YouTube’s gaming community took a back seat to YouTube this week after seeing some creators suddenly stop monetizing their old videos.
The culprit is a new policy the company introduced in November to make certain types of content more advertiser-friendly. This change to YouTube’s advertiser-friendly content guidelines overhauls the platform’s approach to profanity and violence.
Luckily, YouTube seems to be listening to creators’ concerns, although it remains to be seen what the future holds for YouTube.
“Many creators have reached out to us about this update over the past few weeks,” YouTube spokesperson Michael Aciman told TechCrunch. “That feedback is important to us and we are making some adjustments to this policy to address their concerns. As soon as we have more information to share, the creator will follow up with the community as soon as possible. To do.”
In November, YouTube expanded its definition of violence beyond its real-world depictions. This includes “violent in-game content directed at real people or actions designed to create shocking experiences (such as brutal genocide).” The company says the gore is fine for “standard gameplay,” but only for his eight seconds at the beginning of the video. The entire section left plenty of room for interpretation, for better or worse.
The policy change regarding profanity was more drastic. YouTube has announced that it will no longer count “hell” and “damn” as profanity, but will lump all other profanity together rather than differentiate based on severity. (For example, words like “shit” and “shit” are treated the same). road). Additionally, according to the new policy, “titles, thumbnails, his first seven seconds of the video, or profanity used consistently throughout the video may not receive ad revenue.”
If the swearing starts after the first 8 seconds of the video, you’re still eligible, but some changes affect a large amount of the video, many of which were made long before the change was announced. I was. Creators started noticing the new policies that went into effect around the end of December. I was watching some videos get slapped with new restrictions limiting reach and ad eligibility.
YouTube creator Daniel Condren, behind RTGame, explored the impact of policy changes on his channel in a video that has over 1 million views this week. Condren has been working to change enforcement after seeing about a dozen videos disabled for monetization in recent weeks and appeal requests denied.
Condren tweeted, “I truly feel that my livelihood is in jeopardy if this continues. I am so upset that this is happening and it seems there is nothing I can do to resolve it.” .”
YouTube did not respond to a follow-up question about how it planned to fine-tune its policy, but said the platform has identified previously published data that creators may rely on as a source of income. I’m certainly curious if they roll back enforcement of older videos.
In the face of new regulations targeting the relationship between social media and underage users, the company is clearly trying to make its vast number of videos more age-appropriate (and advertiser-friendly). increase. But retrofitting a platform like YouTube with age restrictions and new monetization rules is a delicate balance. In this case, the changes had quick and widespread impact, leaving the creators little time to adapt.
