Youtube + (Cursing | News | Controversial) = No More Ad money for you

Pages

I know, Youtube has stopped their automated bot from demonetizing videos at the moment, because it was hitting too many channels incorrectly, but I think it is a bit nuts that someone at Youtube thought it was a good idea to take money from people if they curse in their videos, or if they report on a story that new outlets cover, or mention anything that could be considered controversial, would have their ad money removed.

And with all of that, all late night talk shows or anything that is old media gets a pass when they can do sexual jokes or news stories and nothing gets said about it. Not to mention, I would hate to think if the bot was configured to get rid of one particular type of opinion.

Any thoughts?

Well, as someone who is only a viewer of Youtube all I can say is based on what some of the trusted channels I'm subscribed to are saying...

I Posted this in the video thread - as I mentioned there, it was tricky to pick out a decent video from all the "SJW's RUINING YOUTUBE" and "FEMINAZI PUSSIFICATION" garbage reactions. (I'd like to think this rules change was a well meaning effort to dealing with those assholes, but I wont hold my breath).

Of course, youtube being youtube - rather than hire some human beings to curate properly they've going their tried and tested model of "let a robot do it while we go off and have another segway race around the office" or whatever it is the staff of Youtube actually DO on a daily basis. What could go wrong!

I'll be brutally honest. If this hastens the death of YouTube I support it.

I just realized I didn't post any links to what was being discussed....

And you're right pyxistyx, posting a link that is leaning in one political way or the other would probably not be the best way to start a discussion (because that would be so topical), so I choose a link that makes fun of everyone... wacky, offbeat news of the week, etc news, a channel likely to be hit with such things because they cover (wacky/horrible) news with a comedic or satire bent and curse every so often. And they were doing weekly content for the comedic channel Machinima until recently, so I'm going to assume this would be mostly safe, or at the very least, much like Col. Jack O'Neill, be an equal opportunity offender.

pyxistyx wrote:

Of course, youtube being youtube - rather than hire some human beings to curate properly they've going their tried and tested model of "let a robot do it while we go off and have another segway race around the office" or whatever it is the staff of Youtube actually DO on a daily basis. What could go wrong!

To be slightly fair there's about 430,000 hours of video uploaded to YouTube every day. Google would have to hire and train tens of thousands of people to just review content.

That being said Google has one-upped itself on how poorly this new policy was rolled-out to content producers. And that's saying something.

As far as how or why this new policy was conceived, I have no idea. I imagine that outside of a few huge channels any ads that are displayed are dynamically selected rather than scheduled. That means YouTube has decided that it's simply easier to Disneyfy content producers than it is for them to educate advertisers as to why having an ad pop up on a more risqué video is OK. God knows they should have the data.

Seth wrote:

I'll be brutally honest. If this hastens the death of YouTube I support it.

Why don't you like YouTube?

My idle speculation is that this is a response to idiots weaponizing the report function. Youtube looked at the human resources they'd need to resolve everything fairly and decided to punt, and now anything that draws fire is ipso facto controversial enough to run afoul of the rules.

I had to deal with similar crap once when I was briefly an IRC server op and had to resolve bullsh*t disputes over channel op status, and the temptation to say "the hell with all y'all, no channel for anyone" is overwhelming.

OG_slinger wrote:
pyxistyx wrote:

Of course, youtube being youtube - rather than hire some human beings to curate properly they've going their tried and tested model of "let a robot do it while we go off and have another segway race around the office" or whatever it is the staff of Youtube actually DO on a daily basis. What could go wrong!

To be slightly fair there's about 430,000 hours of video uploaded to YouTube every day. Google would have to hire and train tens of thousands of people to just review content.

Fun idea: Only have the humans check the things that the algorithm flags.

Here's an alternate take on the whole situation. https://twitter.com/GarrettAuthor/st...

I just wish YouTube would instate an algorithm that removes all the incessant 20-minute-long videos of nerds' reactions to and breakdowns of comic book movie trailers. Also all those "why X movie sucks in 20 minutes or less" videos. In fact, just ban CinemaSins altogether and I'd be happy.

Anyway, Edwin's link is a good take on this situation, although I'm only just looking into it so I have no idea how nuanced it might actually be...

Edwin wrote:

Here's an alternate take on the whole situation. https://twitter.com/GarrettAuthor/st...

Edwin wrote:

Here's an alternate take on the whole situation. https://twitter.com/GarrettAuthor/st...

Intriguing perspective!

Please to be telling upbeat sagas only!

BoogtehWoog wrote:
Edwin wrote:

Here's an alternate take on the whole situation. https://twitter.com/GarrettAuthor/st...

Edwin wrote:

Here's an alternate take on the whole situation. https://twitter.com/GarrettAuthor/st...

Intriguing perspective!

That's actually very interesting. The more I think about it, the more I'm coming around to this perspective actually.

Mermaidpirate wrote:

Please to be telling upbeat sagas only!

Hey! I can be upbeat! Just...maybe not at 9am in the morning

Edwin wrote:

Here's an alternate take on the whole situation. https://twitter.com/GarrettAuthor/st...

That was pretty much my take from the get go. It's not censorship, it's just saying "you're entitled to say whatever you want, you're just not entitled to get paid for it all the time." There are ridiculously overwrought discussions going on about "GREAT! ADVERTISERS RUINING YOUTUBE!!" And they aren't, they just now have more control over what videos their ads get attached to, which is pretty reasonable.

Unfortunately there are some videos getting flagged that probably shouldn't be, but my guess is that the algorithm or whatever mathemagic they use will get more tuned over time as they sort it out.

wordsmythe wrote:
OG_slinger wrote:
pyxistyx wrote:

Of course, youtube being youtube - rather than hire some human beings to curate properly they've going their tried and tested model of "let a robot do it while we go off and have another segway race around the office" or whatever it is the staff of Youtube actually DO on a daily basis. What could go wrong!

To be slightly fair there's about 430,000 hours of video uploaded to YouTube every day. Google would have to hire and train tens of thousands of people to just review content.

Fun idea: Only have the humans check the things that the algorithm flags.

Because that worked so well for Facebook?

nel e nel wrote:
Edwin wrote:

Here's an alternate take on the whole situation. https://twitter.com/GarrettAuthor/st...

That was pretty much my take from the get go. It's not censorship, it's just saying "you're entitled to say whatever you want, you're just not entitled to get paid for it all the time." There are ridiculously overwrought discussions going on about "GREAT! ADVERTISERS RUINING YOUTUBE!!" And they aren't, they just now have more control over what videos their ads get attached to, which is pretty reasonable.

Gosh, it's almost like actions have consequences! So how is Gilbert Gotfried (and all the other celebs who lost contracts for saying inappropriate things) doing these days?

WipEout wrote:

In fact, just ban CinemaSins altogether and I'd be happy.

...is there a petition I could sign somewhere for this to happen?

shoptroll wrote:
wordsmythe wrote:
OG_slinger wrote:
pyxistyx wrote:

Of course, youtube being youtube - rather than hire some human beings to curate properly they've going their tried and tested model of "let a robot do it while we go off and have another segway race around the office" or whatever it is the staff of Youtube actually DO on a daily basis. What could go wrong!

To be slightly fair there's about 430,000 hours of video uploaded to YouTube every day. Google would have to hire and train tens of thousands of people to just review content.

Fun idea: Only have the humans check the things that the algorithm flags.

Because that worked so well for Facebook?

I thought Facebook's recent issue was that they took the "check by human" step out of it.

wordsmythe wrote:

I thought Facebook's recent issue was that they took the "check by human" step out of it.

Slightly different matter of scale between humans tweaking an algorithm-selected news feed and humans manually reviewing what an algorithm flags in the 49 years worth of YouTube videos uploaded every day.

Chumpy_McChump wrote:
Seth wrote:

I'll be brutally honest. If this hastens the death of YouTube I support it.

Why don't you like YouTube?

Can't speak for Seth but it would be their policies.
The reason I like youtube though, is that It Just f*cking Works. Plenty of video sites, and all of them but youtube have horrible user-experiences.

Vimeo has a nice user experience...and even more restrictive content guidelines.

Part of what makes this significant is YouTube is by far the de facto place for hosting internet videos. No one can compete on the same level for plain video. Twitch beats them on streaming; stuff like Vine and Periscope has specific niches; but most other user-content sites make up the difference by having terrible ads.

I don't particularly like that one content host is making automatic decisions about what content can get monetized, especially since their Content ID system is a black box with virtually no appeals for false positives. On the other hand, it's not YouTube per se that's the main driver here. If someone else was the dominant player, they would be seeing the same pressure from advertisers.

It's the nature of capitalism on the internet. The deal is that they host your content and help connect you with an audience, and you have to put up with whatever unilateral decisions they make. It's not a good deal, but it's a workable deal.

There are a lot of conspiracy theory nutjobs and dangerous demagogues who make their money off streaming controversial rants on YouTube. And cheap mass-produced earworm songs for children. And similar bottom-feeding content that few advertisers want to be associated with. I'm not going to be sorry to see them go.

The take Edwin linked is totally right that producing videos for the ad revenue is a business-to-business relationship, with a really lopsided power balance. And a lot of people making money of YouTube don't seem to realize that. Building your product on someone else's platform is always a risky decision. Particularly when it's one of the notoriously closed-off giants like Google or Facebook. (Only time I ever got support from Google was when a lawyer and a court order was involved.)

Granted, it's hard enough to make money producing any kind of artistic output, and some people who don't deserve it will be caught in the gears.

Cheering about anyone being silenced is not a very good idea. And make no mistake, that is what is happening.

The goal, here, is to shut some people up. Anyone who claims otherwise is being deceptive, either toward you or toward themselves.

They're not being shut up at all, they're just not going to be able to make money through ads on their videos anymore. Their videos aren't being taken down and they can still upload as many new ones as they want.

They're not being shut up at all, they're just not going to be able to make money through ads on their videos anymore.

And why would they do that? To shut them up.

YouTube de facto owns the content on YouTube. That's the deal everyone made with them. You can argue that they shouldn't have, and that it was a bad deal to begin with, and I'd agree with you, but that's the nature of the beast. Don't be surprised when the scorpion stings you.

Yes, it's going to silence some people. But they never had a right to make money that way. YouTube granted them access to its fiefdom, and now is taking that away. As a general rule, if you don't pay for a product, you are the product. YouTube has decided it doesn't want that product any more. And no one can make them buy it if they don't want it.

If you want to control your content, you need to control your server.

Malor wrote:
They're not being shut up at all, they're just not going to be able to make money through ads on their videos anymore.

And why would they do that? To shut them up.

More likely to please the advertisers that want more control over the kinds of videos their ads show up on, or want to avoid the complaints they get whenever their ad shows up on a video someone doesn't like. Youtube doesn't make its money from the people uploading videos, it makes its money selling ads to companies.
They're still free to upload videos that they can't make money from in addition to ones they can.

Malor wrote:
They're not being shut up at all, they're just not going to be able to make money through ads on their videos anymore.

And why would they do that? To shut them up.

You keep using that phrase. I do not think it means what you think it means.

That Garret Robinson Tweet Storm is pretty great for crystallising how many of the complaints come from people who profoundly don't understand:

1 Free Speech
2 Censorship
3 business
4 Advertising
5 Customers
6 I actually could go on for about 30 things.

It does suck for people who depend on the awful angry sweary nerd schtick for income, but if they've built their castles on clouds without any deeper thought it's pretty much self inflicted.

On a personal level I'm hoping that the Angry, Sweary, Nerd schtick goes the way of minstrel shows.
Advertisers not wanting to be associated with media that paints them in a bad light is in no way censorship and it's ridiculous to even consider that it is.

Malor wrote:

Cheering about anyone being silenced is not a very good idea. And make no mistake, that is what is happening.

The goal, here, is to shut some people up. Anyone who claims otherwise is being deceptive, either toward you or toward themselves.

I see none of this...rather free market in effect.

There is no free speech unless you are being paid to say it. Advertiser should be forced to put their ads on all videos even videos that promote rape, are racist, or are filled with voguer language. This is the only way to have free speech. The people will never be able to hear your voice on youtube without ads. This is why no one uses ad blockers on youtube.

At the end of the day youtube is a right that is protected by the constitution. You have every right to defend the ads on your videos with armed resistance. I have my gun sitting right next to my PC. I dare someone to try to remove the ads from my videos. The people need to hear me talk about dolls, games, and my genitals. All of these things are really big like freedom.

So all you that can't understand what free speech is take a hike buddy. Also this post was brought to you by lootcrate. Lootcrate brings you cool stuff every month like funkco pop toys and marvel teeshirts.

chit ching.

Baron, oh. Thank you for the awesome on-the-toilet belly laugh. That I am streaming on Twitch and will archive on YouTube. Sponsored by MeUndies.

On a personal level I'm hoping that the Angry, Sweary, Nerd schtick goes the way of minstrel shows.

In other words, you'd like to see people you don't agree with, stop talking.

This is, like it or not, about suppressing unpopular opinions. Painting it as anything else is disingenuous.

It wouldn't surprise me in the least if YouTube keeps running ads on the content they're trying to drive away. But even if they don't, getting those people to go away is the goal.

I don't even like or watch these shows. But I can see this move for what it is, and a lot of hemming, hawing, and rationalizing on the part of the pro-shut-them-up side.

Pages