10 ms·

YouTube demonetizing videos where LGBTQ keywords are said

76 points by pdkl95 7y ago

raxxorrax 7y ago
Activists who are not LGBT but advocated in their names against values like free speech are probably responsible for this again.
- whenchamenia 7y ago
  Bingo. Identity politics is so dangerous because the power of such movements is actually mostly outside the hands of the minorities it claims to represent. Now we all just feel pandered to at best, and painted with a gross and broad brush in general.
octosphere 7y ago
I loathe the way Youtube is this big gatekeeper and can make arbitrary decisions on what is/isn't allowed. We need to build alternatives to Youtube which are not subject to arbitrary interference.
- scohesc 7y ago
  I don't even think it's Youtube. It's the advertisers dictating what should and shouldn't be in videos, and I think Youtube is being a bit over-zealous in marking these keywords. But of course it's """""the algorithms fault""""". Maybe if this algorithm isn't doing it's job properly and you can't think of (or afford) other methods to administrate your content, you shouldn't be able to host it in the first place.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - VikingCoder 7y ago
    > you shouldn't be able to host it in the first place. This is seriously your argument? What are you even saying, that laws should exist that say that if youtube can't perfectly accurately categorize the 300 hours of video that are uploaded every minute, then youtube should be barred from hosting any videos?
    - bonerman69 7y ago
      Yes!
      - VikingCoder 7y ago
        Respectfully, that's loony-tunes. We have a First Amendment for a reason. People should be able to offer services with a contract. Government shouldn't intervene like you describe.
        bonerman69 7y ago
        They should be required to pay Facebook's contracted moderators to moderate their videos. I trust Zuckerberg exclusively.
        bonerman69 7y ago
        Purging the conservatives/nazis would be a great start.
        whenchamenia 7y ago
        Yeah, sure, lets "purge" unpopular minorities. That won't somehow backfire. /s
        bonerman69 7y ago
        Almost worked last election.. Only once purged can you reliably shift the Overton window.
        bonerman69 7y ago
        Honestly, they'll just keep debunking everything. Control of the narrative requires control of the media... Obviously.
- beamatronic 7y ago
  You could almost think of say, reddit, as a crowdsourced index bolted onto the front of YouTube. In other words don’t use YouTube itself for discovery, use specific subreddits for initial discovery. Edit: I left out the part where you could probably add monetizatuon outside of YouTube
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - UserIsUnused 7y ago
    Reddit is not fully crowdsourced. Not every upvote is equal, and the algorithm that rules those is closed.
- Mathnerd314 7y ago
  There are alternatives: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_video_hosting_services https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_video_hosting_services. The issue is that those platforms don't pay much of anything either.
- goodoldneon 7y ago
  That sounds good in theory, but I'd bet a free speech alternative to YouTube would become a hotbed for hate.
- frogpelt 7y ago
  That's what things like Patreon are for. It's a third party monetization platform.
- sergiotapia 7y ago
  Until you get deplatformed like Gab did by payment processors, hosting providers, cdns and more. What can we do to mitigate these gatekeepers?
manfredo 7y ago
Much of the coverage of YouTube's demonetization algorithm has it framed as censoring or curbing LGBT speech, presumably because LGBT issues are controversial. I think it's much more likely that hateful anti-lgbt videos contain these terms much more frequently, which in turn causes these terms to be more aggressively policed by YouTube's algorithm. Enough videos talking about how the queers are ruining society or other hateful content, and it's pretty much inevitable that these terms are likely to cause demonetization. Ultimately, there's a trade-off to be made. YouTube could make their algorithm less strict, but then more objectionable content would monetized. YouTube doesn't want to go through another wringer of public criticism for it's advertising. The lawsuit filed by content creators is going nowhere. YouTube has blanket policies like not monetizing any videos with firearms, they are under zero obligation to monetize LGBT content.
- windsurfer 7y ago
  Have you ever tried to place an advertisement on YouTube? Advertisers can pick and choose the kinds of videos and kinds of users they place their ads on through the interface. This is different. This is YouTube saying "Absolutely no one may place an ad here under any circumstances." Advertisers have no say, and cannot place an ad on these videos even if they wanted to.
  - VikingCoder 7y ago
    ...unless they directly sponsor the content, paying the producer directly for a mention, etc. Which I increasingly see happen in more and more places. Binging with Babish, Linus Tech Tips, etc.
  - ehsankia 7y ago
    Eh, that's not entirely true, Yellow means limited ads, grey would be "Absolutely no ads". But limited is generally much less, it's advertisers that opt-in into running on all videos.
  - Mirioron 7y ago
    >Have you ever tried to place an advertisement on YouTube? Advertisers can pick and choose the kinds of videos and kinds of users they place their ads on through the interface. This didn't stop advertisers from pulling their ads during the adpocalypse. They pulled them because "YouTube has to do something!"
rpmisms 7y ago
To those who support the demonetization of conservative content: it's truly a slippery slope. Wait until minecraft is declared a white supremacist game, and let's watch Youtube torch themselves even harder.
- homonculus1 7y ago
  I can already see the "Meincraft" hoax screenshots from 4chan
  - bonerman69 7y ago
    Classic
  - mieseratte 7y ago
    "Mein Kraft" has a nice Hitlerian ring to it. I can see the criticisms now: "These racists are using Mein Kraft to achieve power through the joy of gaming!"
- spamizbad 7y ago
  LGBTQ content being demonetized has been going on for ages, long before the more recent controversy around conservative content. This was a major concern going back to 2011. Youtube's justification at the time was that content that made references to LGBTQ matters may not be appropriate for all audiences. Like the censorship of ISIS content, LGBTQ content censorship was celebrated by the same people now lamenting "conservative" demonetization.
  - mieseratte 7y ago
    > LGBTQ content censorship was celebrated by the same people now lamenting "conservative" demonetization. The "same people?" All of them? Since when does "Conservative" equal "anti-LGBT?" You do know there exists LGBT conservatives, yes?
    - jswizzy 7y ago
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
rhacker 7y ago
Why don't they just flip this on the head and let advertisers bid on videos that reach 100k views? Then there are no decisions being made by youtube at all. And it creates jobs at the agency to monitor and get their ads in front of people. Pre-bidding could happen on any content estimated to reach 100k.. Downvoters please explain - we have tons of threads about homeless and joblessness and how tech is concerned with eliminating jobs instead of creating them.
- arbitrage 7y ago
  that results in an echo-chamber effect. you'll still get shit content produced to game the numbers.
- Mirioron 7y ago
  Because advertisers don't actually want responsibility. They want to show their ads to as many people as effectively as possible. Advertisers go along with controversies to not get demonized by the media and activists for "supporting the evil people" and to score bonus points by doing what the media wants (so that the media talks about them). If you give this responsibility directly to advertisers then the advertisers are responsible for every single misplaced ad. They have no scapegoat if somebody comes knocking and asks why they support Mr Very Evil by giving them money.
bArray 7y ago
The worst thing Youtube ever did in this respect was to give in to the original advertisers dropping out of their platform. As far as I know, they introduced a bunch of changes that crippled the income of their creators and their speech, without any monetary return for doing so. In turn, creators have to be careful about what they say and viewers are slightly less interested in tamed content. With creators further restricted and not being paid as much, they reached out for third party funding sources (bypassing Yotube) and started to seriously consider other platforms as alternatives. Worse still, once one media company had seen success at trying to "cancel" Youtube, others strive to capitalize on the same opportunity. Now Youtube is stuck trying to implement forever more complicated filtering models, employing larger and larger numbers of humans for manual verification and are trying to find an impossible balance of responsibility. Dealing with news media is pretty much the same as dealing with bullies - simply ignore them and they'll go away. The advertisers will eventually come back when the heat is off and they see their competitors doing really well.
- ijpoijpoihpiuoh 7y ago
  > As far as I know, they introduced a bunch of changes that crippled the income of their creators and their speech, without any monetary return for doing so. Are you in a position to know about that, though? I mean, would you expect to be made aware of whether these changes were financially efficient to YouTube? Or are you just presuming they are not?
  - Mirioron 7y ago
    To explain a bit about your question to others: YouTube directly lost money by introducing these changes, because content that is demonetized doesn't make YouTube any money either. However, the bigger picture is that if YouTube in its entirety becomes advertiser unfriendly, then much more money is lost by them. So the question whether YouTube lost money with these demonetization rules is not so easy to answer.
  - bArray 7y ago
    > Are you in a position to know about that, though? I did proceed my statement with "As far as I know", meaning I'm willing to be educated differently. > I mean, would you expect to be made aware of whether these > changes were financially efficient to YouTube? Or are you > just presuming they are not? Again, I'm willing to be told differently, but the big advertisers that I was aware of were Disney, Coke and Car Manufacturers, none of which ever seemed to return, despite Youtube bending the knee in trying to get them to return. As another comment says, Youtube loses money delivering content without adverts. As the number of demonetized videos increases, so do the losses from those videos. My point is essentially that they although they made these changes, it doesn't appear to have benefited them. The number of "controversies" increases regardless of what they do, but now all that happens is that they hurt the communities they want to protect (such as LGBT) and annoy others.
ehsankia 7y ago
First off, the headline is misleading, the experiment in question didn't look at the words "said", but rather words in the title. Secondly, the experiment itself was contrived: They uploaded thousands of videos (with no video or audio) to a single channel, and looked at the monetization status. The issue is: 1. Youtube's system is probably not stateless. It most likely looks at the uploaders history and other channel data points. 2. An upload with no video or audio content is an abnormal data point. It's an outlier and doesn't represent real case scenario. Therefore, you can't really extrapolate the results from this experiment and reach any sort of conclusion.
- wesammikhail 7y ago
  > 1. Youtube's system is probably not stateless. It most likely looks at the uploaders history and other channel data points. We dont know how Youtube´s system operates which is actually part of the problem as the lack of transparency makes it hard for anyone to make any reasonable assessment. > 2. An upload with no video or audio content is an abnormal data point. It's an outlier and doesn't represent real case scenario. Not really as titles (combined with other meta-data) have for a long time impacted the state of monetization, suppression and view count for any given video regardless of its content.
  - ehsankia 7y ago
    > We dont know how Youtube´s system operates Sure, which is why this isn't "conclusive proof Youtube is blocking LGBTQ content". As I stated above, it's a contrived experiments and the results most likely can't be extrapolated, and you can't reach any definitive conclusions from it. > Not really as titles (combined with other meta-data) have for a long time impacted the state of monetization I'm not saying they don't play a role, most likely all of these data points are fed into the model. What I'm saying is that Youtube is primarily a video/audio site, so running an experiment with no audio/video isn't testing the model the way it runs in practice. The model wasn't made to classify only titles, this is an abnormal input and therefore the output can't be used to reach any conclusions.
    - 7y ago
redder2 7y ago
Just assumign this were real (its not). I kind of love how leftists got a taste of their own medicine. They push for platforming for everything and everyone who does dare not to agree with their ideology and they deep everything that they find offensive (and that is a lot) to be "hatespeech" and pressure Google and others to censor it. On the Stephen Crowder cases YouTube admitted he did NOT violate their terms and they demonized his entire channel for some jokes about a guy who calls himself the same things the jokes were about.
S_A_P 7y ago
I wonder if folks recognize that all of this is internet only drama. I live in a diverse city of 5 million people, and I rarely to never come across someone who is so charged up over identity or race or political affiliations. Those .00001% of the time that I do, its usually related to something from the internet spilling into real life. I can drive 10 minutes from downtown and be in the heart of multiple ethnic groups, affiliations, and cultures, and in fact I often do to go eat or hang out with friends. When I interact with people in these areas I don't see the same behaviors that I see online. It really just makes me want to spend less time online which is a shame. As I entered college in the early 90s and the internet was coming to the masses it seemed a much more hopeful place.
Igelau 7y ago
Whenever something seems wrong with social media, ask yourself "what is the real product here?" and check if what your seeing aligns with that. I didn't want to spend a half hour watching those goofballs in the video explain that their spreadsheets really mean something, so I took my own dumb stab at it. Pre: Advertising partners hand YouTube money and say "We would like to target the following list of keywords..." Event: a new video title appears! 1. Parse title for keywords 2. If there's a match from keywords to advertisers, mark as monetized, and serve up the ads. 3. Else, there is no one left to monetize this video. Mark as demonitized. No idea if it works this way. But even this naive algorithm could have a similar effect to the one being seen. So on one hand, it seems like a Won't Fix, because this is the product, and it's functioning as designed. On the other hand, this might be a nasty enough side effect that they should consider not doing it this way. This is like a soft preview of the AI Alignment Problem.
- plorkyeran 7y ago
  That isn't how it works. Monetized vs. demonitized determines whether or not it is even offered to any advertisers. A monetized video may still not have any ads if it manages to match anything that any advertisers are looking for, and a demonitized video will not have ads even if an advertiser would like to buy an ad there.
AlchemistCamp 7y ago
It's nice to be focused on programming screencasts In one sense, the YT algorithm punishes me for not maximizing watch time, but I'll never fall afoul of this kind of concern and best of all I don't monetize through advertisers. I make tutorials and if people like them so much they want more, they pay me on a subscription basis. No advertisers needed!

76 points by pdkl95 7y ago

Activists who are not LGBT but advocated in their names against values like free speech are probably responsible for this again.

whenchamenia 7y ago
Bingo. Identity politics is so dangerous because the power of such movements is actually mostly outside the hands of the minorities it claims to represent. Now we all just feel pandered to at best, and painted with a gross and broad brush in general.

octosphere 7y ago

I loathe the way Youtube is this big gatekeeper and can make arbitrary decisions on what is/isn't allowed. We need to build alternatives to Youtube which are not subject to arbitrary interference.

scohesc 7y ago
I don't even think it's Youtube. It's the advertisers dictating what should and shouldn't be in videos, and I think Youtube is being a bit over-zealous in marking these keywords. But of course it's """""the algorithms fault""""". Maybe if this algorithm isn't doing it's job properly and you can't think of (or afford) other methods to administrate your content, you shouldn't be able to host it in the first place.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- VikingCoder 7y ago
  > you shouldn't be able to host it in the first place. This is seriously your argument? What are you even saying, that laws should exist that say that if youtube can't perfectly accurately categorize the 300 hours of video that are uploaded every minute, then youtube should be barred from hosting any videos?
  - bonerman69 7y ago
    Yes!
    - VikingCoder 7y ago
      Respectfully, that's loony-tunes. We have a First Amendment for a reason. People should be able to offer services with a contract. Government shouldn't intervene like you describe.
      - bonerman69 7y ago
        They should be required to pay Facebook's contracted moderators to moderate their videos. I trust Zuckerberg exclusively.
        bonerman69 7y ago
        Purging the conservatives/nazis would be a great start.
        whenchamenia 7y ago
        Yeah, sure, lets "purge" unpopular minorities. That won't somehow backfire. /s
        bonerman69 7y ago
        Almost worked last election.. Only once purged can you reliably shift the Overton window.
        bonerman69 7y ago
        Honestly, they'll just keep debunking everything. Control of the narrative requires control of the media... Obviously.
beamatronic 7y ago
You could almost think of say, reddit, as a crowdsourced index bolted onto the front of YouTube. In other words don’t use YouTube itself for discovery, use specific subreddits for initial discovery. Edit: I left out the part where you could probably add monetizatuon outside of YouTube
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- UserIsUnused 7y ago
  Reddit is not fully crowdsourced. Not every upvote is equal, and the algorithm that rules those is closed.
Mathnerd314 7y ago
There are alternatives: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_video_hosting_services https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_video_hosting_services. The issue is that those platforms don't pay much of anything either.
goodoldneon 7y ago
That sounds good in theory, but I'd bet a free speech alternative to YouTube would become a hotbed for hate.
frogpelt 7y ago
That's what things like Patreon are for. It's a third party monetization platform.
sergiotapia 7y ago
Until you get deplatformed like Gab did by payment processors, hosting providers, cdns and more. What can we do to mitigate these gatekeepers?

manfredo 7y ago

Much of the coverage of YouTube's demonetization algorithm has it framed as censoring or curbing LGBT speech, presumably because LGBT issues are controversial. I think it's much more likely that hateful anti-lgbt videos contain these terms much more frequently, which in turn causes these terms to be more aggressively policed by YouTube's algorithm. Enough videos talking about how the queers are ruining society or other hateful content, and it's pretty much inevitable that these terms are likely to cause demonetization. Ultimately, there's a trade-off to be made. YouTube could make their algorithm less strict, but then more objectionable content would monetized. YouTube doesn't want to go through another wringer of public criticism for it's advertising. The lawsuit filed by content creators is going nowhere. YouTube has blanket policies like not monetizing any videos with firearms, they are under zero obligation to monetize LGBT content.

windsurfer 7y ago
Have you ever tried to place an advertisement on YouTube? Advertisers can pick and choose the kinds of videos and kinds of users they place their ads on through the interface. This is different. This is YouTube saying "Absolutely no one may place an ad here under any circumstances." Advertisers have no say, and cannot place an ad on these videos even if they wanted to.
- VikingCoder 7y ago
  ...unless they directly sponsor the content, paying the producer directly for a mention, etc. Which I increasingly see happen in more and more places. Binging with Babish, Linus Tech Tips, etc.
- ehsankia 7y ago
  Eh, that's not entirely true, Yellow means limited ads, grey would be "Absolutely no ads". But limited is generally much less, it's advertisers that opt-in into running on all videos.
- Mirioron 7y ago
  >Have you ever tried to place an advertisement on YouTube? Advertisers can pick and choose the kinds of videos and kinds of users they place their ads on through the interface. This didn't stop advertisers from pulling their ads during the adpocalypse. They pulled them because "YouTube has to do something!"

rpmisms 7y ago

To those who support the demonetization of conservative content: it's truly a slippery slope. Wait until minecraft is declared a white supremacist game, and let's watch Youtube torch themselves even harder.

homonculus1 7y ago
I can already see the "Meincraft" hoax screenshots from 4chan
- bonerman69 7y ago
  Classic
- mieseratte 7y ago
  "Mein Kraft" has a nice Hitlerian ring to it. I can see the criticisms now: "These racists are using Mein Kraft to achieve power through the joy of gaming!"
spamizbad 7y ago
LGBTQ content being demonetized has been going on for ages, long before the more recent controversy around conservative content. This was a major concern going back to 2011. Youtube's justification at the time was that content that made references to LGBTQ matters may not be appropriate for all audiences. Like the censorship of ISIS content, LGBTQ content censorship was celebrated by the same people now lamenting "conservative" demonetization.
- mieseratte 7y ago
  > LGBTQ content censorship was celebrated by the same people now lamenting "conservative" demonetization. The "same people?" All of them? Since when does "Conservative" equal "anti-LGBT?" You do know there exists LGBT conservatives, yes?
  - jswizzy 7y ago

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

rhacker 7y ago

Why don't they just flip this on the head and let advertisers bid on videos that reach 100k views? Then there are no decisions being made by youtube at all. And it creates jobs at the agency to monitor and get their ads in front of people. Pre-bidding could happen on any content estimated to reach 100k.. Downvoters please explain - we have tons of threads about homeless and joblessness and how tech is concerned with eliminating jobs instead of creating them.

arbitrage 7y ago
that results in an echo-chamber effect. you'll still get shit content produced to game the numbers.
Mirioron 7y ago
Because advertisers don't actually want responsibility. They want to show their ads to as many people as effectively as possible. Advertisers go along with controversies to not get demonized by the media and activists for "supporting the evil people" and to score bonus points by doing what the media wants (so that the media talks about them). If you give this responsibility directly to advertisers then the advertisers are responsible for every single misplaced ad. They have no scapegoat if somebody comes knocking and asks why they support Mr Very Evil by giving them money.

bArray 7y ago

The worst thing Youtube ever did in this respect was to give in to the original advertisers dropping out of their platform. As far as I know, they introduced a bunch of changes that crippled the income of their creators and their speech, without any monetary return for doing so. In turn, creators have to be careful about what they say and viewers are slightly less interested in tamed content. With creators further restricted and not being paid as much, they reached out for third party funding sources (bypassing Yotube) and started to seriously consider other platforms as alternatives. Worse still, once one media company had seen success at trying to "cancel" Youtube, others strive to capitalize on the same opportunity. Now Youtube is stuck trying to implement forever more complicated filtering models, employing larger and larger numbers of humans for manual verification and are trying to find an impossible balance of responsibility. Dealing with news media is pretty much the same as dealing with bullies - simply ignore them and they'll go away. The advertisers will eventually come back when the heat is off and they see their competitors doing really well.

ijpoijpoihpiuoh 7y ago
> As far as I know, they introduced a bunch of changes that crippled the income of their creators and their speech, without any monetary return for doing so. Are you in a position to know about that, though? I mean, would you expect to be made aware of whether these changes were financially efficient to YouTube? Or are you just presuming they are not?
- Mirioron 7y ago
  To explain a bit about your question to others: YouTube directly lost money by introducing these changes, because content that is demonetized doesn't make YouTube any money either. However, the bigger picture is that if YouTube in its entirety becomes advertiser unfriendly, then much more money is lost by them. So the question whether YouTube lost money with these demonetization rules is not so easy to answer.
- bArray 7y ago
  > Are you in a position to know about that, though? I did proceed my statement with "As far as I know", meaning I'm willing to be educated differently. > I mean, would you expect to be made aware of whether these > changes were financially efficient to YouTube? Or are you > just presuming they are not? Again, I'm willing to be told differently, but the big advertisers that I was aware of were Disney, Coke and Car Manufacturers, none of which ever seemed to return, despite Youtube bending the knee in trying to get them to return. As another comment says, Youtube loses money delivering content without adverts. As the number of demonetized videos increases, so do the losses from those videos. My point is essentially that they although they made these changes, it doesn't appear to have benefited them. The number of "controversies" increases regardless of what they do, but now all that happens is that they hurt the communities they want to protect (such as LGBT) and annoy others.

ehsankia 7y ago

First off, the headline is misleading, the experiment in question didn't look at the words "said", but rather words in the title. Secondly, the experiment itself was contrived: They uploaded thousands of videos (with no video or audio) to a single channel, and looked at the monetization status. The issue is: 1. Youtube's system is probably not stateless. It most likely looks at the uploaders history and other channel data points. 2. An upload with no video or audio content is an abnormal data point. It's an outlier and doesn't represent real case scenario. Therefore, you can't really extrapolate the results from this experiment and reach any sort of conclusion.

wesammikhail 7y ago
> 1. Youtube's system is probably not stateless. It most likely looks at the uploaders history and other channel data points. We dont know how Youtube´s system operates which is actually part of the problem as the lack of transparency makes it hard for anyone to make any reasonable assessment. > 2. An upload with no video or audio content is an abnormal data point. It's an outlier and doesn't represent real case scenario. Not really as titles (combined with other meta-data) have for a long time impacted the state of monetization, suppression and view count for any given video regardless of its content.
- ehsankia 7y ago
  > We dont know how Youtube´s system operates Sure, which is why this isn't "conclusive proof Youtube is blocking LGBTQ content". As I stated above, it's a contrived experiments and the results most likely can't be extrapolated, and you can't reach any definitive conclusions from it. > Not really as titles (combined with other meta-data) have for a long time impacted the state of monetization I'm not saying they don't play a role, most likely all of these data points are fed into the model. What I'm saying is that Youtube is primarily a video/audio site, so running an experiment with no audio/video isn't testing the model the way it runs in practice. The model wasn't made to classify only titles, this is an abnormal input and therefore the output can't be used to reach any conclusions.
  - 7y ago

redder2 7y ago

Just assumign this were real (its not). I kind of love how leftists got a taste of their own medicine. They push for platforming for everything and everyone who does dare not to agree with their ideology and they deep everything that they find offensive (and that is a lot) to be "hatespeech" and pressure Google and others to censor it. On the Stephen Crowder cases YouTube admitted he did NOT violate their terms and they demonized his entire channel for some jokes about a guy who calls himself the same things the jokes were about.

S_A_P 7y ago

I wonder if folks recognize that all of this is internet only drama. I live in a diverse city of 5 million people, and I rarely to never come across someone who is so charged up over identity or race or political affiliations. Those .00001% of the time that I do, its usually related to something from the internet spilling into real life. I can drive 10 minutes from downtown and be in the heart of multiple ethnic groups, affiliations, and cultures, and in fact I often do to go eat or hang out with friends. When I interact with people in these areas I don't see the same behaviors that I see online. It really just makes me want to spend less time online which is a shame. As I entered college in the early 90s and the internet was coming to the masses it seemed a much more hopeful place.

Igelau 7y ago

Whenever something seems wrong with social media, ask yourself "what is the real product here?" and check if what your seeing aligns with that. I didn't want to spend a half hour watching those goofballs in the video explain that their spreadsheets really mean something, so I took my own dumb stab at it. Pre: Advertising partners hand YouTube money and say "We would like to target the following list of keywords..." Event: a new video title appears! 1. Parse title for keywords 2. If there's a match from keywords to advertisers, mark as monetized, and serve up the ads. 3. Else, there is no one left to monetize this video. Mark as demonitized. No idea if it works this way. But even this naive algorithm could have a similar effect to the one being seen. So on one hand, it seems like a Won't Fix, because this is the product, and it's functioning as designed. On the other hand, this might be a nasty enough side effect that they should consider not doing it this way. This is like a soft preview of the AI Alignment Problem.

plorkyeran 7y ago
That isn't how it works. Monetized vs. demonitized determines whether or not it is even offered to any advertisers. A monetized video may still not have any ads if it manages to match anything that any advertisers are looking for, and a demonitized video will not have ads even if an advertiser would like to buy an ad there.

AlchemistCamp 7y ago

It's nice to be focused on programming screencasts In one sense, the YT algorithm punishes me for not maximizing watch time, but I'll never fall afoul of this kind of concern and best of all I don't monetize through advertisers. I make tutorials and if people like them so much they want more, they pay me on a subscription basis. No advertisers needed!