Nico Cortes

Staff Writer

Youtube has been a widely used platform since around the late 2000’s and is now universally used by millions of people on the daily. However, in recent events, it has become apparent that this may not be the case for some in the near coming future. The demonetization of “non ad-friendly” content on Youtube channels across the board has made this quite apparent. This includes topics and things that are deemed inappropriate by Youtube which includes controversial topics, sexually suggestive content, violence, and vulgar language. Demonetization happens when videos are deemed inappropriate can be marked by  Youtube and not have advertisements run on their videos anymore, which means that the ad revenue the content creators once received is cut to almost nothing. For example, Philip Defranco is a Youtube channel that primarily deals with addressing controversial topics and recent news that happens in the world. It was at this time of  Youtube changing its policy that a number of his videos were taken down purely for the reason that they were controversial. Now while the demonetization of these videos started happening in September of 2017, it wasn’t until recently that they really started cracking down on every little thing that pointed toward inappropriate content. The catalyst for this sort of extreme enforcement was when popular Youtuber, Logan Paul, featured a deceased person’s body in one of his videos. This caused huge outrage toward Paul and it also pushed Youtube to dramatically increase the demonetized videos on the platform along with changing their policy that demonetized channels for not being large enough to earn the right to be monetized in the first place with Youtube officially terminating partnerships with those channels because of them not being popular enough. The company has sent emails to channels stating,  “under the new eligibility requirements announced today, your YouTube channel, [Channel Name], is no longer eligible for monetization because it doesn’t meet the new threshold of 4,000 hours of watch time within the past 12 months and 1,000 subscribers. As a result, your channel will lose access to all monetization tools and features associated with the YouTube Partner Program on February 20, 2018, unless you surpass this threshold in the next 30 days. Accordingly, this email serves as 30 days notice that your  YouTube Partner Program terms are terminated.” https://geekdad.com/2018/01/youtubes-new-rules-will-kill-small-content-creators/

Smaller content creators all around are affected, with some videos getting gutted because of the inappropriate policy enforcement, or some being demonetized completely because of channel size and viewership, leaving many of these creators who create content on this platform in a very rough spot.