My content is clean and all of it is programming/tech related (programming tutorials and some Raspberry Pi stuff).
So if there is an algorithm it's really naive at this stage or it doesn't apply until you request manual review.
Aka, advertisers saying they don't want to waste ad spend on worthless programming videos. So they get demonetized for the first few days to reduce the impact of any ad spend on the times that would be most likely to get views, then turn it on so the drip of ad spend can treat the videos like problem children.
The notice on my videos is: Limited or no ads due to content identified as not suitable for most advertisers[1]. Your video remains fully playable and is eligible to earn subscription revenue from YouTube Red.
Tags: python, rss, feedparser, feed reader, news aggregator, flask, css, static files
It doesn't seem "controversial" to me.
Or news, because you know - "fake news"
For instance a video in a series about writing a Go web app had these tags: golang, http, server, redis, gorilla mux, go-redis, web, application, tutorial, howto
And it was demonetized. Every single video I've uploaded seems to have been until I request manual review (which takes a couple of days).
The algorithm doesn't understand context.
"excluded_ads": "46=14_14; 59=14_14; 76=2_2_1,2_2_4; 102=1_1,1_3,2_1,2_3; 106=1_1,1_2_1,1_3,2_1,2_2_1,2_2_4,2_3,14_14,17_2_1,17_2_4"
EDIT: This may just be the generic variable in their source code, I'm not sure how to get the value specific to my video.
The video from yesterday (08 - CSS and static files) is still demonetized. If that gives you any context.
In my case, I have a demonitized tutorial video on how to download and upgrade my software.
I was a bit surprised since it was a basic boring screen share video. Nothing controversial either, until I looked at the auto generated close captioning.
I said "Prosper202" but Google heard "pr0st!tut3" (I edited the actual word just in case HN also has auto block filters) But as you can see, it's obviously a not safe for brands keyword.
I've manually fixed the closed captioning with the correct words, but as of now the video is still demonetized.
So I think there's some sort of blacklist of words said in videos that will auto demonetize videos.
In your case, after watching your video with closed captioning I notice you use the word "explicit" a lot in your video. Once again given the context, it's totally safe. But there's also a very unsafe context that I doubt google is willing to automatically monetize without some sort of manual review. (https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/6162278?hl=en)
You can request a manual review of the affected videos, but only if your video has 1000 views in the past 7 days. For most small channels wrongly flagged, there's no real fix (for the old video).
The only real suggestion to test out is to not say explicit in your next video.
I'm also interested in hearing from others with demonetized videos, that may be suffering from the same auto captioning and blacklisted words issue.
But when I request a manual review the videos do seem to get monetized again within a few days... Even with less than 1000 views.
Videos are demonetized mostly on a blacklist of bad words. Run text to speech on the video before upload (preferably upload the audio only on a test channel and download the captions), and edit out all words which have any negative connotation whatsoever.
Beware - the blacklist contains a lot of words which are only bad in a certain language or a certain region or slang you might be unaware of. Use urban dictionary to find the bad words... It seems you can let a few slip through, but if a bad word appears too many times, it causes demonetization.