Slashdot Mirror
YouTube Videos Could Get Demonetized If They Have 'Inappropriate Comments'
In response to a mother's inquiry into why her son's gymnastics videos were deemed not advertiser friendly, YouTube said on Twitter it has "taken a number of actions to better protect the YouTube community from content that endangers minors." The video-sharing website went on to say something very concerning for anyone who has ever uploaded a video to the site: "... even if your video is suitable for advertisers, inappropriate comments could result in your video receiving limited or no ads (yellow icon)."
Essentially, what YouTube is saying is that if someone leaves a "incendiary or demeaning" comment, or one with "inappropriate language," the video which features that comment could get demonetized and the content creator would not generate money from it. If you've ever read a comment thread on YouTube, it shouldn't take long for you to realize how big of an issue this could become. According to YouTube's "advertiser-friendly content guidelines," the following content may not be suitable for most advertisers: "controversial issues and sensitive events," "drugs and dangerous products or substances," "harmful or dangerous acts," "harmful or dangerous acts," "hateful content," "inappropriate language," "inappropriate use of family entertainment characters," "incendiary and demeaning [content]," "sexually suggestive content," and/or "violence."
The best advice for circumventing this issue is to disable comments entirely, but this would significantly reduce the interaction between the YouTuber and the viewer. "If this is our new reality we're going to need the ability to restrict comments from accounts under 1-4 weeks old," says news commentator and YouTube personality Philip DeFranco. "Sounds like this is prime for weaponization. Also it would probably be best to have an official blog post instead of my tweet as a reference for this change."
Essentially, what YouTube is saying is that if someone leaves a "incendiary or demeaning" comment, or one with "inappropriate language," the video which features that comment could get demonetized and the content creator would not generate money from it. If you've ever read a comment thread on YouTube, it shouldn't take long for you to realize how big of an issue this could become. According to YouTube's "advertiser-friendly content guidelines," the following content may not be suitable for most advertisers: "controversial issues and sensitive events," "drugs and dangerous products or substances," "harmful or dangerous acts," "harmful or dangerous acts," "hateful content," "inappropriate language," "inappropriate use of family entertainment characters," "incendiary and demeaning [content]," "sexually suggestive content," and/or "violence."
The best advice for circumventing this issue is to disable comments entirely, but this would significantly reduce the interaction between the YouTuber and the viewer. "If this is our new reality we're going to need the ability to restrict comments from accounts under 1-4 weeks old," says news commentator and YouTube personality Philip DeFranco. "Sounds like this is prime for weaponization. Also it would probably be best to have an official blog post instead of my tweet as a reference for this change."
...have no problem collecting 100% of the ad money. They will still run the ad and bill for it, it's just a new way to stiff you out of the money.
I hole-hardedly agree, but allow me to play doubles advocate here for a moment. For all intensive purposes I think you are wrong. In an age where false morals are a diamond dozen, true virtues are a blessing in the skies. We often put our false morality on a petal stool like a bunch of pre-Madonnas, but you all seem to be taking something very valuable for granite. So I ask of you to mustard up all the strength you can because it is a doggy dog world out there. Although there is some merit to what you are saying it seems like you have a huge ship on your shoulder. In your argument you seem to throw everything in but the kids Nsync, and even though you are having a feel day with this I am here to bring you back into reality. I have a sick sense when it comes to these types of things. It is almost spooky, because I cannot turn a blonde eye to these glaring flaws in your rhetoric. I have zero taller ants when it comes to people spouting out hate in the name of moral righteousness. You just need to remember what comes around is all around, and when supply and command fails you will be the first to go. Make my words, when you get down to brass stacks it doesn't take rocket appliances to get two birds stoned at once. It's clear who makes the pants in this relationship, and sometimes you just have to swallow your prize and accept the facts. You might have to come to this conclusion through denial and error but I swear on my mother's mating name that when you put the petal to the medal you will pass with flying carpets like it's a peach of cake.
Making a business or any sort of living as a content creator on YouTube seems to be coming rather quickly to an end if this rule takes hold.
Then again, maybe all that will be left on YouTube are those that do this as a passion project and not expect to make money from it... Those that are only in it for the money will quickly move on to something perhaps more profitable.
If they're so obsessed about "protecting the children", then just hide and disable comments across the entire site on the Youtube Kids interface. Then it's just up to the parents to ensure that Youtube is locked in the Kids mode on their devices.
That will work out well. Everybody on YouTube, no matter how nice or friendly, has enemies. There are a lot of dissatisfied, cruel, envious and stupid people around and also some outright psychos. If these people now get handed a Really Big Stick, they are going to use it.
On the plus-side, this extreme stupidity hopefully will hasten the demise of YouTube. It has vastly overstayed its welcome anyways.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
So Youtubers uploading videos of minors are going to have to choose between no comments or no monetization? This'll doom channels that are specifically about audience participation, like "leave a comment about what you want me to do in my next video". This'll push more Youtube content creators to accept kickbacks from companies to shill their products, rather than being able to rely on monetization and potentially remain unbiased.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
What'll happen is people who hate others speaking their minds will infest their comment sections and troll them, leaving inflammatory comments. This'll get them demonetized, which is about the same as being shut down. Appearing on Youtube is a full-time job if you do it right. It's not vapid internet celebrities either, there is some really incisive content by people like Jimmy Dore that is regularly reported and demonetized by these trolls.
Censorship isn't a school board banning Huckleberry Finn any more. In the corporatist system we have, corporate censorship isn't any different than government censorship. It doesn't make much difference whether the one silencing your dissent is Youtube or Andrew McCabe. The effect is the same.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
I duplicate every video I put up on YT on at least one alternative site. So far I have everything up on Bitchute as well. Anyone who doesn't duplicate their content on an alternative video sharing site, is crazy.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
Itll get abused rather quickly and they will have to remove it. :)
[($)]
"How to solve an important but complicated problem"
By: YouTube
1. Ignore problem
2. Keep ignoring problem
3. Once people bring light to problem, keep ignoring it
4. If it might lose you ad revenue, announce you're looking into it (but keep ignoring it)
5. If it has caused you to lose ad revenue, PANIC! ANNOUNCE YOU'RE TAKING MAJOR STEPS TO SOLVE IT!
6. Implement the worst possible solution to fixing the problem (Make sure the solution can be easily abused to shutdown small channels!)
7. Wonder why people hate YouTube
9. ???
10. No profit
An attentionwhore suddenly decides that ordinary videos of children dancing or in swimwear uploaded by the families or kids themselves is 'softcore child porn' in his own words, (softcore CP that he plays back in the very video that went viral and he's made tons of thumbnails that have been seen by millions) and now the livelihood of content creators across the internet are at risk, regular people will no longer be able to upload videos, and tons of people are generally going to be inconvenienced. All because 'think of the children' hysteria is so powerful nowadays everybody is too terrified to stand up against it and for common sense.
This isn't about comments that they don't want kids to see.
This is about some really messed up stuff that happens with the algorithm for recommending videos and comments certain people post on videos of kids. It's a messed up situation that needs to be addressed somehow. Hopefully YouTube will come up with better solutions.
It's lucky for Google that there is no way this policy could be abused to demonetize your competitors videos. Otherwise there could have been a lawsuit coming their way.
Why should the content creators be solely responsible for such comments. Isn't Youtube jointly responsible? Will they refund the money charged to their advertisers?
If not, this is only a tactic to maximize their revenue, not for protecting children.
If they can identify the comments and demonetize or restrict the video, surely they can give creators the option to instead opt for the comments to be deleted or blocked when they are detected. Some way that creators can choose to have the inappropriate comments removed to prevent demonetization.
No comments there either.
The propaganda must flow.
A mother wants to make money off her son's gymnastics videos? This world is really going to hell...
We are the trolls who say "FUCK!". We shall say "FUCK" again to you, if you do not appease us.
And a shrubbery won't do this time!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
You think YouTube does not put ads on videos that were demonetized? Who do you think you'd hurt that way? Hint: It ain't YouTube.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
So Youtube can detect inappropriate comments obviously, but instead of deleting, hiding the comment or banning the user of the comment the video itself will be banned. Does not make any sense.
That was my thought as well. If I don't like certain social or political commenters on YT, I can just post a few inappropriate comments on their videos and take away their ad revenue.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Now companies wishing to hamstring their competitors can resort to paying people to troll monetized videos instead of leaving fake reviews.
My solution approach would be to use MEPR (Multidimensional Earned Public Reputation) to help the trolls in rendering themselves invisible, except to each other and to people who actually want to play with the trolls.
Time's up, but I bid you ADSAuPR, atAJG.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
It would be interesting to see what kind of Cobra effect this will create. E.g. content creators make 2 videos, one with comments disabled and one redirecting for comments where less advertising income is expected.
Yeah, but just like the big copyright holders, they will probably have special protections put in place for some channels while not others. DMCA takedowns already do not generally work on 'official' channels, there will probably be something similar for this comment policy.
why punish the video, while the commenter is the one who should be blamed.
wouldn't it be easier to set a time limited (or permanent) commect ban on that id?
basically you could build a bot right now that makes sure everything on youtube get demonetized.
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
Expected nothing less form silicon valley ethics, not. Take the users content, make big $$$, give nothing back. profit.
Hanging over us monitoring, censoring, and reporting on everything everybody in the world does on a real time basis and people will wonder how we got here.
Those who are truly entertaining enough to be worth enough subscribers to make money should probably just go into the proper entertainment industry instead, rather than propping their livelihood up on Google. I wouldn't rely on them to provide me with any service that doesn't get whisked away or changed unrecognisably at a moment's notice, so I sure as heck wouldn't rely on them to pay the bills!
Then we can all use some alternative to Youtube and just be happy with the old idea of making videos because you genuinely want to entertain, educate, vlog etc for the fun and benefit of other people, and not having to slap a "please like, comment, subscribe and hit that bell icon" at the end of every pointless 5 minute video telling you something that could've been typed in 5 seconds.
Maybe don't put your children on YouTube.
Maybe don't try or expect to make money from your child being on YouTube.
Maybe we all know that social media isn't good for kids anyway.
YouTube hasn't abandoned or even limit censorship in any way.
They have outsourced it.
Now, consider that YouTube will censor your video, by denying you full exposure/rights/permissions, not (ostensibly) for the content, but because of the comments, even (especially) those you have no control over. If someone wants to harm you, they can easily post objectionable comments to your posts, and *poof*, you suffer consequences of their deliberate acts.
The State wins.
Oh, be sure the State is working their evil on this site also.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Every day it seems less and less like YouTube, and more and more like UsTube.
A tool to stifle comments comments that are contrary to their agenda as well as an excuse to snarf up 100% of the profits for other people's work.
~Any apparent grammatical or typographic errors are caused by defects in your display device.
they make a block channel feature in all versions of their app. the pedo thing is sorted resume.
...because the more massive communications companies behave this way, the more ammunition there is to claim they should be treated as common carriers.
~Any apparent grammatical or typographic errors are caused by defects in your display device.
And if you let your children watch something fucked up, its on you.
Hell force YouTube to require a Google account to even get to the page. Those require you to be 13.
Got to anyways to watch videos with the word fuck in them
http://progressquest.com/spoltog.php?name=Son+Of+Son+Of+DarkRookie
I will give you the last.
The two former are just doing so to get money. There is no altruism there.
http://progressquest.com/spoltog.php?name=Son+Of+Son+Of+DarkRookie
That, and it can't play most games.
Mostly just emulators.
http://progressquest.com/spoltog.php?name=Son+Of+Son+Of+DarkRookie
So we can just post inappropriate shit on videos of content creators we can't stand, and they get demonetized? Just create an alt account so your primary one doesn't start getting shit suggestions of stuff by RG and the Pauls...
I think within the least year or two it's become clear that Youtube as it once existed will not be able to survive. This is partially the fault of advertisers and partly the fault of Youtube itself.
I can understand demonetizing blatant racism, or terrorist training videos, etc, but it seems that just using profanity or DISCUSSING bad things (even for the sake of informing viewers) leads to demonetization now.
What made Youtube refreshing to me was that I don't have to put up with bullshit censorship like mainstream media had. Now Youtube is basically trying to enforce it on the new platform too.
I'm sure some people will survive off of Patreon pledges, and I support about a half-dozen creators there myself, but all in all I think we need a competing platform with a more reasonable approach towards the advertising.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
Sure, but I don't have any sympathy. Social media is made up of an army of nudniks that willingly give their creations away for others to monetize. They knew the score going in.
The fact that Youtube was willing to deal them in to begin with was rare and generous. It shouldn't come as a surprise to anyway that they want to change the deal now.
Let's figure out what the words are, weaponize them, and then go back to complaining YouTube is a bad platform after the feature is removed again.
Is this not akin to punishing the presenter at a venue for comments shouted by the audience?
forget that. It'll be bots. Lots and lots of bots. Including Bots by state actors attacking videos they don't like.
Say goodbye to any political discourse that isn't from the establishment. Say goodbye to anything that's not pro-corporate.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Which would be great, except the people who run google are effectively friends with those in Patreon. So, the same policies are spreading over there. If you have content that they deem offensive, then Patreon is defunding you too. This famously occurred for Sargon of Akad last December, which is the reason some large content creators who champion free speech left patreon in protest.
You might feel your content is safe, and it is just those "bad" people who disagree with you get silenced. The problem is that when bad means disagree, you can find yourself suddenly on the wrong side very quickly.
Free speech is the hardest thing, because it means defending the right of someone to say something that is completely annoying to you. It goes against human nature, which makes it one of the great intellectual achievements of humans.
Ironically, you might not see this post because my karma is bad. My karma is bad because I said some very, very critical things about the slashdot community chasing politics over the quest for science. Even here, censorship happens.
Theres people decrying pictures of newborn babies as child porn.
..without stopping to consider that the rest of us don't find it erotic at all.
Over last couple years the rise and ease of filing false dmca takedowns to get a person's video removed has become a weekly occurrence. Even various forums one in particular with infamous names like "seo blackhat" have step by step instructions on having an enemy's video removed by using a false dmca because there are no penalties for filing a false one anyway, the steps even go through creating alt youtube accounts to use and all steps and what to out on the forms, etc.
Now not only can trolls use false dmca takedowns to remove random videos, they can just use same steps as the false dmca instructions given in various forums mentioned previously to setup as many alt youtube accounts as ya want and just create threads of the vilest grossest comments alone or with a friend or 2 and get your target's video demonetized.
Also with the current fad of scammers using blackmail and extortion on various youtubers, this just gives another weapon in the arsenal to force a youtuber to disable comments which loses them a lot of views and dropped out of the "algorithm" costing them money, and scammers hitting all videos on a youtubers channel to demonetize everything for extortion before graduating to having channel hitten with strikes.
YouTube always handles things ass backwards.
"The best advice for circumventing this issue is to disable comments entirely, but this would significantly reduce the interaction between the YouTuber and the viewer."
Not only that, but videos with comments turned off gets pushed way down the priority list when it comes to their search engine. I have some videos with comments off that don't show up in search results even when the terms are VERY specific.
If you're making money on advertisements you should take the time to moderate the comments. Or turn them off. When that story of the kid toy review that topped the list came out I noticed the channel was smart enough to disable comments altogether, yet it didn't hurt and likely helped their revenue stream.
I loathe this free loader society we are becoming. Upload video, free money. Can't pay for something, crowd fund it.
Great. Now there's an easier way to take down videos of the political opposition than lying that you own it.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
If only there was some way to rank comments, on say a -1 to 5 scale, then people could view comments at the level they're personally comfortable with.
"Grab them by the pussy" -- President of the United States of America
Next? Youtube has censoring conservatives for years.
The creator should certainly assist monitoring the comments and reporting inappropriate comments, however they shouldn’t be financially liable for comments they can’t control. Maybe frequent inappropriate comments means comments are disabled by default.
How's life in the hypocrite lane?
Bring down the whole system by widespread use of AdBlock software. I haven't seen a YouTube ad for 10 years.
Kill advertisement as a concept in its entirety. Make it criminal to knock on people door, make it criminal to play ads on TV, make it criminal to erect billboards.
No. More. Advertisement. Stop the junk.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
Are there ever any youtube comments of any value? I've never seen one.
I have to be honest and say that I don't often read youtube comments. But I have read them on rare occasions and always regretted wasting my time.
YouTube is a great resource. I especially appreciate the technology conferences like PyCons and college level math and physics classes, but I've never seen any indication that the youtube comments feature has any value at all.