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YouTuber here, it feels like the party is over. The viewership is there but it seems like the list of things we can't do or speak about is getting bigger and bi

YouTuber here, it feels like the party is over. The viewership is there but it seems like the list of things we can't do or speak about is getting bigger and bigger. You literally cannot mention war; your video will be demonetized.

FussyZeus 9y ago
That's the other big problem IMHO, all of the content is being compressed and converted to a very pro corporate consumerist culture view. Don't talk negatively, don't use bad words, don't ruffle any feathers, or you'll lose whatever pittance you're getting. This is doubly weird because YouTube has always had (and still has) one of the most atrociously toxic comments sections on the Internet.
- roceasta 9y ago
  Yes: censorship and ads. Both inevitable I suppose, but irksome in the extreme. For instance, it's getting harder to find content by speakers I follow due to repackaging and re-uploading of their older content for ad revenue by third parties.
- userbinator 9y ago
  This is doubly weird because YouTube has always had (and still has) one of the most atrociously toxic comments sections on the Internet. Comments aren't monetised content, however; which makes them, in some sense, rather more honest and genuine. We'd see something very different if people were posting comments to be monetised in some way or another (although I can't see how that could ever happen.)
paulsutter 9y ago
Are you there to speak freely or are you there for the ad revenue? They actually disallow very little. But if ad revenue is what you want, be advertiser friendly. There's nothing unreasonable about that.
- narrator 9y ago
  What about monetizing via Patreon? I watch a few channels that do this such as S/V Delos.
  - CM30 9y ago
    Patreon is good when it works, but it's got even more of an uneven 'curve' than ad revenue. If you're not a massive celebrity with a huge following, your Patreon will at best pay the equivalent of a minimum wage job and more likely pay far less than that. For example, based on some channels I subscribe to: Boundary Break has 178,000 subscribers, and makes $844 a month on Patreon. A Start Show has 500,000 subscribers, making $429 a month on Patreon. Source Gaming makes $80 a month with 4000 subscribers and Top Hat Gaming Man $120 a month with about 7000. They all make good content, but they certainly wouldn't make enough to live on through Patreon alone if they were required to. And even that's more money than a lot of creators make from it. I know good YouTube creators whose Patreon accounts bring them either literally nothing or between $5 and $15 a month. In other words, Patreon basically never makes as much money for a creator as YouTube ads and monetisation does, and even the best cases (people with millions of fans) make at best a lower middle class income from it. It's just not viable for most YouTubers.
    - prawn 9y ago
      How much time are those individuals putting into their channels? I know quality videos take a lot of effort, but is it consistently 40+ hours a week? It's not dangerous, no longer requires expensive equipment, rarely involves a commute. I think most people would rather play or talk about games than flip burgers.
      - CM30 9y ago
        From what I've seen, a lot of time. These people aren't just discussing anything about games or what not, they're actively researching stories no one else has covered online yet. For example, the Boundary Break channel is all about reverse engineering games to disable camera restrictions and take them outside the game world. That takes a lot of time to set up, especially as each game needs to be treated as its own thing due to how they're coded. Probably dozens of hours with the community on Discord figuring how the camera format works, then even more using it to explore the hell out of the game to find interesting stuff before even making the video. Or in the case of Slopes Game Room/Guru Larry/Top Hat Gaming Man, looking into game series and games either from decades past (which have very little documentation online) or aspects of games people didn't know about. It's only thanks to them that stuff like Drivergate (a scandal where a video game magazine publisher gave artificially inflated reviews to a broken game to get the reviews out early) came to the surface or got added to Wikipedia in the first place. A lot of time goes into these videos, it's just a lot more of it likely goes to research and journalism than editing.
manigandham 9y ago
This has nothing to do with Youtube and everything to do with advertisers (and agencies and other marketing related forces) that do not want to be next to content that is not brand-safe. That is well within their right and since they pay the bills, they set the rules.
xxSparkleSxx 9y ago
Do you think this same phenomenon was partially responsible for the decline of content on things like the Histoey channe? There's gotta be more to those decisions beyond just number of eyeballs and purchasing power.
rocqua 9y ago
I personally don't see why all advertisers would want to shy away from war. I'd guess an ad for the next call of duty game would probably run better on average on such videos. Heck, it should be clear that advertisers don't choose what videos they advertise on, so why should they even care what their ads run on? I really don't buy the complaint that 'GM is sponsoring terrorism' when an ad of theirs is ran on an ISIS video.

FussyZeus 9y ago

That's the other big problem IMHO, all of the content is being compressed and converted to a very pro corporate consumerist culture view. Don't talk negatively, don't use bad words, don't ruffle any feathers, or you'll lose whatever pittance you're getting. This is doubly weird because YouTube has always had (and still has) one of the most atrociously toxic comments sections on the Internet.

roceasta 9y ago
Yes: censorship and ads. Both inevitable I suppose, but irksome in the extreme. For instance, it's getting harder to find content by speakers I follow due to repackaging and re-uploading of their older content for ad revenue by third parties.
userbinator 9y ago
This is doubly weird because YouTube has always had (and still has) one of the most atrociously toxic comments sections on the Internet. Comments aren't monetised content, however; which makes them, in some sense, rather more honest and genuine. We'd see something very different if people were posting comments to be monetised in some way or another (although I can't see how that could ever happen.)

paulsutter 9y ago

Are you there to speak freely or are you there for the ad revenue? They actually disallow very little. But if ad revenue is what you want, be advertiser friendly. There's nothing unreasonable about that.

narrator 9y ago
What about monetizing via Patreon? I watch a few channels that do this such as S/V Delos.
- CM30 9y ago
  Patreon is good when it works, but it's got even more of an uneven 'curve' than ad revenue. If you're not a massive celebrity with a huge following, your Patreon will at best pay the equivalent of a minimum wage job and more likely pay far less than that. For example, based on some channels I subscribe to: Boundary Break has 178,000 subscribers, and makes $844 a month on Patreon. A Start Show has 500,000 subscribers, making $429 a month on Patreon. Source Gaming makes $80 a month with 4000 subscribers and Top Hat Gaming Man $120 a month with about 7000. They all make good content, but they certainly wouldn't make enough to live on through Patreon alone if they were required to. And even that's more money than a lot of creators make from it. I know good YouTube creators whose Patreon accounts bring them either literally nothing or between $5 and $15 a month. In other words, Patreon basically never makes as much money for a creator as YouTube ads and monetisation does, and even the best cases (people with millions of fans) make at best a lower middle class income from it. It's just not viable for most YouTubers.
  - prawn 9y ago
    How much time are those individuals putting into their channels? I know quality videos take a lot of effort, but is it consistently 40+ hours a week? It's not dangerous, no longer requires expensive equipment, rarely involves a commute. I think most people would rather play or talk about games than flip burgers.
    - CM30 9y ago
      From what I've seen, a lot of time. These people aren't just discussing anything about games or what not, they're actively researching stories no one else has covered online yet. For example, the Boundary Break channel is all about reverse engineering games to disable camera restrictions and take them outside the game world. That takes a lot of time to set up, especially as each game needs to be treated as its own thing due to how they're coded. Probably dozens of hours with the community on Discord figuring how the camera format works, then even more using it to explore the hell out of the game to find interesting stuff before even making the video. Or in the case of Slopes Game Room/Guru Larry/Top Hat Gaming Man, looking into game series and games either from decades past (which have very little documentation online) or aspects of games people didn't know about. It's only thanks to them that stuff like Drivergate (a scandal where a video game magazine publisher gave artificially inflated reviews to a broken game to get the reviews out early) came to the surface or got added to Wikipedia in the first place. A lot of time goes into these videos, it's just a lot more of it likely goes to research and journalism than editing.

manigandham 9y ago

This has nothing to do with Youtube and everything to do with advertisers (and agencies and other marketing related forces) that do not want to be next to content that is not brand-safe. That is well within their right and since they pay the bills, they set the rules.

xxSparkleSxx 9y ago

Do you think this same phenomenon was partially responsible for the decline of content on things like the Histoey channe? There's gotta be more to those decisions beyond just number of eyeballs and purchasing power.

rocqua 9y ago

I personally don't see why all advertisers would want to shy away from war. I'd guess an ad for the next call of duty game would probably run better on average on such videos. Heck, it should be clear that advertisers don't choose what videos they advertise on, so why should they even care what their ads run on? I really don't buy the complaint that 'GM is sponsoring terrorism' when an ad of theirs is ran on an ISIS video.