YouTube Reverses Course On Controversial Swearing and Monetization Policy (engadget.com) 45
YouTube is relaxing some of the profanity rules it introduced late last year -- "with an update outlining a less restrictive policy that will allow the use of moderate and strong profanity to be used without risking demonetization," reports Engadget. From the report: The original policy, first introduced in November, would flag any video that used rude language in the first several seconds as ineligible for advertising, with little delineation between "strong" or "moderate" swearing. The policy also seemed to apply retroactively, with many creators claiming that videos they published before the updated policy had lost their monetization status. Now, YouTube is reversing course with a tweaked set of rules that allows some swearing.
Now, creators who use colorful language in the first seven seconds of a video are still eligible for advertising, with some conditions. If the profanity is "moderate," the video won't face any restrictions -- but strong profanity in those opening seconds could result in a video only receiving "limited ads." Under the original rules, the update notes, both of these scenarios would have caused a video to be completely demonetized. Creators will be able swear more frequently after the first seven seconds without fear of losing advertising revenue, though YouTube notes that excessive swearing will still put content at risk of being demonetized or limited. The update also clarifies that strong language in background, outro or intro music should not affect monetization status.
Now, creators who use colorful language in the first seven seconds of a video are still eligible for advertising, with some conditions. If the profanity is "moderate," the video won't face any restrictions -- but strong profanity in those opening seconds could result in a video only receiving "limited ads." Under the original rules, the update notes, both of these scenarios would have caused a video to be completely demonetized. Creators will be able swear more frequently after the first seven seconds without fear of losing advertising revenue, though YouTube notes that excessive swearing will still put content at risk of being demonetized or limited. The update also clarifies that strong language in background, outro or intro music should not affect monetization status.
Now return the dislike count (Score:4, Insightful)
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There's already a Chrome extension that returns the button and does a statistical analysis to estimate the number of dislikes. Its not an exact number but it should be ball park accurate for ratios.
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We're talking about both video and comment dislike counts, right?!
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Yes. I can't think of a single reason to hide the dislike count on comments. The thumb-up/down feature on comments is how the "community" self-moderates. This cuts both ways, someone who has been unfairly "down-voted" in the opinion of a viewer can have that downvote counter-balanced with an upvote. In the aggregate this is one of the better solutions we've found to provide self-moderation. It's not perfect and things will always get abused, but for the most part it seems to work well and I don't remember e
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Profanity rules? (Score:5, Funny)
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I wonder... (Score:2)
If streaming competitors like Odysee and Utreon were starting to get a bump in viewership thanks to these changes.
Probably not... most people probably have no idea what I'm even talking about when mentioning them.
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Youtube was getting messed up in the last few months. LOTS of on-off videos on channels claiming that they had videos that were demonetized for no reason, no explanations, no response to questions about it, and with very slow and ineffective remedies. Also videos about how others can claim copyright erroneously and have your most popular videos be hidden while presumably the person making the claim gets monetized instead - again with no easy recourse. Google, like others, wants everything done with an al
Oh, really. (Score:5, Insightful)
Did demonetizing a huge swath of your current and legacy content hurt revenue? Who would have thought!
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Did demonetizing a huge swath of your current and legacy content hurt revenue? Who would have thought!
Honestly, they may as well just demonetize ALL Australian content. Swearing is just how they communicate.
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Re:Oh, really. (Score:5, Informative)
That's not how it works. "Demonetized" only means *you* don't get paid: it doesn't mean Google doesn't still run ads on the content, and it very much doesn't mean Google gives up *their* cut of the ad revenue.
There may be fewer ads run; and each slot will sell for less than it would on an "all ages" video since some advertisers won't be in the bidding pool, but there are plenty of businesses that will happily take a smaller audience in return for the discount on an ad.
Google is changing the policy (again) solely because someone there has done the math and thinks it's more profitable for them to be a little less aggressive about this, that's all. The "why" could be any of a dozen things, but it will be a concrete financial motivation of some sort. (I'm no accountant, but something inflation-triggered seems the most likely root cause. I would have guessed at "getting their asses kicked by TikTok" myself, but since competition is the enemy of the "free" market once you have enough money they already found another way to skin that cat).
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If one site keeps f'ing you over details in the content, and the other doesn't, then where are you gonna post content in the future?
Also, most videos are only (fiscally) relevant the first day or so, before all the views start dropping off. So retroactive un-demonetizing does diddly in the way of undoing damage.
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That's not how it works. "Demonetized" only means *you* don't get paid: it doesn't mean Google doesn't still run ads on the content, and it very much doesn't mean Google gives up *their* cut of the ad revenue.
Not true, it means more than "only" you don't get paid.
Go pull up your youtube studio channel analytics and look and your videos view counts.
Demonetized videos are retroactively removed from being suggested when someone watches another video on your channel.
People watching a "Part 1" will not see part 2 and beyond, unless they explicitly pull up your channel listing.
Demonetized videos are also not counted towards your channels watch time, and the videos audience retention artificially drops to zero.
These do
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I don't disagree that there is a double standard and that YouTube can, and probably often does, act hypocritically.
But something doesn't quite add up. Why would YouTube care in the first place? Going all the way back to the first "ad-pocalypse" several years ago, it was about negative PR resulting from advertisers being associated with highly controversial (to put it diplomatically) content. Advertisers threatened to pull out and so YouTube instituted the first of these demonetization policies.
Assuming that
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Or it could be YouTube runs ads that are willing to pay less but don't care about such content.
So YouTube gets the money to help offset the cost of the video and there's none left over for the content producer.
Though, what happen
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I think there is also an element of trying to get creators to clean up the first few seconds of their videos, to provide a better user experience. Most people don't want to click on something and be bombarded with profanity, so the rule against not using strong language in the first 7 seconds gives people time to decide if the video is what they want, or close it.
But yes, the attacks on LGBT content have been a problem for years. Even when YouTube doesn't demonetize them, they tend to make less money becaus
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In the past this was solved by having ads curated. You never had a random assortment of advertisements from all sources appearing in newspapers, television, or radio. But today everything is automated, the content creators do not know what is happening, at the most they choose from one of a number of third party random ad suppliers, Google, and other big tech using companies, just want an algorithm to do anything - there is so much content that they don't want to pay humans to do the hard work here, or p
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Don't demonetized videos still have ads showing? If there are no ads shown on demonetized videos, then I want a list of them I can watch instead of the ad infested ones :-)
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No, it prevents ads from *some* advertisers showing on the content.
This isn't hard to test. You can find plenty of channels - not "videos", entire channels - that have been demonetized, for either "think of the children" BS, or false copyright claims, and probably half a dozen other less common reasons (that you'll never know about, because Google doesn't give straight answers, or often even any reason for it beyond "computer says no", if that). You can still watch the videos themselves though, and those vi
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If so then the creators are either not telling the truth or the video have been monetized some time after they where demonetized so that the content of the video no longer applies. As parent already wrote the whole point of demonetization is for advertisers to avoid having their ads shown on content that might scandalize the advertiser.
Yes the advertisers can mark the level of content that they allow to be shown on so some videos might be classified in a way that only a small subset of ads are shown but th
Retroactive rule changes (Score:2)
Straight out of Darth "I Am Altering the Deal, Pray I Don't Alter It Any Further" Vader playbook.
Will they retroactively apply this? (Score:2)
Or are they taking the approach on profanity that you can't unfuck that which has been fucked?
The worst part is that they offered no way out of the demonetisation. If automatically flagged you could request a manual review. In many cases the manual review was shown to have confirmed the demonetisation within just a few seconds (unless superman has a new day job and a really fast machine they've been caught out not manually reviewing shit). Youtube gives you the option to cut out parts of videos post publish
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Probably not. Youtube is the biggest, most disgusting asshole towards its creators. If there were any serious competitors, Youtube would have died a long time ago.
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It's expensive here, and that's the problem. Those people doing the review are low paid and have thousands of complaints to deal with before lunch. Thus the review says "yes, indeed there was a copyright claim, all the spelling was right, therefore we're keeping the flag in place." They don't spend the legwork to see if the complainant is actually the copyright owner (profits would plummet!). The system is designed to benefit only Google.
Opening Music (Score:2)
Anyway, it irritates me when Youtubers start talking in the same split second as the video begins, makes me think I might have missed something and I often restart it to check.
Re: Opening Music (Score:2)
youtubers are resorting to rewording around censorship, or straight up bleeping. buy they not only do it to words like fuck, bitch, cunt. also to words like sex, prostitution, and even murder, gun, and bullet.
the fucking puritans that run america want to impose their bullshit on everything
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Also groomer and pedophile. Not allowed to say those words either.
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Malarkey!
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There are some smart channels that are gaming the system to their advantage.
They use profanity and other "not allowed" content, such as substance use, in the first 7 seconds so as to make the video unsuitable for ads -- but they don't care because all their revenue is from Patreon.
This means their subscribers get guaranteed ad-free content and YouTube is left carrying the hosting/distribution costs while the creator rakes in their cash from patrons.
It works surpisingly well and since such channels have a ve
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I don't think most channels could survive on Patreon revenue. What's more, Patreon itself has deplatformed people under pressure from payment processors like mastercard and visa. There is a whole network of rightthink enforcers.
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Zero Punctuation already [escapistmagazine.com] waits 30 seconds of that. Of course YouTube censors [youtube.com] some of the swear words because they are dicks.
Why is music exempt? (Score:4, Insightful)
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The reason is that the "music" with by far the highest frequency of swearing is hip-hop or rap, and demonetizing because of that would be racist.
Thought police (Score:1)