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YouTube Demonetization Screenshot Leaks and Secret YouTube Meeting

377 points by djsumdog 9y ago

ugh123 9y ago
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.
- Sujan 9y ago
  It’s not even about removing the content - but just not showing ads on it.
  - falcolas 9y ago
    Not showing ads has the side effect of burying the video when it comes to discoverability as well.
- kthejoker2 9y ago
  1) they don't tell you what rule you're breaking. 2) transparency is zilch. 3) rule changes came overnight. 4) no system to "pre-approve" videos. 5) it's affecting tons of completely innocuous videos. My wife runs a family friendly vlog, prior to October she'd never had a problem with any of her thousands of videos, and now every other one is demonetized without explanation. From a creator experience it's just confirmation the platform is totally dead and beyond saving. The algos have won.
- mizzack 9y ago
  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 9y ago
    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 9y ago
      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.
  - ugh123 9y ago
    >e.g. religious videos of any sort are automatically deemed controversial Thats not what it says. It reads "Content promoted by extreme religious groups" - Certainly there is subjectivity here and Google should provide clearer guidelines on what is deemed "extreme" (clearly violent jihad and isis recruiting would be considered extreme, and general islam/muslim content should be considered okay). But it clearly does not say "religious videos of any sort".
chiaro 9y ago
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.
awakeasleep 9y ago
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 9y ago
  > 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 9y ago
    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 9y ago
      People who skirt those judgement will always exist, but having the 'we are the law' kind of rule sucks for a community.
- nailer 9y ago
  1. Many very popular YouTube videos (eg brosciencelife) are profane - the Dom Mazetti character is a douchebag - and people come to YouTube to watch them. 2. The guidelines seemingly allow what would be considered hate speech if the topic is women's equality.
thisisit 9y ago
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 9y ago
  creaters can find the monetary status of the videos in their dashboard. They get notified whenever any of their video is demonitized.
  - thisisit 9y ago
    Thanks but is there a way for non-creators to find it?
    - chii 9y ago
      may be probablistically by loading up an incognito window (or use a vpn), and see if ads show up (removing adblock of course).
  - kthejoker2 9y ago
    But it doesn't tell them why it was demonetized, which is the crux of the matter. Very Brazil.
rayalez 9y ago
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.
- simion314 9y ago
  A big problem is that youtubers do not know the reasons for the demonetization, so creators have to guess what is the problem, an example was a Linux video, nothing was bad with the video, people were speculating that maybe the problem was the word "bash" but we can't know if this word is on a blacklist or not.
  - kthejoker2 9y ago
    My wife runs a "mom vlog" mostly recipes, lifestyle things, how tos, etc. Since late October her content is regularly demonetized with no indications as to what's wrong. Her content is literally some of the most desirable, adfriendly content on YouTube. No idea why they don't have a whitelist for channels with 10 years of a spotless record.
    - crankylinuxuser 9y ago
      > No idea why they don't have a whitelist for channels with 10 years of a spotless record. Give it 30 seconds of thought, and it'll be blindingly obvious. "Google/Alphabet doesnt have to pay them for the content now." My question, why do they keep using a platform that's screwing them over? Yippee: -3. Evidently stating the emperors new clothes are his birthday suit is bad/wrong.
      - mdwrigh2 9y ago
        > "Google/Alphabet doesnt have to pay them for the content now." When a video is demonetized, only a small subset of advertisers or no advertisers can be shown on that video. If no ads are being shown then neither Google nor the creator are making money (and Google is spending money to host and serve the content), so really this is a lose/lose for both of them.
qwartile 9y ago
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.
- rsynnott 9y ago
  Ads taken off, I think.
- wmf 9y ago
  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 9y ago
    > 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/2017/12/11/6-year-old-made-11-million-in-one-year-reviewing-toys-on-you-tube/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/12/1...
    - shak77 9y ago
      That's news precisely because it's rare.
      - kthejoker2 9y ago
        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.)
alexasmyths 9y ago
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 9y ago
  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?
  - jacksmith21006 9y ago
    If advertisers do not wanted be associated with the content then yes. This is all about advertisers. YT cost money to run and that money comes from advertisers.
    - emsy 9y ago
      And eyeballs for advertisers come from content. For example Laci Green has up to several million views on her videos. So she pulls a lot of people onto the platform. But because sex ed is "uncomfortable" she shouldn't be able to monetize? That isn't quite fair to the creators either. (I'm talking about the general moral juxtaposition, not Google's interests)
      - alexasmyths 9y ago
        "That isn't quite fair to the creators either." It's fair if it's clear and applied reasonably consistently. Google makes completely arbitrary moral judgements about 'advertising guns' - which I might support, but they are arbitrary. With this - it's about advertisers interests, not Googles. If Coca Cola et. al. don't want their ads jammed into CardiB rapping about her vagina, her butt, your python, and her vagina again - well that's Coke's prerogative. Surely.
  - 9y ago
Dolores12 9y ago
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 9y ago
  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 9y ago
    check this out https://searchengineland.com/library/google/google-search-quality-raters https://searchengineland.com/library/google/google-search-qu... edit: i am pretty sure the websites that were marked as low quality lost their rating on next google search update.
toomanybeersies 9y ago
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 9y ago
  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 9y ago
    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 9y ago
      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.
    - chii 9y ago
      a lot of videos i watch seems to be sponsored videos (lately, there's been lots of 23 and me, and squarespace, skillshare and a few others). How come these videos are not violating youtube's policies?
PeterStuer 9y ago
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.
- NietTim 9y ago
  Yeah having country specific moderation teams with people form those countries would be great. But I won't hold my breath..
  - dogma1138 9y ago
    It would be great until you reach Saudi Arabia or Iran, or heck don't need to go that far since Venezuela is just near by...
    - PeterStuer 9y ago
      So you are saying it would not be ok for those cultures to impose their morals, but it is ok for the US?
      - dogma1138 9y ago
        Moral relativism is nonsense, there are objectively better and worse moral systems. The US and any other country in the world is far from perfect but it doesn’t mean there aren’t better and worse, much much worse moral systems out there today.
- ajkjk 9y ago
  What culture-specific reasonings are you referring to, exactly?
  - chmod775 9y ago
oh-kumudo 9y ago
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.
icantdrive55 9y ago
Sex/Nudity Example #2 (Please scan--do not watch whole movie.)
russellbeattie 9y ago
YouTubers are, as a group, the most entitled, selfish, immature group of people on the planet. They are constantly whining about what is an incredible service, that they are allowed to use, free of charge. The amount of time, money and effort it would cost for any of these "creators" to host their own multi-gigabyte videos with millions of downloads is mind boggling, yet they have little appreciation for the infrastructure and man-hours involved to create and run that business. They have no idea the gift they've been given. Instead they are endlessly trying to find some cause to assume that Google is out to get them somehow. It's a level of self-centered childishness that boggles my brain every single time I read some half-ass conspiracy post complaining about it. There are competitors to YouTube - if you don't like their policies, feel free to post your videos on the other services. It's as simple as that. Yes, everyone watches YouTube, but that doesn't suddenly turn Google into a public resource, nor should they be required to guarantee your sketchy video has advertisers.
- CobrastanJorji 9y ago
  Your point is appreciated, but keep in mind that these are people's livelihoods. They're in a vulnerable position, and change is a big deal for them. Fairly small changes to the YouTube landscape could mean major changes to their income and business viability. Change a few bits of a suggestion algorithm and the kid making $11 million per year playing with toys could be out of business overnight. It's the same reason people freak out when Apple does anything to the app store. It's life or death for a bunch of small companies and they have no power over the situation.
  - kw71 9y ago
    The fact that those people chose or happened to make a living off someone else's website doesn't give them employment rights. Unfortunately the platform is property of YouTube and while I think it would be nice for them to explain their rules when they invite the public to engage and participate, they are allowed to hold these as trade secrets :(
    - SerLava 9y ago
tzfld 9y ago
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.
josteink 9y ago
So if your video in any way can be considered provocative, there’s guaranteed a checkbox to shut it down. Talking positively about drugs? Based on facts? Who cares, it’s against the status quo. Put it down! Confronting feminists with facts? Offensive, intolerant! Push the button, shut it down. Etc. I find this deeply problematic, but I guess the root of the problem here is YouTube’s de-facto video-monopoly. If there were more and bigger video-services besides YouTube that wouldn’t be so much of a problem. Then publishers could migrate to a platform with less censorship.
Molaxx 9y ago
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.
kalleboo 9y ago
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 9y ago
  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 9y ago
    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.
  - kthejoker2 9y ago
    Feel like I'm spamming my wife's channel but hers is Kyleandcourt. 100% family friendly, thousands of videos posted over the years with no flagging, then in October every other video is demonetized without explanation. So nope, their algo/system is jacked up and they won't be transparent about anything.
randyrand 9y ago
"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 9y ago
  "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 9y ago
    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.
- forgottenpass 9y ago
  Tangential, but you might like this: https://www.ecosophia.net/hate-new-sex/ https://www.ecosophia.net/hate-new-sex/
tyfon 9y ago
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.
gldalmaso 9y ago
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 9y ago
  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-google-raters/ https://arstechnica.com/features/2017/04/the-secret-lives-of... [2]: https://www.perspectiveapi.com/ https://www.perspectiveapi.com/
patrickaljord 9y ago
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 9y ago
  The advertisers themselves saying they don't want their ads shown on this content.
  - patrickaljord 9y ago
    All millions of them? I know Amazon still advertizes on Breitbart and they're one of the biggest advertisers in the world.
paul7986 9y ago
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.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
chillingeffect 9y ago
Women's equality is protected, but not men's? That's not what equality means: Many people have been conditioned to believe "MRAs" ( men's right's activists ) are in the same category as misogynists. Unfortunately. MRA's have a handful of very specific grievances against laws, not women. Their key issue is custody and visitation rights of their children. While much of the world is biased against women, family courts are heavily biased against men. Just as women deserve to have their equality addressed, men have the right to fight for visitation and custody of their children. YouTube's policies of supporting women's equality but not men's have had a threatening effect on men's groups trying to communicate to the public the need for equality. Most men don't find out until it's too late. Specifically a group called "The Honey Badgers", in Canada, has been struggling to communicate their message of equality. MRA's have several other equality issues such as ending circumcision and addressing high suicide, addiction and homelessness rates of men, but these are not misogynist ideas, merely health and fairness ones. Stick up for men. It doesn't mean you hate women at all!
qwerty456127 9y ago
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 9y ago
  A video is demometized when Youtube refuses to run ads on the video.
whywhywhywhy 9y ago
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 9y ago
  Any other provider would have the same issues with advertisers.
  - CaptSpify 9y ago
    Who says the other provider needs to use advertising?
jbardnz 9y ago
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 9y ago
  Couldn't the algorithm give its judgement before the video goes live?
  - kthejoker2 9y ago
    YouTube is trying to roll out something like this, it hasn't taken effect yet though.
  - falcolas 9y ago
    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 9y ago
      It also doesn't work - uploading a video privately passes monetization, uploading the same video pubically has the video monetized. It's completely arbitrary.
- LeifCarrotson 9y ago
  > The issue here being that by the time a manual review is complete most of the views for a video have already happened. Wouldn't the solution, then, be to credit the account for the revenue generated while it was demonetized? It's not like Youtube didn't get revenue from ad impressions while the video was flagged.
matt4077 9y ago
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.
DoubleGlazing 9y ago
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.
devit 9y ago
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 9y ago
  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.
- rtpg 9y ago
  If you advertise on a video, you are giving the creator of the video money. There is no stronger endorsement.
squarefoot 9y ago
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.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
rkapsoro 9y ago
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.
- simion314 9y ago
  I think they can create a reputation for a channel, say each time a demonetization decision is reversed by a human then bump the channel reputation and consider this time when deciding to demonetize.
- dsfyu404ed 9y ago
  >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.
CSMastermind 9y ago
I wish Youtube had a real competitor to stop them from doing things like this.
- jacksmith21006 9y ago
  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 9y ago
    A competitor doesn't have to use advertisers
Kazamai 9y ago
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.
ChicagoDave 9y ago
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 9y ago
  > 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.
- simook 9y ago
  Why would million of subscribers bankrupt someone? I work in the industry building video software that would allow anyone to create their own personalozed video on demand or live streaming service. I havent ran the numbers myself, but the cost to provide a youtube like experience is not that expensive. I would be happy to run the numbers if we could determine how many minutes a single subsriber would watch in a month.
simook 9y ago
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.
juanmirocks 9y ago
Leaks, secrecy, demonetization, ... ?? Jezz, relax. Google/YouTube is just changing their policies for content and ads. It is absolutely comprehensible. It means lots of dollars. Whining youtubers should adapt. Period. And if they are still not happy, then switch to another social media platform. Or for that matter create a new one. "Secret YouTube Meeting"... what a stupid concept.
rfdub 9y ago
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.
- tzs 9y ago
  > Google et all would rather impose their bizarrely puritanical morality on the world, than do their jobs and build a system that actually works. I'm having a bit of trouble with the idea that something that is generating around $80 000 000 000 per year revenue and has been growing ~20% per year for the last several years is not something that "actually works".
  - CaptSpify 9y ago
    It's the filtering that isn't working, not the platform
- fhood 9y ago
  I mean sex toys and bongs are one thing but excess profanity? Are you kidding me?

377 points by djsumdog 9y ago

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.

Sujan 9y ago
It’s not even about removing the content - but just not showing ads on it.
- falcolas 9y ago
  Not showing ads has the side effect of burying the video when it comes to discoverability as well.
kthejoker2 9y ago
1) they don't tell you what rule you're breaking. 2) transparency is zilch. 3) rule changes came overnight. 4) no system to "pre-approve" videos. 5) it's affecting tons of completely innocuous videos. My wife runs a family friendly vlog, prior to October she'd never had a problem with any of her thousands of videos, and now every other one is demonetized without explanation. From a creator experience it's just confirmation the platform is totally dead and beyond saving. The algos have won.
mizzack 9y ago
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 9y ago
  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 9y ago
    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.
- ugh123 9y ago
  >e.g. religious videos of any sort are automatically deemed controversial Thats not what it says. It reads "Content promoted by extreme religious groups" - Certainly there is subjectivity here and Google should provide clearer guidelines on what is deemed "extreme" (clearly violent jihad and isis recruiting would be considered extreme, and general islam/muslim content should be considered okay). But it clearly does not say "religious videos of any sort".

chiaro 9y ago

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.

awakeasleep 9y ago

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 9y ago
> 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 9y ago
  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 9y ago
    People who skirt those judgement will always exist, but having the 'we are the law' kind of rule sucks for a community.
nailer 9y ago
1. Many very popular YouTube videos (eg brosciencelife) are profane - the Dom Mazetti character is a douchebag - and people come to YouTube to watch them. 2. The guidelines seemingly allow what would be considered hate speech if the topic is women's equality.

thisisit 9y ago

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 9y ago
creaters can find the monetary status of the videos in their dashboard. They get notified whenever any of their video is demonitized.
- thisisit 9y ago
  Thanks but is there a way for non-creators to find it?
  - chii 9y ago
    may be probablistically by loading up an incognito window (or use a vpn), and see if ads show up (removing adblock of course).
- kthejoker2 9y ago
  But it doesn't tell them why it was demonetized, which is the crux of the matter. Very Brazil.

rayalez 9y ago

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.

simion314 9y ago
A big problem is that youtubers do not know the reasons for the demonetization, so creators have to guess what is the problem, an example was a Linux video, nothing was bad with the video, people were speculating that maybe the problem was the word "bash" but we can't know if this word is on a blacklist or not.
- kthejoker2 9y ago
  My wife runs a "mom vlog" mostly recipes, lifestyle things, how tos, etc. Since late October her content is regularly demonetized with no indications as to what's wrong. Her content is literally some of the most desirable, adfriendly content on YouTube. No idea why they don't have a whitelist for channels with 10 years of a spotless record.
  - crankylinuxuser 9y ago
    > No idea why they don't have a whitelist for channels with 10 years of a spotless record. Give it 30 seconds of thought, and it'll be blindingly obvious. "Google/Alphabet doesnt have to pay them for the content now." My question, why do they keep using a platform that's screwing them over? Yippee: -3. Evidently stating the emperors new clothes are his birthday suit is bad/wrong.
    - mdwrigh2 9y ago
      > "Google/Alphabet doesnt have to pay them for the content now." When a video is demonetized, only a small subset of advertisers or no advertisers can be shown on that video. If no ads are being shown then neither Google nor the creator are making money (and Google is spending money to host and serve the content), so really this is a lose/lose for both of them.

qwartile 9y ago

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.

rsynnott 9y ago
Ads taken off, I think.
wmf 9y ago
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 9y ago
  > 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/2017/12/11/6-year-old-made-11-million-in-one-year-reviewing-toys-on-you-tube/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/12/1...
  - shak77 9y ago
    That's news precisely because it's rare.
    - kthejoker2 9y ago
      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.)

alexasmyths 9y ago

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 9y ago
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?
- jacksmith21006 9y ago
  If advertisers do not wanted be associated with the content then yes. This is all about advertisers. YT cost money to run and that money comes from advertisers.
  - emsy 9y ago
    And eyeballs for advertisers come from content. For example Laci Green has up to several million views on her videos. So she pulls a lot of people onto the platform. But because sex ed is "uncomfortable" she shouldn't be able to monetize? That isn't quite fair to the creators either. (I'm talking about the general moral juxtaposition, not Google's interests)
    - alexasmyths 9y ago
      "That isn't quite fair to the creators either." It's fair if it's clear and applied reasonably consistently. Google makes completely arbitrary moral judgements about 'advertising guns' - which I might support, but they are arbitrary. With this - it's about advertisers interests, not Googles. If Coca Cola et. al. don't want their ads jammed into CardiB rapping about her vagina, her butt, your python, and her vagina again - well that's Coke's prerogative. Surely.
- 9y ago

Dolores12 9y ago

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 9y ago
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 9y ago
  check this out https://searchengineland.com/library/google/google-search-quality-raters https://searchengineland.com/library/google/google-search-qu... edit: i am pretty sure the websites that were marked as low quality lost their rating on next google search update.

toomanybeersies 9y ago

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 9y ago
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 9y ago
  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 9y ago
    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.
  - chii 9y ago
    a lot of videos i watch seems to be sponsored videos (lately, there's been lots of 23 and me, and squarespace, skillshare and a few others). How come these videos are not violating youtube's policies?

PeterStuer 9y ago

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.

NietTim 9y ago
Yeah having country specific moderation teams with people form those countries would be great. But I won't hold my breath..
- dogma1138 9y ago
  It would be great until you reach Saudi Arabia or Iran, or heck don't need to go that far since Venezuela is just near by...
  - PeterStuer 9y ago
    So you are saying it would not be ok for those cultures to impose their morals, but it is ok for the US?
    - dogma1138 9y ago
      Moral relativism is nonsense, there are objectively better and worse moral systems. The US and any other country in the world is far from perfect but it doesn’t mean there aren’t better and worse, much much worse moral systems out there today.
ajkjk 9y ago
What culture-specific reasonings are you referring to, exactly?
- chmod775 9y ago

oh-kumudo 9y ago

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.

icantdrive55 9y ago

Sex/Nudity Example #2 (Please scan--do not watch whole movie.)

russellbeattie 9y ago

YouTubers are, as a group, the most entitled, selfish, immature group of people on the planet. They are constantly whining about what is an incredible service, that they are allowed to use, free of charge. The amount of time, money and effort it would cost for any of these "creators" to host their own multi-gigabyte videos with millions of downloads is mind boggling, yet they have little appreciation for the infrastructure and man-hours involved to create and run that business. They have no idea the gift they've been given. Instead they are endlessly trying to find some cause to assume that Google is out to get them somehow. It's a level of self-centered childishness that boggles my brain every single time I read some half-ass conspiracy post complaining about it. There are competitors to YouTube - if you don't like their policies, feel free to post your videos on the other services. It's as simple as that. Yes, everyone watches YouTube, but that doesn't suddenly turn Google into a public resource, nor should they be required to guarantee your sketchy video has advertisers.

CobrastanJorji 9y ago
Your point is appreciated, but keep in mind that these are people's livelihoods. They're in a vulnerable position, and change is a big deal for them. Fairly small changes to the YouTube landscape could mean major changes to their income and business viability. Change a few bits of a suggestion algorithm and the kid making $11 million per year playing with toys could be out of business overnight. It's the same reason people freak out when Apple does anything to the app store. It's life or death for a bunch of small companies and they have no power over the situation.
- kw71 9y ago
  The fact that those people chose or happened to make a living off someone else's website doesn't give them employment rights. Unfortunately the platform is property of YouTube and while I think it would be nice for them to explain their rules when they invite the public to engage and participate, they are allowed to hold these as trade secrets :(
  - SerLava 9y ago

tzfld 9y ago

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.

josteink 9y ago

So if your video in any way can be considered provocative, there’s guaranteed a checkbox to shut it down. Talking positively about drugs? Based on facts? Who cares, it’s against the status quo. Put it down! Confronting feminists with facts? Offensive, intolerant! Push the button, shut it down. Etc. I find this deeply problematic, but I guess the root of the problem here is YouTube’s de-facto video-monopoly. If there were more and bigger video-services besides YouTube that wouldn’t be so much of a problem. Then publishers could migrate to a platform with less censorship.

Molaxx 9y ago

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.

kalleboo 9y ago

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 9y ago
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 9y ago
  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.
- kthejoker2 9y ago
  Feel like I'm spamming my wife's channel but hers is Kyleandcourt. 100% family friendly, thousands of videos posted over the years with no flagging, then in October every other video is demonetized without explanation. So nope, their algo/system is jacked up and they won't be transparent about anything.

randyrand 9y ago

"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 9y ago
"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 9y ago
  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.
forgottenpass 9y ago
Tangential, but you might like this: https://www.ecosophia.net/hate-new-sex/ https://www.ecosophia.net/hate-new-sex/

tyfon 9y ago

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.

gldalmaso 9y ago

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 9y ago
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-google-raters/ https://arstechnica.com/features/2017/04/the-secret-lives-of... [2]: https://www.perspectiveapi.com/ https://www.perspectiveapi.com/

patrickaljord 9y ago

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 9y ago
The advertisers themselves saying they don't want their ads shown on this content.
- patrickaljord 9y ago
  All millions of them? I know Amazon still advertizes on Breitbart and they're one of the biggest advertisers in the world.

paul7986 9y ago

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.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

chillingeffect 9y ago

Women's equality is protected, but not men's? That's not what equality means: Many people have been conditioned to believe "MRAs" ( men's right's activists ) are in the same category as misogynists. Unfortunately. MRA's have a handful of very specific grievances against laws, not women. Their key issue is custody and visitation rights of their children. While much of the world is biased against women, family courts are heavily biased against men. Just as women deserve to have their equality addressed, men have the right to fight for visitation and custody of their children. YouTube's policies of supporting women's equality but not men's have had a threatening effect on men's groups trying to communicate to the public the need for equality. Most men don't find out until it's too late. Specifically a group called "The Honey Badgers", in Canada, has been struggling to communicate their message of equality. MRA's have several other equality issues such as ending circumcision and addressing high suicide, addiction and homelessness rates of men, but these are not misogynist ideas, merely health and fairness ones. Stick up for men. It doesn't mean you hate women at all!

qwerty456127 9y ago

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 9y ago
A video is demometized when Youtube refuses to run ads on the video.

whywhywhywhy 9y ago

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 9y ago
Any other provider would have the same issues with advertisers.
- CaptSpify 9y ago
  Who says the other provider needs to use advertising?

jbardnz 9y ago

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 9y ago
Couldn't the algorithm give its judgement before the video goes live?
- kthejoker2 9y ago
  YouTube is trying to roll out something like this, it hasn't taken effect yet though.
- falcolas 9y ago
  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 9y ago
    It also doesn't work - uploading a video privately passes monetization, uploading the same video pubically has the video monetized. It's completely arbitrary.
LeifCarrotson 9y ago
> The issue here being that by the time a manual review is complete most of the views for a video have already happened. Wouldn't the solution, then, be to credit the account for the revenue generated while it was demonetized? It's not like Youtube didn't get revenue from ad impressions while the video was flagged.

matt4077 9y ago

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.

DoubleGlazing 9y ago

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.

devit 9y ago

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 9y ago
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.
rtpg 9y ago
If you advertise on a video, you are giving the creator of the video money. There is no stronger endorsement.

squarefoot 9y ago

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.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

rkapsoro 9y ago

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.

simion314 9y ago
I think they can create a reputation for a channel, say each time a demonetization decision is reversed by a human then bump the channel reputation and consider this time when deciding to demonetize.
dsfyu404ed 9y ago
>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.

CSMastermind 9y ago

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

jacksmith21006 9y ago
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 9y ago
  A competitor doesn't have to use advertisers

Kazamai 9y ago

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.

ChicagoDave 9y ago

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 9y ago
> 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.
simook 9y ago
Why would million of subscribers bankrupt someone? I work in the industry building video software that would allow anyone to create their own personalozed video on demand or live streaming service. I havent ran the numbers myself, but the cost to provide a youtube like experience is not that expensive. I would be happy to run the numbers if we could determine how many minutes a single subsriber would watch in a month.

simook 9y ago

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.

juanmirocks 9y ago

Leaks, secrecy, demonetization, ... ?? Jezz, relax. Google/YouTube is just changing their policies for content and ads. It is absolutely comprehensible. It means lots of dollars. Whining youtubers should adapt. Period. And if they are still not happy, then switch to another social media platform. Or for that matter create a new one. "Secret YouTube Meeting"... what a stupid concept.

rfdub 9y ago

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.

tzs 9y ago
> Google et all would rather impose their bizarrely puritanical morality on the world, than do their jobs and build a system that actually works. I'm having a bit of trouble with the idea that something that is generating around $80 000 000 000 per year revenue and has been growing ~20% per year for the last several years is not something that "actually works".
- CaptSpify 9y ago
  It's the filtering that isn't working, not the platform
fhood 9y ago
I mean sex toys and bongs are one thing but excess profanity? Are you kidding me?