YouTube No Longer Advertiser Friendly

On August 30th 2016, many YouTube content creators had their videos struck with notifications of their videos having monetization removed. The reason being: YouTube had rephrased their policies to allow for advertisers to better allow themselves to flag videos for inappropriate content. However, the list of reasons and topics that are considered "not advertiser friendly" cover the gamut of things that are in pretty much every YouTube video ever.



This image was posted on PhillyD's Twitter, and it highlights the reasons for some of his videos having their advertising being removed. In a video that PhillyD posted on the day of the policy clarification, he discusses the concerns that he had about the changes. PhillyD is one of YouTube's earlies content creators, as he mentions in the video, and he has only been flagged roughly twelve times during the course of the ten years that he has been consistently making videos on YouTube. However, because of this new rephrasing of YouTube policy, that number has doubled.

YouTubers make their money from advertising revenue. If they can no longer have advertisements on their videos, they can no longer make money. This is obviously a problem for the individuals who have made their living from said advertiser revenue.

For a YouTuber like PhillyD to have his monetization pulled for "controversial or sensitive subjects" is worrisome. I, myself, watch a lot of Youtube, and a lot of them technically violate these newly reworded policies. While these are not new policies according to YouTube, they have just been reworded so that advertisers can flag videos that they deem not appropriate for their advertisements and have a more clear reason for doing so. These flags are brought up by the advertisers, and not users, which is a good thing. However that probably wouldn't stop a group of people from flagging a video themselves, and complaining to the advertisers to take down their advertisement. This is the tactic that #gamergate used a few years ago. However, those people wouldn't even have to do that because of things like AdBlock, which removes nearly all forms of advertisements that help YouTubers make money. While their are other ways for these content creators to make money, with things like merchandise, Patreon, and donations from their respective communities, this is still a problem. Not everyone can afford to give money regularly, or even afford merchandise. The best way for them to support their favorite YouTubers is to simply watch their videos, and let the YouTube algorithm sort out how much money goes to that creator.



via: Kotaku