Honestly, it’s the terrible content moderation policies that are going to kill YouTube, not a certain type of video.
Bingo. I don’t find shorts all that appealing (especially since I can’t cast them to a TV! Wtf, seems like core function there) but I agree, the REAL problem with YouTube is how much creators have to top toe around demonization.
“Demonetization” is just what YouTube’s promises to advertisers look like when they affect video creators.
Money on YouTube flows from advertisers. The revenue from charging advertisers to show ads is split between YouTube/Google and the video creator. If your video is not shown with ads, then there is no revenue to split.
YouTube gives advertisers a very small control over what videos their ads are shown on. They have a few different classifications of videos, and advertisers can choose which ones they want to be seen with. Advertisers are paying for the service of YouTube putting their ads on videos — but only the videos that YouTube thinks the advertiser does want to be seen with.
If your video is fully “demonetized”, that means YouTube has decided that no advertisers want to be seen with it; or that they are not willing to take revenue from showing ads on that video. But they’re still hosting it, making it available to viewers.
Video creators’ revenue is a share of the ad income from YouTube showing the video (and accompanying ads). A “demonetized” video is one that doesn’t show any ads — so there is no revenue to split. It’s not that YouTube is taking all the revenue and leaving none to the video creator. They’re not making any, because they don’t think the advertisers would be okay with being charged to be seen alongside that video.
However, the creator of a “demonetized” video is still receiving value from YouTube. It is not free to host that video — especially if it is popular. Network bandwidth, data storage, and transcoding of video for viewers’ browsers are not free; YouTube covers the cost of these. YouTube is willing to host a lot of videos that they make zero money from, at their expense, rather than censoring those videos by taking them down.
YouTube is willing to host a lot of videos that they make zero money from, at their expense
That’s just not true…they’re hosting it because they data-farm the living shit out of both the creator and anyone that gets tangentially close to their site. More content = more people visit = more data on these people = more money…They make a lot of money on this data, even if no ads are shown on a video, and are by no means doing it out of the goodness of their heart.
Case in point, when youtube buried one of Caitlin Doughty’s documentaries from Ask a Mortician.
The video in question: The Forgotten Disaster of the SS Eastland. It’s 43 minutes long, both well done, and respectfully done. Her team did a good job on it then some youtube automated system buried it for “violating community guidelines”.
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https://piped.video/watch?v=UCHt2MOVCbg
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
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I’m not even sure it is bad policies. I am pretty sure that they just don’t have moderators.
I doubt anyone reads 99.9% of reports.
So you get bigotry and hate, you get insane and deadly DIYs, you get 12yo girls being creeped while posting random 5s clips from their lives.
Not to mention just the vast amount of extraordinarily low-quality content YouTube serves up. It’s amazing how bad a lot of the videos it thinks you will like are. The algorithm makes no sense.
But hey, here’s 16 different Joe Rogan clips with sigma male music in the background.
The algorithm seems like it is optimized for profit, not for actually being a good platform.
That should mean engagement. It serves up such bad videos that I disengage.
Once in a while I’ll realize I just spent 20, 30 minutes looking at a streak of pretty decent stuff. Rare enough to be remarkable. Usually after just 3 or 4 consecutive crap clips I’ll close it down and get back to work.
I doubt anything disengages a user faster than low-quality content. I bet it does it even faster than the authoritarian politics and bigotry YouTube seems to inexorable serve you.
