By now, you’ve probably heard that YouTube megastar and perpetual asshole Logan Paul made his return to the service after a brief hiatus. He took a break from posting videos after a disrespectful video that included a suicide victim in Japan’s Aokigahara forest. After what seemed like forever, YouTube finally took a stand and instituted punishments against Paul.
The video service provider removed Paul from their “Google Preferred” top-tier ad program, and also binned some of his YouTube Red projects. In his glorious return, Logan Paul thought tasering rats would be hilarious. It wasn’t – and he’s been subject to a world of backlash again. As a result. YouTube has now removed ads from his channel completely, severely stripping his earning potential. They also said they’d effect tougher punishments on “rogue creators”.
Whenever controversies like this happen, advertisers tend to pull out en masse, crippling those who make a living on YouTube without being massive assholes.
“When one creator does something particularly blatant—like conducts a heinous prank where people are traumatized, promotes violence or hate toward a group, demonstrates cruelty, or sensationalizes the pain of others in an attempt to gain views or subscribers—it can cause lasting damage to the community, including viewers, creators and the outside world.
That damage can have real-world consequences not only to users, but also to other creators, leading to missed creative opportunities, lost revenue and serious harm to your livelihoods. That’s why it’s critical to ensure that the actions of a few don’t impact the 99.9 percent of you who use your channels to connect with your fans or build thriving businesses.”
So they’re now putting in extra measures to prevent people from being jerks. People who post videos that step afoul of the new guidelines could see their ad revenue affected, channels demonetised, or removed from the recommended panes.
- Premium Monetization Programs, Promotion and Content Development Partnerships. We may remove a channel from Google Preferred and also suspend, cancel or remove a creator’s YouTube Original.
- Monetization and Creator Support Privileges. We may suspend a channel’s ability to serve ads, ability to earn revenue and potentially remove a channel from the YouTube Partner Program, including creator support and access to our YouTube Spaces.
- Video Recommendations. We may remove a channel’s eligibility to be recommended on YouTube, such as appearing on our home page, trending tab or watch next.
While it’ a good step, I think YouTube could solve many of its current problems by just hiring more human moderators instead of relying on algorithms.
Last Updated: February 12, 2018
