THE LEGENDARY: Is YouTube Turning its Back on Creators?
For a long time now, YouTube has not only been a place where people go to just watch video about all sorts of different things, but it has been the pace where creative outspoken people can go and speak their minds and be themselves and have the support from audiences who shared similar interests and views. But recently, there have been more and more reports about YouTube striking several channels for what some would say as petty stuff.
Not every YouTube channel is safe anymore. Not only are smaller channels getting community guideline strikes but much larger channels with millions of subscribers have been getting strikes also. Creators of smaller YouTube channels have been complaining that they can’t make videos talking about a brand without it being taken down especially if it was saying something negative about the brand that is mentioned in the video while larger YouTubers seem to be safe because they have sponsors and ads on their videos. But larger YouTube worry about getting copyright strikes if clips of someone else’s video or music is used in theirs without adding credit to the original creators. But many larger YouTubers give the original creator their credit and would not use the entire video or audio from the original upload but they would still get a copyright strike because the original creator does not want them using their content at all without monetary compensation; apparently credit recognition from a creator with 4 million subscribers isn’t enough for them.
YouTube has been demonetizing a lot of videos; in other words, they have been removing the ads off the creators video and that creator would not be able to make money off the video any longer. This is due to content that is not “advertiser friendly”. But there has not been much clarity as to what exactly advertiser friendly really means. It has been heard that YouTube will demonetize videos for inappropriate tags, titles and thumbnails such as nudity or obscene gestures, obscene paraphernalia, and using tags like suicide, ISIS, and profane language . Popular YouTubers like Philip DeFranco, TheGamerFromMars, LeafyisHere, Pyrocynical and H3H3Productions have spoken out on this issue and have been persistent about asking the execs of YouTube for more clarity so that their videos are not flagged or demonetized.
But the question is, how does someone report the news if you cannot use certain names in the tags or thumbnails? If someone has an inspirational channel that has helped a lot of people out of depression by using keywords like suicide in the title and tags, does that person get demonetized? What exactly does YouTube consider to be negative? There are millions of videos that still exist on YouTube today that contain sexual images, extremely profane language and even gore but it has not been flagged or removed.
Recently, YouTube announce its new Heros program, where users will be able to add closed captioning to videos and earn points to ultimately be able to flag videos for “negative” content. This is a voluntary program and YouTube is not paying its users. They created this because they need help with policing content to make YouTube a more positive environment. The problem that most creators have with this is that yes, adding closed captioning to videos is great, especially if it is not an option for viewers who are hearing impaired, but if someone has a personal vendetta against a YouTuber, they can flag their video for whatever reason and that YouTuber will then have a strike if the video is removed. YouTube allows creators three strikes on their channel for community guidelines violations, then after that the channel will be removed. This could not just affect a single person, but many companies are ran off their YouTube channels. So by shutting channels down then the business will go down as well. So now it’s not difficult to see why many creators feel abandoned and that YouTube is caring more about huge brands than the little guy who is putting videos on their website.
Is YouTube within their rights since it’s their website? Was it always in the Community Guidelines but just now being strictly enforced? Should YouTube do a better job clarifying to creators what should be excluded from their uploads? Should all creators be worried? Tell us what you think.
