YouTube’s New Content Policies Around Mature Content Results In Chaos
You will recall that we spent a great deal of words and posts in 2021 discussing the problems Twitch created for itself by deciding to suddenly change the way it enforces copyright infringement claims for its streaming community, mostly without informing that community of those changes and remaining extremely opaque and vague about the standards and processes after it went into effect. While some of the ways Twitch decided to enforce copyright on its platform were fairly silly in my view, the real problem stemmed from Twitch's inability to properly and proactively communicate to its own community. That's what set everyone off as much, or more, than anything else.
Given the highly visible nature of Twitch's no good, very bad time with all of this, it's more than a tad surprising to see its rival, YouTube, going through the exact same issue after it updated its mature content standards for YouTube videos.
Members of YouTube's gaming community are calling out the video hosting site for adding new regulations regarding profanity usage and violent content, disproportionately affecting gaming creators who produce unscripted videos such as let's plays of M-rated games. Worse, the policy is retroactively deeming their videos in violation of new rules and affecting their ability to make money on the platform.
The rule changes in question was originally made in November of 2022, and the blog post announcing it says that YouTube now treats all profanity equally (meaning ass" is just as bad as fuck"), and any usage of such in titles, thumbails, or in the first seven seconds of a video may result in complete demonetization. While you can swear after the first eight seconds, if you use profanity consistently throughout the video" it may also be demonetized according to this new policy. The same restrictions apply to violent content, as well.
Except that an additional change to violent content was made, with the restriction no longer applying only to IRL violence, but now depictions of violence in media content, such as video games. This policy too was applied in a retroactive manner, meaning that videos that were fine to post previously are suddenly being demonetized.
Members of the streaming community are understandably unhappy with all of this. In the case of one streamer, Daniel Condren, it appears that in attempting to appeal one instance of a video of his getting flagged, the end result was YouTube flagging even more of his videos.
After escalating the issue, Condren says he saw a mass flagging of around a dozen more videos that he attempted to appeal through the same channels, all of which were immediately denied. Eventually, after being put in direct contact with YouTube, Condren was told these videos were being age-restricted and demonetized due to these new policies, and he says he believes these older videos were being affected because he escalated the situation with the original video.
As you are aware, all content available on the platform must follow these guidelines, regardless of when they were uploaded or when the policy was implemented," a YouTube rep told Condren, as shown by screenshots in the video.
Making this all the more frustrating have been comments and guides coming from other streamers on how to get around these new restrictions. These largely involve simply adding buffer content at the start of a video to push any objectionable content beyond the 8 second mark.
Not that the streaming community finds any of this acceptable, still.
As knowledge of the retroactive effects this policy change has on creators has spread since its implementation in November, other YouTube users like Charles Christopher White Jr., better known online as commentator and streamer MoistCr1TiKaL, have also posted about the issue, criticizing that platform's lack of communication.
If you're just now figuring this out and wondering why your channel got demonetized over the last 24 hours, I'm sorry I had to be the one to shit out this bad news onto your plate," White says. Would've been a lot more palatable if it came from YouTube's mouth as opposed to my ass. But it is what it is. I am very, very convinced they will never actually communicate policy changes ever. At least, not in any effective manner."
Competing with Twitch by taking on its worst practices is probably not a great way to do business, YouTube.