YouTube Drops Online Star Logan Paul from Premium Advertising
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
This has been a long time under way, and while I don’t particularly think they should drop shows like they stupidly did with Pewdiepie, there definitely had to be some backlash for posting a video of a dead guy, when they were striking against videoes talking about that video, for being in violation.
It’s also worth noting, that YouTube were not the ones taking down the video, Logan did this himself after the backlash, and that they waited so long is rather indicative of them trying to see where the wind blows and if they could get away with it.
Honestly, YT has been writing the book on “how to shit on your creators” for 2017 and more, but they might finally be setting back on a better track.
Youtube has for years run at a loss, providing free high-quality video streaming with no bandwidth restrictions. These "creators", who are actually a very tiny portion of users, pay zero overheads to have a worldwide broadcasting platform where they're unrestricted to promote third-party products and monetise their content in countless ways.
If people are going to complain about Youtube, then surely you've got to go after other social networks first who aren't sharing revenue with users who are bringing engagement to their platform (Reddit, Instagram, Snapchat, etc).
I think I'd prefer that as it might skew YouTube back to its origins of "here's a cool video I want to share" instead of the current trend of "here's a video I made for the purpose of making money"
After all it is YouTube and not ChannelTube.
One gets the sense that many people working at places like YouTube really are living in a bubble and are totally oblivious to the intensity of the fear that people feel about their power to censor and promote. I sincerely hope that this changes. It would be horrible for everyone if government had to step in to regulate this medium.
I believe Facebook also offers monetization for video, along with paying certain publishers/influencers directly to use their livestreaming tech.
They are essentially paying for "quality" content the same way Netflix and HBO do only they have a brilliant model because they only have to pay if the video is successful. Whereas Netflix, HBO, and the like need to pay even if the show is a flop.
If anything, they should be investing seed money into professional (Hollywood type) content creators. I'm sure they already are.
I don't know who Logan is but read what he did. It was disgusting. But the market should have naturally handled it. The problem is had YouTube done nothing it likely would not have affected his views. That should tell you something about how loud and powerful we have let the offended become.
I think there is a second problem that actually might be bigger. Intolerance for mistakes.
I did not see the video in question but I know that humans can often loose judgment and make mistakes. I think it is going to make shitty society to live in if you will be judged in perpetually for the worst moments of your public life.
There are talks about him breaking YouTube rules. That is fine. He should be punished within those guidelines. But it seems people want blood.
But, to answer your question, I don't have an answer. Do I not listen to music because the musicians are not my politics, or do I not read an author because they have horrible views or they belong to the Church of Scientology? When I look at it from that prism, I'm not sure.
Then there is the irony of Hollywood, the most misogynistic and misandristic, sexist, exploitative group of people lecturing the rest of the country on what proper conduct is.
Beside, propaganda is not in and of itself bad. Maybe propaganda has made me more of a conservationist or environmentalist. Should I have disregarded those readings because of the inherent propaganda?
That assumption is...unwarranted. The actual percentage of neopuritan busybodies (from whatever political perspective they claim to be from) is significantly lower than an estimate based on volume would lead you to believe.
But youtube is the market. YouTube is a private enterprise that's declining to continue their business relationship with him. That's market forces in action.
Not necessarily, especially when you're talking about multi-sided markets, like YT.
There are 3 demand components: - Ads - Content - Cash
And 4 participants: - YT - Creators - Advertisers - Audience
Ads flow from Advertisers to Audience, content from Creators to Audience, Cash from Audience to Advertisers, and Cash from Advertisers to YT and Creators.
[1]https://www.dailydot.com/society/ladygate-korean-women-publi...
It did. Advertisers don't want to be associated with such content and made it clear to Youtube they want a sanitized landscape to advertise on. Youtube in response has cut Paul off from the Guaranteed Revenue Stream for now. The business partners involved in this situation spoke a long time ago on what they did and did not want, and Youtube made a business decision.
From the article, the viewers who think what Paul did was deplorable are calling out for more punishment, which Youtube has not done, so they are in-fact resisting the will of the masses here.
> I think there is a second problem that actually might be bigger. Intolerance for mistakes.
I do get what you're saying, but per the article and per Logan Paul's history with his videos and audience, his fame comes from constantly pushing the envelope with outlandish behavior. It's part of his character and also what attracts people to him, but it should be expected that he also sets his own limits and boundaries. There's not really a way in light of his popularity and work with Youtube that he could have not known about the policy on such video content, and even if he did, ignorance is not an excuse in this case.
Logan Paul is receiving a penalty for bad judgement and violating Youtube rules; he's not the victim of mob mentality, he's the victim of Advertisers wanting a sanitized advertising platform. If he made a mistake in earnest, then I hope he learns well from it and grows as a video maker, using this as a learning experience from which he recovers. Nothing Youtube has said so far though has made it out to be that this is some irreparable situation, it's a penalty for violating the Youtube Guidelines.
If Logan Paul is contrite, he will recover.
He's receiving punishment because of the mob mentality. The platform had the video in question on their highly curated Trending page before he pulled it.
Whether some accountability was necessary is secondary to the fact that he is now in the sights of a huge morally righteous outrage mob. And I'm with the OP that it seems like society runs in a mode now where mob retribution is not satisfied until it the retribution is absolute.
I'm afraid history doesn't really agree with you - the entire "Adpocalypse" was advertiser driven, not user driven. Users had been complaining about horrible videos on Youtube for years and the videos continued to be monetized and Youtube didn't care. Ad revenue and results were not trending down, Advertisers just wanted more control, and Youtube gave it to them.
And I take issue with the idea of the Trending Page being highly curated because it's clearly algorithmic, not manually managed. The countless videos on the subject, as well as Quora discussions strongly suggest that it's decided by algorithm, not by individuals.
I get that you're frustrated with how people respond to certain topics in modern society, but the action from Youtube is pretty even handed by any metric. Logan Paul is _not_ banned from Youtube, he's not banned from monetizing, he's simply been removed from a specific level of partnership in Youtube for violating a rule that Youtube has had for a long time and for going against Advertiser wishes. Again, he should know better - he's made a mistake, he's receiving a punishment. If he is contrite, he will recover; he seems to have what it takes to be successful on Youtube. This time he just went too far.
You really think add companies cared that much? They only started caring because there were users going after them for advertising on such videos.
In some cases I understand, like the videos that are aimed at kids but they are pretty bad. And the scammers.
The problem is YouTube doesn't want to operate at a loss, they are trying to get more advertisers to the platform so they can make more money. To bring more advertisers to the platform, they are attempting to get advertisers to pick and choose what kind of content their ads show around. Instead of just allowing them to target the user and whatever demographics/interests they may have based on their viewing history.
I find it really strange for a company hemorrhaging money to actively be showing fewer ads, considering they make money on those ads as well.
The users causing a fuss were simply leverage for the ad companies to remind YouTube who is boss. For some reason YouTube thinks they don't have any kind of leverage of their own. Of course they aren't profitable, but they also have a massive user base. It seems like a strategic mistake to me.
They are pushing content creators off the platform, which will push down their user count and push down the amount of people they can advertise to. I'm not a business or marketing guy, but I would have simply said "We try to remove videos that violate our TOS as quickly as possible, all other videos the creators want to make money from, we show ads on. Our ads are targeted to users, not based on the specific video they happen to be watching."
Also seeing youtube as the future of tv... I don't think so.
There is a channel I watch, called "Counter Arguments", it is pretty much exactly what it sounds like. He made a video a while back called "Punch a Nazi"[0]. Some weeks after it being up, he got it taken down as violating the TOS for promoting violence. I don't believe he actually attempted to get it reviewed and put back up. The funny thing about the video is it is a video that is ultimately against political violence and he puts clips from a couple other videos in it that actually do promote violence. Those videos were never taken down. He posted a video about what happened to the video because people were asking him about it. A few days after posting the video about it, the video was put back up. I believe it may be demonetized, but I'm not sure. He seems to have scrubbed the videos discussing it from his channel.
We have no way of knowing if it was a manual or automated action that caused the video to go down, nor if it was a manual or automated action to get it put back up. The timing of it, sounds to me like it may have been flagged, a YouTube employee looked at it and didn't like what it said, so took it down. Potentially another YouTube employee saw the other video about it being taken down and put it back up. We have no way of knowing. I think if he would have never made another video about it being taken down, it likely would still be down today.
People getting so offended someone put a video up, they will call the advertisers and complain about how their add is showing in a offensive video.
And then there is the punishment, it never is enough. The person must be completely destroyed. I think that happens because in the angry mob every one wants retribution for themselves. (for example, you murder someone. You get arrested and go to court. There you get sentenced 5 years for each relative and friend the victim had, instead of getting the sentence for murder)
But this is capitalism.
Bob can say what he likes, but I don't have to pay him to say it.
If the money I spend buying products is then given to Bob in advertising I'm free to chose a company who doesn't advertise with Bob. And when I tell those companies why I no longer buy their products I'm using freedom of speech - the same freedom of speech that Bob claims to care so much about.
Also I don't see how YouTube RED dropping him has your do with advertisers. He still has a channel right ? He still is able to make new videos ?
But you bring up a real good topic. You claim the advertisers want a sanitized platform. Does it not bother you that these people have basically hijacked YouTube and have any say in the content you get to view ?
Also I am not really trying to defend this guy. I am mostly questioning how what is often a vocal offended outraged minority of people seem to have more power than they should.
So if YouTube or an advertiser made any decisions not directly off raw numbers then it bothers me. If the market -- that means views -- goes down because people cared enough to stop watching then it is a win win. Advertisers won't pay because of less views.
My argument is based on the notion that YouTube stands to loose more by penalizing him, the same goes for advertisers in lost impressions.
Well, I think the video popularity even before hand is proof enough that the mob still liked it. People still flocked to Paul's channel, and probably will continue to do so. IIRC, he even saw an uptick in subscribers, but that may be a mistake on my part. The part I take issue with mostly is people saying that overly sensitive people got it taken down, when really it's just that overly anal Advertisers worried about the effect on their investment and brand image. That's a business decision which I'm sure is backed by pretty cold hard numbers.
> Does it not bother you that these people have basically hijacked YouTube and have any say in the content you get to view ?
As I try not to use Youtube at all, no, not really. Like, fundamentally I agree with you that pervasive Advertising is bad for society as a whole, but what happens to Youtube isn't really my concern, as Youtube/Google demonstrated long ago where their loyalties were, and I made peace with that. My response is not to say I approve of Advertisers having this much control - I think it's ridiculous. But my response is to empower the few artists I like using other funding means and to avoid Youtube. The loss of one viewer hopefully is off-set by the $5 a month.
> YouTube stands to loose more by penalizing him, the same goes for advertisers in lost impressions.
Well, I would have to imagine that based on the drama around the Adpocalypse and that Youtube has doubled-down on it instead of walking it back, Youtube and Advertisers are in agreement that the changes have been for the better, not for the worse.
I did not mean to imply you approve with advertisers having this sort of control. It was a question of inquiry on a topic that I had not thought much about. Something we have more common ground on apparently.
I think we do agree on a lot with regards to advertisers. In this instance, we disagree on the impetus for YouTube to punish Logan Paul, but effectively dislike the situation in general. I think that YouTube failed to be what it should, and a Logan Paul style account is symptomatic of the problems of YouTube, but that's unrelated.
Feel better! )
Not perpetually, but the crew needs a reality check. He treated the streets of Japan like his own theme park. He repeatedly disrespected its people. He also recorded, edited and posted his childish reaction to the hanging corpse of a man. Making that vlog took several hours and was reviewed by multiple people. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vtpEwGgdf4
People don't want to support this stuff, or buy products associated with it. That's a show-stopper for this business model.
The market doesn't handle morality. Especially in this kind of case, he was more likely to get views from the outrage, even just from people disgusted in him.
There are cases where yes, I think that maybe the voice of the offended gets magnified too much. But trivialising suicide to millions of (mostly quite young) people and in such a crass and uncouth manner is not one of those cases.
are we so desensitized that we just kinda shrug our shoulders when someone posts a video of a dead guy? what about if a large portion of his audience is kids?
"but wow his viewcount!" i mean what about that warlord that murdered and maimed a whole bunch of innocent people. he was bad but the efficiency in which he did it took my breath away!
logan paul posts a lot of dumb, sometimes racist, mostly shit videos that manipulates kids into buying their "merch" and while i'm sure someone like this has existed for every single generation, the fact that no one is there to ask him whether doing this kind of shit is beneficial besides "for the views!" i mean it wouldn't be so bad if logan or his brother were actually mentally sound enough to make just the baseline level of common decency.
maybe i am just too old, but the ability to influence so many kids at once scares me.
Honestly, what surprises and worries me are the number of people acting like they lost an arm..
YT makes money off these people for virtually pennies on the dollar. They could be more vested in their content creators, they could treat all their creators equally (rather than selectively). They could do so much more to be even handed and create expectation and you know, provide some guidance. No, that costs money.
So the easy way out of all that costly messiness is cut that cheap troublemaking "talent" at the drop of a tweet because you know you have a firehose of more creators waiting.
I havent watched the video in question, Im sure its propably in bad taste, but you dont have to watch it. Nobody HAS to watch it.
So, yeah, maybe for your premier channels, you don't have live streamers without a net.
On the other hand, it's a bit ridiculous to crucify this guy or that Swedish guy when they have thousands of worse , much worse offenders around the globe. But hey, outrage of the day. I mean, I'm shocked, shocked they want to run lean as possible (on oversight, etc.) and cut loose the "ta[l|r]ento[1]" at first sign of trouble.
And, if you head down to Lawson's konbini, you can buy the "101 ways to kill yourself without leaving a mess for your family" polite suicide book.
[1] And by ta[l|r]ento I mean that in the most Japanese way because YT see their creators only as cheap conduits to monetization and only care about them insofar as they create revenue for them.
Do they have to be bad in comparison? I'm happy both were affected. YT can also take care of worse offenders, not instead.
But I admire his hustle, he literally makes [1] millions of dollars off of daily youtube videos.
[1] https://socialblade.com/youtube/channel/ucg8rbf3g2amx70yod8v...
[Edit: By disrespectful I mean actually harassing people (at least in the Japan videos). That's a valid cause for banning in most communities]
From participating in a private online community that doesn't want people peeing in the pool? Sure. Harm done to Paul in exchange for others' benefit. Seems like an easy choice.
By allowing this content YouTube is defacto endorsing it which then encourages others to follow in his footsteps. "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing."
Never mind that a global platform like YouTube has an impossible tension of thousands of subcultures, countries, advertisers and other stakeholders to try and balance.
That’s the big mistake of these Web 2.0 platforms in my opinion - they try to be both a virally growing platform and a community but always wait until something bad happens before making the rules apparent. It’s an unresolvable problem in my opinion.
Free speech is not something that private companies need to protect as far as the law goes, but I think it's an ideal that they should try to hold dear nonetheless, as much as possible. "Acted disrespectfully towards a group" is way too wiggly and subjective as an offense to start banning people over.
Edit: just to be clear, I think the suicide video is clearly over the line. I'm only talking about his general shithead-ness the rest of the time.
Does demonetization mean "banned" to you?
I am not sure if Mr Paul was disrespectful in the material, that wasn't covered by the article. But death is real, why to reject it? Why to not discuss it openly?
Videos of death appear all the time across various platforms. The fact that he made a video featuring a corpse should not enough to warrant a ban I don't feel - rather an immediate setting to 'age restricted content' perhaps - but If we're banning youtubers over showing a corpse on the screen, then most news media outlets would need to shut up shop. I know some people "don't like to see death", but it is a part of life. Do we really need to make death a taboo subject?
Now, I know that it's not simply because he video taped a corpse. His response and handling of the situation is clearly the underlying factor, and to that I ask - what happened to the idea that people can apologise, learn from mistakes, rehabilitate their behaviour and improve as a result of it? He apologised and removed his video, which seems like a reasonable response.
We all (i.e. the greater internet consuming population) seem to be going down a path of extreme responses to events without offering any ability for fixing mistakes. As soon as someone does something that's perceived to be wrong, everyone flips out and makes outrageous statements in comments threads (and in fact, it doesn't seem to require a majority voice - just loud and persistent small groups). The media perpetuates these stories as people love to keep getting more and more outraged. And people start posting more outlandish and aggressive responses in order to garner their own 'likes' and responses which feeds the snowball effect.
It seems like as time rolls on, there's less and less margin for error that people are willing to accept. And if you anger the mob for any reason, your life and career is over. It's a big risk for anyone in the public light I feel, and I wonder if we'll reach a stage where content creators (actors, writers, vloggers, streamers, or whoever) will change how they see any value in their career if it could be immediately and permanently extinguished for minor reasoning.
Edit: That wasn't supposed to sound as ranty as it did, apologies.
Also let's not forget his history of racism towards Asians.
I'd understand if you suggested that he donate the profits from the video to a suicide prevention charity or something similar. If I fuck up at work, I don't apologise and offer to work for free.
I generally really respect the NYT but to phrase the whole PewDiePie situation like this is utterly disgusting and a misguided narrative.
I have to believe this was intentional so he could essentially force his audience to go some paid network he owns. I don't think it was as accidental as their making it seem.
Disney is trying to start their own streaming network as well.
I have to think these are all related.
That's it. No gore. And they don't go close to the body. But do talk about it while staring in shock.
He talked a bit about suicide, and about being shocked to actually see a dead body. I didn't watch the whole thing (not really that interested in what he has to say), but the part I saw didn't seem like such a big deal to me. Maybe I'm missing something?
Is it the simple fact that they show a [partly blurred] dead body?
Something else?
(I hope I can actually ask this here. It seems like people are really sensitive about it, so I'm hoping not to get attacked for asking. But I really don't see what the big deal is.)
2) He failed to report the incident to police despite being close to the station and having a phone.
3) The rest of that video had a wealth of racist and disgraceful content.
4) He exploited the incident for monetary gain.
I agree with you that there might be the scratchings of an effective lesson there but sadly the edit of the video didn’t really do it.
I frequently talk to reporters about the way they report suicide, and when I was using the Samaritans guidance journos would almost always say "but fredom of speech".
Giving them guidance written by other journalists (and then giving them the Samaritans guidance) stopped them saying that.
https://www.nuj.org.uk/documents/nuj-guidelines-for-responsi...
https://www.nuj.org.uk/news/guidelines-on-reporting-on-menta...
Treating top talent poorly is a great opportunity for an incumbent.
Logan is generating tremendous value.
As technology becomes more accessible in order for YouTube to maintain it’s dominate position they need to realize that the creators have the power.
Guys like Logan and PewDiePie are scaring away advertisers, and the kids who watch them would probably just switch and watch some other YouTuber instead if they were to go away.
They are the ones generating the value.
In the extreme case imagine that all YouTube videos were of paint drying. Would people still watch?
There is real entertainment value.
Content is king.
Netflix agrees.
If it were so easy to move off of YouTube, these many "creators" would have already banded together to create something new, backed by VC funding based on their "star-power". But this hasn't happened.
Making a YouTube clone is easy, making a YouTube clone that isn't a sinkhole that just eats millions and millions of dollars is hard.
If a company such as amazon decided it was time I’m sure you would see a lot of creators move over.
Human capital is very expensive.
Every country on earth competes hard and pours a ton of resources on creating human capital.
In the case of Logan he won out on YouTube’s platform. This is not an easy feat.