YouTube is now demonetizing videos from content creators deemed too controversial for the platform, and conservatives and independents are being heavily impacted.
The move follows YouTube’s announcement earlier in August to catch and flag “controversial religious and supremacist” content hosted on the popular video-hosting website. Political and social commentators on YouTube are feeling the hurt—and they believe that they may be on a blacklist for having the wrong opinions.
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Affected creators are unable to make money from their work, which is automatically flagged or vetted by volunteer “experts.” In addition, the new system incorporates “tougher standards” for controversial videos that do not break YouTube’s terms of service, which are placed in a purgatory state that effectively censors them from being recommended to YouTube viewers.
The Daily Caller spoke to conservative and independent YouTubers whose channels are now being affected by the new policy. Conservative journalist Lauren Southern believes there is a drive to stifle politically divergent voices.
“I think it would be insane to suggest there’s not an active effort to censor conservative and independent views,” said Southern. “Considering most of Silicon Valley participate in the censorship of alleged ‘hate speech,’ diversity hiring and inclusivity committees. Their entire model is based around a far left outline. There’s no merit hiring, there’s no support of free speech and there certainly is not an equal representation of political views at these companies.”
Independent journalist and activist Luke Rudkowski, who runs WeAreChange, told The Daily Caller that hundreds of his videos were demonetized in a single day on Thursday, effectively killing his ability to earn a living on YouTube.
“Having had 660 of my videos demonetized in one day left me a little stunned since this is the core for my income but left me with the impression that this was done on purpose,” said Rudkowski, who said that the videos included some of his most popular videos from years ago. “This was videos from years ago predominately targeting the most viewed videos which has eviscerated my income.”
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Daniel Sulzbach, better known as MrRepzion, told the Daily Caller that YouTube’s demonetization of his videos has hurt his incentive to make new content. He says that it hasn’t been the first time his videos were demonetized, but when the issue happened previously in early 2017, he was able to successfully appeal for them to be restored.
“The difference now is that my videos are not being restored with monetization when I file for manual review,” said Sulzbach.
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Edgy YouTube comedian Razorfist says every single one of his videos was demonetized. His biggest issue with the site was how the platform values progressive voices over everyone else through biased algorithms. Razorfist cited a video rebuttal to Sam Seder (a left wing comedian) as an example of the bias. He claims that Seder posted a reply containing Razorfist’s video in its entirety, but the algorithm flagged the original video for demonetization.
“If leftist channels are being white-listed, someone’s going to have to explain to me how this algorithm is functionally any different than a conservative blacklist,” he said.
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“Google’s going to need to explain to me why John Oliver can engage in weekly invective punctuated by a hail of profane epithets, skew it leftward, and still have ads for Pampers and pimple cream adorn the margins of his unwatchable videos,” he said.
Conservative vlogger and cultural pundit Mark Dice told The Daily Caller he believes YouTube is upset at the rise of conservative channels on YouTube over the past year, and that the new policies are designed to squelch dissenting voices.
“I think YouTube is furious that so many conservative channels have gotten so popular in the last year, and they don’t want us to be able to work full-time doing what we’re doing because our message is at odds with almost everything that Google and YouTube’s leadership stands for,” said Dice, who says that even his monetized videos are underperforming as a result of the changes.
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He says that his videos performed better when he had a 10th of his subscriber count, years ago.
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“YouTube has kicked a bees nest by going after Diamond and Silk [a channel of two black female Trump supporters]. I think it won’t be long before President Trump is commenting on YouTube’s censorship,” he said.
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http://dailycaller.com/2017/08/11/co...emonetization/
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Originally Posted by Swordsmyth
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