Independent content creators are on fire all over YouTube, especially the ones who's content is predominantly focused on reporting news, events and "Natural Calamities". According to YouTube the following contents are deemed as "advertiser unfriendly":
- Sexually suggestive content, including partial nudity and sexual humor
- Violence, including display of serious injury and events related to violent extremism
- Inappropriate language, including harassment, profanity and vulgar language
- Promotion of drugs and regulated substances, including selling, use and abuse of such items
- Controversial or sensitive subjects and events, including subjects related to war, political conflicts, natural disasters - - and tragedies, even if graphic imagery is not shown
Youtube has clearly stated that any videos containing such content shall be demonetized. This essentially means that there would be no ads shown alongside the video which would result in no income generated for the creator through Adsense, a program through which creators get a part of the ad revenue generated from the viewership of their content.
Youtube has argued that their advertisers do not like their products being marketed alongside controversial or objectionable content. The advertisers fear that it might indicate their products getting associated with the content which might negatively impact how the product is received by the viewers.
As expected, the response to this has been outrage from the creators. Several videos have been published accusing Youtube of using this as a method of rooting out the content which it doesn't approve of but cannot censor. Leading the pack is this 10 minute rant from Philip De Franko, who was one of the firsts to bring this issue to light.
The most surprising part of the story is that this is not new. Apparently, Youtube has been doing this for quite a while. It is only now, that they have started informing the creators about their practice by clearly flagging the videos that have been demonetised. Before that, there was no direct way to tell which videos were being stripped of ads.
Surely, for the average creators, Adsense revenue remains the primary source of income and is critical for them to keep on creating more content. In fact, Adsense revenue plays a major role in drawing people for creating and publising content on the platform. How much this eventually affects the Youtube creators, remains to be seen.