So have you ever watched videos on the Youtube, or uploaded
videos on YouTube for others to enjoy?
Then this news is for YOU.
Viral video Producer Joerg Sprave, with 1.933 million subscribers
on his youtube channel, on March 2, 2018, endeavored to establish a new YouTuber's Union
to combat unfair practices of the on-demand-video monopoly, YouTube
The YouTuber's Union on FB (2,934 members as of 11:32am 2018.March.2
https://www.facebook.com/groups/483374865391821/
AS YOU CAN SEE, the YouTuber's Union FB Group membership is ONLY GROWiNG AT A RATE OF ROUGHLY 350 members per hour so far!
Let's PUT TURBOs ON IT, NOW!
https://www.facebook.com/groups/483374865391821/
Here is the video Mr. Joerg Sprave uploaded this morning along with
its full transcript, all of which he is asking that we copy & share with a fervor:
https://get.vooplayer.com/publish/NDU5ODg=
Entire Transcript Downloadable:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1KTprebW_ErS6_Sbq6WPcttJNkJ-17s0X/view
The transcript entire of Joerg's Call to Arms this morning
(38,137 views on original as of 11:08pm, 2018.MARCH.2)
YouTuber's Union, original video on Joerg's "The SlingShot ChanneL"
By Viral Video Producer
JoergSprave
Published on Mar 2, 2018
SUBSCRIBED 1.9M
"Enough is enough! Creators Unite.
Hello and welcome.
My name is Jörg, a German, professional YouTube Creator.
I have been a “YouTube Partner” for many years now and they awarded me with both the silver and
the golden Play Award. I visited the YT headquarter, I have been at their parties and I even personally
met their CEO, Susan W.
I can say that I don’t hate YouTube. Quite the opposite actually. I love Youtube. After all I helped
building it, and I know many great people who work for YouTube. YouTube is NOT evil, at least that is
what I think. Hope.
But you know, I had many partners in my long career before this job here. If a partner gets too much
leeway, then sooner or later he will succumb to the temptation, step over the line and things get out
of bounds. This is exactly what happened within the last year, and now it is high time to set things
right again.
Because some big advertisers united and boycotted YouTube, they changed their entire business
approach. They simply yielded to the pressure, to the great disadvantage of many many creators. No
surprise. On one sided we have huge corporations with deep pockets and on the other side we have
thousands of very small individuals with no power and no money.
So, gradually we saw a lot of atrocious things brought upon us. YouTube now messes with the
content of videos that are within their rules. That never happened before. The consequences are
grave.
Massive demonetization. Bots given power over humans – bots demonetize, bots delete, bots issue
strikes, bots even ban YouTube partners. Kicking out all of the small YouTubers. Taking away parts or
even all of the income from long term partners and giving all of the cash to the content YouTube, not
the audience, likes. Censoring by uneven distribution of funds. Discrimination, by categorizing
completely different videos into the same group. Total intransparency. Sudden change of rules and
values. “Community Guidelines” that are softer than a sponge and more elastic than rubber. In short:
The adpocalypse.
This has to end, for the benefit of the whole phenomena that we call YouTube. For the benefit of the
audience, for the benefit of the creators, but also – as I firmly believe – for the benefit of the stake
holders at Google and the advertisers. The current path is wrong and will lead to the demise of a
platform I dearly love.
For making a difference, we have to unite. So I call all YouTubers to arms. No matter if you are a
channel with 10 million subs or just watch a video every now and then – I need you to stand by my
side in this very important campaign. Our goal is to safe YouTube as we know it, no less.
Therefore, I herewith officially initiate The YouTubers Union. United we stand!
https://www.facebook.com/groups/483374865391821/
How much does it cost to become a member? Nothing. I don’t need your money. I need your strong
sword arm. Or, better, your fingertips or mouse hand.
How do you join? Simply by becoming a member of the “YouTubers Union” Facebook group, link in
text description. I know, many of you don’t like Facebook much – but they are in competition to
YouTube and not likely to censor our content in that regard. We will be safe there.
What are your obligations? None. You will be able to follow what is happening and from time to time
I may ask you for your help. Maybe I’ll want you to send an email to an individual or organization.
Maybe I’ll ask you to share a video or post. I WILL ask you for your opinion in the form of a poll, many
times. In fact, my first request is that you share THIS video.
Please go ahead and download it, then upload it to wherever you want, in full, in part, commented or straight, I don’t care. I give you full permission. This video is unmonetized and I did not register it with ContentID. Why? Because I don’t
want to make it easy to hush this up, just in case. But of course, you are completely free to follow my
request.
The YouTubers Union is entirely voluntary. No obligations, no fees. You can join or leave as
you see fit.
OK, now we will come to my demands, directed at YouTube’s management. Note this is just a start.
We will develop this further in the Facebook group, all of us together.
Bring back monetization for smaller channels - freedom of speech and fair chances shall not
be limited in any way, not in my book.Stop letting bots decide whether or not a channel receives a strike or has to be removed. At
least the verified partners have a right to speak to a real person if you plan to remove their
channel.Open up direct communication between the censors ("content department") and us
Creators.Stop using demonetized channels as "bait" to advertise monetized videos. If the creator can’t
make any money on that video, you shouldn’t make anything either, even if indirectly.Stop demonetization as a whole. If a video is in line with your rules, allow ads on an even
scale. Keep your nose out of our content. If your advertisers don't like that, let them go back
to the dying print media until they come back, tail between their legs.Stop preferring some creators over others. No more “YouTube Preferred”. Spread out the ad
money over all YouTubers based on audience retention, not on ads placed next to it. You
know full well that you need controversial videos so you can bombard the audience with
videos that contain your ads. So pay those guys too. A car manufacturer can’t just pay the
sales force. They have to pay the engineers, accountants, workers and even the cleaning
team as well. Otherwise they can’t maintain their business. Same here.Community guidelines are OK. Nobody wants to see beheading videos, at least I don’t want
those. But bring out clear rules with clear examples about what is OK and what is a No-No.
Stop referring us to these rubbery rules some slippery lawyers put together for you so you
can interpret them any way you like.
Here is a blunt message for you, YouTube. Listen closely.
Start of message:
Our deal as partners is: We make videos and bring in the views. You provide the infrastructure and
bring in the ads.
We creators are doing our job, every day. Now you do yours as well! Do it now. Focus on your
simple tasks in our partnership, and keep your hands off everything else. Don’t mess with our
content. Don’t prefer some partners over others. Don’t go political. That isn’t for you. Understood?
Come on, it ain’t that hard.
End of message.
How will we get YouTube to give in to this?
By hitting them where it hurts.
- Publicity.
- Reach.
- Money.
First we will gather strength. As soon as we have enough momentum, we can start applying some
pressure. I guess the press will be interested in our movement, and it is time that the world realizes
what is going on behind the scenes of the world’s one and only FreeVoD monopoly.
Then we can voice our issues by jointly approaching the YouTube decision makers. There are several
ways how to do that. If we have enough of an audience behind us, they WILL talk. Look at Logan Paul.
Susan W. personally dealt with the issue.
We will raise so much stink that in the end, they WILL talk to us first before they change anything,
just to make sure we agree and this won’t end in one more PR disaster. This is what big corporations
do today. Change something? Go ask the union guys first.
It may sound hopeless, but it isn’t. Without unions, people would still work 12 to 16 hours a day, six
days a week. Without unions, we’d probably all live in communism now. Unions prevented open
rebellions in many countries, simply by making the majority of workers happy, or at least happy
enough not to join the commie party.
Now, I’d like to address a few arguments that no doubts will come up.
“It’s their platform, they can do with it what they want”.
No. We, google and the creators, built this platform together. Hey, they even still call us “partners”,
not “users” or “parasites”. Partners achieve things together. We did. So it is our platform as much as
it is theirs.
“Just change to Vimeo, Full30, Twitter, ...”
No. I helped building YouTube. Plenty of my heart blood is into it. I refuse to give it up without a
fight. Plus also people need to realize that NO YouTube creator would be able to make a living just
from these very small (in comparison) services.
“Only channels that went too far are affected. Advertisers can’t accept them.”
Look at the airgun guys... their pellet guns aren’t exactly suited for school shootings, right? The bots
even deleted, not just demonetized, videos, even whole channels that dealt with Olympic airgun
disciplines. Look at the poor colleagues at Zombie Go Boom. They test things like Xboxes against
Zombie heads made from foam, plastics and ketchup. They lost ALL of their income. The
“Mythbusters” did things like that, and beyond, for many years on television. I, for one, saw PLENTY
of ads in that show. But not on YouTube.
“The advertisers can decide by themselves if they want controversial channels”
They can decide whether or not they accept certain CATEGORIES of content. The bots put my videos
about slingshots in the “weapons” category. So a review of a bump stock equipped AR15 is in the
same drawer as my “how to make a slingshot from a balloon” video. Worse. Both the AR15 and the
slingshot video are in the same group as abortion videos. I think many advertisers would be fine with
the balloon slingshot. But maybe not with an abortion clip.
“The bots will learn and get better”
That is what YouTube keeps saying. But after I saw dozens of great airgun channels removed because
some haters performed a flagging campaign, I am certain that it isn’t working. I took part in a
“YouTube Hangout” seminar just a couple of days ago. They recommend avoid ANY controversial
word in a video title because otherwise the bots may go wrong. I ask you what is the value of an
“artificial intelligence” bot that can’t even differentiate between a “Naked butt” and the “Naked
Truth”, after a year of “learning”? Artificial it is – Intelligent, not so much. Come on YouTube, Google.
With all your money and resources, THAT is the best you can do? Really?
“Only weapon related channels are affected by this.”
No. Many channels are affected. News channels that report about war and disaster. Obituaries. Even
a beeped out curse can get you demonetized, for ads that shut out that category.
“Just find advertisers yourself and make sponsored videos”.
That is a good strategy, but in fact not what I want. I want YouTube to stick to the original deal. I
bring the views, they bring the ads. Plus, not having ads probably means that YouTube won’t put you
in “trending” or “recommended”. Why would they, this space makes more money if reserved for the
clips that have ads. This limits the growth rates of a channel very severely. You don’t find many new
subscribers without being featured.
“Just get a Patreon.”
I have one, but many people don’t know about it. I sometimes show it, but you know, it feels like
begging. I have an issue with that. I just want the old YouTube deal back, when an honest creator
could earn honest money.
So, that’s it for today. Please share this video, and don’t forget to join the Facebook group! Shield
brothers and sisters, we shall prevail."