7 ms·

> “[It] in effect forces MCNs to either watch every video uploaded by their partners, or at least be reasonably confident none of the videos they are uploading

> “[It] in effect forces MCNs to either watch every video uploaded by their partners, or at least be reasonably confident none of the videos they are uploading could possibly either in the present or in the future violate or even come close to violating a YouTube guideline/terms,” Urgo said. Its funny how a lot of people think its totally reasonable to expect YouTube to pay people to watch every video, and yet the people bundling the video think thats unworkable. To some extent, if you're bundling content and you want all your content to be treated equally, there is a shared responsibility to not upload things advertisers don't like.

sillysaurus3 9y ago
It's not about what advertisers don't like: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pj8n78AuN3w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pj8n78AuN3w
- crankylinuxuser 9y ago
  And people think Facebook is bad. Remember DoubleClick, the ad company that did all sorts of scammy and slimy and hacky advertising? Yeah, Google bought them years ago. Now mix in "AI" -- which really means crap arbitrary computer decisions that you have no recourse on. Yeah, "Do Evil, and dont care". That's their slogan now.
  - HenryBemis 9y ago
    DoubleClick is not the devil. Ok it kinda is. I have been blocking them on my hosts file [1], Noscript, and Adblock+ for years. But I don't feel that YouTube content is relevant to this discussion (evil-ness of Advertisers). I don't think that YouTube has signed a Contract with (majority) of content creators that they will get paid $XX for YY-hours of viewing (or for ad display). That would have been breach of contract (kinda like when you bank changes your interest rate or your employer your salary without agreement). I don't really like what Google has become, but it's their rules, and it's a take it or leave it. Do creators have the guts to abandon massively Google for a couple of months? Similar to going for a strike. Can they make 500 million people not look at cat-videos for 2 months? [1]: someonewhocares.org/hosts
    - whywhywhywhy 9y ago
      >Can they make 500 million people not look at cat-videos for 2 months? We can pretend YouTube is just a twee place to watch cat videos like it was 12 years ago or we can actually realise that the network has evolved over time and people actually go there now to watch personalities not just funny home videos. I feel YouTube creators might be surprised with just how much power they wield if they did move to another platform en masse.
- nemothekid 9y ago
  I'm a fan of h3h3, but this video is misleading. The reason Kimmel and CNN still have ads on their channels is because they have a sales team who negotiates their own ads. Joe YouTuber does not. In other words, if your sales team is essentially the "black box of YouTube" you are beholden to YouTube's "demonetization algorithm". Kimmel (ABC/Disney) does not. Negotiating ad deals for every creator is hard, so "bundlers" (even those owned by Disney, like Maker) would rather just rely on YouTube.
  - youpassbutter 9y ago
    The video isn't misleading. You are missing the point. It's pointing out that advertisers don't really care about how controversial the content is. > In other words, if your sales team is essentially the "black box of YouTube" you are beholden to YouTube's "demonetization algorithm". Kimmel (ABC/Disney) does not. That's the point. Why is coca cola fine with advertising on controversial video on kimmel's TV shows but not on other people's content on youtube? You could discuss the same topic on youtube and you would be demonetized while kimmel isn't. Why? It can't be because advertisers don't like that type of content. Otherwise, they wouldn't be advertising on kimmel ( tv and youtube ). Advertisers are advertising in china, saudi arabia, israel, russia, etc. So obviously they have no qualms about image or controversy. From 2011 to 2016, they didn't have qualms about offensive content on youtube. So what changed? It's simply a matter of traditional media like CNN constantly attacking youtube and advertisers to get more money for themselves. That's it. If you applied the same rules on youtube as you did on TV, the entire industry would have to shut down. Think about it. During the las vegas shooting, CNN shows dead bodies and was exploiting controversial topic for their own selfish ends. Advertisers had no problem showing their ads on CNN during that time ( on TV or youtube ). But if a ordinary youtuber covered the topic, it would be flagged as "controversial" and not advertiser-friendly. But that doesn't make sense since advertisers had no problem advertising everywhere else. The only reason there is demonetization on youtube is because the likes of CNN has been constantly attacking youtubers and advertisers because they want the ad money coming to them. It's pretty slimey but what do you expect from CNN and the media.
    - dragonwriter 9y ago
CydeWeys 9y ago
I think it's even simpler: No one is owed advertising revenue. There are entire classes of content for which the risks of being associated with outweigh the benefits as far as advertisers are concerned. This goes well beyond YouTube; it's affected a lot of network and radio shows as well. The most recent example is Laura Ingraham, e.g. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/laura-ingraham-advertisers-drop-show-she-goes-on-vacation/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/laura-ingraham-advertisers-drop... . I think that the best way to support video creators going forward is Patreon or YouTube's built-in sponsorships. You can't rely on ad dollars from big companies anymore unless you yourself are a big content producer, on the level of an actual network.
- astronautjones 9y ago
  > here are entire classes of content for which the risks of being associated with outweigh the benefits as far as advertisers are concerned. This goes well beyond YouTube; it's affected a lot of network and radio shows as well. The most recent example is Laura Ingraham, e.g. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/laura-ingraham-advertisers-drop.. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/laura-ingraham-advertisers-drop.... . she's a contract employee who has a salary
  - CydeWeys 9y ago
    That doesn't have anything to do with whether advertisers are willing to be associated with her or her content, though. Are you proposing that YouTube start hiring video creators full time?
    - apetresc 9y ago
      No, that's what you were proposing indirectly by bringing up Laura Ingraham as an example. She's a salaried employee – as long as Fox News doesn't fire her over this, she sees none of the downside of pissing advertisers off, so there's nothing particularly "risky" about it. The same logic doesn't apply to 99.99% of YouTube creators, who are paid directly by their advertisers.
- wincy 9y ago
sandworm101 9y ago
>> its totally reasonable to expect YouTube to pay people to watch every video, and yet the people bundling the video think thats unworkable. Talk to full-time youtube creators, the people who pay their rent via youtube vids. It is a precarious existence. Shifts in youtube policies mean income varies wildly from month to month. They dare not risk hiring anyone. On the other hand, youtube's revenues are relatively stable. They control the money and thereby outsource any irregularity to content creators. If anyone is in a position to hire people it is youtube.
- BeetleB 9y ago
  >Talk to full-time youtube creators, the people who pay their rent via youtube vids. It is a precarious existence. Shifts in youtube policies mean income varies wildly from month to month. What you describe is the norm for pretty much every art form. Why are people expecting it to be better with art they post on Youtube? These people are running a business. That their future earnings will be very much out of their control (i.e. in Youtube's control) was something pretty much everyone knew. If I view this in business terms, they clearly made a very risky gamble and that they're losing is not a surprise. It's one thing to try to make money on the side via Youtube, affiliate links, etc. It's another to quit your job and work on it full time. If you do, you should own the consequences.
  - ghaff 9y ago
    I suppose the argument is that, in this case, one company effectively has a monopoly on monetizable distribution for a certain type of content. The somewhat analog is if there were only one gallery in a city that decided on a whim to display or not display certain artists. But, while true, I'm not sure how different it is from being dependent on fickle public tastes or a major sponsor/patron deciding to pull funding.
  - sandworm101 9y ago
    Not really. Art is a hit and miss business, but every artist has a clear understanding of how they will be compensated. They know they are getting a portion of sales, or a contracted fee for a gig. Youtube artists have absolutely no idea how, or if, they will be paid. The rate/likelihood of payment is very much separate from the popularity of a video. Youtube acts like content creators are all casual uploaders of homemade videos. The reality is that youtube's best content comes from professionals who deserve to be treated as such.
bobcostas55 9y ago
>Its funny how a lot of people think its totally reasonable to expect YouTube to pay people to watch every video, and yet the people bundling the video think thats unworkable. It's unworkable because it's impossible to predict what youtube thinks is OK. It's a black box whose outputs are often completely nonsensical. One of my favorite channels is TheReportOfTheWeek: it's just a kid sitting in his car reviewing fast food. There's nothing even remotely rule-breaking in his videos, yet he's been demonetized multiple times.
- Stranger43 9y ago
  the vast majority of times when a video is demonetized it's because of a 30second sondbite where some copyrighted music is playing in the background, even if it just the background noise at a mall or a store and would pass any sane non algorithmic test as fair use. And not because the intentional content breaks any rules. A big part of that is due to the power the copyright cartels of non-creators(aka music and film distribution companies) have brought to bare on youtube due to the amount of music video's being streamed on the platform means that youtube cannot really afford to be a fair use supporter or try to code any fair use awareness into their algorithms(even if it was technically feasible).
  - mistersquid 9y ago
    I was ready to spec an ML-backed plugin that would use insights and algorithms from cocktail party problem [0] [1] to remove copyrighted audio from muxed video when a quick search for "post-processing audio to remove copyrighted music" yielded among its first few results a YouTube help link titled "Remove claimed songs from videos" [2]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cocktail_party_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cocktail_party_effect [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source_separation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source_separation [2] https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2902117?hl=en https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2902117?hl=en
OnlyRepliesToBS 9y ago
This was a shitty decision by Google.

sillysaurus3 9y ago

It's not about what advertisers don't like: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pj8n78AuN3w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pj8n78AuN3w

crankylinuxuser 9y ago
And people think Facebook is bad. Remember DoubleClick, the ad company that did all sorts of scammy and slimy and hacky advertising? Yeah, Google bought them years ago. Now mix in "AI" -- which really means crap arbitrary computer decisions that you have no recourse on. Yeah, "Do Evil, and dont care". That's their slogan now.
- HenryBemis 9y ago
  DoubleClick is not the devil. Ok it kinda is. I have been blocking them on my hosts file [1], Noscript, and Adblock+ for years. But I don't feel that YouTube content is relevant to this discussion (evil-ness of Advertisers). I don't think that YouTube has signed a Contract with (majority) of content creators that they will get paid $XX for YY-hours of viewing (or for ad display). That would have been breach of contract (kinda like when you bank changes your interest rate or your employer your salary without agreement). I don't really like what Google has become, but it's their rules, and it's a take it or leave it. Do creators have the guts to abandon massively Google for a couple of months? Similar to going for a strike. Can they make 500 million people not look at cat-videos for 2 months? [1]: someonewhocares.org/hosts
  - whywhywhywhy 9y ago
    >Can they make 500 million people not look at cat-videos for 2 months? We can pretend YouTube is just a twee place to watch cat videos like it was 12 years ago or we can actually realise that the network has evolved over time and people actually go there now to watch personalities not just funny home videos. I feel YouTube creators might be surprised with just how much power they wield if they did move to another platform en masse.
nemothekid 9y ago
I'm a fan of h3h3, but this video is misleading. The reason Kimmel and CNN still have ads on their channels is because they have a sales team who negotiates their own ads. Joe YouTuber does not. In other words, if your sales team is essentially the "black box of YouTube" you are beholden to YouTube's "demonetization algorithm". Kimmel (ABC/Disney) does not. Negotiating ad deals for every creator is hard, so "bundlers" (even those owned by Disney, like Maker) would rather just rely on YouTube.
- youpassbutter 9y ago
  The video isn't misleading. You are missing the point. It's pointing out that advertisers don't really care about how controversial the content is. > In other words, if your sales team is essentially the "black box of YouTube" you are beholden to YouTube's "demonetization algorithm". Kimmel (ABC/Disney) does not. That's the point. Why is coca cola fine with advertising on controversial video on kimmel's TV shows but not on other people's content on youtube? You could discuss the same topic on youtube and you would be demonetized while kimmel isn't. Why? It can't be because advertisers don't like that type of content. Otherwise, they wouldn't be advertising on kimmel ( tv and youtube ). Advertisers are advertising in china, saudi arabia, israel, russia, etc. So obviously they have no qualms about image or controversy. From 2011 to 2016, they didn't have qualms about offensive content on youtube. So what changed? It's simply a matter of traditional media like CNN constantly attacking youtube and advertisers to get more money for themselves. That's it. If you applied the same rules on youtube as you did on TV, the entire industry would have to shut down. Think about it. During the las vegas shooting, CNN shows dead bodies and was exploiting controversial topic for their own selfish ends. Advertisers had no problem showing their ads on CNN during that time ( on TV or youtube ). But if a ordinary youtuber covered the topic, it would be flagged as "controversial" and not advertiser-friendly. But that doesn't make sense since advertisers had no problem advertising everywhere else. The only reason there is demonetization on youtube is because the likes of CNN has been constantly attacking youtubers and advertisers because they want the ad money coming to them. It's pretty slimey but what do you expect from CNN and the media.
  - dragonwriter 9y ago

CydeWeys 9y ago

I think it's even simpler: No one is owed advertising revenue. There are entire classes of content for which the risks of being associated with outweigh the benefits as far as advertisers are concerned. This goes well beyond YouTube; it's affected a lot of network and radio shows as well. The most recent example is Laura Ingraham, e.g. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/laura-ingraham-advertisers-drop-show-she-goes-on-vacation/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/laura-ingraham-advertisers-drop... . I think that the best way to support video creators going forward is Patreon or YouTube's built-in sponsorships. You can't rely on ad dollars from big companies anymore unless you yourself are a big content producer, on the level of an actual network.

astronautjones 9y ago
> here are entire classes of content for which the risks of being associated with outweigh the benefits as far as advertisers are concerned. This goes well beyond YouTube; it's affected a lot of network and radio shows as well. The most recent example is Laura Ingraham, e.g. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/laura-ingraham-advertisers-drop.. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/laura-ingraham-advertisers-drop.... . she's a contract employee who has a salary
- CydeWeys 9y ago
  That doesn't have anything to do with whether advertisers are willing to be associated with her or her content, though. Are you proposing that YouTube start hiring video creators full time?
  - apetresc 9y ago
    No, that's what you were proposing indirectly by bringing up Laura Ingraham as an example. She's a salaried employee – as long as Fox News doesn't fire her over this, she sees none of the downside of pissing advertisers off, so there's nothing particularly "risky" about it. The same logic doesn't apply to 99.99% of YouTube creators, who are paid directly by their advertisers.
wincy 9y ago

sandworm101 9y ago

>> its totally reasonable to expect YouTube to pay people to watch every video, and yet the people bundling the video think thats unworkable. Talk to full-time youtube creators, the people who pay their rent via youtube vids. It is a precarious existence. Shifts in youtube policies mean income varies wildly from month to month. They dare not risk hiring anyone. On the other hand, youtube's revenues are relatively stable. They control the money and thereby outsource any irregularity to content creators. If anyone is in a position to hire people it is youtube.

BeetleB 9y ago
>Talk to full-time youtube creators, the people who pay their rent via youtube vids. It is a precarious existence. Shifts in youtube policies mean income varies wildly from month to month. What you describe is the norm for pretty much every art form. Why are people expecting it to be better with art they post on Youtube? These people are running a business. That their future earnings will be very much out of their control (i.e. in Youtube's control) was something pretty much everyone knew. If I view this in business terms, they clearly made a very risky gamble and that they're losing is not a surprise. It's one thing to try to make money on the side via Youtube, affiliate links, etc. It's another to quit your job and work on it full time. If you do, you should own the consequences.
- ghaff 9y ago
  I suppose the argument is that, in this case, one company effectively has a monopoly on monetizable distribution for a certain type of content. The somewhat analog is if there were only one gallery in a city that decided on a whim to display or not display certain artists. But, while true, I'm not sure how different it is from being dependent on fickle public tastes or a major sponsor/patron deciding to pull funding.
- sandworm101 9y ago
  Not really. Art is a hit and miss business, but every artist has a clear understanding of how they will be compensated. They know they are getting a portion of sales, or a contracted fee for a gig. Youtube artists have absolutely no idea how, or if, they will be paid. The rate/likelihood of payment is very much separate from the popularity of a video. Youtube acts like content creators are all casual uploaders of homemade videos. The reality is that youtube's best content comes from professionals who deserve to be treated as such.

bobcostas55 9y ago

>Its funny how a lot of people think its totally reasonable to expect YouTube to pay people to watch every video, and yet the people bundling the video think thats unworkable. It's unworkable because it's impossible to predict what youtube thinks is OK. It's a black box whose outputs are often completely nonsensical. One of my favorite channels is TheReportOfTheWeek: it's just a kid sitting in his car reviewing fast food. There's nothing even remotely rule-breaking in his videos, yet he's been demonetized multiple times.

Stranger43 9y ago
the vast majority of times when a video is demonetized it's because of a 30second sondbite where some copyrighted music is playing in the background, even if it just the background noise at a mall or a store and would pass any sane non algorithmic test as fair use. And not because the intentional content breaks any rules. A big part of that is due to the power the copyright cartels of non-creators(aka music and film distribution companies) have brought to bare on youtube due to the amount of music video's being streamed on the platform means that youtube cannot really afford to be a fair use supporter or try to code any fair use awareness into their algorithms(even if it was technically feasible).
- mistersquid 9y ago
  I was ready to spec an ML-backed plugin that would use insights and algorithms from cocktail party problem [0] [1] to remove copyrighted audio from muxed video when a quick search for "post-processing audio to remove copyrighted music" yielded among its first few results a YouTube help link titled "Remove claimed songs from videos" [2]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cocktail_party_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cocktail_party_effect [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source_separation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source_separation [2] https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2902117?hl=en https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2902117?hl=en

OnlyRepliesToBS 9y ago

This was a shitty decision by Google.