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Youtube becoming a "Safe Space"


Suzu Fanatic

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Like this show or hate it, it gets across a clear message what is currently happening to a vast amount of content creators right now, as things start to change within Youtube.

 

With Twitter and other major sites also taking steps to change, this leads to some pretty scary concerns over what many took for granted, freedom of speech.

 

 

 

sogh, and I was going to stay out of controversial topics for awhile...rip me I guess. :sachi:

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It's not censorship:

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Over on the official support page relating to “Advertiser-friendly content guidelines” they now list what is no longer considered “advertiser-friendly”. You can view the list below.

Content that is considered “not advertiser-friendly” includes, but is not limited to:
• Sexually suggestive content, including partial nudity and sexual humor
• Violence, including display of serious injury and events related to violent extremism
• Inappropriate language, including harassment, profanity and vulgar language
• Promotion of drugs and regulated substances, including selling, use and abuse of such items
• Controversial or sensitive subjects and events, including subjects related to war, political conflicts, natural disasters and tragedies, even if graphic imagery is not shown

This isn't the same as banning certain material, it just means you can't make money from it. But hey, if you've got a point of view and you want to put it out there, nothing's stopping you. If you want to be edgy for coin however ... well, you'll need to find somewhere else. I hear in ye olden days people used a soapbox, a megaphone, and a hat. Just sayin'.

Basically they're not going to allow their platform to fund people to potentially do some pretty awful stuff.

As for the video, it's pretty hyperbolic. 

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24 minutes ago, Rooke said:

It's not censorship:

This isn't the same as banning certain material, it just means you can't make money from it. But hey, if you've got a point of view and you want to put it out there, nothing's stopping you. If you want to be edgy for coin however ... well, you'll need to find somewhere else. I hear in ye olden days people used a soapbox, a megaphone, and a hat. Just sayin'.

Basically they're not going to allow their platform to fund people to potentially do some pretty awful stuff.

As for the video, it's pretty hyperbolic. 

I admit you got to take this vid in paticular with a large grain of salt, but it still raises reasonable points about legitimate coverage being demonetized, while some pretty trashy stuff remains untouched - for questionable reasons.

The scope is going to be far-reaching and likely to cause a lot of collateral damage to peoples livelihoods, that have produced content for years~ You joke about it, but some of those people have made their content into fulltime jobs for over ten years now.

Random example, any depictions or coverage of war will be considered (and already has been, from some other channels I've visited) an offense to the TOS.

 

Sure, it's easy to say "so you can't get paid for it anymore, so what?" but it's a subtle shift in persuasion - it acts as a deterrent. And it's the slow, sneaky, stuff like that that worries me.

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It's just a way they use to "discourage" users to not speak of certain topics that might be controversial or just offend certain groups of society.

They're as wide as possible regarding what kind of content can be considered  “not advertiser-friendly”, pretty much everything  they want can be  subsumed into the category of "Controversial or sensitive subjects and events"

The answer to this could be, "well don't use youtube if you don't agree wiht their TOS" but that's a really conformist point of view to this whole issue which I think is much deeper... 
Is it censorship?Meh I don't want to answer that, but let me tell you that there will be always be those who defend ( or do nothing and by omission they are also agreeing) with this this type of things and those who are against it.

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12 minutes ago, Soulless Watcher said:

Unless I'm sorely mistaken, but couldn't people work around this (to an extent) by using patreon to make money indirectly from their vids?

I know a few that do that, but the real question is if Youtube will change it's stance regarding videos on its platform receiving outside funding.

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It's just a way they use to "discourage" users to not speak of certain topics that might be controversial or just offend certain groups of society.

@Deep Blue Pretty much, its mainly a deterant - the question is WHO behind the scenes forced Googles, Twitter, FB, etc, hands and WHY are such large companies buckling to subjective social concerns? I may be a tad paranoid and dramatic - but it really is a slippery slope if such things become the norm.

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Just now, Suzu Fanatic said:

You joke about it, but some of those people have made their content into fulltime jobs for over ten years now.

Which wouldn't have been possible without the exposure granted to them by Youtube in the first place. If you climb to the top all on your own then you have the right to do what you wish, but when your success is reliant on a multitude of others then you will need to compromise. If you're a writer and a publishing house suddenly no longer publishes the type of novels you write, please go on Youtube (heh) and complain vigorously about how unfair this is. Take note of how little attention you will garner. At the end of the day, you (the writer) need the distribution service of they (the Publisher) and they probably need you ... not at all. Therefore you will need to change yourself so you can take advantage of the service they provide, or use a different service. Same deal here. The company wants to change policies and well, unless the backlash makes it financially unviable for them to continue in this direction I really doubt the complaints will affect them.

Businesses are not run to be convenient for you, they're run to make money (which can mean providing convenience but only when it's financially advantageous for them to do so.) At the end of the day Youtube provides a brilliant platform to get your voice out to the community. You can choose to take advantages of the services they provide, or try and find a different service. The world is about making compromises.

But if people are going to complain about it, they should complain about what it actually is. I continually talk about how people hyperbolise incidents to make them seem more evil than it is. In no way is this 'censorship' but people will call it that because it provides a negative emotional response in the audience. They do this because campaigning that 'Youtube will no longer allow certain things to be funded' will not provide much response. 

I don't find this to be much of a deterrent. Why would no longer receiving cash affect your desire to put your views out there?

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15 minutes ago, Deep Blue said:

It's just a way they use to "discourage" users to not speak of certain topics that might be controversial or just offend certain groups of society.

See, this is what confuses me. I'm an outspoken guy, a lot of people will attest that I put my views out there a lot, and I do so without the incentive of cash. In a certain group of people I've talked about the stupidity of driverless cars, religion, socialism, the demise of Europe and many other potentially controversial things. The thing is, I don't receive cash for these views. In no way did this lack of cash stop me from talking about any of this stuff.

If you want to talk about stuff nothing's stopping you from doing so. The idea that someone needs cash before they start is inane. But IMO Youtube is drawing a line at implicitly being responsible for the FUNDING of certain views, and they're free to do so if they wish.

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28 minutes ago, Rooke said:

I don't find this to be much of a deterrent. Why would no longer receiving cash affect your desire to put your views out there?

The obvious reasoning is that it doesn't put food on the table or keep a roof over your head. I suspect you underestimate or undervalue some of the content creators out there that use Youtube as a platform. As you say, it is a business relationship - a healthy portion of all revenue gained by the creator goes directly to Youtube (as it should). Some of the highest tier creators bring in vast sums yearly, that Google benefits from.

With such a sudden and drastic change to the ToS, it's debatable if it was a reasonable or tasteful decision between a two parties.

 

But in the end, I actually agree with you - If creators have a problem with it, they should find another platform to work from - but, as a bizzare example, it's like telling a guy that doesn't want to sleep on a bed of nails to instead go outside and sleep on the ground. Not really a lot of options out there.

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I don't find this to be much of a deterrent. Why would no longer receiving cash affect your desire to put your views out there?

Tsk tsk, just becuase some not see the value in it, doesnt mean a person shouldent get paid for their efforts. Releasing content is all well and good - but that alone doesnt feed them or put a roof over their head. (and pleaselet's not go into the matter of "is fuulltime Youtubing a respectable occuption worthy of pay". :makina:  That's really dependent on the viewer - and what the creators goals are for their channel.

 

EDIT: Also (in response to a post you snuck in), I suspect we are thinking of different kinds of creators, I'm not thinking about opinion-driven people that post their feelings, and cry - and say how their day was, and talk about how bad the world is - not vloggers, plz no :sachi: . I'm thinking of the professionals that are making content for either comedy, journalism, entertainment, and/or news casting.

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21 minutes ago, Rooke said:

See, this is what confuses me. I'm an outspoken guy, a lot of people will attest that I put my views out there a lot, and I do so without the incentive of cash. In a certain group of people I've talked about the stupidity of driverless cars, religion, socialism, the demise of Europe and many other potentially controversial things. The thing is, I don't receive cash for these views. In no way did this lack of cash stop me from talking about any of this stuff.

If you want to talk about stuff nothing's stopping you from doing so. The idea that someone needs cash before they start is inane. But IMO Youtube is drawing a line at implicitly being responsible for the FUNDING of certain views, and they're free to do so if they wish.

Yes, nobody is stopping you but they are showing to you, by cutting the incomes you receive from your videos, that they are not ok with the content you are showing or speaking of, you might like it or not but is a way to persuade users to not use their platform for those purposes only.
You can certainly go to a park and do a public speech of those topics or do whatever you want nobody is forcing you to use youtube but don't forget that most of these guys live from this, it's their only income, it might be an stupid decision to base your only income in some platform that can decide from one day to another what you can or cannot do that's the scary thing of internet but that's not the point.

So in the end they are trying to persuade users to change what they speak about or what content they release in their videos.

34 minutes ago, Suzu Fanatic said:

I know a few that do that, but the real question is if Youtube will change it's stance regarding videos on its platform receiving outside funding.

@Deep Blue Pretty much, its mainly a deterant - the question is WHO behind the scenes forced Googles, Twitter, FB, etc, hands and WHY are such large companies buckling to subjective social concerns? I may be a tad paranoid and dramatic - but it really is a slippery slope if such things become the norm.

He, I'm pretty...paranoid so I don't want to give my opinion about this xD 

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5 minutes ago, Suzu Fanatic said:

The obvious reasoning is that it doesn't put food on the table or keep a roof over your head.

Then it’s just that the business arrangement/opportunity is no longer desirable. Happens all the time in any industry. People who no longer get paid sufficiently walk away, it happens in sport, office workers, and content creators. 

Maybe demand will result in another platform being built. Competition is always good :) 

I'm quite surprised there's so few options out there. 

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24 minutes ago, Rooke said:

But if people are going to complain about it, they should complain about what it actually is. I continually talk about how people hyperbolise incidents to make them seem more evil than it is. In no way is this 'censorship' but people will call it that because it provides a negative emotional response in the audience. They do this because campaigning that 'Youtube will no longer allow certain things to be funded' will not provide much response.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship disagrees, as do the dictionary definitions. What this doesn't do is impinge on is anyone's right to free speech.

To illustrate the problem: Say all roads were owned by one private company. That company one day decides that you may no longer use their roads to transport VNs. Whoops. But ok, let's say they don't own all roads, just most of them - sure, you can go to the guys who own the remaining roads, but you'll be at a severe disadvantage compared to those who can use all roads. Which is to say, at some point (or rather size), the question is whether something is still like a shop or more like a road in that respect.

And sure, not being able to make money with something doesn't mean you're not allowed to do it. But imagine for a moment "you're allowed to distribute VNs, but you're not allowed to charge money for them". See the problem? Only difference there is between speech you like and speech you don't like.

Of course the flip-side is that the right to free speech does not only mean "you can say what you want", but also "you can refrain from saying what you don't want to say", so you can't exactly force a company to distribute any speech they don't want to.

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2 minutes ago, KuroganeHomura said:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship disagrees, as do the dictionary definitions. 

It doesn't. I think you misunderstand what censorship is. Either that or the misuse of the word by today's millennials are warping the definition in more people than I previously thought.

Censorship is the suppression of information, not the failure to promote information, or the failure to endorse information.

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5 minutes ago, Rooke said:

It doesn't. I think you misunderstand what censorship is. Either that or the misuse of the word by today's millennials are warping the definition in more people than I previously thought.

Censorship is the suppression of information, not the failure to promote information, or the failure to endorse information.

It's certainly not limited to millenials. http://ncac.org/resource/what-is-censorship

The big point here is that depending on the size of the one refusing to distribute certain information, that equals suppression. Take the road example I gave and apply it to the Internet instead. Suppose every single company offering hosting refused to deal with anyone wanting to distribute certain (legal) information. That would effectively remove that information from the Internet - which is quite clearly suppression.

And if you're talking about refusal to distribute vs. refusal to make ad revenue available the same way it is for other kinds of information, well, people need money live, so being unable to make money this way certainly limits the time they have available to create the stuff in question (because they need that time to do something else that does make money). Which results in... suppression of that information, relative to if that restriction was not there and also relative to those not under that restriction.

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My thoughts on this is that it grants way too much power to corporate entities with lawyers and teams of people who can send DMCA notices and now Youtube guidelines notices in order to disincentivize content that is critical of them. I'm mainly concerned about the fact that many of these videos exist only because people can make money by doing them, and Youtube is giving corporate bullies another tool to effectively silence their critics by removing their source of revenue. Youtube's new content restriction guidelines for monetization are insanely restrictive and basically gives them free reign to take down anything that they don't want to hear. 

Released a video review critical of the new Call of Duty game? Controversial opinion, you're not allowed to make money off that.

Released a video "in partnership" with Activision talking about how rad the new Call of Duty game is? Gotta get a swimming pool to fit all this money in.

The end result is a future where there are no more professionally produced content on Youtube containing critical thought because there's no money in it for them, and instead you can expect an even greater non-stop flood of paid shills gushing endlessly at the top of their lungs.

The problem with this is that I'm not necessarily morally opposed to the move, this change was spurred on by what youtube's advertisers want, and advertisers have a right to select the kind of content they associate themselves with. That itself is a right I want to defend. The main issue is that Youtube doesn't give their video creators any choice in the matter. There's no way to find advertisers that want to associate with the kind of content you produce. Youtube is meant to be an open platform for this kind of thing but restrict all monetization to content that can only appeal to mainstream audiences. This both scares away niche advertisers and producers of niche content, completely defeating the point of creating an open platform. If Youtube wants to go down this road of allowing advertisers to dictate the content they wish to associate with, they really need to implement a system that allows for greater diversity in advertising and for producers of niche or opinionated content to partner with the right kind of advertisers, instead of essentially blocking off large swathes of content creators from earning any money. And they need to protect these creators of niche content from the corporate entities who try to bully them off the site.

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10 minutes ago, Decay said:

The problem with this is that I'm not necessarily morally opposed to the move, this change was spurred on by what youtube's advertisers want, and advertisers have a right to select the kind of content they associate themselves with. That itself is a right I want to defend. The main issue is that Youtube doesn't give their video creators any choice in the matter. There's no way to find advertisers that want to associate with the kind of content you produce. Youtube is meant to be an open platform for this kind of thing but restrict all monetization to content that can only appeal to mainstream audiences. This both scares away niche advertisers and producers of niche content, completely defeating the point of creating an open platform. If Youtube wants to go down this road of allowing advertisers to dictate the content they wish to associate with, they really need to implement a system that allows for greater diversity in advertising and for producers of niche or opinionated content to partner with the right kind of advertisers, instead of essentially blocking off large swathes of content creators from earning any money. And they need to protect these creators of niche content from the corporate entities who try to bully them off the site.

The whole semantics about what is/isn't censorship aside, basically exactly this.

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Youtube is just one possible platform for sharing content, but of course, it's major. I don't know that much about Twitch, but maybe they could move the nasty videos over there. Large sectors of Youtube have been a drama fest between users, so it's fine that it's coming to an end. Like Rooke says, I think this measure can only improve it. Controversial videos are funny for a while, but tire afterwards.

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Well, this is rather putting into the TOS and enforcing more something that existed already. Video makers have had videos de-monetized before because of their topics, such as the Israel-Palestine conflict or the genocides in Rwanda. That's the kind of content that gets booted out, not actually questionable content like people promoting sexual harassment or w/e.
But that only follows the tacit rule of the media, which is to never displease the advertisers.

Which IS concerning for video makers, of course. But that's just one of the consequences of having just two platforms viable for getting exposure when you're a professional video maker, both of which are run by huge privately owned companies. There's no easy solution. Making a video sharing platform involves fairly huge costs, after all, so something run by a non-profit or self-organized seems unlikely to come out in the near future (and I don't believe in the liberal bullshit that concurrency b/w private companies will make things better).

The solution, which is already emerging anyway, is for video makers to find alternative ways of funding their work, such as patreon. Most people who don't make literally millions of hits on youtube make most of their money through crowdfunding already. And those who make millions of hits are already doing consensual content that pleases advertisers anyway.

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As one of the people who is opposed to censorship I find this action extremely bad for content creators but as much as I hate to say it, this isn't censorship. I highly encourage people to read the youtube advertiser-friendly content page which explains their policies. All these content creators can very easily release their content (that does not go against general youtube guidelines) and be perfectly fine. If they want to monetize they need to find an advertiser who believes your content is friendly for their purposes and not post clickbait titles and images for your videos. The abuse of this system will primarily come from flaggers who will flag to be dicks/trolls as the rest of it can be quite easily circumvented (via sponsors, patreon, not posting titles/preview images that are controversial). I don't think this should be done mind you but it not quite censorship...yet.

Advertiser-friendly content is content that's appropriate for all audiences. It has little to no inappropriate or mature content in the video stream, thumbnail, or metadata (such as in the video title). If the video does contain inappropriate content, the context is usually newsworthy or comedic and the creator’s intent is to inform or entertain (not offend or shock).

Content that may be acceptable for YouTube under YouTube policies may not be appropriate for Google advertising.Google's program policies provide additional guidelines for what can be monetized, and advertisers also have their own standards and requirements for content.

Content that is considered inappropriate for advertising

Content that is considered "not advertiser-friendly" includes, but is not limited to:

  • Sexually suggestive content, including partial nudity and sexual humor
  • Violence, including display of serious injury and events related to violent extremism
  • Inappropriate language, including harassment, profanity and vulgar language
  • Promotion of drugs and regulated substances, including selling, use and abuse of such items
  • Controversial or sensitive subjects and events, including subjects related to war, political conflicts, natural disasters and tragedies, even if graphic imagery is not shown
If any of the above describes any portion of your video, then the video may not be approved for monetization. If monetization is approved, your video may not be eligible for all available ad formats. YouTube reserves the right to not monetize a video, as well as suspend monetization features on channels that repeatedly submit videos violating our policies.

Best practices for creating advertiser-friendly content

Remember: Context is key. We understand that high-quality content isn't always sanitized, especially when it comes to real world issues. If your video has graphic material in it, you can help make it advertiser-friendly by providing context.

Use these best practices to successfully monetize your content on YouTube:

  • Do follow YouTube’s policy guidelines.

  • Do use a title and thumbnail for your video that represents the content.

  • Do create content that appeals to brand advertisers looking to engage with your content. This can increase the chances of finding an advertiser sponsor for your channel.

  • Don't use explicit language or imagery in your title or thumbnail.

  • Don't embed promotions for your own sponsors in your video since this can create advertiser conflict. Learn more about paid product placement policy.

How content is approved for ads

YouTube uses technology and policy enforcement processes to determine if a video is suitable for advertising. A video’s availability in Restricted Mode does not affect its ability to be monetized.

  • Automatic checks: We have trained systems that automatically check features of a video, like the video title, metadata, and visual imagery, to decide how appropriate the video is for general advertising.
  • Community flags: We depend on our user community to flag inappropriate videos to us for our review. Learn more about how to flag content.
  • Advertiser controls: Brand advertisers have tools in their campaign settings to control where their ads may appear on YouTube, including targeting and/or excluding by audience demographics, topics, category, and content appropriateness. If we receive a complaint from an advertiser whose ad served against your video, we reserve the right to disable monetization on your video if we determine that it did not meet our policy guidelines.

Depending on the nature of the policy violation, videos can be removed from the site or age-restricted. Monetization is disabled on age-restricted videos and Google will immediately stop serving ads on these videos.

Request video review

If the content of a video you uploaded has been flagged as inappropriate for advertising ("not advertiser-friendly") and you believe that your video is eligible for monetization, you can request a manual review
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