YouTube has decided to tighten up its moderation to make its platform more suitable for brands and younger viewers. — Photography NiP STUDIO/Shutterstock/AFP Relaxnews
YouTubers are not happy, and they are making it known. The streaming video platform has faced criticism from several of its creators after changing its moderation policy regarding profanity.
Some YouTubers got an unpleasant surprise recently. A number of them have noticed that some of their older videos have been demonetized for obscenity. Back at the end of November, YouTube announced that it was tightening its moderation policy regarding monetization of videos posted online. With this new moderation rule, videos containing profanity in the first 8 to 15 seconds are no longer able to receive ad revenue. This is a major change since this rule is also retroactive. And it is particularly on this aspect of it that certain YouTubers are seeing red.
In a 47-second video, creator ProZD strongly criticized this new rule, pointing out the limitations of these new parameters. After waiting to go beyond the first 15 seconds of his video, the YouTuber let loose on YouTube, while respecting the clauses in order to not be demonetized, in order to show that he sees such a measure as absurd and to test it: "YouTube's new policy for limiting ads is that if you have profanity in the first 8 to 15 seconds of a video, then the ad revenue will be limited. So... just wait a few seconds here... That's the dumbest (expletives) I've ever heard. Anyway, hey YouTube! How about all the channels you support with ads that spew hate speech regularly? Did they say a no-no word in the first 15 seconds? I guess not. Then that's fine. Thank you YouTube, you (expletive) donkeys, and I should be able to say that without being demonetized because, one, it wasn't in the first 8-15 seconds, and two, it's only four swear words out of around 150 words total, so it's not the majority. What a smart policy that wasn't created by a bunch of numbskull dumb (expletive). There, that's the fourth one in case you were counting." In just nine days, this video by ProZD, who is followed by almost 4 million subscribers, has surpassed 2 million views.
Following that video, the creator said in another video that his content was eventually demonetized: "It [the video] was up for about two days no problem and then after two days it got demonetized," he explained. "Not only does this policy affect new uploads, but it can also retroactively affect old uploads. So videos that were totally fine before with the monetization rules... all of a sudden, no, not anymore, you don't get to make money on those anymore," he continues. "For a little experiment I'm just going to say '(expletive) YouTube,' just once, and I'm going to see if this video gets demonetized. Is it because YouTube just doesn't like it when I get mad at them and it gets a lot of views?" he pitched. In five days, this new video has achieved over 1.3 million views.
In the face of such criticism, the video platform has decided to reconsider this moderation policy, without announcing any concrete changes for the moment.
"In recent weeks, we've heard from many creators regarding this update," YouTube spokesperson Michael Aciman told The Verge. "That feedback is important to us and we are in the process of making some adjustments to this policy to address their concerns. We will follow up shortly with our creator community as soon as we have more to share," he added. – AFP Relaxnews
