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YouTube's "Ad-Friendly" Content Policy may Push one of its Biggest Stars off the Site

posted by martyb on Sunday September 04 2016, @07:17AM   Printer-friendly
from the where-else-could-he-go? dept.

An Anonymous Coward writes:

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.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 04 2016, @01:27PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 04 2016, @01:27PM (#397379)
    Yeah losing Philip DeFranco and similar isn't going to kill YouTube. I'm not even sure if it would hurt YouTube that much. Do his viewers buy a lot of stuff?

    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?