
YouTube Demonetization Screenshot Leaks and Secret YouTube Meeting - djsumdog
http://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1sqbsph
======
rayalez
I have a feeling that the internet will get outraged about this for one reason
or another, but just from looking at this, it actually seems like a sensible
policy designed to keep YouTube out of trouble. Nothing extreme or unfair,
just avoiding to show ads next to stuff advertisers would not want to see
their ads next to, while also making an effort to avoid offending or censoring
youtubers.

Probably won't be flawless, because things rarely are, but seems pretty
reasonable.

~~~
bufferoverflow
The real problem with these rules is subjectivity. Something you would
consider offensive is probably not from my perspective. In the end it will be
a moderator bias galore. I can easily see a Christian mod demonetizing atheist
videos, democrat <\--> republican, prude <\--> free, etc etc etc.

I'd like to see a true free speech platform with violence/nudity sectioned off
according to the local laws, and then let the advertisers decide where they
want to spend the money, instead of treating them as children who don't know
better.

~~~
rayalez
That makes sense. The problem is that at the end of the day the decision will
have to be made either by algorithms or by people. Algorithms are less
nuanced, hard to write, and will often fail, people are expensive and biased.

With the amount of videos youtube has to process, and without an almost human-
level AI, I don't think there's a perfect solution.

Algorithms flagging videos for review, and then humans making decisions based
on some basic set of principles seems right.

Also, to let advertisers decide where to spend their money there's targeting
tools...

~~~
bufferoverflow
The solution is obvious - tag/categorize the videos, according to very strict
rules, let the advertisers decide which tags to serve. Allow the publishers to
dispute the tags.

For instance, "nudity" can be defined as "visible genitals, female nipples" in
the US.

"Controversial" tag should not even exist, it makes no sense, any non-trivial
subject is controversial.

And honestly, YouTube can benefit from a more precise tagging/category system,
it's currently extremely crude.

~~~
musage
Where would this fit in?

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9R5w-PIzlUk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9R5w-PIzlUk)

It's a clip-art style "coloring video" drawing a baby with a lot of syringes,
which then each empty their colored liquid into the baby. Technically,
perfectly innocent. In context of a positive flood of videos with an undertone
ranging from brain damaging to abusive targeted at little kids it doesn't seem
that innocent to me. The sum isn't larger than the whole, but it's larger than
each individual piece seen in a vacuum. However, where to draw the line? I
would draw the line at "if it targets little kids, demonetize it", not even
because of the content of such videos, simply because I think marketing to
little kids is immoral no matter in what context, but I know that's not going
to fly. But there could be a category for it, and then people could check out
which advertisers advertise to little kids and let that inform their wallet
voting.

For me, YT is just totally ruined anyway. Yeah I still watch videos on it, 99%
of the video material on the web is on YT, but even using an ad-blocker what
used to feel lame now feels positively fucked up considering how horribly bad
YT has handled this before it blew up as well as after advertisers started
retracting ads. I want to turn my back on it for good, and if we can't find a
way to self-host and directly pay what we watch, I'll find a way to live
without video on the web.

~~~
bufferoverflow
Since the number of categories is limited, even if large, there will always be
weird videos that don't strictly fit into any category. It's a slippery slope
argument, it doesn't mean we shouldn't organize information better.

This particular video can be under

 _Art > Drawing > Coloring_

I don't see anything damaging about it. Yes, it's weird, but so what?

~~~
musage
> _“We are shocked and appalled to see that our adverts have appeared
> alongside such exploitative and inappropriate content,” said a Mars
> spokesperson in a statement. “We have taken the decision to immediately
> suspend all our online advertising on YouTube and Google globally. Until we
> have confidence that appropriate safeguards are in place, we will not
> advertise on YouTube and Google.”_

[http://www.tubefilter.com/2017/11/24/advertisers-suspend-
you...](http://www.tubefilter.com/2017/11/24/advertisers-suspend-youtube-
elsagate/)

> I don't see anything damaging about it. Yes, it's weird, but so what?

So you don't, probably not having looked at thousands of video descriptions
and thumbnails on hundreds of channels featuring bondage, pregnant children,
adults and children impregnated after having been drugged, dolls in bath tubs
filled with things, objects and persons under car wheels and feet, drinking
urine and eating poop, dominance and submission, binge eating of candy or just
objects, objects being removed from a body or lumps removed by getting a
syringe, babies faking their death, adults and kids with pacifiers, maggots,
people being eaten, limbs being removed, unresolved tension, and dozens of
other concepts [you see, that stands for something, there is just no space to
expand all placeholders, just like when I said "flood" or "targeted at little
kids"] repeated ad nauseam, across live action, claymation, 2D and 3D "art",
all underlaid with the same handful of music and audio samples, produced on
all continents except Africa maybe. So what?

Like many forms of abuse, e.g. mobbing or sexual harassment, each individual
act can be explained away, and people who don't really look into things just
see the one-off "weird thing". So what?

Then there's all the stuff that's neither here nor there, like making people
jealous by drawing a heart on someone's belly, or a million "finger songs", or
"Jony Jony Yes Papa". That's how babies learn colors. It's just copycats that
experiment with the medium while not straying from the script that doesn't
exist.

And of course, it's just the brains of toddlers, those aren't sponges or
anything, and quite obviously, if it's not traumatizing to you, there can be
no damage. We know that even "just" too much lack of healthy interaction can
stunt development, but what's millions of hours of low-effort, "weird" content
gonna do?

Anyways, I'm not here to tell you how you live your life, I'm just stating how
I live mine. If you're not at work and not easily grossed out, maybe enjoy
this 0.01% slice:
[https://i.imgur.com/MziRRQw.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/MziRRQw.jpg) \-- but
that's still just images, that's without the deceptive music and channel
descriptions that advertise themselves as great entertainment for kids. And
you can always find something there or in the ElsaGate subreddit that can
serve as lightning rod, to say oh, this is overreacting, let's dismiss it all
out of hand.

~~~
deadbunny
Your entire argument is "won't somebody think of the children".

~~~
Goronmon
You do realize that sometimes it's actually acceptable to be concerned for the
well-being of children?

~~~
musage
Not even once. Not even in the context of something called "Youtube for Kids".
Pearl-clutching consideration for others: not okay. Pearl-clutching shock over
people having consideration for others: totally on.

------
rfdub
The thing I really, really don't get about modern media companies (IE.
YouTube, Facebook, etc.) and their approach to advertising is their almost
universally puritanical policies. I mean I get it to a point, they're trying
to mitigate the risks of someone getting offended and suing them or something,
but at the same time its such a lazy and one size fits all approach.

They have all this data about people, yet they're too lazy, or too genuinely
puritanical, to actually use that data to show the right ads to the right
people. Take for instance the category of drug "paraphernalia," (not to
mention actual drugs). Neither Facebook, YouTube or Google will allow
advertisers to advertise for these kinds of products, even in markets where
they are completely legal. You'd think a more reasonable, and profitable
approach, would be to use all that data to only allow advertisers to target
these kinds of ads to people of legal age, in markets where these products are
legal, but no, no-one can advertise them to anyone, anywhere, ever.

And what about sex toys? Why can't videos of say sex toy reviews, be age-
gated, and then so called "Adult ads," you know, only be shown to the verified
adults watching those videos? I'm sure there are lots of sex toy companies who
would love to advertise to that audience, and I'm sure someone watching a sex
toy review video would much rather see an ad for a sex toy than for another
fucking Nissan, but yet again, Google et all would rather impose their
bizarrely puritanical morality on the world, than do their jobs and build a
system that actually works.

~~~
ntuch
>use that data to show the right ads to the right people

To expand on what you're saying here, YouTube allows offended people to bully
them by contacting advertisers and saying things like, "YouTube is putting ads
for your company in front of videos about hitler!!" And YouTube just
immediately caves to that.

YouTube's response from day one should have been, "no, we don't put ads in
front of videos, that's not how this works. This isn't tv where the ad is
broadcast whether someone is watching or not. This is a website that plays
videos you ask for. We (youtube) have data about you. We (try to) select an ad
specifically for you. We did not play that ad for Pepsi because it has
anything to do with hitler. We played it because (our data suggested) the ad
is relevant to you. And then afterward, we played the Hitler vid because
that's what you clicked on."

That seems like such an obvious, slam dunk response to me. I think the reason
YouTube didn't push back in that manner is that they welcomed the excuse to
start pushing political content they don't like off their platform.

~~~
jacksmith21006
Based on what do you think Google is pushing off political context they do not
like? We can see the screen here that there is nothing like that. Would
suggest your allegation is untrue and Google is doing g nothing like you
suggest and is the exact opposite.

~~~
whatshisface
On one of the images, they advise the moderators to demonetize controversial
content, and then make exceptions for certian controversies (which Google does
not feel it would be right to suppress). This is _obviously_ bias; it's the
definition of bias. It just doesn't feel like bias to us because if we were
made autocrats and instructed to rule as undemocratically as possible, we
would enforce the _same_ bias.

------
PeterStuer
Google is an American company. Their "rules" are extremely embedded in a US
culture. Unfortunately YouTube is a product that is consumed worldwide. Many
of the regions where it has a dominant market share for web VoD do have
cultural palates that are very different from the US. I feel Google should
embrace their international position and be less biased in it's reasoning.

~~~
ajkjk
What culture-specific reasonings are you referring to, exactly?

~~~
chmod775
The US is unusually sensitive about naked bodies and swearing for instance.

In most countries it's unusual to _BEEP_ swear words on TV, and in some other
countries nobody will bat an eye at casual nudity, even in TV shows aimed at
children.

~~~
sschueller
Meanwhile excessive violence is permitted on regular TV.

------
randyrand
"Any language intended to spread hate." Could that be any more vague? Does
encouraging people to hate DRM or hate cancer count under that? Clearly not.
So what does 'hate' even have to do with it?

Really its because "Hate speech" in and of itself is a dumb phrase. AFAIK It
only refers to an incredibly small subset of hate. It does not refer to hate.
And often refers to mean-speech instead of referring to the emotion hate at
all, which is even more frustrating.

I'd rather we just throw the phrase into the dumpster where it belongs and
come up with something better. Good terminology combats extremism.

~~~
fortythirteen
"Hate speech" isn't a dumb phrase, it's a newspeak phrase perfectly designed
for its purpose - to strike fear in the heart of anyone accused of it, and for
it to be spoken with an undeserved sense of self-evidence.

You'll not find anyone outside of the "anyone who disagrees with my political
opinions is inherently evil" group using it.

~~~
josteink
Put more bluntly “hate speech” is a term constructed exclusively to justify
censorship against any group the political left disagrees with.

Anyone using it _hates_ actual democracy.

------
jbardnz
Maybe this is real, but it doesn't seem to line up with what I have heard from
other Youtubers.

Firstly it is almost certain that a video is initially demonetized by an
algorithm. Only during a manual review is it looked at by a human.

The main complaint from Youtubers is that the algorithm is way too strict and
inconsistent. But the manual review process is pretty fair and the vast
majority of videos get remonetized. The issue here being that by the time a
manual review is complete most of the views for a video have already happened.

I could of missed it, but I have seen very few complaints about the manual
review process being overly strict or biased.

~~~
airesQ
Couldn't the algorithm give its judgement before the video goes live?

~~~
falcolas
YouTube's advice to creators is to do exactly this - post the video privately
to let the algorithm and potentially the human review go through before making
it public.

Sadly, since this process can take up to 48 hours, this doesn't work if your
videos have any kind of time sensitivity.

It also doesn't help with videos of streams, which are automatically posted
immediately after the stream's conclusion.

~~~
freeone3000
It also doesn't work - uploading a video privately passes monetization,
uploading the same video pubically has the video monetized. It's completely
arbitrary.

------
rkapsoro
My take on the demonetization controversy is that it is too coarse: the output
is a boolean, is it advertiser friendly or not so, to say nothing of the
preferences of individual advertisers.

To me it seems that even assuming the current single set of criteria for
advertiser friendliness (with all of the other problems discussed in the other
comments regarding subjectivity) that different advertisers might or might not
be willing to be exposed to it given different prices. Right now there's no
escape hatch, so instead we've seen content chilling effects and a ton of new
customers for Patreon, something that is starting to exert some degree of
competitive pressure on YouTube.

I'm not familiar with the AdSense interface on YouTube, but I'm guessing that
it's some sort of keyword bidding model. If advertisers could bid on keywords
with with or without the friendliness bit turned on, then market prices could
emerge. I can see an incentive on the part of advertisers to be willing to
take a bit more "friendliness-risk" if they can get access to a valuable
demographic with valuable keywords at a better price.

Hardly a perfect solution (the friendliness bit itself remains the real
issue). Even better would be a set of several different friendliness scores
that advertisers can make decisions about and thus allow prices to emerge.

edit: spelling.

~~~
dsfyu404ed
>My take on the demonetization controversy is that it is too coarse: the
output is a boolean, is it advertiser friendly or not so, to say nothing of
the preferences of individual advertisers.

Different metrics matter more/less to different
advertisers/industries/audiences and the more niche it is the less it matches
up with the global average that is a "general audience"

This. If there's a video of some guy laying in the mud welding some piece of
heavy equipment back together in the middle of nowhere whether or not he's
swearing like a sailor probably doesn't matter at all to Hobart or Lincoln or
some other company that might be advertising their line of welding consumables
with the video.

Likewise I'm sure some companies that sell products that make us less afraid
of unlikely events (fire extinguishers, life insurance, etc) would have little
problem with their ads appearing in conjunction with violent content.

------
tzfld
To demonetize "sensitive topics (such as abortion, suicide)"

and then there is a mention: "Does not include: Content made by gay ..." or
whatever else.

I understand what they want, but these guidelines are somewhat problematic, at
least.

------
awakeasleep
Does anyone have any idea about why these rules would be secret?

The only thing I can think of is that YouTube is not confident in their
guidelines & categorization, and does not want to defend these choices
publicly.

~~~
justboxing
> any idea about why these rules would be secret?

Don't work for youtube, but I'm guessing they would be secret for a couple of
reasons.

1\. If made public, people could post violating content and work around it by
making sure they won't get flagged with carefully crafted thumbnails, content
etc. Ex: Take a look at the 'Nudity' section. There are examples of 'Partial
nudity' in which a guy wearing underwear is deemed inappropriate because it
looks 'Vulgar'. So one could, in theory avoid such thumbnails, and still post
vulgar content in the video and get by their censors.

2\. It would also open Youtube to criticism, just like the Facebook
breastfeeding content was, a whiles back.

~~~
AnkhMorporkian
I think you're spot on. I manage an online game, and we don't have rules. We
have somewhat vague guidelines, and moderators we trust to enforce them.

Rules are open to arguments, and with dozens of bans/appeals a day, it'd be
ridiculous to do that. We tried strict rules, and they are both too
restrictive and ineffective.

Humans need to make judgements, and guidelines give you the latitude to do
that.

~~~
chii
People who skirt those judgement will always exist, but having the 'we are the
law' kind of rule sucks for a community.

------
toomanybeersies
These rules seem incredibly strict, in a way that could seriously limit
original content.

If I was to make a show similar to Trailer Park Boys, about a bunch of comedic
stoners bumbling around and swearing a bunch, it would be demonetized.

Trailer Park Boys is a good example, since it's a show that you could produce
on a minimal budget and try to launch on Youtube.

~~~
icebraining
I wonder if they could get outside sponsorship. Many creators show ads (sorry,
"sponsorships") in their own video, outside of YouTube's ad system. Apparently
YouTube has been saying they want the advertiser to pay for YT ads on the
channel, but if the videos are demonatized, I wonder if that still holds?

~~~
fragmede
Outside sponsorship is explicitly prohibited by section 4 of YouTube's TOS.

"YouTube creators can not include promotions, sponsorships or other
advertisements for third party sponsors or advertisers in their videos where
YouTube offers a comparable ad format"
[https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/3364658?hl=en](https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/3364658?hl=en)

(Patreon, as a way to make money as a YouTube creator occupies a gray area but
this restriction hampers their potential for growth since YouTube could just
shut them down.)

~~~
icebraining
It's not that simple:
[https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/154235](https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/154235)

You can't splice an actual ad into the video (although channels do, and they
haven't been banned), but you can have outside sponsorship. I believe stuff
like vloggers cooking using a meal kit sponsored by the company is OK.

------
qwartile
I don’t understand what the term “demonetization” means in this context.

When a video is flagged for “demonetization” what are the immediate
consequences? I’ve never actually met anyone who got paid for something that
happened on YouTube, so I just don’t understand how the business side of
YouTube even works.

For the life of me, all I’ve ever directly witnessed is the occassional friend
who received a DMCA notice, because they uploaded an audio rip of an album
they wanted to listen to from a work computer, as a public video.

~~~
wmf
It means the video won't have ads and thus the creator won't earn any money
from ads. It's very difficult to make a lot of money from YouTube ads, but
some people are doing it and getting "demonetized" really hurts them.

~~~
clouddrover
> _It 's very difficult to make a lot of money from YouTube ads_

Like anything else, I think you have to find your audience. A 6 year old
apparently made $11 million this year off his YouTube channel:

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-
mix/wp/2017/12/1...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-
mix/wp/2017/12/11/6-year-old-made-11-million-in-one-year-reviewing-toys-on-
you-tube/)

~~~
shak77
That's news precisely because it's rare.

~~~
kthejoker2
Not rare, just extreme.

If you see a YouTube channel with 250,000 subscribers or more, they are
probably taking in around $10,000 a month from YouTube (assuming they post
regularly.)

------
thisisit
The rules to flag videos is here:
[https://imgur.com/a/uTLTS](https://imgur.com/a/uTLTS)

and they seem quite vague. Stuff like "Regular TV" is not something many
people can understand.

That said, is there a way to find the demonetized videos?

~~~
that70sshow
creaters can find the monetary status of the videos in their dashboard. They
get notified whenever any of their video is demonitized.

~~~
thisisit
Thanks but is there a way for non-creators to find it?

~~~
chii
may be probablistically by loading up an incognito window (or use a vpn), and
see if ads show up (removing adblock of course).

------
devit
I don't really understand why advertisers would have a problem with
"objectionable content" (obviously excluding fradulent websites that might be
faking ad views).

If someone is viewing the content, they presumably like it, so there doesn't
seem to be any difference compared to people viewing advertisement on "non-
objectionable" content.

If someone else sees the content along with the advertisement, they can just
truthfully say that the advertisements are placed by an automatic algorithm
and that they don't endorse the content.

What's the problem?

~~~
jakewins
Partially, I think "they presumably like it" is an invalid assumption, as
evidenced by the many youtube videos with more downvotes than upvotes.

More importantly, the argument made by campaigners looking to stop ads on
objectionable content is that placing ads in association with objectionable
content constitutes funding that content; whether you do that via an algorithm
or manually makes no difference, the point is that the advertisers choice of
how to place ads is paying out money to producers of objectionable content.

That, in turn, makes those advertisers liable to explain to their regular
customers, who are now vicariously funding objectionable content by paying
money to the advertiser, why they are placing ads as they are.

All-in-all, it'd be much easier for a generic advertiser to just avoid
objectionable content; but that isn't properly possible on Youtube, which is
what I suppose is what this whole scheme is trying to change.

------
tyfon
I find it very strange that one of the criteria is if you would want to watch
it in public. There are many thing on regular TV I'd never watch in public.

I'm also baffled by the levels of fear naked skin seems to solicit in the US,
how common is this? Often you can have extremely violent games/movies with
teen rating, but the moment you show a tit it's instantly adults only.

------
Dolores12
I don't see anything wrong with that. Google did this before to fight search
engine spam. Top positions for money keywords in search results were manually
reviewed by humans. Now advertisers do not want to be advertised on specific
videos to avoid risk of brand damage.

~~~
londons_explore
This isn't true.

Top positions were reviewed to determine the best parameters.

A review didn't affect that one individual sites ranking, but all sites as a
whole.

~~~
Dolores12
check this out [https://searchengineland.com/library/google/google-search-
qu...](https://searchengineland.com/library/google/google-search-quality-
raters)

edit: i am pretty sure the websites that were marked as low quality lost their
rating on next google search update.

------
patrickaljord
What I don't understand is why don't they allow advertisers to accept showing
their ads on these more explicits videos? They were ok with it for a decade
but all of sudden they're not? I'm sure most non-American brands would be ok
with it, even many American brands would be ok with it. I'm sure Google has
the ability to add such a simple feature to their video ad platform (it's
basically a checkbox with a boolean that would say "restrict to family
friendly content" or something). Am I missing something?

~~~
freeone3000
The advertisers themselves saying they don't want their ads shown on this
content.

~~~
patrickaljord
All millions of them? I know Amazon still advertizes on Breitbart and they're
one of the biggest advertisers in the world.

------
DoubleGlazing
There is a compromise that would work for YouTube and its "less desirable"
creators.

YouTube can stop monetising those channels with advertising it has sold. That
keeps YouTubes normal advertisers happy.

The owners of those channels could instead sources their own advertisers and
use the YouTube ad management systems to inject the adverts in to their videos
- with YouTube taking a cut of the revenue.

This way everyone is happy, the channel owners get revenue, the advertisers
know exactly where their adverts are appearing and YouTube gets a cut too.

------
whywhywhywhy
I know some people are happy about this happening because currently the
demonetisation matches their own beliefs/politics/dislikes.

What happens though if this is outsourced out from Americans doing the
moderation to cheap labour in other nations that don't share your beliefs or
politics.

If one thing is clear it's that we need competition in this space.

~~~
jacksmith21006
Any other provider would have the same issues with advertisers.

~~~
CaptSpify
Who says the other provider needs to use advertising?

------
oh-kumudo
So there isn't too much juicy stuff here. They decide to manage out some
unwanted channels, the list seems regardless of the channel's political
affiliation, then I didn't really see a problem with that.

------
paul7986
On a different YouTube note if they want to continue being a powerhouse they
need to also get rid of all those robot voiced bot created videos. Also those
videos that are clickbait and play only an image of a website to go to.

Youtube for me is being plagued by the above videos.

------
chiaro
Fantastic news. Though a conspicuous absence is lack of any classification
that deranks videos in the search results or recommendations.

Even if it's largely financially motivated, it's still nice to see some kind
of assessment of what kind of content they are willing to enable.

------
CSMastermind
I wish Youtube had a real competitor to stop them from doing things like this.

~~~
jacksmith21006
How would it be different? Google is subject to what is comfortable for the
advertisers and putting these rules in place which seem fair.

~~~
CaptSpify
A competitor doesn't have to use advertisers

------
squarefoot
I agree with almost all points, but some are excessively restrictive in a
blind way. There should be a distinction between uploading violence because
there are idiots around the world wanking when they see someone killing
someone else, and reporting excessive and wrongful military force or domestic
everyday police abuse. By their rules one could not expose these neither,
which to me is disgusting.

------
Kazamai
If I was a company buying lots of ads on YouTube, I definitely would not want
them next to any channel like leafy or any other troll spam channel.

------
gldalmaso
Could this be a way to train a demonetization AI model?

Given it's Google behind it, I don't think they are expecting to keep a work
force to flag videos for the foreseeable future.

I think they are probably doing this in parallel with AI and most of the false
positives are on that end, which means they hire more people to make a bigger
training data set, rinse and repeat.

~~~
strangecasts
Yeah, considering Google has been cutting search raters' pay[1], and they
tested the waters with automated moderation tools[2] earlier this year, I
think it's pretty safe to say their goal is to cut out people from moderation
entirely.

[1]: [https://arstechnica.com/features/2017/04/the-secret-lives-
of...](https://arstechnica.com/features/2017/04/the-secret-lives-of-google-
raters/)

[2]: [https://www.perspectiveapi.com/](https://www.perspectiveapi.com/)

------
matt4077
So this "secret" meeting was just a meeting that YouTube didn't write a press
release about, right? By that logic, I've endured hundreds of "secret"
meetings.

If only I had known! I would have suffered much less boredom knowing I was
part of yet another vast conspiracy.

------
simook
I would like to start an experiment where I create my own youtube/vimeo like
website and run it as bootstraped buisness. For me, the hardest challenge
would be getting viewers to watch the content. But the technicial side would
be trivial.

------
Molaxx
Seems like a reasonable solution. And that YouTube made an effort to think
this through. There's no ideal solution for this problem though. And this sort
of things may make you cringe but I think the alternatives are much worse.

------
ugh123
I don't see the issue. Google is curating their platform and trying to remove
as much un-original and reasonably offensive content. The doc also didn't seem
to contain any political leanings or cultural shifters. I believe much of this
is part of the service agreement on Youtube.

Only issue I see here is the manual review process and subjectivity baked into
that.

~~~
mizzack
Completely disagree about there not being any political leanings.

See the Controversial section here:
[https://i.imgur.com/vkBrkns.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/vkBrkns.jpg)

e.g. religious videos of any sort are automatically deemed controversial (way
more inclined to be right leaning), but videos about racial justice (left) are
exempt (unless, of course, they are anti-racial justice videos, in which case
they must be removed.)

~~~
jacksmith21006
You realize this for ads not the content to be in YT. I do not see anything
that could be considered leaning right or left.

You seem to come to this with a bias that Google is left leaning and why you
see a political leaning situation here. I am a centrist and do not.

~~~
mizzack
Yes I am aware what demonetization means. It's a very effective way to get
people to stop producing content that does not align with
Youtube/Alphabet/their advertiser's values.

The problem here is the looseness of the guidelines and the complexity of
navigating deep issues with nuance.

Entertain me here for a second... Let's talk about a few hypothetical videos:

"The positive contributions of undocumented migrants in the US" \- positive
content about immigrants. Exempt from demonetization per the guidelines.

"The problem with illegal immigration in the US" \- antagonism of a specific
group of people/xenophobia per the guidelines. Should be demonetized.

Now, do you think it's an unreasonable position to say that undocumented
immigration has both pros and cons? Of course not, everything does.

Youtube's distillation of rules that only allow for discussion of one side
these issues with zero nuance is the problem. Coincidentally or not, the
allowed positions for discourse align with the brand's corporate values.

------
qwerty456127
What does "demonetization" mean anyway? It's the second time I read about
"demonetization" and I still don't get it what does this mean at all.

~~~
awestroke
A video is demometized when Youtube refuses to run ads on the video.

------
kalleboo
I don't see any problems with these rules in particular (I would prefer
something less strict but we're talking America here), my problem is with all
the seemingly innocent videos by people like EEVBlog that are purely
noncontroversial tech stuff that gets instaflagged for no apparent reason.

The manual review isn't the problem it's the initial algorithm that robs
creators of all the views in the initial week(s) before the review gets
carried out (i.e. 90% of the revenue)

~~~
tssva
Except EEVBlog videos aren't completely innocent by these rules. I suspect a
good number of Dave's past videos that have been flagged are because of
cursing which he avoids today but definitely used to do occasionally.

He can be culturally insensitive at times. I don't know if to the point that I
would flag him as violating the rules, but then again these people were
instructed that if in doubt flag. As the father of a daughter I'm am very much
aware that he can be sexist at times. In fact this is why although I will
occasionally watch one of his videos I am no longer subscribed to the channel.

~~~
kalleboo
These regulations talk about what's common on TV, I can't recall him cursing
worse than that, has he dropped an F-bomb?

Anyway that was just one example. Another who's gotten demonetized is
LazyGameReviews, and he's a total kitten. Ashens is also clean and has gotten
demonetized. There are countless examples.

------
alexasmyths
Seems very pragmatic to me.

Actually "If people feel uncomfortable watching it in public" is vague but
reasonably good guideline.

It has to be nary impossible to draw the line in so many cases, but the
guidelines seem reasonable and the line will roughly get drawn about there.

~~~
emsy
So if I'm uncomfortable to watch a video in public about, let's say "How to
avoid getting STDs", which is clearly something me and probably a lot of
people would benefit from, it should be demonetized?

~~~
alexasmyths
" it should be demonetized?"

I don't see why PSA should be being 'monetized'.

I don't see why Coca Cola should be forced to pay for ads during this program.

This is not 'banning or censoring videos' \- this is basically 'deciding which
bits of content advertisers want to pay for'.

Different game.

~~~
emsy
>I don't see why PSA should be being 'monetized'.

That's irrelevant to the argument.

>I don't see why Coca Cola should be forced to pay for ads during this
program.

I didn't say that and I haven't picked up that argument anywhere else really.
I merely refuted your argument that something "comfortable to watch" is a good
metric for this program. I came up with this example off the top of my head.
And you would find a lot of suitable advertisers for this kind of content as
well.

Please stick to the original argument, that "comfortable to watch" is a good
metric instead of strawmanning me with censorship and forced payments.

~~~
alexasmyths
"I don't see why PSA should be being 'monetized'. That's irrelevant to the
argument."

It's relevant because we are discussing which videos can and cannot be
_monetized_ \- some are not intended to be monetized.

"comfortable to watch" \- is actually a perfect way to communicate a complex
and nuanced issue, in a simple way to various audiences - internal,
operational, close ad partners, long tail ad partners.

It reasonably summarizes the otherwise reasonable policy.

And yes - someone talking about explicit sexual subjects for whatever reason
definitely falls in that category, because advertisers would be weary of it.
Google wants it that way for obvious reasons, and it seems like it's working.

Finally - there is nothing to report here. It's great that we get some
insight, but this has to be a fairly naive view of 'insider reporting'. There
is no story. Google has a reasonable policy for determining which content is
good for ads, in general, and which is not. They seem to be acting
professionally on it. This is people doing their jobs reasonably well
especially with nuanced things.

If this story were about content removal or censoring, it would be a different
discussion.

------
ChicagoDave
As I just explained to my 16 year old daughter about YouTube policies. YouTube
is a business. Businesses will do whatever they need to do to get customers
and make money. If anyone was under some strange illusion that YouTube was a
public and free platform to make money and/or create any content they wanted
was naive at best.

If you want to create a channel for users to view your content, purchase a
domain, buy a VM on some cloud service, and set up your own video streaming
service for your own channel.

It would be interesting to see how much it cost one person versus the income
generated. I'm pretty sure that anyone with millions of subscribers would be
bankrupt instantly.

I think the one reasonable avenue would be to unionize all of the major
content creators and invite any creator to be a part of the union. Then
threaten a strike. But the content creators are probably like a herd of cats.
It's unlikely any coalition is remotely possible.

~~~
hnarn
> I'm pretty sure that anyone with millions of subscribers would be bankrupt
> instantly.

It would be interesting to see a napkin calculation on this, because I highly
doubt this is true. Bandwidth cost and video compression are both a lot better
these days than people think, and if you could cut the middle man out of
advertising (which you might could if you have millions of viewers) I think
the benefit would be significant.

Of course, YouTube does not _only_ provide bandwidth and servers. They provide
a "platform", not in the technical sense but in the broader sense. They have
well working apps on all mobile platforms, they have a social network, they
have editing tools and redundancy, they have so many benefits that you'd
really have to think twice before taking them on.

Your idea of a strike is interesting, while I doubt it would happen I would
love for content creators to team up and make common demands.

