YouTube stops monitization on controversial subjects and political conflicts
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That said, I think something has changed. I'm not sure why it is, but they have become more prudish in recent years. Is it a generation thing? A change sent down from their corporate clients? Pressure groups? Perhaps more government influence? All of the above?
Google tied both together and brought our startup down wiping out adsense, youtube, docs and play account. They kept adwords alive billing for $200 a month for almost an year.
I emailed them and the silence was deafening.
Too cold Google. Too cold.
In other words, it'd basically drive every 'caustic critic' off of YouTube for good, and with it, probably a very large chunk of the site's traffic.
The political conflicts one basically means amateur journalism and investigative reporting is unsustainable on the platform, since by definition most journalism deals with political subjects that often involve things like war, crimes, terrorism, etc.
The stuff about violence and sexual content could easily be applied to media like video games, and end up driving off whatever gaming channels aren't already annoyed by the swearing prohibitions.
And then there's talk of 'harassment', which can be applied so vaguely it's almost meaningless. Especially in today's age where 'harassment' has basically come to mean 'anything that makes anyone feel uncomfortable or criticises them or their ideas'.
So yeah, they'd better get rid of these guidelines soon, otherwise they could well kill a large percentage of the site's traffic in one foul swoop. They're trying to turn a video platform in network television (well, very watered down network television) and it won't work.
The enforcement already started with Philip DeFranco's videos[1], and quickly spread to various other youtubers. The targets seem to be the usual "controversial" topics and political content in general. Videos about depression seem to be one of the targets[2]? Maybe?
There also seems to be inconsistency between hitting certain popular youtubers that produce some form of "news"[3], while allowing blatant clickbait, bullying, and propaganda[4] about the same topics.
> so vaguely it's almost meaningless
That's vague enough, but their cornerstone of selective enforcement will be the "...but is not limited to..." clause.
> otherwise they could well kill a large percentage of the site's traffic
I fear that may be the goal. If YouTube isn't profitable for Google, they may want to cut their expenses by encouraging some of their heavier users off the site.
[1] https://twitter.com/PhillyD/status/771026030442090496 https://twitter.com/PhillyD/status/771054150733803521
[2] https://twitter.com/LukeIsNotSexy/status/771124768280043521
[3] I'm being very generous in what might be called "news". I may not like a lot of it, but even shallow clickbait can contain at least some journalism.
As for trying to lower expenses by doing this... well, perhaps, but if your popular users leave, then your ad revenue will drop far more than the money you'll save. It's like a news station firing all their journalists and presenters to save costs and then thinking 'oh crap, we have no way to get people to use our site/newspaper now'.
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