
Changes to the YouTube Partner Program - tomkwok
https://youtube-creators.googleblog.com/2018/01/additional-changes-to-youtube-partner.html
======
sgentle
I think people are missing the forest for the trees here. Despite what the PR
says, this has very little to do with the relationship between YouTube and
creators, and everything to do with the relationship between YouTube and
advertisers.

YouTube is renting out billboards at a music festival, and the advertisers,
predictably, want to know who's playing. "Well, I dunno, like, whoever shows
up" has proven to be an answer that they can't get away with. YouTube's
negotiating position with advertisers depends on how they can position their
package of advertising space. Right now they're trying to sell a big bundle of
uncertain providence, with loads of little no-namers mixed in with the heavy
hitters.

But what can YouTube do? If they split it up, they now have a gold package, a
silver package, and a shit package. The rates for the shit package would be so
bad that current YouTube revenue starts to look like winning the lottery. The
smallest channels are subsidised by the bigger ones, not in terms of views but
in terms of reputation. So if you need to improve the reputation of the group,
what's left to do but drop the weakest performers?

If you're thinking "but that's totally illogical! Smaller channels
collectively contribute an enormous number of very valuable advertising
impressions", you're right, but making the same mistake YouTube did. The
advertising industry isn't logical, it's 18 layers of ticket-clippers and con
men playing telephone with money. It doesn't run on economically rational
real-time bidding systems, it runs on trend-chasing and reputation. That other
stuff is just to keep the nerds happy.

So, like in every other field Goophabet has entered, the techno-utopianism
lasts right up until it hits the balance sheet. Party's over, folks. YouTube
is an advertising company and now it's realising it has to act like one.

~~~
protonfish
If this is their reasoning, then it is YouTube that is missing the forest if
they think destroying the environment that fosters and encourages small
content creators is a smart move. All of the big players started there once.
As the taste for content matures and viewers search for higher-quality
content, hacks like PewDiePie dwindle and pros like Binging with Babish rise.
Locking into the cesspool of current popular channels is extremely short
sighted. A wiser position would be investing in nurturing up and coming
content creators or risk losing to a platform that does.

~~~
rubinelli
Advertisement is a bad model for niche content creators anyway. Selling
"premium" content, contract work, and donations are how most are paying their
bills.

EDIT: And PewDiePie won't disappear. He provides the perfect wish fulfillment
for kids that would love to stay in their bedrooms and be paid to play
videogames all day long.

~~~
kevin_thibedeau
No way can he sustain the attention beyond his 30's. His demo will grow up and
he'll eventually be a creepy old guy the next generation isn't interested in.

~~~
reader5000
This is true of literally every celebrity.

~~~
cf
Many celebrities and entertainers can bring their fanbase with them as they
get older. This is literally what people like Leno and the Rolling Stones do.

------
jeffmould
As one of the people whose channel is affected by this policy change, I have
to say I am not happy. There are a few issues I have with their new policy:

1) They should not have made this change retroactive to channels. If you
already met the criteria you should be grandfathered into the new program. To
terminate monetization entirely gives me no incentive to continue with
YouTube.

2) For niche channels, like my own, it can be easy to have the views but
difficult to have the subscribers. These two should not be tied together for
purposes of monetization.

3) The ones that seem to be causing the biggest headaches on YouTube lately
are the bigger creators.

4) Finally, their email to me says that they made this decision based on
discussions with creators like me. I would be hardpressed to find a creator
"like me" that suggested this. Instead, I suspect, they reached out to the
creators with the biggest say and decided to squash the little guys for
greater visibility.

I am curious if they will continue to monetize my videos while not sharing the
revenue with me or if they will remove ads entirely from my videos.

~~~
mc32
>) For niche channels, like my own, it can be easy to have the views but
difficult to have the subscribers. These two should not be tied together for
purposes of monetization.

I completely agree.

I've saved hundreds of dollars [and time] on car maintenance/repairs and
plumbing by watching some guy or gal on youtube with very specific information
(for a given make/model/year) for example.

I hope these kinds of instructional videos get a reprieve because many many
people use them and save tons of money and time [finding manuals and reading
them is arduous].

This could be a terrible loss for some audiences as well as the creators who
get compensated, slim as it may be.

~~~
Nition
Honestly I think people will keep making those sorts of videos anyway. We
never get paid anything for posting on Stack Overflow or Hacker News yet here
we are. And YouTube had lots of good videos before it had monetisation.

~~~
eropple
_> We never get paid anything for posting on Stack Overflow or Hacker News yet
here we are._

About 30% of my consulting revenue last year came directly from "I saw you on
Hacker News and--".

It is rather harder for a car mechanic to do that.

~~~
AJ007
Right, but if even 5% of car mechanics were making Youtube videos only a few
would still be able to make a meaningful amount of money off of them. A car
mechanic capable of adapting to a new technology early, and building an
audience off of that is more than just a car mechanic.

If you benefit from a disruptive technology, you can't expect the "new normal"
to persist indefinitely. The ride certainly may not be free or easy, but it
would be abnormal for it not to change.

This whole thing seems very reminiscent of SEO about a decade ago. It was
still fairly new and thousands of people built incomes and entire businesses
with employees around it. In some cases a search algorithm update wiped out
all of their audience. Of course, in nearly every case those impacted
immediately blamed Google.

When something is fairly new, the first movers often get outsized benefits.
You have less competition which makes the ability to both capture and monetize
an audience easier. As the market matures more competitors appear. If the pie
doesn't grow as fast as the new competitors arriving, all participants earn
less profits.

The results of what Google/Youtube is doing now is just bringing the same
effects early. The future of Youtube producers will consist of less search
visibility combined with ad revenue divided more ways. 15+ years of double
digit only advertising growth has gone a long way to mask the audience problem
(and when it ends it is going to result in massive changes to Google.)

------
Scoundreller
Great. /s

I published ONE video about how to easily fix a head-scratching computer
hardware problem, because there isn't any other guide on it.

I get about 1000 views a month, tons of thank yous and make a few dollars.

Because I won't get 4000 hours of watch time[1], and nobody will subscribe,
I'll get squat.

And zero motivation to publish more videos.

The next time I figure out a life-trick[2], I won't bother.

Who subscribes to videos about fixing stuff anyway?

[1] Don't you hate those videos that are 5x longer than necessary? WHY
ENCOURAGE THAT?

[2] That fancy French mustard you bought? Don't bother with your hands. You'll
need to use a corkscrew to open it.

~~~
dmix
What's the motivation here then? To stop paying money to one-hit wonders and
funnel it only to the professional/serious content producers? I don't really
understand why that'd be necessary.

Youtube makes some strange choices with their monetization. I really wonder
why they are so obsessed with finely controlling who can profit from producing
good content on their platform. Why not let a) the users and b) the
advertisers decide this? Who is losing out here, absent their preemptive
interventions?

If they keep this up it might highly incentivize a decentralized video
platform with a built-in monetization scheme.

~~~
Scoundreller
No idea. I just met their new criteria for 10000 views before monetization,
which should mean I've already been vetted?

Does a company like Google really need human review on videos? With 10k views,
their AI/ML should detect what's risky content or not based on what they know
about users.

Here's a great video that we'll see less of:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDB2QVEuy60](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDB2QVEuy60)

A well-produced 36 second video on replacing your Corolla's brake light,
rather than a 5 minute video going blah blah blah. And I'll never subscribe.

~~~
intended
Again that level of AI/ML means being able to state what the intent of a
comment or document is. If we ever get close to that point, that programs can
reliably mark something as "risky" content, _human thought_ is in big trouble.

"Risky" material is subjective. Something even humans can't make out reliably
very often.

I think, this is the result of the tech firms putting content creators of old
out of business, but not investing in the necessary editorial power,
subscribing instead to the "wisdom of the crowds" school of thought.

They have not paid for (and will not be able to afford) the distributed human
editorial power which was lost.

~~~
Scoundreller
It doesn't need to be perfect, just reliable enough to determine what needs
more thorough review.

A 2 minute video titled "How to fix your computer's _______", that is linked
from fixit forums, that is universally liked with comments stating "Wow, that
worked, thanks!" shouldn't even need human review to determine risk.

The comparison alone to other videos with similar characteristics should do
it.

~~~
intended
How, all human activities have adversarial components to it- especially when
there’s a financial pay off involved. People will just got the comments.

And that’s over the naturally noisy data set of human behavior.

Not to mention cultural norms across all nations in the world - I know many
Indian user forums where even mildly helpful or unhelpful videos/posts will
receive “thank you, could you help with...” posts.

------
anonytrary
A signed suicide note by YouTube. It's those peanuts that motivate actual
content creators to post content and grow. This is the problem with "free and
always will be", smh.

You get a centralized broker. In Google's case, between sellers and viewers,
who are cast as buyers. This all happens under the shadow of "video content".
Google feeds off of the creativity of everyone on YouTube, its own Hollywood.
Then they decide who is worthy of reaping the rewards with their rules.

Something as simple as an organic comment promoting a product can actually
drive real sales, and the John Doe that posts such a comment gets zilch. Why
does he get nothing? Is it too difficult for Google to index all of John Doe's
comments, crunch the impressions and counts and then give him the few dollars
he would have accrued over the past few weeks? This should all just "work"
without having to download Google Surveys, or whatever their community
feedback/rewards app is.

If they can index the web, they can do some math on behalf of me and count me
in their little MLM payouts equation ffs. /ranty This is the perfect move to
put more YouTubers past the tipping point.

~~~
nemothekid
>This is the perfect move to put more YouTubers past the tipping point.

YouTube is dead for the ______th time. Now YouTubers will finally move to
______ with monetization strategy _______ and we will enter the golden age of
online video.

I agree with the other (downvoted) poster - YouTube has no where to go. They
literally have no competition, and bled billions of dollars for years to get
where they are today. No one is lining up bleed money on user generated
content like Google did.

If you think creators should be compensated for the work they put out anymore
than YouTube is doing, then build that platform. Until then no other platform
has come close to actually writing checks to actual creators - even Facebook
has seemingly decided to not touch that landmine with a 50ft pole - and they
were supposed to "dethrone" YouTube with their billions of minutes watched.

It's amazing people think that YouTube is screwing over creators when no other
platform has even come close to what YouTube is doing at scale.
Facebook/Twitter - heck even most ad networks give you zilch for putting
content online.

YouTube isn't just deciding who reaps the rewards, their the _only_ content
platform sharing the rewards.

~~~
ashelmire
There are alternatives to Youtube. There are many video sharing sites, and
more sites where you explicitly get paid for your content (Patreon, etc).

Moves like this are inevitable and allow those smaller companies to make some
headway in the market.

------
robertelder
I just got an email that my channel will de-monetized by this. I thought it
was pretty funny actually. There are all these huge content creators losing
out on their livelihoods because of Google's unpredictable de-monetization
behaviour, and then Google even decides to demonetize even my tiny channel
with only a few videos (that are over 9 years old).

I turned on monetization a few years ago and I think I've made maybe $20 so
far. For a while, I actually considered investing time in making more videos
with the idea that the present value of a large number of videos might be
pretty considerable over the long term (say 30 years or so).

A few years ago one of my most popular videos (tens of thousands of views) was
flagged as being 'not family friendly'. The video was a screen capture of me
scrolling through a notepad.exe list of documentary titles with no audio. It
was just a list of nature/space documentaries that were _already on YouTube_.
Nothing offensive or controversial.

I guess this is the final nail in the coffin for my YouTube career.

~~~
gkya
This is why one should not entrust their livelihood to any company. I'm a fan
of the Patreon model. If I was starting a video publishing enterprise (say
something like Primitive Technology or Computerphile or a music band channel)
I'd definitely use all the most popular subscription services available, and a
newsletter & blog with proper RSS. I'd upload to YouTube to drive viewers,
than take them to my blog, show them where else I upload stuff and where to
pay to take active part in the community, which allows for pre-releases or
access to live programs after some videos where they can ask questions. I'd
earn less than PewDiePie, but nobody would be able to challenge my enterprise.
Though certainly to earn with such model, you need to be publishing high
quality stuff (or of a quality too low for the decent peope), that is, high
quality content.

~~~
raiyu
Except for when Patreon updated how they collect payments about a month ago
and that made it very expensive for patrons to donate to a large number of
different people small amounts so they started cancelling their $1 and $2
donations because of the extra fees involved. So all of a sudden if you were
getting 20% of your income from these smaller patrons you would lose that.

Now they did eventually reverse it, but it just shows you that when you are
dependent on X, you are dependent on X. It could be better or worse, but it's
still a middle man in the system.

You could go to a straight donation model like using Paypal, but that limits
your global subscriber network since Paypal isn't used everywhere and you will
also be missing out on the platform benefits. Meaning if someone is donating
already on Patron they will more likely donate to someone else. Likewise if
someone is subscribed to one channel on Youtube they will more likely
subscribe to a second.

I think ultimately there is a trade off here where you have to understand what
you are exchanging in terms of freedom, control, and dependence, with the
platform you choose to use.

~~~
gkya
Quoting myself:

>> I'd definitely use all the most popular subscription services available

I have about five of them bookmarked. There definitely exists more.

You need to rely on someone at some point, but redundancy and decoupling can
make the potential backstab less hurting.

------
Scoundreller
tl;dr: Unless you have 4000 hours of watch-time AND 1000 subscribers, you're
getting axed from monetization.

1000 subscribers is going to be impossible if your content is niche.

That guy who put together that excellent 40 minute step-by-step video on
fixing my garage-door opener (plastic gears, seriously?)... why would I
subscribe?

Youtube is pivoting to being a TV-replacement.

~~~
ucaetano
If you're making <$100/year out of your videos (99% of the channels affected)
it is highly unlikely that you were making new videos because of the money
anyway.

So only <1% of impacted channels might be materially affected.

~~~
ndespres
Maybe so, but won't there be less incentive for someone new to post some
obscure repair video later on, to help the few people who might benefit from
it and make a few dollars?

~~~
PeterisP
Sure, there'll be somewhat less incentive, but it's reasonable to assume that
it'll still be enough to get a sufficient amount of obscure repair videos. If
there was never much of a financial incentive, then pretty much all such
videos were produced for other reasons and will still get produced even
without that financial incentive.

~~~
Scoundreller
Good luck getting subscribers though.

------
OscarTheGrinch
Shitting on millions(?) of small creators in order to better please the big
fish is short sighted. It risks shrinking the total pie of views, if 9
creators get axed will pewpewdie's views really go up 10x to cover the
shortfall?

It reminds me of the time my bank canceled my credit card because I always
back before any interest has accrued, I wasn't degenerate enough for them to
make margins. Totally short sighted because, there is nothing to say I
wouldn't need emergency cash tomorrow.

Likewise with youtube there is nothing to prevent todays small fry producing
super engaging content tomorrow. After all, how does one get to the big time
without going through mediocrity first?

Other video hosting platforms, such as the vimeo, suddenly got a lot more
attractive.

------
jdietrich
It's not a grossly unreasonable move, but it doesn't exactly smack of creator-
friendliness.

It does nothing to address the ongoing grievances of YouTubers about
monetisation. At this stage, it seems like getting paid is a complete
crapshoot. Sometimes your videos will be classified as "not suitable for most
advertisers", despite not breaching any of YouTube's policies. Sometimes your
video will be taken down or demonetized by a completely bogus copyright claim.
Sometimes you'll get lucky and actually see some ad revenue for a video. If
you've got a problem, you're stuck with the usual Google tech support system
of "personally know someone who works at the Googleplex, otherwise you're
SOL".

Pretty much every sane YouTuber is moving towards a Patreon-first business
model and treating ad revenue as a bonus. If someone solves the
discoverability problem for videos hosted on other platforms, YouTube are
_done_. Do not pass go, do not collect $200, lose all of your content creators
because you've treated them like criminals for years.

------
nickjj
This really stings because you can't use cards unless you opt into the partner
program. That's Youtube's mechanism for linking to an external site.

I had ads disabled on my Youtube channel but was forced into the partnership
program just so I could link to my website in a card.

Now those cards are going to disappear which means it's extremely unlikely
someone is going to find my site since it's only listed in the description. As
a content provider this makes me less interested in using their platform.

I'm only at 2,000 hours watched and 366 subs which isn't remotely close to
their new threshold considering those are life time stats. The 4,000 hours and
1,000 subs have to be less than 12 months old.

The weird thing is, the channels with the largest amount of subscribers are
the ones who are the most risky to advertisers. I don't follow Youtube drama
but didn't some kid recently video record a corpse with tens of millions of
subscribers, and now advertisers are ripping into Youtube.

That one video from 1 person with tons of subs is responsible for more
negative advertising press than hundreds of thousands of people with smaller
channels.

------
fluxsauce
I had some original content with over a million views from a decade ago. I now
have other priorities and the language like

> Accordingly, this email serves as 30 days notice that your YouTube Partner
> Program terms are terminated.

feels like a pretty big fuck you.

------
tanilama
My bet about how they are choosing the 1000 subs and 4000 hours watchtime
criteria: it is about to get this number as tractable as possible, considering
they will now manually review your channel prior to monetization. Even with
their smart machine learning algorithm, they cannot scale beyond this number.

It is a little insincere to use the 99% of the channels number here. Vast
majority of the channels from Youtube makes barely better than nothing because
the long tail effect. What is actually interesting is, how many of the
channels that previously make around a sizable chunk of money from Youtube,
like say 1000 dollars, now will not qualify. I bet it won't be as harmless as
Youtube want people to believe here, but they probably believe it is
inevitable casualty.

------
skywhopper
What I find most interesting is that immediately the top comments on the post
are all channel owners asking for subscriptions from other channel owners in
exchange for subscribing back.

To be honest these new thresholds seem entirely too low to do any good. The
spammers and scammers can easily reach the thresholds. But small scale
operators who aren’t interested in gaming the system will be the hardest hit.

~~~
kevin_thibedeau
There'll be a new gold rush for paid sockpuppets who will bring a channel up
to the subscriber threshold.

------
joelrunyon
When is there going to be a legitimate YouTube contender? Seems like it's ripe
for a replacement...

~~~
tanilama
Never was, and probably won't be there for a long time.

If you wish to compete with Youtube, consider a feature match of the
followings:

1\. Fast streaming, everywhere, on phones and browsers.

2\. Super High resolution videos.

3\. Huge content reserves.

4\. Good search and discovery experience.

5\. The ability to battle spams and handle external copyright claim to avoid
lawsuit.

6\. Robust ad platform and sales and the infrastructure to sustain operations.

Youtube has achieved this because they are part of Google, they enjoy all
kinds of technological advantage: Storage/Serving/Spam filtering/Video
encoding/Machine Learning, and years and years of accumulation of data, losing
billions of dollars while getting constant cash injection from Google.

It is hard to replicate Youtube, heck, even Chinese doesn't succeed to copy
one of their own. None of the video streaming websites in China is exactly the
model of Youtube.

~~~
sundarurfriend
"1\. Fast streaming, everywhere, on phones and browsers" and "4\. Good search
and discovery experience" are the essentials (with 1 including the hosting
requirements). Most users are ready to put up with moderate resolution videos,
the content will accumulate surprisingly quickly as long as there is some
initial content to draw people in, and it'll be good news for the platform
when spam and copyright issues become actual problems. But feature 1 is big
enough in cost and difficulty, to be a big barrier to entry by itself.

~~~
zimpenfish
> 5\. The ability to battle spams and handle external copyright claim to avoid
> lawsuit.

That's also vital. Otherwise you're risking your entire platform on lawsuits
from film and music companies when copyrighted content is inevitably uploaded.

~~~
sundarurfriend
As I mentioned in the comment, this is sort of a "good" problem to have, in
that both spammers and copyright claims look for popular, well-known services
to focus their efforts on. The problems will definitely exist at small scales
too, but compared to the other difficulties mentioned, these are much smaller
concerns initially.

------
e_b
Vimeo's OTT is an interesting offering in this space that let's filmmakers
launch their own subscription services.
[https://ott.vimeo.com](https://ott.vimeo.com)

~~~
dbbk
While it is a good idea to establish your own site that you control, I think
most YouTubers benefit the most from the built-in marketing that YouTube
provides. It's hard work getting your audience off of YouTube the destination
and onto your website.

------
C4stor
Someone (not me) is going to create a webservice to buy fake subscribers in
the next hours/day, that's a guarantee :D It's not like creating a google
account is exactly difficult ! Thank you Youtube for providing new markets for
shady shops !

And now that I think about it, fake view time doesn't really seem difficult to
put up either. The time is coming where you'll pay to have you video viewed so
you can be payed to have your video viewed, looks a lot of fun :D

~~~
CamperBob2
Exactly. The incentives Google is setting up are as perverse as they can be.

------
protomyth
I pity all the animators publishing short content since they are going to have
a problem get the number of hours in when they spend the time on quality
product.

~~~
pvdebbe
If they truly have a quality product, they can monetize on Patreon/Liberapay.

~~~
geostyx
Linking to Patreon is banned if you don't qualify for the partner program.

------
dom96
This is why I am excited for competitors like Linus Tech Tips' floatplane to
start getting traction. YouTube seems to be turning into more of a behemoth
that doesn't care for the little guys every day.

------
FiveSquared
As a smalll Youtuber, I am appalled and shocked. Google is shooting themselves
in the foot with this. This is killing the small creators. Google is chasing
short term profit over long term stability. I guarantee you, a smart startup
will try to upset YouTube and succeed due to this new rule. Everyone started
from the bottom. And now Google is sinking them.

------
tclover
I don't have many videos on my channel. There is a couple of "niche" videos
with ~70k+ views. And I'm going to delete them all. This is my protest. RIP
youtube.

------
mcbits
Anyone with small channels, remember that you can turn off ALL ads for your
videos (under Channel -> Advanced) if you're not going to get your cut, as
small as it may have been. Surely that option will also be taken away
eventually, but for now it's still there.

------
keyboardhitter
So, will they also be screening the legitimacy of subscribers and watchers in
those 12 month?

The first thing that came to my mind is that I can't imagine it is terribly
difficult to purchase bot subscriptions. Their policy changes to focus on
relevant watched hours in a set amount of time could, and probably will, open
new demand for purchasing illegitimate traffic as well. Same game, different
rules.

I wonder if this policy will be easier to spoof than pure views alone? Surely
the risk has been evaluated by the policy makers but I am interested to see
how things pan out, and what counter measures against bots/spam they may take
as a result.

~~~
Roverlord
And the exchange of subs to boost both your counts and hit 1000. No doubt
there will be auto player scripts emerging that will randomly watch 4000 hours
of content by Friday.

------
csours
There's nothing in here that addresses problems of content creators. It's a
list of things that YouTube is doing to protect itself. I guess it's nice that
they are sharing the information though?

------
jaggs
I think some folk are missing the point that some small publishers do derive a
benefit from putting up a video, even if they don't get cash from Google ads.
They gain a reputation, perhaps enquiries about their business, collaboration
opportunities etc etc. If I was running a smaller channel with cool content, I
would definitely start hunting around for partnerships, and start marketing my
own business/money source more aggressively if I could. A YT channel can even
be a big benefit to a resume, no?

------
Nition
Everyone's talking about how this is bad for small channels, but surely this
is a big hit to YouTube itself as well.

Since they've decided they need to vet all channels before ads are shown, and
they can't do that to _every_ channel, they've had to set an arbitrary
view/subscriber limit. But now they're going to lose out on ad revenue for
millions of previously-monetised videos, while still having to host them for
free.

~~~
Scoundreller
Isn't google's advertising cut 30-40%?

How many dollars does it cost them to vet a channel?

My 3 minute video makes me ~.3 cents per view. It's actually less than 3
minutes, most don't watch the whole thing. 4000 hours in a year = $240
revenue. So, advertisers are paying $360.

If you have just 2000 hours of views per year, Google is throwing away
$60/year in revenue.

My linked gmail account alone with 10+ years of data should scream legitimacy
alone.

~~~
Nition
I don't think they're worried about whether you're a legitimate account,
they're worried about whether your videos are advertiser-friendly, and they've
decided that to verify that they'll need to manually check your channel. Which
would take forever if they didn't set some threshold.

They tried to crowdsource it with YouTube Heroes. I guess that didn't end up
being enough.

~~~
Scoundreller
> manually check your channel. Which would take forever if they didn't set
> some threshold.

It's Google. They'll tell advertisers that every channel will be manually
reviewed to make them happy, but the degree of manual review will vary.

They'll score most channels as low risk and do a cursory manual review to
'check-the-box', and the degree of review will go up from there.

------
Grue3
Youtube is run by idiots. What they needed is to create their own Patreon
clone/gift system (like Twitch did, for example) and open it to _all_ the
users. Bang, no more ads needed! Even if big advertisers don't like some
channel's content, both youtube and the creator are still getting money off
it, as long as fans are willing to support the creator.

~~~
wmil
Susan Wojcicki is just the wrong person to run YouTube. She comes from an
advertising background and doesn't know how to work with creators.

Really her appointment was nepotism and she'd already have been replaced if
she wasn't so close with Larry and Sergey.

------
piyush_soni
They're just missing one majorly obvious thing here. If it were not for the
initial ad earnings, a _lot_ of these "big" content creators would have never
become big. I'd certainly remove my videos from YouTube (since my lifetime
earning is just $36, they'll not give that to me anyway :) ).

Edit: Made all of my videos private.

------
reader5000
Third party supported content will always be adversarial to both consumer and
creator. People really need to figure out microtransactions / frictionless
payments so that creators can be directly supported by consumers for
reasonable cost to consumer.

For me as a consumer the main value youtube provides is its recommendation
system for discovering [long-tail] content. Why not have a "show me more
videos like this" button for paying subscribers out of which the video creator
gets 10c or something.

Youtube is slowly becoming just another shitty mega broadcast outlet like NBC
or netflix producing corporate-sanctioned mainstream content of little
relevance to anyone.

Somebody has to find a way to make longtail content sustainable. The fact that
people do sign up to pay into Patreon or pay to Twitchers demonstrates that
this is possible.

Corporate involvement in content creation is poisonous.

------
billysielu
Isn't the real problem that when you search for a video on YouTube the first
result is usually fake?

Actors can and will still make fake accounts to remove traffic from the
monetized accounts (and therefore from YouTube).

YouTube needs better search results.

------
peapicker
I have several musician friends who create excellent content, yet are still
fairly niche. Every one of them is getting frozen out of their measly dollar a
month from this, as they are all a bit short on hours of listening per year.

At least Spotify/Apple still pays musicians per stream. The small musicians on
youtube are no longer getting that privilege. Big Music(tm) screws the little
guys again.

(I know this is more than about indie musicians, but this is the effect I am
seeing most in relation to my usage of Youtoob)

------
retox
Let's not forget that this is a direct effect of the outrage culture coming
from North America. By spuriously reporting videos and organising email
campaigns, or in the case of the Wall St Journal publishing national stories,
about ads appearing on your political enemies videos, offended students and
general busybodies have taken food from the mouths of thousands.

They aren't solely to blame but I would wager they are a prevailing interest
at mountain view and in the valley.

------
2600
Is there a reason why YouTube can’t implement something similar to Twitch
subscriptions and Patreon backing to YouTube? I see that an increasing number
of smaller YouTubers are relying on Patreon to supplement their income because
their YouTube revenue has been cut significant.

A smaller number of dedicated fans are willing to pay more money directly to
the creators that they enjoy and connect with.

How does this affect their relationship with advertisers more than YouTube
Red, if at all?

------
vincengomes
Youtube itself is a loss making company. With this announcement youtube has
effectively told they will only give advertisement on selected videos vetted
by youtube.

what about the expenses incurred for youtube for hosting small/niche channels?
If its reputation that youtube is looking for, they can ask some third party
to advertise on the smaller contents with a 33/33/33 split of revenue with
content creator/advertiser/youtube.

------
yeukhon
> Starting today we’re changing the eligibility requirement for monetization
> to 4,000 hours of watchtime within the past 12 months and 1,000 subscribers.

Is this an annual check? Or is it a one-time enrollement eligibility?

The 4000 hours is a big entry bar... it’s already hard enough to gain
subscribers. Indeed the small creators - those who get maybe 5k views per
video + 1000 subscriber + 5 mins videos won’t be making money??

~~~
DanBC
Doesn't 4000 hours rule out massive channels like SlowMoGuys?

EDIT: 4000? That's 70 hours per week.

~~~
yeukhon
But it's difficult to get 70 hours of views already for most of the small
channels now making some money. Let alone 4000 hours a year accumulated. So
basically YouTube is saying we don't want to pay the smaller guys. But the
fact is a lot of the smaller guys do good videos and deserve to have a stake
too.

------
jijji
its all about keeping the advertiser money flowing and reducing payments to
content creators, that way youtube makes more money

------
pravj
If you read the comments on this blog, it's interesting to see youtubers
asking for subscribers in return, "sub for sub".

I won't wonder if we see a solution soon to provide fraudulent subscribers
like Instagram/Twitter ecosystem has. (not sure if it exists)

And then I will wait for Google to fight the subscriber (vote) ring pattern.

------
cobbzilla
I wonder how much more momentum this gives to
[https://lbry.io](https://lbry.io) which is a sort of p2p YouTube. There's no
good reason that, in the long run, a single centralized entity should control
so much video distribution.

~~~
dbbk
I'm willing to wager none at all.

------
hartator
So, if you have one high quality video, but no subscribers, your video will
get demonetize?

It doesn't seem fair or to promote high quality content. Seems pushing more
for low quality prank videos à la Jack Paul and co.

------
Scoundreller
In 2-3 years, amazon is going to be _the_ place to post fixit/construction/diy
videos.

Watch the video and buy the parts all in one place.

Give the creator a commission on the parts/tools sales.

------
cjslep
Unsurprisingly, people are turning to tit-for-tat subbing to get around the
subscription limit, which opens a different kind of headache for enforcement.

~~~
baud147258
All the comments on the blog post were basically this: links to YouTube
accounts.

------
EADGBE
Sad, but honestly I only made ~$3.50 over the course of 4 years by monetizing
my videos.

I suppose I was a waste of time to begin with (for them).

------
debt
I think this is a way more fairer system.

They’re trying to reward longer term contributors whom have lower viewer
counts.

Basically people who continue to contribute content even though YouTube hasn’t
rewarded them; they’re contributing because they have a small following of
dedicated viewers.

~~~
Macha
1\. The old requirement is 10k lifetime views.

2\. The new requirement is 4000 annual hours and 1000 subs.

3\. The default limit on a new YouTube account is videos of at maximum 15
minutes.

So for a new/low profile user, they're effectively requiring at least 16k
annual views vs the previous 10k lifetime. Also, many videos are shorter than
15 minutes, so make that 20k. Except a view is counted for 10% of the video,
not 100% so really the number is much larger again.

This isn't changing the numbers to favour smaller active channels over small
channels that have just been around long enough, it's massively raising the
requirements however you look at it.

I have put out 10-12 videos over the last few years, with 14k views and 2
subscribers, though frequent content and plugs in the video will obviously get
a higher subscribe rate. I don't care in this case, I never bothered to turn
monetisation on, but I can see someone who'd put more effort in more recently
feeling like it's wasted.

------
djaychela
I have a YouTube channel [1], which is only just above the new criteria - in
the last year, 4300 hours of views, and 1100 subscribers.

I produce videos on using Cubase, and teaching it IRL was my main source of
income until September last year (I got made redundant from 2 schools I worked
at). The channel is a useful ad for the book I have written on the subject of
Cubase and Music Technology [2], and has got me some sales - I don't have
exact figures, but I've had a few people say they saw the channel, then the
book ads, and then bought the book. The book sales in total are nothing
remarkable (a year of sales is about a month's earnings from the jobs I no
longer have), but better than nothing, and mean it's actually worthwhile
putting the considerable amount of time needed into the book to update it each
year when a new version of Cubase comes out.

The YT channel made $135 in the last year. Nothing to write home over, but it
means that once a year I can buy a plugin that I wouldn't have done otherwise.
A niche channel such as mine isn't ever going to earn real money, but it's a
nice side bonus to get some spending money once a year from it - I put the
videos up because they are a bit of an advert for my skills, and because I've
got a lot of positive comments from people who have found the videos helpful.
But I would feel somewhat aggrieved if I wasn't making this small amount of
money, and felt that I was being profited from for making content for free. I
know about the hosting costs, etc., but I'm sure YT makes money overall.

However, I had another video on my personal channel which had a MAME cabinet I
made using a Raspberry Pi - back in the day when this wasn't that common. It
made it onto the official Pi blog [3] - along with a write-up that I did for
it, and currently has 180,000 views. I wouldn't have seen a penny from that if
the new rules were in place, and that the new rules will stop the 'one hit
wonders' who create something that goes truly viral (Charlie/Finger, etc) from
earning anything is a little concerning to me - I'm sure YouTube will still
place adverts on them (?), but if you're a one-off, then you get nothing.
Won't this just lead to people sending potentially viral videos to a channel
who specialise in redistribution who will take a cut of the revenue?

[1] -
[https://www.youtube.com/c/musictechtuition](https://www.youtube.com/c/musictechtuition)

[2] - [http://tinyurl.com/cubase9book](http://tinyurl.com/cubase9book)

[3] - [https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/guest-blog-6-mame-
cabinet-b...](https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/guest-blog-6-mame-cabinet-by-
darren-j/)

------
AaronHatchWorld
If we want to protest this, isn't it a good idea to disable ads? That way,
YouTube's making no revenue off our videos, and they're paying to host. Or am
I missing something here?

