"Today we focus on people who upload videos, i.e. "creators" and sometimes self-styled 'influencers' (fancier term for marketers)."The main issues are free speech and 'monetisation' or distribution of rewards/awards. Alphabet claims to have over 5 billion dollars a year in YouTube revenue (not the same as actual profit), so where does all this money go?
YouTube has, over the years, promoted various kinds of paid subscriptions to YouTube. These didn't seem to succeed in the business sense, so YouTube keeps trying again and again. Twitter had the same perils (e.g. "Blue") as debt piled up and the company struggled to make actual profits.
It should be noted upfront that users who pay for YouTube will not see any of that money funnelled to actual creators. It all goes to YouTube, the company, i.e. to rich Google/Alphabet shareholders.
"It should be noted upfront that users who pay for YouTube will not see any of that money funnelled to actual creators."We'll come back to monetary issues in just a moment.
One major issue in YouTube is censorship. The rules change all the time (range of "permissible" speech) and sanctions may vary from shadowbanning to demonetisation. In some cases, videos can be forcibly removed (blackmail/coercion is common; remove this, or else!) and entire channels can be suspended if not permanently removed. There's no lack of examples of that. We previously mentioned how 'underfunded' Google does not handle actual appeals and seldom overturns decisions even when mistakes are made (unless there's significant backlash in another platform, such as Twitter). Google or YouTube moreover retroactively applies new speech restrictions to old videos, then issues a strike against them. This means that videos published today may get you banned in the future, even if they were in compliance with the rules at the time they were initially published.
According to what people told us, GNU/Linux content is being demonetised almost immediately. There's also strong evidence and material, based on channels that focus on the theme. Since there's no transparency in moderation (faceless censors who call "misinformation" anything not deemed "advertiser-friendly"), they can always deny that this is happening, in effect gaslighting people whom they're muzzling with impunity.
"According to what people told us, GNU/Linux content is being demonetised almost immediately.""I think I remember a case," one person said in IRC this week, "where a 12 year old kid hated a channel so much [that] he registered a fake company with YouTube's content ID to take down every video; how easy it is to take down videos [sic] than to appeal it because appealing it would do nothing but dox you to the person who took down your video..."
And "what I hate about the content ID system," he added, is that "anyone can make up a fucking company and not prove the legal existence of it... and take down videos. I mean, all it took is a 12 year old kid, who wanted to do mass censorship on YouTube, to do it [...] the lesson here is that counter-claims in YouTube are shit [...] you might as well just hire a lawyer to sue YouTube and the kid [...] and then they'll back down."
Quite a few popular channels were completely destroyed this way. In some cases, the people who ran the channels gave up and stopped producing new material. It just wasn't worth the trouble anymore.
"There are a lot of fake DCMA take-downs and YouTube toes the line," another person told us. "If you are a "creator" on the other hand, tough."
Here are some examples:
"The person points out that advertising does not require JavaScript and malware-laden scripts are so common in advertisements that they are known as malvertisements.""The guys who ran the Swedish site GnuHeter would have been interesting to interview if they still remember anything. They tried to make the site ad-based and it was loaded with ads but the ad company always refused to pay them claiming they were false clicks. Similar to how DT and Lunduke and other have reported demonitizaton of YouTube videos containing the string "Linux". LF [Linux Foundation] should have gotten in and pressured Google about that, that's another thing you can fault LF for."
The person points out that advertising does not require JavaScript and malware-laden scripts are so common in advertisements that they are known as malvertisements. It has afflicted even big name companies, not just dodgy sites. That is because the ads are served by a third party which gets its ads from yet another entity. No part of the chain has accountability.
For more information see:
"It's a trap; you must accept everything that comes later (changes to YouTube policy) or lose all your work."Yes, YouTube started putting ads in videos I uploaded over a decade ago. I didn't allow ads in those. They're howtos for Free software.
As ZedHedTed put it last night, YouTube says something along the lines of, "don't wanna monetize your video? we'll monetize it for you and give you 0% of the cut!"...
Whatever you're consenting to with YouTube today isn't the same agreement that applies to you years down the line. You're forced to accept whatever change they make later (or lose the whole channel). It's a trap; you must accept everything that comes later (changes to YouTube policy) or lose all your work.
What sane person who put up with it, in retrospect? ⬆