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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 pol

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.
      - crankylinuxuser 9y ago
        Yes, and demonetized also de-indexes from search and hides the video unless directly shared. AvE has been dealing with this very issue, where he'd upload a new vid, and within an hour, demonetized. It would within 1 day go unindexed. And for those who don't know, the first 48 hours is when most views come in. So, no ads = no money. He figured out if you make the video unindexed, then it would be demonet'ed. Then he would argue, and monet would be turned on. And then he'd make it public. AvE got sick of that, and moved to Patreon, and then releases videos telling people to install Adblocks to stop youtube ads. (Pateron's had its own recent scandal https://blog.patreon.com/updating-patreons-fee-structure/ https://blog.patreon.com/updating-patreons-fee-structure/ - Ive been seeing quite a few artists and customers move away from that platform. Where will they go? Who knows.. I digress.) But to a larger point, storage space is near-zero cost. Bandwidth over a video that's unindexed is ~=0. And if unindexed stale video happens to go away, aww gee shucks. Google keeps the mindshare as being the only videosite in town, and starves any upstarts with their monopoly of videosite/ad/search proficiency. Tl;Dr: Google is a very bad actor here.
        jacksmith21006 9y ago
        There is nothing in your post that suggest Google is a bad actor. They do not benefit in anyway when fine content is demonetized. It actually cost them.
    - simion314 9y ago
      I think the way you responded caused your downvotes not the point you made. Google is not paying the creators for uploading a video, then you can upload 100 videos a day and get money, the creator gets payed only if ads run on the video but if the video runs ads then Google also gets payed, so me creating a popular video and running ads on it will make Google money. I suspect Google is afraid of detailing why a video was flagged because bad people could adapt and not use those words but other equivalent, but this hits hard on good creators and frustrates them. Why are not creators moving to other providers? Because the consumers are on youtube for now, but I noticed a few youtubers moving on Twitch completly so if a few more youtube alternatives would show up then with the bad karma youtube is getting now google may not be able to reverse the migration to new platforms. Google should admit that their AI is dumb, colaborate with creators in finding a solution, maybe have a reputation system like if this channel has a good reputation and our AI is confused then assume AI is dumb until proven that creator is bad.
      - pixl97 9y ago
        > because bad people could adapt and not use those words but other equivalent, but this hits hard on good creators and frustrates them A bad actor will try to find the limits to your system 10,000 times. A good actor will give up and go elsewhere. When everybody loses the bad actor will gain more perspectively.
    - jacksmith21006 9y ago
      Wrong. Google still has the expense of serving the video without the ad revenue. They do not benefit but instead the exact opposite.
      - Tarq0n 9y ago
        Google might still incur a net benefit from keeping viewers on their platform where they'll also watch monetized videos.
        crankylinuxuser 9y ago
        That's precisely it. "Social Media", be it facebook empire, twitter, twitch, google empire, amazon empire... They want mindshare. They want people to keep using it, millions of people. Because the bigger the number, the more they can use various ways to entrap people into those platforms. People keep saying that a demonetized video costs - the trivial bandwidth and storage of a deindexed video is miniscule. Yet, making people think they're the only game in town is all encompassing. You deal with them and their games and give them content, or you go away. And not only that, but when people put up videos, they're also giving Google/Alphabet free machine vision content. Which that is actually worth quite a bit because content's hard to just generate.
  - pbhjpbhj 9y ago
    Perhaps it competes with a favoured provider or someone who has paid for promotion?
FRex 9y ago
To me it's absolutely not okay that they have came up with a bunch of new and secret rules all on their own, against their own community and apply them selectively and retroactively over night to videos from months or years ago and blame "the algorithm" for anything that goes wrong. This is also on top of other debacles and constant layout changes that many people hated. If YouTube wants so badly to not be outraged at by the public then they are free to get their shit together or close up if they can't manage. Things like [0] are also not okay to be happening. Ad money shouldn't justify (accidentally) sweeping up terrorism under the rug and throwing journalists who risk their lives out of the platform. [0] - https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/22/world/middleeast/syria-youtube-videos-isis.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/22/world/middleeast/syria-yo...
bufferoverflow 9y ago
The real problem with these rules is subjectivity. Something you would consider offensive is probably not from my perspective. In the end it will be a moderator bias galore. I can easily see a Christian mod demonetizing atheist videos, democrat <--> republican, prude <--> free, etc etc etc. I'd like to see a true free speech platform with violence/nudity sectioned off according to the local laws, and then let the advertisers decide where they want to spend the money, instead of treating them as children who don't know better.
- PeachPlum 9y ago
  With Anita Sarkeesian and Zoe Quinn on the team, what could go wrong?
  - sctb 9y ago
    We've already asked you twice to stop trolling, so we've banned this account. We're happy to unban accounts if you email us at hn@ycombinator.com and we believe you'll start following the guidelines. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- chiaro 9y ago
  They have a pretty clear set of guidelines for what counts as controversial. I think they do a good job of circumscribing the worst of what they've been funding up to this point, without being too overreaching.
  - viridian 9y ago
    I don't use youtube much, but I know that Joe Rogan's podcasts as well as a bunch of Jiu Jitsu stuff has been demonitized for no real reason. I can't imagine it's going well for other, more dramatic communities if even a combat sport with no striking is seeing a bunch of videos culled in the process.
  - CaptSpify 9y ago
    This is entirely untrue. Just search for "youtube" in HN's search and you'll see articles describing how inconsistent, inaccurate, and overreaching they've been.
douglaswlance 9y ago
Until you realize the people filling out this form are purple haired, hairy-armpit militant feminists and soyboy beta Bronies.
- sctb 9y ago
  If you won't stop breaking the guidelines by posting unsubstantive comments we'll ban the account. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
mromanuk 9y ago
I concur, youtube is filled with trash, at least for the youngest audience (2-5 years)
- jonathanstrange 9y ago
  If you let your 2-5 year olds watch Youtube videos, then you're the problem, not Youtube. I really mean that seriously, this is just irresponsible.
  - pbhjpbhj 9y ago
    We're watching some nursery rhymes (Farmees) on YT now, it's as good as TV (!), it's low effort but there far worse things IMO educationally/recreationally. Is it all TV you object to for this age range or just when it's served via YouTube? Mind you, as an aside, we're using FireTV so we won't be allowed by Google to have YouTube from January ...
  - mromanuk 9y ago
    I agree with you, that is responsibility of the parents. Anyway, that doesn't change the fact that youtube has trash content targeted to small kids
debacle 9y ago
The real problem is the outcome. If you demonetize a video by accident, and then "fix" it, you've effectively killed up to 90% of the youtuber's income from that video. Many youtubers get most of their views within the first 48 hours of posting a video. This impacts people who post a video <1/wk the most, because one demonetized video can mean a huge hit to their monthly income. Now you're driving out higher production values in trade for shorter, more frequent videos.
- pc86 9y ago
  > Now you're driving out higher production values in trade for shorter, more frequent videos. The market does that anyway, though. Ask any YT creator, or just looks at the stats for the two approaches in the same niche. Frequency (with a minimum bar of quality) will beat out infrequent but very very high quality every time. It's better to post 2 minimally edited, acceptable quality videos every week than one high production value video every 2-3 weeks.
- jacksmith21006 9y ago
  That is true but it also hurts Google. So Google is not a bad actor. It is unfortunate and hopefully Google can figure out a way to change.
  - debacle 9y ago
    I would not be shocked if Google was not at 100% ad fill, especially considering how much I see their own products being advertised.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
sandworm101 9y ago
Funny, I see plenty of adds next to "offensive" content in other media. Plenty sponsor TV news, which is fully of the violence specifically forbidden here. SouthPark gets advertisers. So youtube's blanket demonetization is overkill. If certain sponsors want out of certain videos, they should be free to do so. But leave room for those advertisers who aren't so squeamish.
spyder 9y ago
Yea, I don't see how this is different from the public guidelines: https://www.youtube.com/yt/about/policies/#community-guidelines https://www.youtube.com/yt/about/policies/#community-guideli... The problem is the demonetization of the videos that don't break the guidelines. I'm guessing it comes from the poor automated detection and not from the human reviewers.

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.
    - crankylinuxuser 9y ago
      Yes, and demonetized also de-indexes from search and hides the video unless directly shared. AvE has been dealing with this very issue, where he'd upload a new vid, and within an hour, demonetized. It would within 1 day go unindexed. And for those who don't know, the first 48 hours is when most views come in. So, no ads = no money. He figured out if you make the video unindexed, then it would be demonet'ed. Then he would argue, and monet would be turned on. And then he'd make it public. AvE got sick of that, and moved to Patreon, and then releases videos telling people to install Adblocks to stop youtube ads. (Pateron's had its own recent scandal https://blog.patreon.com/updating-patreons-fee-structure/ https://blog.patreon.com/updating-patreons-fee-structure/ - Ive been seeing quite a few artists and customers move away from that platform. Where will they go? Who knows.. I digress.) But to a larger point, storage space is near-zero cost. Bandwidth over a video that's unindexed is ~=0. And if unindexed stale video happens to go away, aww gee shucks. Google keeps the mindshare as being the only videosite in town, and starves any upstarts with their monopoly of videosite/ad/search proficiency. Tl;Dr: Google is a very bad actor here.
      - jacksmith21006 9y ago
        There is nothing in your post that suggest Google is a bad actor. They do not benefit in anyway when fine content is demonetized. It actually cost them.
  - simion314 9y ago
    I think the way you responded caused your downvotes not the point you made. Google is not paying the creators for uploading a video, then you can upload 100 videos a day and get money, the creator gets payed only if ads run on the video but if the video runs ads then Google also gets payed, so me creating a popular video and running ads on it will make Google money. I suspect Google is afraid of detailing why a video was flagged because bad people could adapt and not use those words but other equivalent, but this hits hard on good creators and frustrates them. Why are not creators moving to other providers? Because the consumers are on youtube for now, but I noticed a few youtubers moving on Twitch completly so if a few more youtube alternatives would show up then with the bad karma youtube is getting now google may not be able to reverse the migration to new platforms. Google should admit that their AI is dumb, colaborate with creators in finding a solution, maybe have a reputation system like if this channel has a good reputation and our AI is confused then assume AI is dumb until proven that creator is bad.
    - pixl97 9y ago
      > because bad people could adapt and not use those words but other equivalent, but this hits hard on good creators and frustrates them A bad actor will try to find the limits to your system 10,000 times. A good actor will give up and go elsewhere. When everybody loses the bad actor will gain more perspectively.
  - jacksmith21006 9y ago
    Wrong. Google still has the expense of serving the video without the ad revenue. They do not benefit but instead the exact opposite.
    - Tarq0n 9y ago
      Google might still incur a net benefit from keeping viewers on their platform where they'll also watch monetized videos.
      - crankylinuxuser 9y ago
        That's precisely it. "Social Media", be it facebook empire, twitter, twitch, google empire, amazon empire... They want mindshare. They want people to keep using it, millions of people. Because the bigger the number, the more they can use various ways to entrap people into those platforms. People keep saying that a demonetized video costs - the trivial bandwidth and storage of a deindexed video is miniscule. Yet, making people think they're the only game in town is all encompassing. You deal with them and their games and give them content, or you go away. And not only that, but when people put up videos, they're also giving Google/Alphabet free machine vision content. Which that is actually worth quite a bit because content's hard to just generate.
- pbhjpbhj 9y ago
  Perhaps it competes with a favoured provider or someone who has paid for promotion?

FRex 9y ago

To me it's absolutely not okay that they have came up with a bunch of new and secret rules all on their own, against their own community and apply them selectively and retroactively over night to videos from months or years ago and blame "the algorithm" for anything that goes wrong. This is also on top of other debacles and constant layout changes that many people hated. If YouTube wants so badly to not be outraged at by the public then they are free to get their shit together or close up if they can't manage. Things like [0] are also not okay to be happening. Ad money shouldn't justify (accidentally) sweeping up terrorism under the rug and throwing journalists who risk their lives out of the platform. [0] - https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/22/world/middleeast/syria-youtube-videos-isis.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/22/world/middleeast/syria-yo...

bufferoverflow 9y ago

The real problem with these rules is subjectivity. Something you would consider offensive is probably not from my perspective. In the end it will be a moderator bias galore. I can easily see a Christian mod demonetizing atheist videos, democrat <--> republican, prude <--> free, etc etc etc. I'd like to see a true free speech platform with violence/nudity sectioned off according to the local laws, and then let the advertisers decide where they want to spend the money, instead of treating them as children who don't know better.

PeachPlum 9y ago
With Anita Sarkeesian and Zoe Quinn on the team, what could go wrong?
- sctb 9y ago
  We've already asked you twice to stop trolling, so we've banned this account. We're happy to unban accounts if you email us at hn@ycombinator.com and we believe you'll start following the guidelines. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
chiaro 9y ago
They have a pretty clear set of guidelines for what counts as controversial. I think they do a good job of circumscribing the worst of what they've been funding up to this point, without being too overreaching.
- viridian 9y ago
  I don't use youtube much, but I know that Joe Rogan's podcasts as well as a bunch of Jiu Jitsu stuff has been demonitized for no real reason. I can't imagine it's going well for other, more dramatic communities if even a combat sport with no striking is seeing a bunch of videos culled in the process.
- CaptSpify 9y ago
  This is entirely untrue. Just search for "youtube" in HN's search and you'll see articles describing how inconsistent, inaccurate, and overreaching they've been.

douglaswlance 9y ago

Until you realize the people filling out this form are purple haired, hairy-armpit militant feminists and soyboy beta Bronies.

sctb 9y ago
If you won't stop breaking the guidelines by posting unsubstantive comments we'll ban the account. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

mromanuk 9y ago

I concur, youtube is filled with trash, at least for the youngest audience (2-5 years)

jonathanstrange 9y ago
If you let your 2-5 year olds watch Youtube videos, then you're the problem, not Youtube. I really mean that seriously, this is just irresponsible.
- pbhjpbhj 9y ago
  We're watching some nursery rhymes (Farmees) on YT now, it's as good as TV (!), it's low effort but there far worse things IMO educationally/recreationally. Is it all TV you object to for this age range or just when it's served via YouTube? Mind you, as an aside, we're using FireTV so we won't be allowed by Google to have YouTube from January ...
- mromanuk 9y ago
  I agree with you, that is responsibility of the parents. Anyway, that doesn't change the fact that youtube has trash content targeted to small kids

debacle 9y ago

The real problem is the outcome. If you demonetize a video by accident, and then "fix" it, you've effectively killed up to 90% of the youtuber's income from that video. Many youtubers get most of their views within the first 48 hours of posting a video. This impacts people who post a video <1/wk the most, because one demonetized video can mean a huge hit to their monthly income. Now you're driving out higher production values in trade for shorter, more frequent videos.

pc86 9y ago
> Now you're driving out higher production values in trade for shorter, more frequent videos. The market does that anyway, though. Ask any YT creator, or just looks at the stats for the two approaches in the same niche. Frequency (with a minimum bar of quality) will beat out infrequent but very very high quality every time. It's better to post 2 minimally edited, acceptable quality videos every week than one high production value video every 2-3 weeks.
jacksmith21006 9y ago
That is true but it also hurts Google. So Google is not a bad actor. It is unfortunate and hopefully Google can figure out a way to change.
- debacle 9y ago
  I would not be shocked if Google was not at 100% ad fill, especially considering how much I see their own products being advertised.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

sandworm101 9y ago

Funny, I see plenty of adds next to "offensive" content in other media. Plenty sponsor TV news, which is fully of the violence specifically forbidden here. SouthPark gets advertisers. So youtube's blanket demonetization is overkill. If certain sponsors want out of certain videos, they should be free to do so. But leave room for those advertisers who aren't so squeamish.

spyder 9y ago

Yea, I don't see how this is different from the public guidelines: https://www.youtube.com/yt/about/policies/#community-guidelines https://www.youtube.com/yt/about/policies/#community-guideli... The problem is the demonetization of the videos that don't break the guidelines. I'm guessing it comes from the poor automated detection and not from the human reviewers.