> “If a creator’s off-platform behavior harms our users, employees or ecosystem, we take action to protect the community,” the spokeswoman said.
Putting aside the validity of the accusations—let's say he did everything he's accused of, for the sake of argument—is Youtube alleging that he assaulted Youtube employees, app developers who use the Youtube ecosystem, or Youtube users? I assume the latter. But the thing is, a majority of people on Earth are Youtube users, so what the heck does that even mean?
I have no dog in this fight, Russell Brand's fate is not of interest to me. I'm just wondering about the argument they are making, and how broad it seems. If any alleged crime takes place wherein the victim has watched at least one Youtube video at some point in their life, and the perpetrator has a monetized Youtube channel, will Youtube's policy be to step in and protect the victim? For example, if I am YT creator and I punch someone in a bar, and that someone has a Youtube subscription, does Youtube step in? That feels like the kind of policy that cannot be faithfully and objectively executed, which makes it a bad policy and a potential legal vulnerability for Youtube.
I don't think it matters if the other person has a YT subscription. If you create videos about, say, beekeeping and you get in a random bar fight, no, probably not. IF you're some sort of 'influencer' and your public persona is all about being a tough-talking badass, such that your getting into a bar fight makes you the Main character in the entertainment/gossip pages for several days, then they might dump you because they don't want next weeks story to be 'YouTube subsidizes karaterobot's hard-drinking combat LARP.'
It's not a balanced appraisal of facts and harms and injury allocation like in a tort lawsuit; more a seat-of-the-pants executive judgement call on 'does hanging out with this guy commercially make us look bad?' If the answer is yes, then you suddenly no longer have a commercial relationship. It's similar to the 'morals clauses' in the contracts of TV and movie stars, but with the difference that tech firms basically set contractual terms unilaterally and the network effects are so strong that that no individual performer has any kind of leverage to request anything different.
It's worth understanding that the incredible concentration of corporate power on digital platforms is due to a mix of technological moats, the first-mover advantage of preferential attachment, and a philosophical shift away from breaking up monopolies, on the theory that large entities often deliver greater consumer benefits than a competitive market place, a viewpoint famously summarized here: https://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?articl...
The comparison to 'morals clauses' is apt: it was used mostly to force Christian, anti-Communist, and later pro-China stances on actors lest they harm the 'reputation' of the studio.
> But the thing is, a majority of people on Earth are Youtube users, so what the heck does that even mean?
This is beside the point, but I want to bring it up because I think it's important to remember we live in a bubble.
A majority of people on earth are not Youtube users. Only ~60% of the world's population uses the internet[1], and of those, I'd assume a significant portion lack the bandwidth to stream video. Also, Youtube is blocked in China.
YouTube doesn't want to be demonetized by advertisers, so they are demonetizing Brand. It's basic reputation management / income stream protection. Brand is free to go elsewhere or set up his own streaming / video publishing service.
YouTube is a massive platform and inherently has power. People used the exact same argument for Twitter but I don’t think you can deny that arbitrary management choices made a huge difference in how it worked, which had substantial impacts that a private company shouldn’t have.
>Brand is free to go elsewhere or set up his own streaming / video publishing service.
Obviously there's problems with this reasoning right? Why bother mentioning pointless rationalization here? You and Youtube both know there's only one video service that offers long form format and that's youtube themselves.
Just tell it like it is. Youtube having a monopoly over online video content is effectively gagging and censoring Brand because of the alleged crimes influencing their business. It is not technically eliminating freedom of speech but it is both practically and effectively doing the same thing.
This points to a an overall problem within the US today regarding freedom of speech. We effectively do not have freedom of speech because all public speaking platforms are controlled by business interests.
That's what's going on here. Not some "oh you're free to go to another video service" bullshit.
I doubt YouTube worries about being demonetized by advertisers at this point. Where exactly will this advertisers go to advertise on long form videos otherwise?
It doesn't really matter what their argument is, they simply need to have one. It's their sandbox, and they have chosen an advertiser-friendly ratchet as the driver of policy. YouTube will get more and more bland and samey as people fear the banhammer, which will get used on less and less extreme content and producers, as the "cancelling machinery" has been built and will always find the next-most-evil^tm on which to focus.
Until YouTube becomes boring and enough interesting people end up together somewhere else, and then all the users will leave at once (in internet time).
Doctorow huffs his own farts at a James Cameron level, but he's right about this.
>In England and Wales, more than 99% of rapes reported to police do not end in a conviction. This is the result of a criminal justice system that makes prosecuting rape extremely rare, lengthy and difficult.
An alternative interpretation of what's going on here is that the mainstream justice system is failing, and people are cobbling together an alternative justice system, where public shaming and demonetization are the punishments.
I think building in redundancy to reduce single points of failure is generally a good thing.
It's an interesting thought experiment, but ultimately boils down to one point. YT gets to do whatever they want. The terms of service are designed so they can be selective in their enforcement.
Is it bad policy? Yes. Does it allow for flexibility in a world that is never black and white? Also yes. Honestly, if there was a better solution, what would it be? The questions are endless once you start down this rabbit hole.
No, in my view Youtube can not do whatever they like with this kind of thing, at least as far as my potential outrage is concerned. If Youtube gives a false reason (to me as well as others) about the reason for demonetising someone then I have a problem with that.
When some content is banned from Youtube, it's got positives and negatives. Like when Alex Jones was banned, I was annoyed that I could no longer watch Alex Jones on Youtube if I ever wanted to, but more than that glad that he'd never appear in my autoplay or recommended videos. While I think there is some truth that YouTube can do as it likes, people talking about what their rules are, complaining about them, lobbying Youtube even, is all fair too. A fair complaint would be that the user does not get enough control over what gets recommended. If enough people are talking about that issue, it could motivate Youtube or a competitor to provide that kind of control, as it would be a signal that it would attract an audience to that platform and keep them engaged if recommendation control was a major concern of theirs.
Also, in some circumstances I could be quite annoyed with Youtube for not demonetising or banning some content. It could be something I don't want to watch personally, or more likely something I feel disgusted by such as Elsagate type scandals where the 'protect the children' type argument or instinct in my opinion or feelings override free speech concerns.
People criticising what Youtube does and talking about what a video hosting website would ideally do helps to create the conceptual foundations for the ideal video hosting website, and which Youtube and anyone else who reads the comments can use.
Also, discussing how such a system works produces what would be considered 'prior art' when it comes to patents.
He is not being censored. Youtube ends their commercial partnership, because they think he doesn’t fit their brand image. But he can still upload videos, ask for patreon subscriptions, sell tshirts etc…
I believe this is about protecting the ecosystem. YT has basically stopped ads from playing on his content…no advertiser wants to be associated with him right now. If YT didn’t take this action, it’s likely advertisers would pull back on spend because they don’t want to risk being seen along side his content.
YouTube, afaik, doesn’t just let advertisers blacklist individual channels.
> no advertiser wants to be associated with him right now.
I see this sentiment all the time and I just don't understand it. If I sold razor blades, or if I was Stephen He's dad and sold Beijing Corn, I would want EVERYONE buying my product. Communists, Fascists, Russians, Ukrainians, Israelis, Palestinians, Antifa, Proud Boys, Prince Andrew, Andrew Tate, etc.... They may all hate each other but they should all agree that I make the best damn razor blades / canned corn on planet Earth, and everyone should buy it.
This weird era of conspicuous consumption, "lifestyle" branding, and virtue-signaling faux-activism can't end soon enough.
I think that’s a good way to look at these things. I went through a phase of getting angry at online censorship. In reality, I don’t think corporations will be spending much time debating morals and will simply look at their reputation and bottom line.
How has it taken YouTube this long, anyway? Hasn’t much of this stuff been openly known for a decade or more? Is YouTube literally just reacting to the media cycle and nothing more?
yeah it's odd, if they do it for brand does that mean they'll now do it for all? of course not and they haven't, this feels unusual for them, so why target brand specifically?
this is going to make his conspiracy's seem true like they are targeting him
but it could be as simple as advertisers don't care about aerosmith because it's bigger than steven tyler, whereas brand is purely a youtube based opinion show and he is the main star of the show
Soon, hopefully. But I don't understand how you think Aerosmith is significant, or somehow countervails Brand. The people who care about Brand's sex pestery tend not to give a shit about Aerosmith. There are always going to be victimizers who haven't been called out, or who haven't yet been dealt with, in every field of endeavor; Robert Kelly is a good example.
It's not as if people who care about sexual assault are somehow lined up in Steven Tyler's corner. Quite the opposite.
Same here, but tbh the accusations against Brand are quite moot.
Regardless of that, why is YouTube to decide and not a court of law?
Of course a private platform can do whatever they want, but when their decision is basically the same as a court issuing fine or damages in the way it affects a person’s livelihood, shouldn’t their decisions be regulated accordingly?
Is that really the right way to think about it? Has Brand been convicted of any crime by any government? Seems more accurate to say Youtube is building an alternative security state. Heck, it's rather anarcho-capitalist if you ask me.
Nobody seems worried about how this standard gets applied down the road. They all seem focused on the case study but don’t see how this example applies directly to them so obviously.
I am genuinely confused how so many smart people can be so short sighted.
'Community' is defined by them. It does not mean us. It could mean the government, military industrial complex, biopharmaceutical complex, the board of Alphabet, and anybody else they wish to include in it.
It's incredibly easy to get a video demonetized on YouTube now. I don't know what videos you're talking about, but I wouldn't assume that they haven't long since been demonetized.
>we take action to protect the community,” the spokeswoman said.
This really exposes Google's hypocrisy, though. If they were worried about protecting the community, surely they would remove his content and not his ability to monetize it.
They must mean that "community" is being harmed by the content and not by the ads (else the responsible thing would be to shut down altogether ...)
That said, I think Brand's videos are a big pile of barf, though again, if that were the standard, YouTube would have to throw out 90+% of their content...
I'll make one point, which is that if you are a violent asshole who punches anyone in the face that looks at you wrong, you still can't actually harm anyone through Youtube except by trying to convince someone to come get their ass kicked by you.
Russel Brand is accused of grooming a 16 year old girl while he was 31, if true, that means there is the very real possibility that Brand could be using the YT platform as a means for finding other victims.
Trying to dig into their statement is a moot point:
R Kelly on Youtube Music is alive and well. You can argue, that it's separate from Youtube. But then here is a search result for R Kelly https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=r+kelly I assume those those videos that come up copyrighted content and someone gets monetization for it? And he his not been merely accused, but convicted.
There are other examples if you dig. This Brand is a tool and can't stand him, but this all happens conveniently right when he gained a little bit of traction by being an outspoken critique of the government.
> But the thing is, a majority of people on Earth are Youtube users, so what the heck does that even mean?
This is an interesting question; why hasn’t anyone verified that these women are YouTube users?
Since we have established that “ecosystem” is a word that means “app developers” and not a broad term that could be interpreted to mean the general environment in which YouTube does business with advertisers and users, this means that YouTube is acting in defense of its users.
Furthermore this announcement gets even more confusing as punching someone in a bar is not something that can faithfully or objectively be separated from (alleged) rape by any community standards or legal bodies, YouTube is in even further hot water here
All this doesn't matter. There is a Social Credit System and Scoring that is implicitly implemented in the Land of the Brave and Free. If you anger the Lords of The Traditional Orthodoxy by shaking your Chains, they will ensure that Sufficient Character Assassination is carried out to reduce your score to pitiful levels. Once that is done, you are deemed as Unfit For Society and then slowly Cancelled and Censored Out Of Existence.
It's simply an excuse to engage in political censure. It's worth remembering that in these people's parlance it's "denying someone's existence" to disagree with their political program or one counter-reality belief they hold, and they do demonetize for it.
YouTube is like HR - they are there to protect the company and the company's revenue streams, not you or "the community".
This is why I think the term "community guidelines" for "censorship policy" is such abusive gaslighting. It's unilateral censorship, not community, and they are rules, not guidelines.
It's the same deceptive drive that renamed "searching your bag" to "security screening" at airports.
I mostly agree but my argument against “rules” is that these things never seem to be unilaterally enforced. So it really is more like a guideline because enforcement is unpredictable in several aspects.
Twitter has lost something like 60% of its advertisers because it turns out Proctor and Gamble doesn’t want an ad for Dawn dish detergent next to someone called BasedFuhrer1488 posting about how the Holocaust didn’t happen.
If it wasn’t for that all these platforms would let anything legal go as long as it drove engagement.
It’s not lawyerly nitpicking. The US has a tradition in rule of law, and it’s a social convention that applies broadly.
YouTube, in their statement, is pretending they have an objective standard that is fairly applied to everyone. In reality, there is no uniform standard. They ban people when business interests dictate it.
So their policy reads as “we have an objective standard,” but reality is “we ban when we feel like it.”
YouTube could fix this contradiction by changing their policy to something like “we will ban creators for any reason, at our discretion.”
Are they not still associated with an alleged rapist by hosting and monetising his content, but not sharing the profits with the content creator? They should just give him notice to close his account if that is the case and close his account.
Allegedly. If a bunch of people come forward accusing you of assault, odds are pretty good you did it.
However, private businesses punishing people for having charges brought against them but not yet tried? That's judge, jury and executioner, which is incompatible with the set of laws that the US is built on - for which the source material was English Law, and precedent even older than that.
So an American company pre-punishing a Brit based on a news article is the beginning of another level of dystopia none of us wants.
Brand is not being executed. There has never been a principle in US or English law that you have to do business with everyone all the time. There are, in modern times, certain protected classes that you cannot discriminate against. Otherwise, you are free not to do business with someone, or to set the terms on which you are willing to do business with them. Alleged rapists are not a protected class.
In fairness there is a discussion that needs to be had about private businesses that have the de facto power to wreck people's lives if they decide to de-platform them. I think that applies more to businesses like banks and payment services providers that can literally make it difficult for you to obtain food and shelter than it does to social media or content hosting platforms, which are relatively easy to self-host. In any event, it has nothing to do with the criminal law concept of "innocent until proven guilty".
By the definition of "punish" that you are implicitly using, private businesses in America used to be able to punish people for anything ("we reserve the right to refuse service to anybody"). Now there are certain things they cannot punish people for (e.g. being black). Are you suggesting that the time has come to mandate that companies may not discriminate against customers for other reasons as well?
This has never been the standard for businesses. "Innocent until proven guilty" is only applicable in criminal court.
OJ didn't keep his endorsements after he murdered Nicole and Goldman, he lost them well ahead of the trial, and the businesses shouldn't have been forced to continue them because he was a toxic asset even after he was found not guilty.
>is the beginning of another level of dystopia none of us wants
This 'dystopia' is called freedom of association and I can confidentially tell you that I personally support the rights of any business to choose who they enter contracts with and not to do business with a likely sex offender, so I think you ought to speak for yourself.
There is no basis on which to compel a private business to host everyone's content and I would in fact consider that to be quite dystopian.
Liability. It all comes back to liability. I can't tell you what kind of cases have legal standing against YouTube for showing videos of an alleged abuser, but I trust that many smart and less scrupulous lawyers could.
Did I read this correctly? It sounds like YouTube will continue to host his content, but will now pocket the money they would have paid him.
That doesn't seem right to me. If they were to cease hosting his material, that would maych their corporate-speak blurb. This sounds to me like more money for YouTube.
> It sounds like YouTube will continue to host his content, but will now pocket the money they would have paid him.
If he is demonetized, then his videos won’t get ad placement, so Google won’t make the money in the first place, as it will contribute neither to advertising revenue nor to the marginal benefit from the Premium users derived compared to non-Premium users in avoiding ads.
Since Google pays creators less than it makes from their content, Google is giving up money (in a narrow analysis) by demonetizing Brand, not keeping additional money. (In a broader analysis, the rational for demonetizing is that monetizing toxic content hurts the brand and alienates advvertisers, so it is profitable to demonetize that content in the long run despite the immediate hit from any particular decision to do so.)
The exception is demonetization for certain copyright claims, which effectively isn’t “really” demonetization, its letting the copyright holder take the creators place for monetization.
While Youtube may be discounting direct revenue from this specific and limited set of content, Alphabet recognises the value of ostensibly being the quasi-exclusive repository & catalogue of video content.
Denying to their "users"/viewers the availability of some subset of content hurts their reputation more than "losing" a negligeable fraction of direct monetisation.
Leaving aside the morality of repudiating monetisation while allowing access, this is a sound strategy for maintaining the Youtube platform's monopoly and raison d'être. Which is after all the core of their ability to maximise shareholder value, and what else matters to a corporation?
If you’re just starting out and don’t qualify to become a “partner”, you can’t monetize your videos until you reach X amount of subscribers and Y amount of watch hours.
This doesn’t mean your videos won’t have ads on them. They most assuredly will have ads on them.
It just means that YouTube doesn’t consider you good enough to share the revenue with you.
Load of BS of course.
Either content is good enough to place ads on, revenue of which is shared, or your content isn’t good enough to place ads on.
Making profit over someone else’s content (however abhorrent the person might be) is just dirty imho.
To be honest, YouTube should be charging hosting fees to people who don't qualify for the partner program. The fact that they try to make up the shortfall through ads is a huge favor
Youtube is a free platform to host video content, they themselves need to pay the bills. At a particular point that your videos become "valuable" they offer to provide you with a cut.
The grey area is potentially how they determine the value
My understanding is that when a channel's content is not monetized, no ads are displayed. So no, YouTube is not pocketing the money they would have paid him.
YT most certainly runs ads against demonetized content. They just don't share in the take with the creator. What a principled stance... "I will make even more money because you did something bad somewhere else!"
unless they changed things, last year YT made it impossible to not display ads on your videos even if you wanted to let people watch your videos without ads
I believe this is true when you are a partner and you opt out of ads for a video. But if you're not a partner yet, then YT will serve ads that you don't receive any income for.
The less money that creators get from YouTube, the better. Content becomes a swamp when content gets monetized for the creator. The internet was so much better before everything was monetized. The platform should always be pocketing all the money.
Just like how Youtube will demonetize videos with things like violent retro video games. But they don't take down the video or hide it, they just collect all the ad revenue for themselves.
Like every social media platform the "community guidelines" are written to be purposely subjective and vague, such that the enforcement of the guidelines can be done arbitrarily, per the whim of the company and their agents.
Not just social media. Stripe and Square have similar wiggle-room and it's a demonization felt pretty directly. Amazon, Etsy and others - their policies give room to pick and choose winners - and change policy on a whim - and apply it inconsistently.
Corporate Overlords don't have to engage on Rights - it's all in the Privilege realm.
I worked at a (big) company when they changed their policy to include this vagueness. It was all over this guy spreading mass disinformation and conspiracy theories that were actively harmful. There was a lot of discussion about “yeah, I agree this is bad… but, this is a slippery slope,” and “how can you think we should let him use OUR platform to do this,” type arguments. We were a privately held company at the time, and this is what the owner wanted to do.
So we changed the terms. I felt like the T&S team (trust and safety) sighed a huge sigh of relief because they were having to deal with advertisers and bereft families complaining.
Anyway, it became a very heavy hammer that was very rarely used except in extreme circumstances.
I imagine not every company uses it as sparingly but it’s a much needed clause to deplatform certain kinds of charismatic people who are harmful to humanity. I don’t know anything about this particular case, nor do I want to know even a TL;DR. I’m just here for the comments and your comment chain struck a nerve.
Good way to piss off some people and encourage competitors. We need business reform, they do nothing in society to be deserving of authority in any measure.
No clue whether Brand is innocent or guilty before the law, but if he's exonerated would he have grounds to sue YouTube/Google or do the terms of service allow YouTube to demonetize people based on accusations even if they turn out to be false at a later time?
Unlikely, since uploaders don't really have a contractual relationship with YouTube. Platform operators can just arbitrarily kick people off with no recourse or accountability or even a clear explanation. There's no workaround for this except through regulation, aka government overreach into the free market destroying jobs and freedoms (as objections are usually phrased).
Small nit: YouTube has to adhere to it’s Terms of Service and any other “click to agree” policies. However, those documents and policies are incredibly broad like you mentioned.
Not really, YouTube can terminate your account for any reason. If the accusations are false, and if they're the reason why he lost monetization, he could sue the accusers for damages.
In addition to the contracts, YT could easily say even the implication he may have done wrong is not good for their business to associate with. He needn't be convicted in a court of law for it to be bad business to continue to work with him.
Probably would have to go after the false accusers for defamation and damages incurred… probably not worth it.
That said, mere unsupported allegations leading to serious material consequences is a dystopian quagmire and should be actionable in a legal sense without regard to the absurdly inequitable stipulations put forth in the T&C.
The Monetization Window is the new Overton Window. I think people underestimate how much Youtube's monetization policy influences what popular creators put in videos. Because it's not just the money - it also effects how videos are promoted by the algorithm.
I wonder if YouTube takes into consideration local values when doing this. For example, nudity and other controversial stuff can have much different standards on what's acceptable and what's not. If this is not baked into the formula, then it's likely that YouTube is pushing cultures to align with SV or some managers in Google.
I'm not going to defend Russel Brand, just making a point about YT's impact. This time around maybe many people agree with their decisions on content but what happens if the managers change and the rules change with them? What happens if Andrew Tate types get positions in the corporate? Will people be OK about promoting videos about how you can make money by pimping your girlfriend on live stream and how to recruit more girlfriends and demonetise videos on climate change?
It's very disturbing that those utility level services can pick winners and losers. IMHO, we need to move to a model where if you can moderate content you are liable for the content. If you don't want to be liable for content then you should have nothing to do with that content, just provide the service and cooperate with the law enforcement when they are after someone who posts illegal content.
You can't be the curator and have no responsibility, and if you don't want responsibility don't be the curator.
I'm sorry that you don't like this unpopular opinion but we need to go to the dumb wire days of the telephone companies who couldn't control what people say on the phone and if their services were used to do bad things it was the law enforcements job to deal with it.
> but we need to go to the dumb wire days of the telephone companies who couldn't control what people say on the phone and if their services were used to do bad things it was the law enforcements job to deal with it.
That is today. You do not get to control Google’s computers.
Buy your own server(s), buy your own bandwidth, and do what you please.
Lobby your representatives to make symmetric fiber internet a utility to each home, and implement ipv6 so you can serve content from your house and not have to depend on bigger companies to get around CGNAT.
And if you don’t moderate at all you get deluged under piles of crap, hate speech, spam, and bot-created garbage. Might as well not even try. In any sort of forum context, zero moderation makes it useless at least for most.
> then it's likely that YouTube is pushing cultures to align with SV or some managers in Google.
This is as sure as that the sun will rise tomorrow. I have absolutely no doubt that the rest of the world is culturally influenced by the larger SV companies.
> we need to move to a model where if you can moderate content you are liable for the content.
Hasn't pushing cultural norms on others always been the case with American-centric media? Before silicon valley it was Hollywood. They've got all the big budgets to produce hyperviolent movies but lord help you, if there's an uncovered boob, then it's an R rating and a much tougher pitch to studios.
The answer to that is yes, kind of. Google only really cares what people say in English and perhaps some other major languages. Speech in less common languages is less moderated in general across the internet.
It's not just video content either, Google's been fucking up the whole Internet for a while now.
Do you want a high search ranking for your site? It's far more important to appease Google's algorithms than provide quality content your users enjoy.
Want to make money off Google Ads? You need to be very careful about what you put on your site. They sent me a threatening letter once because I promoted World Naked Gardening Day.
Running a "successful" website nowadays revolves around keeping Google happy. If you fail to do that, they can destroy your business.
This is how ad-subsidized media has always worked. You worked for a television network has a team of censors that protected it from reputational damage. You had to listen to them if you wanted your show to air.
Heh, I bet there is an age gap here in the replies. Older people remember the days of TV/magazines where if you did the wrong thing, suddenly your face disappeared from the media like it never existed. Then the wild west days of the internet was a weird time where there was all kinds of crazy crap on the net. Now we've recentralized the services and it looks like traditional media.
I do not blame Google on this. They are behaving in their business interests exactly the way one should expect. The problem is as a society we grow massive corporations that have large near monopolies over multiple aspects of the internet and think it's perfectly fine.
This is something I think is overlooked very often. I feel like a constant narrative I hear is that censoring media like this is a new-fangled concept when in reality this has been standard practice forever.
Curated vs non-curated content. Apples and oranges.
Why can't social media add flags to accounts? Discusses weapons, discusses police shootings, violence, under accusation of <x>, trans/queer promotion, terf or anti- trans/queer, then advertisers can select which flags they don't want to be associated with?
This is a very interesting point. Tech-media companies (Google, Meta, Tik Tok) increasingly serve a similar gatekeeper function for public discourse that TV networks (ABC, NBC, CBS) did 50 years ago.
You would really enjoy the Chinese internet world, where legions of "gatekeepers" at Bytedance et al. bravely patrol the cyber world and rapidly eliminate any undesirable utterance. It's very clean and reassuring.
I think the main difference is that traditionally, this gatekeeper function was "decentralized". That is, ABC, NBC, CBS, New York Times, The Atlantic, Baltimore Sun, etc. etc. etc. all made their own editorial decisions, and there were dozens – if not hundreds – of decisions being made, rather than just a small handful of them.
This is still true to some extent, but the distribution of stories relies a lot more on a small handful of companies. Previously the distribution (newspaper stands and the like) might also refuse to carry some issues they found particularly objectionably, but again, these decisions were "distributed" much more than it is today, and it didn't affect subscribers of the newspaper or magazine.
Not that the previous system was perfect either or always worked well, or didn't have their downsides, but it's not really the same, IMHO.
The monetization window has everything to do with the advertiser confort window. That is "are we alienating a big chunk of the population being associated with that", where big is in dollars, not in people
So it is a lens that distorts what society deems 'acceptable' -- and that phase itself has its own set of complications
Matt Taibbi brought up a case of a guy who put up montages of Trump saying the 2020 election was rigged cut up with clips of liberal media figures saying the Russians stole 2016.
Pure trolling, kind of funny, 100% clips of public figures with no commentary. Demonetized.
I'm honestly confused what people get upset about using a private platform. If you want better accountability argue for an open platform uncontrolled by capital. What is the point of complaining while suggesting nothing? This conversation is even more useless than the old "marketplace of ideas" bullshit.
It interesting seeing Mr Beast talk about AB testing thumbnails — his old style was apparently not actually what the algorithm wanted but he'd never tested it properly.
There was another style other than him looking stupefied with his mouth open? I'd be fine if that face disappeared off Youtube entirely because everyone seems to have copied that.
Content goes on there based on the promise of money, not the reality of it. If you’ve watched YouTube enough you know how many content producers have come to grips with how much/little money they are actually making and have adjusted their strategy.
I like for instance LTT’s philosophy on merch and patreon as money streams for review oriented content: if the majority or plurality of your sponsorship comes from manufacturers, how can anyone be sure that you’re bringing objectivity to those reviews? How can you be sure you are? So keep sponsors locked into a small pool of your revenue, that way everyone knows you can walk away from them at any time and still keep the lights on. There’s less temptation to even attempt coercion, because the leverage is weak at best.
This is why contract law exists. You can cancel me, sure, go ahead, but you will pay up. With youtube, the contract is written, in the TOS, to 100% favor youtube.
See also "cerveza sickness" for when any discussion about COVID would get you flagged, and any narrative except the latest globalist one was tolerated.
It's really what advertisers are willing to put up with. Unfortunately most companies are run by cowards and I know for a fact that having your ad presented alongside something controversial doesn't imply the brand supports it
Unfortunately, there's a load minority who try to push this when this far from the truth.
When a channel is demonetized does that mean YouTube doesn't run ads at all on the channel's content, or do they still run ads and just don't pay out the share to the creator?
Agree. One can only interpret this as ham-fisted virtue signaling by YouTube management and perhaps with staff support.
If they are continuing to host and serve the Brand videos, they are defacto saying, "content by this person doesn't hurt our platform in a material way, but we've decided this person is bad and we want to show ourselves punishing him." And the best part is they are tangibly rewarded in this by not having to pay the creator's share of the revenue. No matter what Brand may or may not be guilty of... continuing to stream his content without paying for it is despicable and immoral.
Properly thought about, moral judgement of what YouTube is doing is completely independent of anything Brand had done.
Went to YouTube.coms Russel Brand page, clicked the shortest video, let it play.
After the video, ad played, then the next Russell Brand video.
Next video was longer and included marked ads throughout the video, clearly pausing the ad content and labeled with a pop-up.
Also, YouTube still has its pop up that say, "Video contains paid promotion," so they know he is profiting off the video and are still allowing it AND YouTube is profiting from ad between videos.
Overall, I'd say YES, they are still allowing ads, they probably just suspended payments for "In-video" YouTube 3rd parts ads, really only 1 of 4 ad types they are serving.
Both YouTube and Russel Brand continue to make money off ads on Russell Brands videos on YouTube.
I don't think this is quite right - as the other comments point out, Youtube will still play ads and they take 100% cut of the money. They have already announced that Brand is demonetized, so they will pay him 0% while taking 100% of the ad revenue for themselves.
Somethings that happen from I remember from other demonetised channels:
- no revenue share from YT
- no superchats (via YT)
- most of the ads are turned off due to brand deals with YT and risk of being associated with some banned channel
YouTube ads are a tiny % of revenue. Celebrities on YT make their money from brand deals, not ads. Remember "Adpocalypse" and the beginning of all this ultra clean PC talk online? Before all that, sure you could make a living from YT ads, but many channels don't even have them on because it's cents. For example I have over 50k views on some videos, but the ad revenue is nothing.
"“He is most likely making £2,000 to £4,000 per video, not taking into account any affiliate deals and brand sponsorships that might be running in the background,” she said.
Based on five videos a week, this could easily produce the best part of a £1m a year."
Perhaps a moral opportunity if you believe that people credibly accused of and under investigation for rape (Brand) or spreading white supremacist dog whistle conspiracy theories (Carlson) is a moral imperative.
Not such a great opportunity when you consider that the audience for this sort of content is poorly-educated, credulous, reactionary, and anathema to advertisers who can actually support the businesses behind the platforms.
This is the most surprising thing about Elon's lurch to the right: it has already cost him c.40% of Twitter's ad revenue because, huge surprise, nobody wants to be associated with conspiracy theorists even when they aren't rapists or racists.
To say the kinds of things you're saying betrays that you just blindly believe whatever you're told. How can you say that and then seemingly unaware go on to call others credulous and poorly-educated? It's remarkable.
Isn’t Brand on Rumble? He already does live shows on Rumble. Less followers, less money I assume but doesn’t seem like he’ll be kicked off Rumble anytime soon.
I am not sure how long X can keep doing this. Elon is under tremendous pressure from the establishment. It's likely that he will either align with Facebook and YouTube's policies or be compelled to relinquish control of X.
Readit News
Putting aside the validity of the accusations—let's say he did everything he's accused of, for the sake of argument—is Youtube alleging that he assaulted Youtube employees, app developers who use the Youtube ecosystem, or Youtube users? I assume the latter. But the thing is, a majority of people on Earth are Youtube users, so what the heck does that even mean?
I have no dog in this fight, Russell Brand's fate is not of interest to me. I'm just wondering about the argument they are making, and how broad it seems. If any alleged crime takes place wherein the victim has watched at least one Youtube video at some point in their life, and the perpetrator has a monetized Youtube channel, will Youtube's policy be to step in and protect the victim? For example, if I am YT creator and I punch someone in a bar, and that someone has a Youtube subscription, does Youtube step in? That feels like the kind of policy that cannot be faithfully and objectively executed, which makes it a bad policy and a potential legal vulnerability for Youtube.
I don't think it matters if the other person has a YT subscription. If you create videos about, say, beekeeping and you get in a random bar fight, no, probably not. IF you're some sort of 'influencer' and your public persona is all about being a tough-talking badass, such that your getting into a bar fight makes you the Main character in the entertainment/gossip pages for several days, then they might dump you because they don't want next weeks story to be 'YouTube subsidizes karaterobot's hard-drinking combat LARP.'
It's not a balanced appraisal of facts and harms and injury allocation like in a tort lawsuit; more a seat-of-the-pants executive judgement call on 'does hanging out with this guy commercially make us look bad?' If the answer is yes, then you suddenly no longer have a commercial relationship. It's similar to the 'morals clauses' in the contracts of TV and movie stars, but with the difference that tech firms basically set contractual terms unilaterally and the network effects are so strong that that no individual performer has any kind of leverage to request anything different.
It's worth understanding that the incredible concentration of corporate power on digital platforms is due to a mix of technological moats, the first-mover advantage of preferential attachment, and a philosophical shift away from breaking up monopolies, on the theory that large entities often deliver greater consumer benefits than a competitive market place, a viewpoint famously summarized here: https://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?articl...
It's not a good thing.
This is beside the point, but I want to bring it up because I think it's important to remember we live in a bubble.
A majority of people on earth are not Youtube users. Only ~60% of the world's population uses the internet[1], and of those, I'd assume a significant portion lack the bandwidth to stream video. Also, Youtube is blocked in China.
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1: https://ourworldindata.org/internet
India has the most youtube users at 570M+, though the US is highest in youtube traffic. Japan also has high youtube traffic per capita.
https://www.globalmediainsight.com/blog/youtube-users-statis...
Obviously there's problems with this reasoning right? Why bother mentioning pointless rationalization here? You and Youtube both know there's only one video service that offers long form format and that's youtube themselves.
Just tell it like it is. Youtube having a monopoly over online video content is effectively gagging and censoring Brand because of the alleged crimes influencing their business. It is not technically eliminating freedom of speech but it is both practically and effectively doing the same thing.
This points to a an overall problem within the US today regarding freedom of speech. We effectively do not have freedom of speech because all public speaking platforms are controlled by business interests.
That's what's going on here. Not some "oh you're free to go to another video service" bullshit.
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Until YouTube becomes boring and enough interesting people end up together somewhere else, and then all the users will leave at once (in internet time).
Doctorow huffs his own farts at a James Cameron level, but he's right about this.
https://www.city.ac.uk/news-and-events/news/2022/04/new-scor...
An alternative interpretation of what's going on here is that the mainstream justice system is failing, and people are cobbling together an alternative justice system, where public shaming and demonetization are the punishments.
I think building in redundancy to reduce single points of failure is generally a good thing.
Is it bad policy? Yes. Does it allow for flexibility in a world that is never black and white? Also yes. Honestly, if there was a better solution, what would it be? The questions are endless once you start down this rabbit hole.
When some content is banned from Youtube, it's got positives and negatives. Like when Alex Jones was banned, I was annoyed that I could no longer watch Alex Jones on Youtube if I ever wanted to, but more than that glad that he'd never appear in my autoplay or recommended videos. While I think there is some truth that YouTube can do as it likes, people talking about what their rules are, complaining about them, lobbying Youtube even, is all fair too. A fair complaint would be that the user does not get enough control over what gets recommended. If enough people are talking about that issue, it could motivate Youtube or a competitor to provide that kind of control, as it would be a signal that it would attract an audience to that platform and keep them engaged if recommendation control was a major concern of theirs.
Also, in some circumstances I could be quite annoyed with Youtube for not demonetising or banning some content. It could be something I don't want to watch personally, or more likely something I feel disgusted by such as Elsagate type scandals where the 'protect the children' type argument or instinct in my opinion or feelings override free speech concerns.
People criticising what Youtube does and talking about what a video hosting website would ideally do helps to create the conceptual foundations for the ideal video hosting website, and which Youtube and anyone else who reads the comments can use.
Also, discussing how such a system works produces what would be considered 'prior art' when it comes to patents.
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YouTube, afaik, doesn’t just let advertisers blacklist individual channels.
I see this sentiment all the time and I just don't understand it. If I sold razor blades, or if I was Stephen He's dad and sold Beijing Corn, I would want EVERYONE buying my product. Communists, Fascists, Russians, Ukrainians, Israelis, Palestinians, Antifa, Proud Boys, Prince Andrew, Andrew Tate, etc.... They may all hate each other but they should all agree that I make the best damn razor blades / canned corn on planet Earth, and everyone should buy it.
This weird era of conspicuous consumption, "lifestyle" branding, and virtue-signaling faux-activism can't end soon enough.
It's sort of amazing that the biggest search company on earth can't filter/select ads like that.
There is never anything more than that with corporations.
How has it taken YouTube this long, anyway? Hasn’t much of this stuff been openly known for a decade or more? Is YouTube literally just reacting to the media cycle and nothing more?
this is going to make his conspiracy's seem true like they are targeting him
but it could be as simple as advertisers don't care about aerosmith because it's bigger than steven tyler, whereas brand is purely a youtube based opinion show and he is the main star of the show
It's not as if people who care about sexual assault are somehow lined up in Steven Tyler's corner. Quite the opposite.
You are witnessing the slow merging of Silicon Valley with the Security State. Buckle up. It gets super fun after this.
I am genuinely confused how so many smart people can be so short sighted.
It means they'll ban anyone who is high profile enough to expose YouTube to PR risk.
This really exposes Google's hypocrisy, though. If they were worried about protecting the community, surely they would remove his content and not his ability to monetize it.
They must mean that "community" is being harmed by the content and not by the ads (else the responsible thing would be to shut down altogether ...)
That said, I think Brand's videos are a big pile of barf, though again, if that were the standard, YouTube would have to throw out 90+% of their content...
Russel Brand is accused of grooming a 16 year old girl while he was 31, if true, that means there is the very real possibility that Brand could be using the YT platform as a means for finding other victims.
There are other examples if you dig. This Brand is a tool and can't stand him, but this all happens conveniently right when he gained a little bit of traction by being an outspoken critique of the government.
It's just a euphemism for people.
This is an interesting question; why hasn’t anyone verified that these women are YouTube users?
Since we have established that “ecosystem” is a word that means “app developers” and not a broad term that could be interpreted to mean the general environment in which YouTube does business with advertisers and users, this means that YouTube is acting in defense of its users.
Furthermore this announcement gets even more confusing as punching someone in a bar is not something that can faithfully or objectively be separated from (alleged) rape by any community standards or legal bodies, YouTube is in even further hot water here
No they really aren't.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedro_Rodrigues_Filho
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This is why I think the term "community guidelines" for "censorship policy" is such abusive gaslighting. It's unilateral censorship, not community, and they are rules, not guidelines.
It's the same deceptive drive that renamed "searching your bag" to "security screening" at airports.
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Twitter has lost something like 60% of its advertisers because it turns out Proctor and Gamble doesn’t want an ad for Dawn dish detergent next to someone called BasedFuhrer1488 posting about how the Holocaust didn’t happen.
If it wasn’t for that all these platforms would let anything legal go as long as it drove engagement.
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YouTube, in their statement, is pretending they have an objective standard that is fairly applied to everyone. In reality, there is no uniform standard. They ban people when business interests dictate it.
So their policy reads as “we have an objective standard,” but reality is “we ban when we feel like it.”
YouTube could fix this contradiction by changing their policy to something like “we will ban creators for any reason, at our discretion.”
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However, private businesses punishing people for having charges brought against them but not yet tried? That's judge, jury and executioner, which is incompatible with the set of laws that the US is built on - for which the source material was English Law, and precedent even older than that.
So an American company pre-punishing a Brit based on a news article is the beginning of another level of dystopia none of us wants.
In fairness there is a discussion that needs to be had about private businesses that have the de facto power to wreck people's lives if they decide to de-platform them. I think that applies more to businesses like banks and payment services providers that can literally make it difficult for you to obtain food and shelter than it does to social media or content hosting platforms, which are relatively easy to self-host. In any event, it has nothing to do with the criminal law concept of "innocent until proven guilty".
OJ didn't keep his endorsements after he murdered Nicole and Goldman, he lost them well ahead of the trial, and the businesses shouldn't have been forced to continue them because he was a toxic asset even after he was found not guilty.
This 'dystopia' is called freedom of association and I can confidentially tell you that I personally support the rights of any business to choose who they enter contracts with and not to do business with a likely sex offender, so I think you ought to speak for yourself.
There is no basis on which to compel a private business to host everyone's content and I would in fact consider that to be quite dystopian.
I sure hope you're never on a jury!
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That doesn't seem right to me. If they were to cease hosting his material, that would maych their corporate-speak blurb. This sounds to me like more money for YouTube.
If he is demonetized, then his videos won’t get ad placement, so Google won’t make the money in the first place, as it will contribute neither to advertising revenue nor to the marginal benefit from the Premium users derived compared to non-Premium users in avoiding ads.
Since Google pays creators less than it makes from their content, Google is giving up money (in a narrow analysis) by demonetizing Brand, not keeping additional money. (In a broader analysis, the rational for demonetizing is that monetizing toxic content hurts the brand and alienates advvertisers, so it is profitable to demonetize that content in the long run despite the immediate hit from any particular decision to do so.)
The exception is demonetization for certain copyright claims, which effectively isn’t “really” demonetization, its letting the copyright holder take the creators place for monetization.
Not necessarily true. YouTube definitely runs ads on demonetized videos and channels.
While Youtube may be discounting direct revenue from this specific and limited set of content, Alphabet recognises the value of ostensibly being the quasi-exclusive repository & catalogue of video content.
Denying to their "users"/viewers the availability of some subset of content hurts their reputation more than "losing" a negligeable fraction of direct monetisation.
Leaving aside the morality of repudiating monetisation while allowing access, this is a sound strategy for maintaining the Youtube platform's monopoly and raison d'être. Which is after all the core of their ability to maximise shareholder value, and what else matters to a corporation?
If you’re just starting out and don’t qualify to become a “partner”, you can’t monetize your videos until you reach X amount of subscribers and Y amount of watch hours.
This doesn’t mean your videos won’t have ads on them. They most assuredly will have ads on them. It just means that YouTube doesn’t consider you good enough to share the revenue with you.
Load of BS of course.
Either content is good enough to place ads on, revenue of which is shared, or your content isn’t good enough to place ads on. Making profit over someone else’s content (however abhorrent the person might be) is just dirty imho.
as long as the number isn't too high I don't really see a problem with it
Youtube is a free platform to host video content, they themselves need to pay the bills. At a particular point that your videos become "valuable" they offer to provide you with a cut.
The grey area is potentially how they determine the value
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So they’re still making profits off someone else’s work (without retribution)
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Are these things you want?
Corporate Overlords don't have to engage on Rights - it's all in the Privilege realm.
So we changed the terms. I felt like the T&S team (trust and safety) sighed a huge sigh of relief because they were having to deal with advertisers and bereft families complaining.
Anyway, it became a very heavy hammer that was very rarely used except in extreme circumstances.
I imagine not every company uses it as sparingly but it’s a much needed clause to deplatform certain kinds of charismatic people who are harmful to humanity. I don’t know anything about this particular case, nor do I want to know even a TL;DR. I’m just here for the comments and your comment chain struck a nerve.
I think you're mocking those who say this is overreach? But the tone is hard for me to be sure about.
In any case, regulation would seem to protect jobs here (jobs of content creators), although what it does to freedoms is much harder to analyse.
That said, mere unsupported allegations leading to serious material consequences is a dystopian quagmire and should be actionable in a legal sense without regard to the absurdly inequitable stipulations put forth in the T&C.
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I'm not going to defend Russel Brand, just making a point about YT's impact. This time around maybe many people agree with their decisions on content but what happens if the managers change and the rules change with them? What happens if Andrew Tate types get positions in the corporate? Will people be OK about promoting videos about how you can make money by pimping your girlfriend on live stream and how to recruit more girlfriends and demonetise videos on climate change?
It's very disturbing that those utility level services can pick winners and losers. IMHO, we need to move to a model where if you can moderate content you are liable for the content. If you don't want to be liable for content then you should have nothing to do with that content, just provide the service and cooperate with the law enforcement when they are after someone who posts illegal content.
You can't be the curator and have no responsibility, and if you don't want responsibility don't be the curator.
I'm sorry that you don't like this unpopular opinion but we need to go to the dumb wire days of the telephone companies who couldn't control what people say on the phone and if their services were used to do bad things it was the law enforcements job to deal with it.
That is today. You do not get to control Google’s computers.
Buy your own server(s), buy your own bandwidth, and do what you please.
Lobby your representatives to make symmetric fiber internet a utility to each home, and implement ipv6 so you can serve content from your house and not have to depend on bigger companies to get around CGNAT.
This is as sure as that the sun will rise tomorrow. I have absolutely no doubt that the rest of the world is culturally influenced by the larger SV companies.
> we need to move to a model where if you can moderate content you are liable for the content.
Agree completely.
Do you want a high search ranking for your site? It's far more important to appease Google's algorithms than provide quality content your users enjoy.
Want to make money off Google Ads? You need to be very careful about what you put on your site. They sent me a threatening letter once because I promoted World Naked Gardening Day.
Running a "successful" website nowadays revolves around keeping Google happy. If you fail to do that, they can destroy your business.
I do not blame Google on this. They are behaving in their business interests exactly the way one should expect. The problem is as a society we grow massive corporations that have large near monopolies over multiple aspects of the internet and think it's perfectly fine.
Why can't social media add flags to accounts? Discusses weapons, discusses police shootings, violence, under accusation of <x>, trans/queer promotion, terf or anti- trans/queer, then advertisers can select which flags they don't want to be associated with?
This... actually is a hopeful insight to me.
This is still true to some extent, but the distribution of stories relies a lot more on a small handful of companies. Previously the distribution (newspaper stands and the like) might also refuse to carry some issues they found particularly objectionably, but again, these decisions were "distributed" much more than it is today, and it didn't affect subscribers of the newspaper or magazine.
Not that the previous system was perfect either or always worked well, or didn't have their downsides, but it's not really the same, IMHO.
I wrote a thing a few years ago after reading one of the case studies in John Doerr’s OKR book that used YT as an example, I think the point I was trying to make likely still stands https://www.jacquescorbytuech.com/writing/okr-youtube-uninte...
More like yet another reflection of the extant overton window.
The monetization window has everything to do with the advertiser confort window. That is "are we alienating a big chunk of the population being associated with that", where big is in dollars, not in people
So it is a lens that distorts what society deems 'acceptable' -- and that phase itself has its own set of complications
(see: wikileaks)
Pure trolling, kind of funny, 100% clips of public figures with no commentary. Demonetized.
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Content goes on there based on the promise of money, not the reality of it. If you’ve watched YouTube enough you know how many content producers have come to grips with how much/little money they are actually making and have adjusted their strategy.
I like for instance LTT’s philosophy on merch and patreon as money streams for review oriented content: if the majority or plurality of your sponsorship comes from manufacturers, how can anyone be sure that you’re bringing objectivity to those reviews? How can you be sure you are? So keep sponsors locked into a small pool of your revenue, that way everyone knows you can walk away from them at any time and still keep the lights on. There’s less temptation to even attempt coercion, because the leverage is weak at best.
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Unfortunately, there's a load minority who try to push this when this far from the truth.
If they are continuing to host and serve the Brand videos, they are defacto saying, "content by this person doesn't hurt our platform in a material way, but we've decided this person is bad and we want to show ourselves punishing him." And the best part is they are tangibly rewarded in this by not having to pay the creator's share of the revenue. No matter what Brand may or may not be guilty of... continuing to stream his content without paying for it is despicable and immoral.
Properly thought about, moral judgement of what YouTube is doing is completely independent of anything Brand had done.
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Please link to any example of one of Brand's youtube videos that is still running ads
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Went to YouTube.coms Russel Brand page, clicked the shortest video, let it play.
After the video, ad played, then the next Russell Brand video.
Next video was longer and included marked ads throughout the video, clearly pausing the ad content and labeled with a pop-up.
Also, YouTube still has its pop up that say, "Video contains paid promotion," so they know he is profiting off the video and are still allowing it AND YouTube is profiting from ad between videos.
Overall, I'd say YES, they are still allowing ads, they probably just suspended payments for "In-video" YouTube 3rd parts ads, really only 1 of 4 ad types they are serving.
Both YouTube and Russel Brand continue to make money off ads on Russell Brands videos on YouTube.
1. https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxUtzzTeakkcWlZp531K_jZ6JGWUSKbU7...
"“He is most likely making £2,000 to £4,000 per video, not taking into account any affiliate deals and brand sponsorships that might be running in the background,” she said.
Based on five videos a week, this could easily produce the best part of a £1m a year."
https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2023/sep/18/how-russell-...
Not such a great opportunity when you consider that the audience for this sort of content is poorly-educated, credulous, reactionary, and anathema to advertisers who can actually support the businesses behind the platforms.
This is the most surprising thing about Elon's lurch to the right: it has already cost him c.40% of Twitter's ad revenue because, huge surprise, nobody wants to be associated with conspiracy theorists even when they aren't rapists or racists.
https://rumble.com/c/russellbrand
One I’d be doubly happy to continue not paying for.