I recently wrote an article about the censorship going on on YouTube. In it, I briefly said that I would talk about the advertiser crises in another article. Well, here it is. Now where this whole debacle starts is from the most subscribed YouTuber on YouTube and an article the mainstream media (Which I will refer to as MSM in this article) wrote about him.
If you are on YouTube at all you most likely have heard of PewDiePie, a Swedish YouTube superstar with over 50 million subscribers. Yes, you read that right; 50 million. Well, about a month or so ago, an article published by a pretty big member of the MSM said that PewDiePie was anti-Semitic, and they had the video to prove it... A video that was cut together from a bunch of videos that he made that made him seem this way. The thing that sparked this article was his video using Fiver trying to get people to do silly things and he paid them the five dollars. Well, he made a joke that was not funny and has since apologized for it. This even got author J.K. Rowling to speak about how wrong he was to make the joke. Most people are not supporting his use of the joke but they are supporting PewDiePie. I think that most people say and do things that they regret and have to live the consequences, but this sparked more than just a little controversy.
Not long after this article, it came out that PewDiePie's Network (AKA how they get represented and paid and such) dropped him. This resulted in a big drop in pay for him. Now, keep in mind, people that the big YouTubers do this as is for a living. This is their job and they rely on the ads that show and their networks. So, YouTube also had a punishment for him and this was to cut his show from YouTube Red. This sparked something in YouTube though.
Now, within the past few weeks, it has come to light that ads are being shown on controversial content. Some of this content involved channels that were being backed by extremists. They also got mad about videos with guns, swearing, and basically talking normally. So what happened? Some of the biggest companies pulled their ads off of YouTube; Coke, Pepsi, Walmart. You know the people with a lot of bucks. Yeah, not good. So, YouTube decided that it was going to go through every single video with a fine tooth comb (by checking thumbnails, tags, and descriptions, without watching the video), and demonetize all of them without the chance to appeal it.
YouTube will usually give you chance to appeal the demonetization of your video by filing a claim and it has to be deemed advertiser friendly. Really, what is advertiser friendly anymore? I understand the not funding of certain things, but some of the content that they are flagging is better than shows that I see on TV nowadays. Why is this? YouTube is supposed to be a platform to go find someone like you. To find someone who you can watch and relate to. To maybe find a friend that lives on the other side of the screen. To find someone who could change your life. It is so nice to see people like us being able to make it so that many people know them and that they are just regular people. So why do advertisers support videos that promote unhealthy relationships or unrealistic body image expectations? They also support movies or videos in which the actors and actresses are starving themselves just to “keep in shape for the role.” You don't find a lot of people doing that. You find quirky people who may do crazy things like curling their hair with Cheetos, covering their body in blackhead mask, or playing a video game that you want, but don't know if you will like it.
So will the advertisers ever come back? Will YouTube ever go back to being a platform for people, by people? I can tell you right now that advertisers are slowly coming back, which is a good sign, and there are ways to appropriately identify which videos should be advertiser friendly. I mean, watching a woman hit her face and roll it across bread has to be advertiser friendly right? Right? So hopefully advertisers will return soon to YouTube. YouTube has become the platform for the people, by the people, and we need the people who are content creators running the show, not a CEO that was hired by Google to take over the site when it was bought. Now YouTube has done some great things but it is broken and this is something that Duck Tape will not fix.
