky amount of subscribers, it seems like you can get 0.5-2 views per subscriber per video pretty easily.
10,000 views total is peanuts, and could be reached by posting 100 videos that get 100 views a piece, which plenty of people have done while still remaining in the completely unknown camp. The 10k views might represent $5-20 of unearned revenue ($76 = unlikely), but $/views is based on many factors.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Sunday April 09 2017, @01:01AM (1 child)
Interesting point about going viral. If it is quick enough, you could get a few million views before they get around to reviewing and monetizing your channel.
If they stop paying out for "one-hit-wonders" how much money do they save?
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Sunday April 09 2017, @01:13AM
It's not clear to me what YouTube is going to do with this "review" process. Content theft should be very low-hanging fruit, because they could use a version of ContentID to analyze one channel's theft against another channel's videos.
YouTube doesn't really want to review shit. It either costs money in the form of hiring mechanical turks to look at a bunch of content, or it costs money in TPUs running flawed machine learning algorithms. Either approach is going to result in many false positives, removal of legitimate satire/fair use/etc. and headaches for everybody.
As for getting big fast, there are many innovative ways [complex.com]...
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by tempest on Sunday April 09 2017, @12:27AM
You're not getting enough money under 10k views to make a difference. I think this might be a boon to new channels actually, since they won't have adds served to annoy their audience unlike "big" channels.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Appalbarry on Saturday April 08 2017, @09:09PM
I'm all for this if it weeds out the seemingly endless masses of "Channels" that do nothing but repackage, poorly, usually in altered form, existing content. It's crazy that finding something straightforward and legitimate on You Tube can involved trolling through dozens of dead ends.
The people who are actually producing quality material won't be touched by this, just the slimebags.
And for those who inevitably jump up and shout "censorship!!", the solution is simple: go and start your own web site and post whatever dreck you think the world needs. YouTube/Google owe you nothing, and is under no obligation to host your creations.
You're free to say what you like, but you're not free to force someone else to pay to host it.