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Soft White Underbelly demonetized by YouTube [video]

192 points by keithnz 4y ago

busterarm 4y ago
It's disheartening to see so little consideration among the comentariat that it's possible for once that YouTube may have actually done the right thing here for a change in trying to curb exploitation-content on their platform.
- iforgotpassword 4y ago
  Care to explain why? I don't know that channel.
  - busterarm 4y ago
    Here's $50 to tell me your life story that I'm going to make $3-5/1k views on. If I make enough money I might come back for another video and give you more money. No guarantees that you don't feed your addictions with this money though...but your addiction is good content anyway.
    - bitcharmer 4y ago
      How do you know how much the interviewees were paid? Were they forced to do the interviews? Do you have evidence that shows they felted being exploited?
      - busterarm 4y ago
        What do you think the mental state is of his interviewees? How many of them do you think are in a reasonable state of mind to understand AND consent to any kind of contract? What about Amanda who literally got put into a conservatorship? Keep in mind we're in a society that doesn't consider you able to consent if you're even a little bit drunk and we're talking about heavy drug users for the most part here.
    - ConSeannery 4y ago
      He has stated in several interviews and previous videos that he gives away the money he makes on the channel. Watch the video linked, he says it again on it.
      - busterarm 4y ago
        He has a $10/mo subscription site with a forum. Turning it into a tax writeoff doesn't make it less exploitative.
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - SpelingBeeChamp 4y ago
        Do you believe him, just because he says so?
    - junon 4y ago
      This isn't at all how that channel works. Flagrant dismissal of a body of work is explicitly against the Hacker News guidelines. I suggest you review them at the bottom of this page.
      - busterarm 4y ago
        junon 4y ago
        You've not done a lot of research on this channel, have you?
        busterarm 4y ago
        I'm not the first nor the last person to levy the exact same criticism. Most of them from his own fucking subreddit.
        _bohm 4y ago
        On the contrary, I find most of his videos to be deeply humanizing of their subjects, who would probably be ignored or brushed aside in a normal day-to-day interaction by the typical viewer of the channel. Also, speaking personally as someone who has a family member who suffers from addiction, I have found it valuable to listen to people speak candidly about their struggles to someone uninvested in their lives, in a way that my family member could never speak to me.
        busterarm 4y ago
        Separate how viewing the content makes you feel from understanding the subject's ability to completely understand and consent to a contractual arrangement to have their story recorded, broadcast and sold. When an addict-relative sells all of your valuables, are they in a proper state of mind or is their addiction ruling their life? Do they fully comprehend the outcome of their actions? Most of these people are not in any proper state of mind to be able to sign on to appear on a show like this.
    - concinds 4y ago
      Everyone on Earth is being paid less than they generate for their business. That is true for utterly everyone except equityholders. And your reasoning is completely self-defeating, unless you suggest that this YouTube channel should kidnap their interviewees and force them to get sober under duress. Soft White Underbelly is not the government. BTW, YouTube still makes money off demonetized videos, since they increase overall viewer engagement; which nullifies your core point.
      - busterarm 4y ago
        No, they're just not outright banning him. Demonitized content has _zero_ reach on YouTube. It's them telling you that they do not want you. There's no point to uploading new content when you're demonitized.
        concinds 4y ago
        This is not true; demonetized videos still get recommended on all of YouTube's surfaces (homepage, recommendations sidebar, end-of-video suggestions).
        switch007 4y ago
        Is that lying while telling the truth? How often? How many people will see it? How many views vs monetized?
        diydsp 4y ago
        From the alg's perspective, each video is a mutant offspring. It has hypothetical values in several contexts. On publication, those values get tested for a bit until the value converges. So new vids get a chance... but they're competing with known, larger quantities. Advertiser-edgy content has a signal attached to it saying "don't let this get tested much," in case it gets popular.
    - nverno 4y ago
      You're treating it as if their life story is a zero-sum game, where it was worth 3050$ and he only gave them 50$. I've always given away my life story for free and don't feel gypped whatsoever.
      - busterarm 4y ago
        It's a fortunate position in life to not have to choose between getting your next fix and admitting to a pattern of criminality on camera. Related: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEUh4FZIf8E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEUh4FZIf8E
        nverno 4y ago
        That's just your point of view. From mine, life is a long tumble down the stairs
        HardlyCurious 4y ago
        I haven't watch many of his videos, but I didn't get any sense of a predatory relationship. For what I saw, I was impressed with the content. He shows us a side of humanity normally left in the shadows. There is merit in that.
        honkdaddy 4y ago
        If someone paid me $50 to admit on camera I've broken laws in the past, I think I'd probably be more than happy to. Are you under the impression the police are going to start arresting people on Soft White Underbelly because they admit to doing drugs? That's not really how the American justice system works, from what I understand.
        peterangular 4y ago
        Yea - I wouldn't. I'd rather not have such direct representation of myself out there - invariably people would recognize you, and invariably they would pass the video around social groups. Just the way things work in the social media era. Also, this could really hurt you if a video with this sorta subject matter/content would be passed around your place of work. This is about to get bitter so please take with a grain of salt: I've learned that most people are gossipy and will often not give people the benefit of the doubt. People judge others to bolster their ego and elevate their own social standing. Even if it was something out of your control like childhood trauma, people will still extrapolate their own opinions. Then there's the "nothing's ever deleted from the internet" trope - even if I needed it taken down and the original uploader agreed, the content could easily exist elsewhere. I guarantee there's people doing reaction content to this. All-in-all I functionally can't see the benefit of doing one of these outside of $... and I agree with other posters that it's problematic. It reminds me of photography class in college where all of these kids would photograph the homeless. Everyone thought they were brilliant by shining a light on poverty or something.... Really, they were just privileged asshole kids with savior complexes waving money in front of people who didn't have the option to turn it down; only to put these people on display in school galleries where the subject of the photo would never be allowed.
    - Fricken 4y ago
      In documentary we don't typically pay people anything to tell us their life stories.
      - busterarm 4y ago
        But Mark does pay his subjects.
        stackola 4y ago
        Would it be better if he didn't?
        concinds 4y ago
        Would it be more ethical not to pay? I don't get it. Interview them for free, you're making money without compensating them. Interview them and give them part, you're exploiting them by underpaying them. Interview them and give them all profits, you're enabling their addiction. Give away the non-ad revenue, you're just abusing a tax writeoff. Don't give it away, you're enriching yourself. Your economic ideology seems quite fluid, and seems to lack internal consistency.
        treis 4y ago
        Gets murky when we're talking about prostitutes that funnel their money to/get it stolen by pimps. Also gets murky when we're talking about drug addicts who are going to use that money to buy drugs. Also gets murky when we're talking about people that are under the influence of drugs. They probably don't want a video out there of them blasted to the moon if they ever get clean.
        brokenmachine 4y ago
        You would be shocked to learn how many of your coworkers use their paycheck to buy drugs.
        zarzavat 4y ago
        It’s not exploitative to pay people for their time. It’s basic decency. There’s three options for remuneration. 1. Pay nothing 2. Pay them for their time 3. Give them a large cut If the contention is that they may be junkies then 3 is probably not a great idea, better to give the money to charity. If the contention is that it’s exploitation then surely 2 is less exploitative than 1. In the end, giving people a voice who don’t have one currently is the complete opposite of exploitation.
    - graderjs 4y ago
      So these people shouldn't have a voice (be able to participate in any way in the commercial system the rest of us created), because we find their economic engagements to be "morally repugnant"? And yet the only "voice" they should have, should be permitted to have, is relegated to playing their accepted parts in the sex/vice industry their only "moral crime" is to talk about? Basically we want to mediate their economics and not allow them to speak up outside of the roles we want to put them in to. And we're going to pretend to justify we're doing that, in "their best interest", tacitly projecting the lies that: "we know what's best for them", and we get to decide their autonomy, not them. So, on the one hand, we decry the fact that they seem to lack power and agency, while willingly with the other hand we strip them of what agency and power they do have by saying, "shut up, don't spend your money on that, this is for your own good." Sounds fucked up and abusive to me. The people should talk if they want to. We shouldn't pretend that we know how to mediate that for them. If they want to expand the way they engage economically, and narratively, in society, then I'm not going to step in their way. I think it's good for them, if they want to do it. I think it's good to have their story told. Maybe we're just unhappy their voices reveal our hypocrisy? Maybe should you think it through before you find a way to condemn-label something that perhaps you're just a little uncomfortable with. Examine yourself first, rather than projecting onto them, trying to further limit their access, is my unsolicited advice. Thanks
      - socialismisok 4y ago
        I think the parent is suggesting they should be paid more.
        graderjs 4y ago
        Hmm, maybe. But I'm sure there's current of attitude, that some people have, where people think, any payment in exchange for narrative from the classes of the "downtrodden" is simply exploitation but I think that is both a disempowering perpetuation of an incorrect stereotype that tries to rob people of agency, plus a tactic of the upper classes to keep people down. But then again even giving voice to class itself may be an incorrect stereotype that's disempowering. Uuhh...It's difficult to find the right language but I think we should just see people as people. And that's what I'm really speaking to here even if I'm not replying to the intention of the parent comment, it doesn't matter: what I'm saying is still valuable and important.
    - snshn 4y ago
      - busterarm 4y ago
        You claim I don't do anything to help people with addiction without evidence, Does the dark side of the moon not exist because we can't see it? First of all, you don't know shit. Second of all, I don't have to do anything to justify myself to you. Third of all, I've lost more friends to addiction and have helped more addicts recover than you have had birthdays. Shut the fuck up when grown folks is talking.
        snshn 4y ago
        dang 4y ago
        Posting like this will get you banned here, regardless of how bad or wrong someone else's comments are or you feel they are. Please review the site guidelines and don't do this again. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
        emerged 4y ago
        Just about anything will get you banned here, because mods have a political axe to grind you dishonest bitch.
        dang 4y ago
        https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26148870 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26148870
        dang 4y ago
        Posting like this will get you banned here, regardless of how bad or wrong someone else's comments are or you feel they are. Please review the site guidelines and don't do this again. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    - jayski 4y ago
      He's also saying on the video linked by OP, that he donates 100% of all revenue back into these troubled communities. I get a feeling a lot of the people criticizing him haven't watched the channel. I've seen about 50 videos, and honestly cried with a lot of them. They've made me reevaluate my own life and reconsider how hard life is for others. It has also nudged me to donate time and money to particular communities that struck a chord with me. I think it's great content.
      - SpelingBeeChamp 4y ago
        > He's also saying on the video linked by OP, that he donates 100% of all revenue back into these troubled communities. Sounds like the kind of thing someone would be transparent about. As far as I know, there is no evidence that any of his claims are true. They could be, but he has a huge monetary incentive to lie. Also, his vague language is a bit of a red flag. I put money back into my community when I spend it. But I call that shopping, not altruism.
        Hallucinaut 4y ago
        If you're saying there's no evidence in terms of accounting audit for money going to addicts on Skid Row then, well, good luck with that bar of evidence. I have seen him let the Whittaker family buy trolleys full of stuff from Walmart for their house. I have seen that prostitute (Angel maybe?) interviewed a second time after he paid for her rent and gave her money multiple times after the first video and it turned out she was just giving it to her pimp (and she doesn't refute any of this on camera). So does he deserve total faith based trust, no, but it's easy to see enough of his videos where they are clearly benefiting from the funds and that's probably enough for many of us to say it's net positive.
        StanislavPetrov 4y ago
        >As far as I know, there is no evidence that any of his claims are true. Perhaps you should spend 5 minutes researching what you know nothing about before you opine about it. In particular, there is a poor, inbred family in Appalachia that he has visited (and befriended) several times over the years and that the funds he raised have helped them move from their dilapidated trailer into an actual house, among other things. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRY41kF_0Oc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRY41kF_0Oc
    - dopidopHN 4y ago
      I don’t known that channel so I listen to the intro. He mention give back 100% back the « community » Is that person having troubled relationship with percentage ? ( real question , I think I heard about that channel once before )
- bitcharmer 4y ago
  I don't understand. Are you suggesting that soft white underbelly was exploiting their interviewees? How?
  - busterarm 4y ago
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
ChrisRR 4y ago
I can't remember the last time youtube made a change that was liked by the community
etchalon 4y ago
“Algorithmic advertising placement at scale produces weird edge cases.”
keithnz 4y ago
This channel has such a good window on what is going wrong in America at the bottom. The stories of how people end up being exploited and damaged, the failure of foster care, and the awful reality of kids being born into the exact same circumstances which will repeat themselves.
- grecy 4y ago
  I wonder if that's part of the reason it was demonetized. Dirty laundry is not something the powers that be usually like aired.
- nonethewiser 4y ago
  But why does he film them half naked?
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - mjburgess 4y ago
    The interviewer is a bit of a "photography narcissist" and basically just created the channel to have interesting people to photograph. The interview angle was added later, and it wasn't something he cared about initially. The impression I get is that it's best not to explore his motivations too much, as they're quite disappointing compared to what he's been able to create.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  - jayski 4y ago
    I love this YouTube channel, I find the stories very interesting. I haven't watched them all, but the ones I've watched 80% were fully clothed. I highly recommend this YT channel.
  - bergenty 4y ago
    Why not? I like it better that way anyways.
realsolipsist 4y ago
This is disappointing, and while there might be some unknown factors here, it does seem to follow a concerning trend. While demonetization isn’t technically censorship, it is discouragement and disincentivizing, which can have a similar effect as censorship without its messiness.
- DoItToMe81 4y ago
  I have no idea if it's still the case, but demonetized videos used to appear lower, or not at all, in the search.
- threatofrain 4y ago
  According to the video, YT is demonetizing all sex-related content. That's likely to be a popular move regardless of whether people understand the full implications of that decision. It's in YT's interest to make money, but they have to balance that desire with perceived threats from legislature or public sentiment.
  - defrost 4y ago
    "sex related content" is broad ill defined brush. The recent case of the father sending groin region photographs to doctor via google (?) services and being flagged for "inapropriate child content" is one example of where exceptions should be made. I'm now aware of this channel - I have no issue with its content and feel it should have as much access to income streams as any other vlogger. There are audiences for all manner of content, surgeons have an interest in "gore" videos that relates to injury, treatment, and things often pixelated out. Those in the social sciences want to see stories such as these in this channel to better understand issues and impacts of policy. This is an area that needs better human judgement and oversight, if youtube wants to deter OnlyFansOG style videos then they should do so in a manner that doesn't also swat channels such as this example.
    - threatofrain 4y ago
      YouTube has more reason to be afraid of false positives than false negatives. By refusing to monetize all sex-related content, they now won't make a mistake which the public or government might punish them for. I think the public is far more okay with the idea that YT doesn't fund sex-related content than vice versa, and therein lies the source of risk for YT.
tedk-42 4y ago
Grown to be one of my favourite channels. It's a real shame that the algorithms that be at youtube have struck down Mark's revenue stream like this :(
drewcoo 4y ago
- polytely 4y ago
  What do you mean by hidden narrative, can you expand on that.
- honkdaddy 4y ago
  If you're going to make comments which deliberately call out a political or social agenda, please just be respectful to the community and explain what you actually mean. This isn't Twitter or reddit, it's HN. How would you describe the 'the hidden narrative' that's being pushed here? To extend, do you personally think that channels which push narratives you don't support should be demonetized?
secondcoming 4y ago
He’s a bit naive about what advertisers want when he says something along the lines of ‘advertisers would love to have their ad shown to 200k users’. ‘Brand Safety’ is a huge thing in advertising and there are companies out there that classify webpages based on their content. Premium advertisers don’t want their ads shown alongside content that can be deemed scandalous or unsafe. Sex obviously falls into this category, a more recent example was Covid-related content; advertisers wanted nothing to do with it. I’m guessing here, but it seems that YT lacks to ability to guarantee premium advertisers that their ads won’t appear on unsafe content and so they demonitise the whole channel. That said, the amount of garbage ads I get shown on YT is astounding, I doubt those advertisers care where their ads get shown.
- im3w1l 4y ago
  I don't get it. Like so much news is negative. No ads next to sex? No ads next to news of an economic downturn? No ads next to war in Ukraine? No ads next to funeral of Queen Elisabeth? With that reasoning, are they just gonna demonetize news entirely?
  - donatj 4y ago
    Yes. It seems bizarre to me. There are ads in the physical Sunday newspaper right next to a story about a murder. I don't assume the advertiser supports murder. Do people actually think ads mean the company's approve of the messages of the content? It doesn't make sense to me. I don't see a terrorist video and think man Proctor and Gamble sure loves terrorists. An ad is just something unrelated to the content on the page, like the buttons. The YouTube logo is on the page. Does that mean I'm supposed to think YouTube stands behind everything on there? Because that's going to get real problematic real quick. This seems easily solvable if Google just strong-armed them. Stand up and say "We will serve your ads on all our content or none of it". Like it really seems like they have the demographic advertisers want. There'd be some gnashing of teeth, but they'd get over it I'm sure.
    - Maken 4y ago
      The Sunday newspaper has limited physical space and probably justifies the ad placement on layout constraints. Google, on the other hand, has built a multi-billion empire over the premise that they can show every single ad to potential consumers. So, when Google is showing your ads to people interested in porn, violence and political controversial topics, it is by extension implying that they are your target audience and the ones your product is designed for.
anotherhue 4y ago
The original name of the Blue Oyster Cult (this is not they). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_%C3%96yster_Cult https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_%C3%96yster_Cult
- m1gu3l 4y ago
  “got ‘em”
- Applejinx 4y ago
  That was my first thought as well.
- cachvico 4y ago
  Turns out both are references to a Churchill quote (which apparently has even older origins still) - https://www.quora.com/Why-did-Churchill-refer-to-Italy-as-the-soft-underbelly-of-the-axis https://www.quora.com/Why-did-Churchill-refer-to-Italy-as-th...
paulsutter 4y ago
Could Youtube allow another network to monetize content they don’t want to monetize? Challenges would include policing such ads for malware or ad content that would then appear alongside the Youtube brand As unfortunate as this is, even the channel owner agrees the content does (at least technically) violate the policy Maybe the larger question is why Youtube is under so much pressure to change old policies that were working for many years
- boomboomsubban 4y ago
  Doesn't this already happen with sponsors? YouTube creators are already free to get external revenue sources for their videos. Maybe someone could develop a way to automate some portion making it easier, and it'd be hard to replicate the income from targeted advertisement with click tracking using permanent in video sponsorships, but it seems possible.
- concinds 4y ago
  Forcing ad-supported platforms to allow competing ad networks & auctions would be a pretty brilliant piece of legislation. They would need to be forced, though (https://searchengineland.com/google-allegedly-creates-ad-monopoly-with-facebook-to-favor-its-own-exchange-according-to-new-unredacted-details-from-project-jedi-375487 https://searchengineland.com/google-allegedly-creates-ad-mon...).
busterarm 4y ago
With his partnership with Lima Jevremovic and what happened to Amanda I'm not surprised at YouTube and advertisers wanting no part of it. I wouldn't be surprised to see criminal charges at some point in the future.
- 2mol 4y ago
  Can you elaborate? I have no idea what any of this means in context.
  - busterarm 4y ago
    There's a lot of recent youtube and other content covering the situation if you google Lima's name with Amanda. Patient brokerage is a serious area of organized corruption within our medical system and it's disgusting. Lima's program has a 6 step process where step 1 is "conservatorship or jail".
  - aliqot 4y ago
    "Patrick Cc:" has a video that goes into it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CU1V2GM1oTI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CU1V2GM1oTI TL;DR - It's someone who was involved in the videos at one point, runs a new-style recovery program, patient from video attends recovery program, dies under odd circumstances. SWU does not give much detail post-events.
- honkdaddy 4y ago
  It helps to provide some context when making comments like this. Most HN readers don't follow YouTube drama, so at least suggesting what you think the criminal charges would relate to would help a lot. To help others, the first result I found about this Lima Jevremovic character was: > Founder, Lima Mora has lived through the implications of severe mental health illness first hand through loved ones. The Jevremovic Institute of Behavior and Brain Sciences (JIBBS) was bloomed from a desire to create tools to improve mental healthcare, research and innovations and make those tools available globally to all that need them. A Mixed Reality Experience Designer, Mora specializes in Digital Health. She is well known in the tech community for her speaking engagements and role as an ambassador for bridging innovative technology with healthcare and providing insight on the emerging markets of VR/AR and Artificial Intelligence (AI). Seems like another entrepreneur trying to make it in the exhausting scene of health digitalization. What am I missing here?
honkdaddy 4y ago
This is a shame. There are some uncomfortable conclusions which one can reach hearing people in such dire positions being completely honest about what brought them there, but giving them a voice at all is incredibly valuable, even if what they say isn't necessarily what people who help them want to hear. My uncle was a daily heroin user most of his adulthood. I remember him telling me one of his only regrets is not finding heroin sooner, it was the only thing that made him happy. It brought (synthetic) joy into a life which a poor, short, confused, single man in rural ON never would have experienced otherwise. He spent the last couple years of his life shooting up in a cheap rural cottage, financially supported by the government and his extended family. He overdosed many times and died young of cancer, but I do wonder how his story would be interpreted by my more progressive colleagues who like to talk about addiction as if all we need to solve the problem are safe injection sites, less cops, and more lenient sentencing. He had the safest injection site imaginable and the incredibly lax Canadian drug laws; it seems like what he needed most was to be part of a society which didn't encourage and enable his choices. I think finding a woman who loved him, even if just for a fleeting moment, might have helped him too. More than anything, I wish my parents had kept going back and hadn't given up and listened to the advice the government workers gave, which was that some people are beyond help, and providing them with their fix and a place to shoot up is the best thing you can do. Tim was my godfather and my favorite uncle growing up. He's the one who told me some people's brains like drugs so, so much more than others, and if I can, to stay away from them. I miss him all the time. I think channels like Soft White Underbelly are great because they allow people to form opinions on complicated, human-centric topics without the political and social commentary that come when big corps try to enter the arena. Trust me, if Fox, CNN, Disney, or Buzzfeed were trying to tell Tim's story, you would essentially end up watching an advertisement for an American political party.
- pavlov 4y ago
  > "I remember him telling me one of his only regrets is not finding heroin sooner, it was the only thing that made him happy. [...] More than anything, I wish my parents had kept going back and hadn't given up and listened to the advice the government workers gave, which was that some people are beyond help" Is there something specific you think your parents could have done? It seems like an extraordinarily tall order to externally replace the only source of happiness in someone's life without their co-operation.
_nalply 4y ago
I hate ads. It's intrusive information. A few, some or many people would prefer to decide when they get information about a product. It seems a status quo for many people that advertisement finances a lot of things, however I posit that this is often the wrong or inefficient way causing external costs. I don't have an answer but I have a vision about a future where we don't need to finance ourselves this desperately like now. Now we have many people depending on money from advertisement. I feel sad about that.
- Test0129 4y ago
  Have you watched TV in the last 50 years? All television, radio, etc relies on ad revenue. The difference is that those ads tend to be better targeted because the channels/stations tend to be granular enough to figure out good things to run. The problem is, now, that any advertiser can run on any video. If I am watching a woodworking video I shouldn't get an ad for dawn soap. It would make sense for a brief ad on tools, or a wood supplier, or something which I might even appreciate because it lets me know something exists. It's not ads. It's the increased quantity of them and the low signal to noise ratio. Ads are useful, being inundated with them is not. It's further made worse by the average youtube video's quality going straight down to nothing over the 10 years. It's mostly "professionals". At this point, I'd rather go back to watching TV.
  - mandmandam 4y ago
    > Have you watched TV in the last 50 years? All television, radio, etc relies on ad revenue. Yes, and that's been a horror that Lovecraft and Orwell combined wouldn't comprehend. The uncountable hours of human eyeball time wasted utterly; worse than wasted; used to whitewash the reputations of criminals and scumbags. For what? To sponsor "news" that itself is a commercial? For TV and radio that leaves people dumber than they'd be without it? Billionaire media moguls have done very well. Entrenched political interests have done great. Fossil fuel fucks and tobacco companies, pharma and insurance, polluters and propagandists have all done very well indeed - for themselves. ... The rest of us - not so much. Cheap junk, rotting minds, hyper saturated nonsense killing thought itself. > The difference is that those ads tend to be better targeted The problem is NOT the targeting. The problem is the unfathomable scale of the negative externalities.
masswerk 4y ago
This is why these platforms won't be a "marketplace of ideas", ever. There's a certain differences between a public and providing a platform as a private enterprise, and chances are that the commercial interests won't align with what maintaining a public or a true representation of it may afford. (BTW, HN is doing a great job in providing a platform to a specific public. But this is only, because HN is not the primary source of income for Y Combinator. Rather, this is a strategic investment, which happens to strategically align itself with the interests of this specific public. But I doubt if this could serve as a general blueprint. And it could be gone in a moment.)
SilverBirch 4y ago
I honestly think that Youtube's monetization system has done a lot more harm than good. It's allowed content creators to completely abandon the business side of their own business. What's slowly become clear is that there is only a small niche of content creators that Youtube advertising really works for. For big brands, it doesn't work, they can work out their own advertising deal and demand a massive premium for this, think things like Mr Beast, beauty vloggers etc. Then you've got small creators, they don't do enough volume to actually drive any advertising revenue. Youtube might be showing adverts across millions of creators but the payout is pennies, these people are better off running Patreons for their true fans. Finally, you have the high quality content creators, that go off to subscription services like Nebula because their investment in the content is never going to be paid for through the crappy CPM you get at Youtube. The good news for Soft White Underbelly is what I've just said above - look, there are plenty of business models out there that can work, and they're actually much more valuable revenue streams than Youtube ads. The bad news is, what exactly is Youtube at this point if all of their high value content is disintermediating their revenue model? Well, advertising to kids, which is minefield, advertising on music videos, which they're doing worse than Spotify, or advertising on things like Podcasts, which are adverts on content that you otherwise would get ad free elsewhere.
- solarmist 4y ago
  I mostly agree, but I also think this wouldn’t be obvious or even hinted at without YouTube running this experiment. Also, most of these creators would never have started without the YouTube model. So I feel like, using the YouTube model, should be used more as bootstrapping step while you find a more sustainable revenue model. Or you’ll forever be subjected to the whims of the algorithm.
- beebmam 4y ago
  Agree with all of your points. It is also worth examining how monetization changes the kinds of videos that get created, and the way content creators cater to their audiences for maximum engagement.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
SnowHill9902 4y ago
www.rumble.com
Jemm 4y ago
Youtube demonetizing Soft White Underbelly is an example of the Toxic Positivity problem in the western world right now.
werber 4y ago
I don’t understand why he doesn’t directly name the organizations he supports or in what way he benefits the communities he’s working in, outside of this video I had a vague awareness of the channel but that lack of transparency outside of “I give a 100%back to the community” sounds like it could be just spending money in those communities?
- atmosfera 4y ago
  He takes donations and doles them out to interview subjects. Recently he had a bit of a scandal where he'd been funneling a massive amount of cash to a sex worker who was exploiting him for it, she in turn being exploited by her pimp who was taking the cash.
  - SpelingBeeChamp 4y ago
    Wow. Evidence?
croes 4y ago
That's why in capitalism it isn't necessary to put inconvenient people in prison like in Russia or China We simply take the your income and payment options. No PayPal, Mastercard or Visa for you, no money from ads. You can say want you want but sooner or later you run out of money. Free but broke
sam0x17 4y ago
I've never understood how we got to this place where _some_ content on youtube is advertiser friendly and _some_ is not, and that is viewed as actionable information. I guess my whole mental model is you run ads on the whole network, and advertisers have nothing to do with the content being shown, and only an idiot would look at an ad and think, oh this brand is knowingly sponsoring this content. Advertisers used to be content with that, and wouldn't dream of being choosey about what content their ads run alongside of. However we got to this place, it's done a lot of damage -- would much rather live in the world where there is no concept of demonetizing a particular video or channel, and ads just run on the entire network. Caving to advertiser demands is the #1 best way to make a platform worse for the actual users and content creaters and slowly drain your value. Note that for example google AdSense could run alongside _any_ content that appears on youtube probably without issue. They've just created this different, pickier world when it comes to video ads. What's worse is youtube entirely controls the market, and they opened the floodgates of caving to advertiser demands. Now advertisers expect it wherever they go. They should be 4th class citizens if anything, not a meaningful constituency. As long as youtube keeps driving users to the platform, that should be the only concern.
- kube-system 4y ago
  > only an idiot would look at an ad and think, oh this brand is knowingly sponsoring this content. I don’t disagree but I also think * many companies want to sell to idiots * vocal fringe ideologists can blow these financial relationships up into a PR incident * some responsible companies actually do care about where their money goes * YouTube also doesn’t want negative PR “YouTube financially supports [bad thing]” but at the same time understands that demonetized content is important attracting factor to the platform overall I don’t think YouTube is to blame here. The issue is that ad supported platforms inherently have advertisers as customers, and viewers are only a means to an end. The entire business model is flawed in the lens of the viewer or content producer, and there’s no way to fix it.
  - sam0x17 4y ago
    > I don’t think YouTube is to blame here. They are. They opened the floodgates of coddling advertisers. Before they did, no one listened to them at all.
derac 4y ago
I am highly concerned that YouTube is selling children's eyes to advertisers. They obscure this fact with YouTube kids and marking videos as not for kids. This is their business model. Why have content marked as not for kids at all? What they need is a section of youtube for HBO-like content. They have allowed people to make a living there for years and will shut them down with no warning whenever they like or at the whim of a terrible algorithm (or report brigading). It is a horrible business relationship.
dmartzol 4y ago
I pay for youtube premium to not see ads and I love this channel. Now if I keep paying none of that money will go to this channel. But advertisers have a say to where their money goes.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
datatrashfire 4y ago
I wonder how many of the commenters shrieking exploitation are gladly devoting their abilities to creating more invasive tracking and ad tech.
SpelingBeeChamp 4y ago
Hold on. Soft White Underbelly has NOT been demonetized by YouTube. Some of the videos that Soft White Underbelly creates are demonetized, or as YouTube puts it, found to not be suitable for all advertisers. Creating content on YouTube has been my full-time job for more than five years. There is a HUGE difference between a channel being kicked out of the Partner Program and videos being 'demonetized.' (Namely, that in the latter case, all of your other videos, past and future, can still earn revenue.) Honestly, this just seems like the guy is trying to encourage people to pay for his "members only" content. I don't blame him for that, but afactual alarmist titles are not the right way to help him along. YouTube's policies regarding advertiser friendliness are annoying, but they are mostly clear — and as far as I know, they have not substantively changed recently.
- worstestes 4y ago
  “Some” in this case make up over 70% or so of his collection due to sexual content. I think that hits the demonetized territory.
  - SpelingBeeChamp 4y ago
    1. So he says. I hope you realize that the creator has an enormous monetary incentive to lie about that, and that it is impossible to verify his claims. 2. "Demonetized," when describing a YouTube channel, means one thing and one thing only: that the channel has been kicked out of the YouTube Partner Program. I don't know why you would adopt your own, materially-different, definition of a word whose definition is widely accepted. Doing so creates unnecessary confusion, and — particularly in this case — is highly misleading.
    - CommitSyn 4y ago
      Have you ever watched a Soft White Underbelly video?
      - SpelingBeeChamp 4y ago
adultSwim 4y ago
Putting the advertising issue to the side, I think this account is exploitative and uses questionable methods for producing videos.

192 points by keithnz 4y ago

It's disheartening to see so little consideration among the comentariat that it's possible for once that YouTube may have actually done the right thing here for a change in trying to curb exploitation-content on their platform.

iforgotpassword 4y ago
Care to explain why? I don't know that channel.
- busterarm 4y ago
  Here's $50 to tell me your life story that I'm going to make $3-5/1k views on. If I make enough money I might come back for another video and give you more money. No guarantees that you don't feed your addictions with this money though...but your addiction is good content anyway.
  - bitcharmer 4y ago
    How do you know how much the interviewees were paid? Were they forced to do the interviews? Do you have evidence that shows they felted being exploited?
    - busterarm 4y ago
      What do you think the mental state is of his interviewees? How many of them do you think are in a reasonable state of mind to understand AND consent to any kind of contract? What about Amanda who literally got put into a conservatorship? Keep in mind we're in a society that doesn't consider you able to consent if you're even a little bit drunk and we're talking about heavy drug users for the most part here.
  - ConSeannery 4y ago
    He has stated in several interviews and previous videos that he gives away the money he makes on the channel. Watch the video linked, he says it again on it.
    - busterarm 4y ago
      He has a $10/mo subscription site with a forum. Turning it into a tax writeoff doesn't make it less exploitative.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
    - SpelingBeeChamp 4y ago
      Do you believe him, just because he says so?
  - junon 4y ago
    This isn't at all how that channel works. Flagrant dismissal of a body of work is explicitly against the Hacker News guidelines. I suggest you review them at the bottom of this page.
    - busterarm 4y ago
      - junon 4y ago
        You've not done a lot of research on this channel, have you?
        busterarm 4y ago
        I'm not the first nor the last person to levy the exact same criticism. Most of them from his own fucking subreddit.
      - _bohm 4y ago
        On the contrary, I find most of his videos to be deeply humanizing of their subjects, who would probably be ignored or brushed aside in a normal day-to-day interaction by the typical viewer of the channel. Also, speaking personally as someone who has a family member who suffers from addiction, I have found it valuable to listen to people speak candidly about their struggles to someone uninvested in their lives, in a way that my family member could never speak to me.
        busterarm 4y ago
        Separate how viewing the content makes you feel from understanding the subject's ability to completely understand and consent to a contractual arrangement to have their story recorded, broadcast and sold. When an addict-relative sells all of your valuables, are they in a proper state of mind or is their addiction ruling their life? Do they fully comprehend the outcome of their actions? Most of these people are not in any proper state of mind to be able to sign on to appear on a show like this.
  - concinds 4y ago
    Everyone on Earth is being paid less than they generate for their business. That is true for utterly everyone except equityholders. And your reasoning is completely self-defeating, unless you suggest that this YouTube channel should kidnap their interviewees and force them to get sober under duress. Soft White Underbelly is not the government. BTW, YouTube still makes money off demonetized videos, since they increase overall viewer engagement; which nullifies your core point.
    - busterarm 4y ago
      No, they're just not outright banning him. Demonitized content has _zero_ reach on YouTube. It's them telling you that they do not want you. There's no point to uploading new content when you're demonitized.
      - concinds 4y ago
        This is not true; demonetized videos still get recommended on all of YouTube's surfaces (homepage, recommendations sidebar, end-of-video suggestions).
        switch007 4y ago
        Is that lying while telling the truth? How often? How many people will see it? How many views vs monetized?
        diydsp 4y ago
        From the alg's perspective, each video is a mutant offspring. It has hypothetical values in several contexts. On publication, those values get tested for a bit until the value converges. So new vids get a chance... but they're competing with known, larger quantities. Advertiser-edgy content has a signal attached to it saying "don't let this get tested much," in case it gets popular.
  - nverno 4y ago
    You're treating it as if their life story is a zero-sum game, where it was worth 3050$ and he only gave them 50$. I've always given away my life story for free and don't feel gypped whatsoever.
    - busterarm 4y ago
      It's a fortunate position in life to not have to choose between getting your next fix and admitting to a pattern of criminality on camera. Related: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEUh4FZIf8E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEUh4FZIf8E
      - nverno 4y ago
        That's just your point of view. From mine, life is a long tumble down the stairs
      - HardlyCurious 4y ago
        I haven't watch many of his videos, but I didn't get any sense of a predatory relationship. For what I saw, I was impressed with the content. He shows us a side of humanity normally left in the shadows. There is merit in that.
      - honkdaddy 4y ago
        If someone paid me $50 to admit on camera I've broken laws in the past, I think I'd probably be more than happy to. Are you under the impression the police are going to start arresting people on Soft White Underbelly because they admit to doing drugs? That's not really how the American justice system works, from what I understand.
        peterangular 4y ago
        Yea - I wouldn't. I'd rather not have such direct representation of myself out there - invariably people would recognize you, and invariably they would pass the video around social groups. Just the way things work in the social media era. Also, this could really hurt you if a video with this sorta subject matter/content would be passed around your place of work. This is about to get bitter so please take with a grain of salt: I've learned that most people are gossipy and will often not give people the benefit of the doubt. People judge others to bolster their ego and elevate their own social standing. Even if it was something out of your control like childhood trauma, people will still extrapolate their own opinions. Then there's the "nothing's ever deleted from the internet" trope - even if I needed it taken down and the original uploader agreed, the content could easily exist elsewhere. I guarantee there's people doing reaction content to this. All-in-all I functionally can't see the benefit of doing one of these outside of $... and I agree with other posters that it's problematic. It reminds me of photography class in college where all of these kids would photograph the homeless. Everyone thought they were brilliant by shining a light on poverty or something.... Really, they were just privileged asshole kids with savior complexes waving money in front of people who didn't have the option to turn it down; only to put these people on display in school galleries where the subject of the photo would never be allowed.
  - Fricken 4y ago
    In documentary we don't typically pay people anything to tell us their life stories.
    - busterarm 4y ago
      But Mark does pay his subjects.
      - stackola 4y ago
        Would it be better if he didn't?
      - concinds 4y ago
        Would it be more ethical not to pay? I don't get it. Interview them for free, you're making money without compensating them. Interview them and give them part, you're exploiting them by underpaying them. Interview them and give them all profits, you're enabling their addiction. Give away the non-ad revenue, you're just abusing a tax writeoff. Don't give it away, you're enriching yourself. Your economic ideology seems quite fluid, and seems to lack internal consistency.
        treis 4y ago
        Gets murky when we're talking about prostitutes that funnel their money to/get it stolen by pimps. Also gets murky when we're talking about drug addicts who are going to use that money to buy drugs. Also gets murky when we're talking about people that are under the influence of drugs. They probably don't want a video out there of them blasted to the moon if they ever get clean.
        brokenmachine 4y ago
        You would be shocked to learn how many of your coworkers use their paycheck to buy drugs.
      - zarzavat 4y ago
        It’s not exploitative to pay people for their time. It’s basic decency. There’s three options for remuneration. 1. Pay nothing 2. Pay them for their time 3. Give them a large cut If the contention is that they may be junkies then 3 is probably not a great idea, better to give the money to charity. If the contention is that it’s exploitation then surely 2 is less exploitative than 1. In the end, giving people a voice who don’t have one currently is the complete opposite of exploitation.
  - graderjs 4y ago
    So these people shouldn't have a voice (be able to participate in any way in the commercial system the rest of us created), because we find their economic engagements to be "morally repugnant"? And yet the only "voice" they should have, should be permitted to have, is relegated to playing their accepted parts in the sex/vice industry their only "moral crime" is to talk about? Basically we want to mediate their economics and not allow them to speak up outside of the roles we want to put them in to. And we're going to pretend to justify we're doing that, in "their best interest", tacitly projecting the lies that: "we know what's best for them", and we get to decide their autonomy, not them. So, on the one hand, we decry the fact that they seem to lack power and agency, while willingly with the other hand we strip them of what agency and power they do have by saying, "shut up, don't spend your money on that, this is for your own good." Sounds fucked up and abusive to me. The people should talk if they want to. We shouldn't pretend that we know how to mediate that for them. If they want to expand the way they engage economically, and narratively, in society, then I'm not going to step in their way. I think it's good for them, if they want to do it. I think it's good to have their story told. Maybe we're just unhappy their voices reveal our hypocrisy? Maybe should you think it through before you find a way to condemn-label something that perhaps you're just a little uncomfortable with. Examine yourself first, rather than projecting onto them, trying to further limit their access, is my unsolicited advice. Thanks
    - socialismisok 4y ago
      I think the parent is suggesting they should be paid more.
      - graderjs 4y ago
        Hmm, maybe. But I'm sure there's current of attitude, that some people have, where people think, any payment in exchange for narrative from the classes of the "downtrodden" is simply exploitation but I think that is both a disempowering perpetuation of an incorrect stereotype that tries to rob people of agency, plus a tactic of the upper classes to keep people down. But then again even giving voice to class itself may be an incorrect stereotype that's disempowering. Uuhh...It's difficult to find the right language but I think we should just see people as people. And that's what I'm really speaking to here even if I'm not replying to the intention of the parent comment, it doesn't matter: what I'm saying is still valuable and important.
  - snshn 4y ago
    - busterarm 4y ago
      You claim I don't do anything to help people with addiction without evidence, Does the dark side of the moon not exist because we can't see it? First of all, you don't know shit. Second of all, I don't have to do anything to justify myself to you. Third of all, I've lost more friends to addiction and have helped more addicts recover than you have had birthdays. Shut the fuck up when grown folks is talking.
      - snshn 4y ago
        dang 4y ago
        Posting like this will get you banned here, regardless of how bad or wrong someone else's comments are or you feel they are. Please review the site guidelines and don't do this again. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
        emerged 4y ago
        Just about anything will get you banned here, because mods have a political axe to grind you dishonest bitch.
        dang 4y ago
        https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26148870 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26148870
      - dang 4y ago
        Posting like this will get you banned here, regardless of how bad or wrong someone else's comments are or you feel they are. Please review the site guidelines and don't do this again. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - jayski 4y ago
    He's also saying on the video linked by OP, that he donates 100% of all revenue back into these troubled communities. I get a feeling a lot of the people criticizing him haven't watched the channel. I've seen about 50 videos, and honestly cried with a lot of them. They've made me reevaluate my own life and reconsider how hard life is for others. It has also nudged me to donate time and money to particular communities that struck a chord with me. I think it's great content.
    - SpelingBeeChamp 4y ago
      > He's also saying on the video linked by OP, that he donates 100% of all revenue back into these troubled communities. Sounds like the kind of thing someone would be transparent about. As far as I know, there is no evidence that any of his claims are true. They could be, but he has a huge monetary incentive to lie. Also, his vague language is a bit of a red flag. I put money back into my community when I spend it. But I call that shopping, not altruism.
      - Hallucinaut 4y ago
        If you're saying there's no evidence in terms of accounting audit for money going to addicts on Skid Row then, well, good luck with that bar of evidence. I have seen him let the Whittaker family buy trolleys full of stuff from Walmart for their house. I have seen that prostitute (Angel maybe?) interviewed a second time after he paid for her rent and gave her money multiple times after the first video and it turned out she was just giving it to her pimp (and she doesn't refute any of this on camera). So does he deserve total faith based trust, no, but it's easy to see enough of his videos where they are clearly benefiting from the funds and that's probably enough for many of us to say it's net positive.
      - StanislavPetrov 4y ago
        >As far as I know, there is no evidence that any of his claims are true. Perhaps you should spend 5 minutes researching what you know nothing about before you opine about it. In particular, there is a poor, inbred family in Appalachia that he has visited (and befriended) several times over the years and that the funds he raised have helped them move from their dilapidated trailer into an actual house, among other things. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRY41kF_0Oc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRY41kF_0Oc
  - dopidopHN 4y ago
    I don’t known that channel so I listen to the intro. He mention give back 100% back the « community » Is that person having troubled relationship with percentage ? ( real question , I think I heard about that channel once before )
bitcharmer 4y ago
I don't understand. Are you suggesting that soft white underbelly was exploiting their interviewees? How?
- busterarm 4y ago
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

ChrisRR 4y ago

I can't remember the last time youtube made a change that was liked by the community

etchalon 4y ago

“Algorithmic advertising placement at scale produces weird edge cases.”

keithnz 4y ago

This channel has such a good window on what is going wrong in America at the bottom. The stories of how people end up being exploited and damaged, the failure of foster care, and the awful reality of kids being born into the exact same circumstances which will repeat themselves.

grecy 4y ago
I wonder if that's part of the reason it was demonetized. Dirty laundry is not something the powers that be usually like aired.
nonethewiser 4y ago
But why does he film them half naked?
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- mjburgess 4y ago
  The interviewer is a bit of a "photography narcissist" and basically just created the channel to have interesting people to photograph. The interview angle was added later, and it wasn't something he cared about initially. The impression I get is that it's best not to explore his motivations too much, as they're quite disappointing compared to what he's been able to create.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- jayski 4y ago
  I love this YouTube channel, I find the stories very interesting. I haven't watched them all, but the ones I've watched 80% were fully clothed. I highly recommend this YT channel.
- bergenty 4y ago
  Why not? I like it better that way anyways.

realsolipsist 4y ago

This is disappointing, and while there might be some unknown factors here, it does seem to follow a concerning trend. While demonetization isn’t technically censorship, it is discouragement and disincentivizing, which can have a similar effect as censorship without its messiness.

DoItToMe81 4y ago
I have no idea if it's still the case, but demonetized videos used to appear lower, or not at all, in the search.
threatofrain 4y ago
According to the video, YT is demonetizing all sex-related content. That's likely to be a popular move regardless of whether people understand the full implications of that decision. It's in YT's interest to make money, but they have to balance that desire with perceived threats from legislature or public sentiment.
- defrost 4y ago
  "sex related content" is broad ill defined brush. The recent case of the father sending groin region photographs to doctor via google (?) services and being flagged for "inapropriate child content" is one example of where exceptions should be made. I'm now aware of this channel - I have no issue with its content and feel it should have as much access to income streams as any other vlogger. There are audiences for all manner of content, surgeons have an interest in "gore" videos that relates to injury, treatment, and things often pixelated out. Those in the social sciences want to see stories such as these in this channel to better understand issues and impacts of policy. This is an area that needs better human judgement and oversight, if youtube wants to deter OnlyFansOG style videos then they should do so in a manner that doesn't also swat channels such as this example.
  - threatofrain 4y ago
    YouTube has more reason to be afraid of false positives than false negatives. By refusing to monetize all sex-related content, they now won't make a mistake which the public or government might punish them for. I think the public is far more okay with the idea that YT doesn't fund sex-related content than vice versa, and therein lies the source of risk for YT.

tedk-42 4y ago

Grown to be one of my favourite channels. It's a real shame that the algorithms that be at youtube have struck down Mark's revenue stream like this :(

drewcoo 4y ago

polytely 4y ago
What do you mean by hidden narrative, can you expand on that.
honkdaddy 4y ago
If you're going to make comments which deliberately call out a political or social agenda, please just be respectful to the community and explain what you actually mean. This isn't Twitter or reddit, it's HN. How would you describe the 'the hidden narrative' that's being pushed here? To extend, do you personally think that channels which push narratives you don't support should be demonetized?

secondcoming 4y ago

He’s a bit naive about what advertisers want when he says something along the lines of ‘advertisers would love to have their ad shown to 200k users’. ‘Brand Safety’ is a huge thing in advertising and there are companies out there that classify webpages based on their content. Premium advertisers don’t want their ads shown alongside content that can be deemed scandalous or unsafe. Sex obviously falls into this category, a more recent example was Covid-related content; advertisers wanted nothing to do with it. I’m guessing here, but it seems that YT lacks to ability to guarantee premium advertisers that their ads won’t appear on unsafe content and so they demonitise the whole channel. That said, the amount of garbage ads I get shown on YT is astounding, I doubt those advertisers care where their ads get shown.

im3w1l 4y ago
I don't get it. Like so much news is negative. No ads next to sex? No ads next to news of an economic downturn? No ads next to war in Ukraine? No ads next to funeral of Queen Elisabeth? With that reasoning, are they just gonna demonetize news entirely?
- donatj 4y ago
  Yes. It seems bizarre to me. There are ads in the physical Sunday newspaper right next to a story about a murder. I don't assume the advertiser supports murder. Do people actually think ads mean the company's approve of the messages of the content? It doesn't make sense to me. I don't see a terrorist video and think man Proctor and Gamble sure loves terrorists. An ad is just something unrelated to the content on the page, like the buttons. The YouTube logo is on the page. Does that mean I'm supposed to think YouTube stands behind everything on there? Because that's going to get real problematic real quick. This seems easily solvable if Google just strong-armed them. Stand up and say "We will serve your ads on all our content or none of it". Like it really seems like they have the demographic advertisers want. There'd be some gnashing of teeth, but they'd get over it I'm sure.
  - Maken 4y ago
    The Sunday newspaper has limited physical space and probably justifies the ad placement on layout constraints. Google, on the other hand, has built a multi-billion empire over the premise that they can show every single ad to potential consumers. So, when Google is showing your ads to people interested in porn, violence and political controversial topics, it is by extension implying that they are your target audience and the ones your product is designed for.

anotherhue 4y ago

The original name of the Blue Oyster Cult (this is not they). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_%C3%96yster_Cult https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_%C3%96yster_Cult

m1gu3l 4y ago
“got ‘em”
Applejinx 4y ago
That was my first thought as well.
cachvico 4y ago
Turns out both are references to a Churchill quote (which apparently has even older origins still) - https://www.quora.com/Why-did-Churchill-refer-to-Italy-as-the-soft-underbelly-of-the-axis https://www.quora.com/Why-did-Churchill-refer-to-Italy-as-th...

paulsutter 4y ago

Could Youtube allow another network to monetize content they don’t want to monetize? Challenges would include policing such ads for malware or ad content that would then appear alongside the Youtube brand As unfortunate as this is, even the channel owner agrees the content does (at least technically) violate the policy Maybe the larger question is why Youtube is under so much pressure to change old policies that were working for many years

boomboomsubban 4y ago
Doesn't this already happen with sponsors? YouTube creators are already free to get external revenue sources for their videos. Maybe someone could develop a way to automate some portion making it easier, and it'd be hard to replicate the income from targeted advertisement with click tracking using permanent in video sponsorships, but it seems possible.
concinds 4y ago
Forcing ad-supported platforms to allow competing ad networks & auctions would be a pretty brilliant piece of legislation. They would need to be forced, though (https://searchengineland.com/google-allegedly-creates-ad-monopoly-with-facebook-to-favor-its-own-exchange-according-to-new-unredacted-details-from-project-jedi-375487 https://searchengineland.com/google-allegedly-creates-ad-mon...).

busterarm 4y ago

With his partnership with Lima Jevremovic and what happened to Amanda I'm not surprised at YouTube and advertisers wanting no part of it. I wouldn't be surprised to see criminal charges at some point in the future.

2mol 4y ago
Can you elaborate? I have no idea what any of this means in context.
- busterarm 4y ago
  There's a lot of recent youtube and other content covering the situation if you google Lima's name with Amanda. Patient brokerage is a serious area of organized corruption within our medical system and it's disgusting. Lima's program has a 6 step process where step 1 is "conservatorship or jail".
- aliqot 4y ago
  "Patrick Cc:" has a video that goes into it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CU1V2GM1oTI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CU1V2GM1oTI TL;DR - It's someone who was involved in the videos at one point, runs a new-style recovery program, patient from video attends recovery program, dies under odd circumstances. SWU does not give much detail post-events.
honkdaddy 4y ago
It helps to provide some context when making comments like this. Most HN readers don't follow YouTube drama, so at least suggesting what you think the criminal charges would relate to would help a lot. To help others, the first result I found about this Lima Jevremovic character was: > Founder, Lima Mora has lived through the implications of severe mental health illness first hand through loved ones. The Jevremovic Institute of Behavior and Brain Sciences (JIBBS) was bloomed from a desire to create tools to improve mental healthcare, research and innovations and make those tools available globally to all that need them. A Mixed Reality Experience Designer, Mora specializes in Digital Health. She is well known in the tech community for her speaking engagements and role as an ambassador for bridging innovative technology with healthcare and providing insight on the emerging markets of VR/AR and Artificial Intelligence (AI). Seems like another entrepreneur trying to make it in the exhausting scene of health digitalization. What am I missing here?

honkdaddy 4y ago

This is a shame. There are some uncomfortable conclusions which one can reach hearing people in such dire positions being completely honest about what brought them there, but giving them a voice at all is incredibly valuable, even if what they say isn't necessarily what people who help them want to hear. My uncle was a daily heroin user most of his adulthood. I remember him telling me one of his only regrets is not finding heroin sooner, it was the only thing that made him happy. It brought (synthetic) joy into a life which a poor, short, confused, single man in rural ON never would have experienced otherwise. He spent the last couple years of his life shooting up in a cheap rural cottage, financially supported by the government and his extended family. He overdosed many times and died young of cancer, but I do wonder how his story would be interpreted by my more progressive colleagues who like to talk about addiction as if all we need to solve the problem are safe injection sites, less cops, and more lenient sentencing. He had the safest injection site imaginable and the incredibly lax Canadian drug laws; it seems like what he needed most was to be part of a society which didn't encourage and enable his choices. I think finding a woman who loved him, even if just for a fleeting moment, might have helped him too. More than anything, I wish my parents had kept going back and hadn't given up and listened to the advice the government workers gave, which was that some people are beyond help, and providing them with their fix and a place to shoot up is the best thing you can do. Tim was my godfather and my favorite uncle growing up. He's the one who told me some people's brains like drugs so, so much more than others, and if I can, to stay away from them. I miss him all the time. I think channels like Soft White Underbelly are great because they allow people to form opinions on complicated, human-centric topics without the political and social commentary that come when big corps try to enter the arena. Trust me, if Fox, CNN, Disney, or Buzzfeed were trying to tell Tim's story, you would essentially end up watching an advertisement for an American political party.

pavlov 4y ago
> "I remember him telling me one of his only regrets is not finding heroin sooner, it was the only thing that made him happy. [...] More than anything, I wish my parents had kept going back and hadn't given up and listened to the advice the government workers gave, which was that some people are beyond help" Is there something specific you think your parents could have done? It seems like an extraordinarily tall order to externally replace the only source of happiness in someone's life without their co-operation.

_nalply 4y ago

I hate ads. It's intrusive information. A few, some or many people would prefer to decide when they get information about a product. It seems a status quo for many people that advertisement finances a lot of things, however I posit that this is often the wrong or inefficient way causing external costs. I don't have an answer but I have a vision about a future where we don't need to finance ourselves this desperately like now. Now we have many people depending on money from advertisement. I feel sad about that.

Test0129 4y ago
Have you watched TV in the last 50 years? All television, radio, etc relies on ad revenue. The difference is that those ads tend to be better targeted because the channels/stations tend to be granular enough to figure out good things to run. The problem is, now, that any advertiser can run on any video. If I am watching a woodworking video I shouldn't get an ad for dawn soap. It would make sense for a brief ad on tools, or a wood supplier, or something which I might even appreciate because it lets me know something exists. It's not ads. It's the increased quantity of them and the low signal to noise ratio. Ads are useful, being inundated with them is not. It's further made worse by the average youtube video's quality going straight down to nothing over the 10 years. It's mostly "professionals". At this point, I'd rather go back to watching TV.
- mandmandam 4y ago
  > Have you watched TV in the last 50 years? All television, radio, etc relies on ad revenue. Yes, and that's been a horror that Lovecraft and Orwell combined wouldn't comprehend. The uncountable hours of human eyeball time wasted utterly; worse than wasted; used to whitewash the reputations of criminals and scumbags. For what? To sponsor "news" that itself is a commercial? For TV and radio that leaves people dumber than they'd be without it? Billionaire media moguls have done very well. Entrenched political interests have done great. Fossil fuel fucks and tobacco companies, pharma and insurance, polluters and propagandists have all done very well indeed - for themselves. ... The rest of us - not so much. Cheap junk, rotting minds, hyper saturated nonsense killing thought itself. > The difference is that those ads tend to be better targeted The problem is NOT the targeting. The problem is the unfathomable scale of the negative externalities.

masswerk 4y ago

This is why these platforms won't be a "marketplace of ideas", ever. There's a certain differences between a public and providing a platform as a private enterprise, and chances are that the commercial interests won't align with what maintaining a public or a true representation of it may afford. (BTW, HN is doing a great job in providing a platform to a specific public. But this is only, because HN is not the primary source of income for Y Combinator. Rather, this is a strategic investment, which happens to strategically align itself with the interests of this specific public. But I doubt if this could serve as a general blueprint. And it could be gone in a moment.)

SilverBirch 4y ago

I honestly think that Youtube's monetization system has done a lot more harm than good. It's allowed content creators to completely abandon the business side of their own business. What's slowly become clear is that there is only a small niche of content creators that Youtube advertising really works for. For big brands, it doesn't work, they can work out their own advertising deal and demand a massive premium for this, think things like Mr Beast, beauty vloggers etc. Then you've got small creators, they don't do enough volume to actually drive any advertising revenue. Youtube might be showing adverts across millions of creators but the payout is pennies, these people are better off running Patreons for their true fans. Finally, you have the high quality content creators, that go off to subscription services like Nebula because their investment in the content is never going to be paid for through the crappy CPM you get at Youtube. The good news for Soft White Underbelly is what I've just said above - look, there are plenty of business models out there that can work, and they're actually much more valuable revenue streams than Youtube ads. The bad news is, what exactly is Youtube at this point if all of their high value content is disintermediating their revenue model? Well, advertising to kids, which is minefield, advertising on music videos, which they're doing worse than Spotify, or advertising on things like Podcasts, which are adverts on content that you otherwise would get ad free elsewhere.

solarmist 4y ago
I mostly agree, but I also think this wouldn’t be obvious or even hinted at without YouTube running this experiment. Also, most of these creators would never have started without the YouTube model. So I feel like, using the YouTube model, should be used more as bootstrapping step while you find a more sustainable revenue model. Or you’ll forever be subjected to the whims of the algorithm.
beebmam 4y ago
Agree with all of your points. It is also worth examining how monetization changes the kinds of videos that get created, and the way content creators cater to their audiences for maximum engagement.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

SnowHill9902 4y ago

www.rumble.com

Jemm 4y ago

Youtube demonetizing Soft White Underbelly is an example of the Toxic Positivity problem in the western world right now.

werber 4y ago

I don’t understand why he doesn’t directly name the organizations he supports or in what way he benefits the communities he’s working in, outside of this video I had a vague awareness of the channel but that lack of transparency outside of “I give a 100%back to the community” sounds like it could be just spending money in those communities?

atmosfera 4y ago
He takes donations and doles them out to interview subjects. Recently he had a bit of a scandal where he'd been funneling a massive amount of cash to a sex worker who was exploiting him for it, she in turn being exploited by her pimp who was taking the cash.
- SpelingBeeChamp 4y ago
  Wow. Evidence?

croes 4y ago

That's why in capitalism it isn't necessary to put inconvenient people in prison like in Russia or China We simply take the your income and payment options. No PayPal, Mastercard or Visa for you, no money from ads. You can say want you want but sooner or later you run out of money. Free but broke

sam0x17 4y ago

I've never understood how we got to this place where _some_ content on youtube is advertiser friendly and _some_ is not, and that is viewed as actionable information. I guess my whole mental model is you run ads on the whole network, and advertisers have nothing to do with the content being shown, and only an idiot would look at an ad and think, oh this brand is knowingly sponsoring this content. Advertisers used to be content with that, and wouldn't dream of being choosey about what content their ads run alongside of. However we got to this place, it's done a lot of damage -- would much rather live in the world where there is no concept of demonetizing a particular video or channel, and ads just run on the entire network. Caving to advertiser demands is the #1 best way to make a platform worse for the actual users and content creaters and slowly drain your value. Note that for example google AdSense could run alongside _any_ content that appears on youtube probably without issue. They've just created this different, pickier world when it comes to video ads. What's worse is youtube entirely controls the market, and they opened the floodgates of caving to advertiser demands. Now advertisers expect it wherever they go. They should be 4th class citizens if anything, not a meaningful constituency. As long as youtube keeps driving users to the platform, that should be the only concern.

kube-system 4y ago
> only an idiot would look at an ad and think, oh this brand is knowingly sponsoring this content. I don’t disagree but I also think * many companies want to sell to idiots * vocal fringe ideologists can blow these financial relationships up into a PR incident * some responsible companies actually do care about where their money goes * YouTube also doesn’t want negative PR “YouTube financially supports [bad thing]” but at the same time understands that demonetized content is important attracting factor to the platform overall I don’t think YouTube is to blame here. The issue is that ad supported platforms inherently have advertisers as customers, and viewers are only a means to an end. The entire business model is flawed in the lens of the viewer or content producer, and there’s no way to fix it.
- sam0x17 4y ago
  > I don’t think YouTube is to blame here. They are. They opened the floodgates of coddling advertisers. Before they did, no one listened to them at all.

derac 4y ago

I am highly concerned that YouTube is selling children's eyes to advertisers. They obscure this fact with YouTube kids and marking videos as not for kids. This is their business model. Why have content marked as not for kids at all? What they need is a section of youtube for HBO-like content. They have allowed people to make a living there for years and will shut them down with no warning whenever they like or at the whim of a terrible algorithm (or report brigading). It is a horrible business relationship.

dmartzol 4y ago

I pay for youtube premium to not see ads and I love this channel. Now if I keep paying none of that money will go to this channel. But advertisers have a say to where their money goes.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

datatrashfire 4y ago

I wonder how many of the commenters shrieking exploitation are gladly devoting their abilities to creating more invasive tracking and ad tech.

SpelingBeeChamp 4y ago

Hold on. Soft White Underbelly has NOT been demonetized by YouTube. Some of the videos that Soft White Underbelly creates are demonetized, or as YouTube puts it, found to not be suitable for all advertisers. Creating content on YouTube has been my full-time job for more than five years. There is a HUGE difference between a channel being kicked out of the Partner Program and videos being 'demonetized.' (Namely, that in the latter case, all of your other videos, past and future, can still earn revenue.) Honestly, this just seems like the guy is trying to encourage people to pay for his "members only" content. I don't blame him for that, but afactual alarmist titles are not the right way to help him along. YouTube's policies regarding advertiser friendliness are annoying, but they are mostly clear — and as far as I know, they have not substantively changed recently.

worstestes 4y ago
“Some” in this case make up over 70% or so of his collection due to sexual content. I think that hits the demonetized territory.
- SpelingBeeChamp 4y ago
  1. So he says. I hope you realize that the creator has an enormous monetary incentive to lie about that, and that it is impossible to verify his claims. 2. "Demonetized," when describing a YouTube channel, means one thing and one thing only: that the channel has been kicked out of the YouTube Partner Program. I don't know why you would adopt your own, materially-different, definition of a word whose definition is widely accepted. Doing so creates unnecessary confusion, and — particularly in this case — is highly misleading.
  - CommitSyn 4y ago
    Have you ever watched a Soft White Underbelly video?
    - SpelingBeeChamp 4y ago

adultSwim 4y ago

Putting the advertising issue to the side, I think this account is exploitative and uses questionable methods for producing videos.