Online Video NewsIs YouTube blocking monetization for anti SJW content | Death of free speech of creators?

Several YouTube content creators are flipping out as their videos are getting demonetized for producing anti-advertising friendly content. It all started 3 months back when the YouTube policy changed by adding “Harassment may include” section. This trend of online harassing, counterculturist’s, and highly opinionated criticisms from both left/right wings of society started exactly after the Orlando shootings back in June.

The rise of anti/pro criticisms on Police, Syrian refugees, Brexit, Black Lives Matter, White Lives matters, All lives matter, Anti-gay slurs by conservationists, Pro-LGBTQ opinions from popular YouTubers, radical Islam commentators, and last but not least, THE US PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS – All happened in these three months or got accelerated as we got to have an opinion on everything.

It started way back 

Yes, shocking but true. If you happened to be enlightened by Philip DeFranco’s YouTube vlog called “YouTube Is Shutting down My Channel and I’m Not Sure What to Do”, then you have to know that YouTube started de-monetizing YouTube videos way back.

Seems like @Youtube will be stripping most of my advertising from now on. Oh well.

I’m not going to censor myself. pic.twitter.com/a9upZh6eTY

— Philip DeFranco (@PhillyD) August 31, 2016

DeFranco’s YouTube channel received this WARNING NOTICE when he posted a YouTube show covering a story about a woman named Annaliese Nielsen who tried to claim that she was extremely offended by the Hawaiian doll; and started calling out drivers “White Privilege” and threatening the driver that she is going to publish the recorded video on websites thus ruining his life by turning him into a meme.

This is an example of how bad social justice warriors’ can turn out.

Later, Philip DeFranco informed his twitter users that, at least 12 of his videos was demonetized by YouTube. YouTube Channel like Seeker Daily – a network for well-crafted knowledge-based content, received de-monetization for at least 120 videos way before DeFranco made a video of this issue.

boogie2988, a Youtuber with more than 3 million subscribers had more than a dozen of his videos de-monetized because he talked about “suicide prevention, and suicidal thoughts”. The list is long, but some of the most popular YouTubers who got banned are LeafyIsHere, PewDiePie, Brofresco, Luke Cutforth, ETC Show, Rob dyke, GradeAUnderA among thousands of others are also got demonetized by YouTube.

Making Adult Tags & Titles

According to a video from H3H3 Productions, the flagging, and demonetization of YouTube videos might be the result of an automated bot. He also explained further that, this has to do with “Tags and titles” of the videos having OFFENDING/HARMFULL words. So, fundamentally, METADATA of your video content could get your YouTube video demonetized.

Recently, a video titled “3 Reasons Why Nuclear Energy Is Terrible” got de-monetized as the video deals with nuclear energy and other interesting stuff.

WTF. Checked after what happened to @PhillyD – youtube disabled monetization of one of our videos! D: pic.twitter.com/Cm7YeSmcCT

— Kurzgesagt (@Kurz_Gesagt) September 1, 2016

Let’s dissect the circumstances of WHY THIS PARTICULAR VIDEO GOT DEMONETIZED.

• Channel – Kurzgesagt In a Nutshell (2.9 million subscribers)
• Title – 3 Reasons Why Nuclear Energy Is Terrible
• Tags – Chernobyl disaster, flat design, Russian nuclear weapon (film subject),destroy rocket nuclear, waste, missile, japan, animation, nutshell, infographic, destruction, radiation, thorium, disaster, fission, nuclear power, industry, weapons, Fukushima, blast, nuclear, Ukraine, fusion, USA, cancer, accident, explosion, death, future, war, atomic, cons, kurzgesagt, funny, energy (industry)
• Topic – Nuclear Energy
• Content – To educate people
• Harmful content – No. It’s educating people with well-researched video
• Breaks Community guidelines – No. Only if you are anti- education

It’s clear that YouTube’s bot automatically removes monetization, like shoot first ask second.

As an advertiser, you have to block these things

Don’t cross the line!

This is the first message you receive on visiting YouTube’s community guidelines page. So, if you are unaware of “GUIDELINES” by YouTube, here are the seven magnificent rules.

1. Nudity or sexual content – YouTube search shows 31,000,000 results for the keyword SEX
2. Harmful or dangerous content – Prank videos
3. Violent or graphic content – 3,030,000 results for the Keyword Torture
4. Copyright – YouTube is filled with free music
5. Hateful content – Opinion doesn’t matter
6. Threats – Those who did, got banned anyway

So, if you are an advertiser, you probably wanna check out all the titles, tags, and keywords related to the GUIDELINES mentioned above.

As YouTube relies heavily on Online Behavioral Advertising (OBA), the ads get targeted according to the user’s interests while they’re browsing YouTube. YouTube collects the information about users internet browsing activity, such as channels visits, kind of videos watched, or online searches you’ve made using a cookie (small text files) stored on the computer to detect the best monetization content. Thus, this can be an important factor in YouTube’s decision to go insane on its own content creators.

Journalistic YouTube channels like The Young Turks (TYT) were not surprised by this current situation. They said that more than half of the content they have uploaded got demonetized automatically way back when YouTube changed its “Content Guidelines”.

How to check the monetization

If you are reading this and happen to have a YouTube channel, then here are the steps through you can check whether your YouTube channel got hit with De-monetization.

• Sign into your YouTube account.
• In the top right, click your account icon > Creator Studio.
• In the left menu under “Channel,” click Status and features.
• Check the status next to Monetization.

So, what do you think of YouTube’s recent hard-hitting steps on monetization? Would you like YouTube to take away that you have created in a span of 2 to 3 years? Many popular YouTube channels have already started publishing their content (or the full part of that content) on their private websites.

You can make and upload all the controversial content, but remember that your whole YouTube channel in jeopardy +zero monetization money.

Also, as METADATA is now an integral part of Youtubers recent content takedowns, you can try our “YouTube Creator Tool” to find the best keywords, description, title tags and tons of analytical insights generated just for your YouTube channel. CLICK here to try it for 14 days.