The recent shootings that took place at the YouTube Headquarters are a tragic event that, in a perfect world, should never occur. I do think, however, YouTube’s recent moves may have motivated such illogical reactions from creators.
I am NOT justifying what Nasim Aghdam (shooter in-question) did, but merely pointing out that there are some people who will take things to extreme lengths to get what they perceive as justice.
A lot of recent policies have seen YouTube become the bane of small content creators. Some of these ‘uneven’ policies are why content developers are very much disgruntled with YouTube and fleeing to other platforms such as Patreon.
Using some of Nasim’s complaints and other incidents (that don’t involve her), we will look at some of the recent issues that have made YouTube’s small content creators disenchanted with the video sharing platform.
Content is removed for unclear reasons…
Back in January, Nasim posted a video on her YouTube (the channel has now been deleted) complaining that some of her videos had been removed for having racy content but the video she showed in question did not appear offensive in any way. She also brought up the fact that more popular artists such as Nicki Minaj actually have much more provocative videos but their videos remain unaffected.
In the case of the removed video it is really hard to tell what was wrong because we only have one side of the story, but if Nasim’s exercise video was removed on the basis of it being provocative then is it wrong to think YouTube should remove countless video’s of artists on the same basis?
Is Content filtering a thing?
Nasim also believes her content was being filtered and the reach of her videos was being intentionally throttled. This one is even harder to verify because viewership could drop for a number of different reasons. It could be possible because content creators have been going through an ‘Adpocalypse’ as YouTube tries to better regulate what goes on to their platform so they can stay in advertiser’s good books.
However, content creators are a major reason why advertiser’s rush to the platform; as they are the ones who create the content consumed on a daily basis so YouTube may also want to stretch their hand out to them and not just lean primarily on advertiser’s.
The new monetization policy
By far, the most controversial and impactful –to small content creators that is- policy change by YouTube last year. Under the new policy implemented not-so-long-ago in order to qualify for monetization, a channel has to have 1000 subscribers and 4 000 hours of watch time before they can add ads to their videos. Previously, content creators only needed 10 000 total views to be able to run ads on their page. This was and still is a huge blow to small creators as it is now much harder to actually make money from their videos.
‘It’s just YouTube, what’s the big deal?’
Well, the big deal is precisely the fact that some people are making their living off the platform so changes to policy that spite creators are a bigger deal than most consumers of YouTube content would believe. Because YouTube is dealing with people’s livelihood it only makes sense that they tread lightly but also implement and police their policies in a much more clear and fair manner.
If not, chance remains that things such as the just recent shootings will continue occurring as disgruntled content developers are pushed over the edge. It is not just YouTube and according to CNBC, Nasim’s father had warned authorities that his daughter hated YouTube and might go to the HQ. It seems content creator’s frustrations have been building up for a long time now…
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5 comments
I believe if one is truly creative, they should be able to handle criticism in a level-headed way, not leveling a gun at someone’s head!
There is still a lot that will happen in the coming years as jobs get lost due to disruptive technology and “innovation”. Even those still young today (who are assuming they will never be old one day) will be negatively affected. I read somewhere that the level of reduction of ICs using TTL logic has got to a point where the chips are almost the size of an atom, well – think of the obvious possibilities of that!!…and at the CES show a couple of years back, they show-cased flying butterflies (robots) and miniature ants (robots)….I mean imagine some numbskull who can write software that will remotely “print” 3D guns elsewhere where another numbskull’s robots will pick them up to decimate humanity!!
Yeah, calling this an overreaction would be an understatement… But as long as YouTube continues to aggravate content creators, they leave a possibility that these things will happen
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You have no idea how Youtube filters content do you?
Or how the filtering works.
Yet you write a critic article about it.
Thanks for the feedback Mr Van Lee! Could you please be more helpful to fellow readers and share how exactly content filtering works, if you feel we have missed that? The article was not only about content filtering but about various policies that have urked content creators and filtering was just but a part of the issues.