Video Creators Accuse YouTube Of Censorship After Notification Improvement: No, Ad Guidelines Weren't Changed

YouTube content creators were in an uproar as of late after receiving notifications that their videos are demonetized. However, the video-sharing platform claims there are no new censorship policies, just a new notification system.

The said uproar started on Aug. 31, after long-time YouTuber Philip DeFranco tweeted about the notification he received for his videos that YouTube specified as not being monetized, which means no advertisement revenues will be gained from those content he and his team produced. He also discussed it on a video that he uploaded later that day.

One of DeFranco's producers got in touch with a YouTube representative and got a confirmation that it wasn't a mistake. DeFranco said that about 40 of his videos had been demonetized.

Other YouTube content creators have also come out with the same claims. Jesse from the McJuggerNuggets YouTube channel, which is known for its psycho dad and psycho brother videos, said that he received notifications for three of his videos that are not monetized. Another is the ETC Show channel, which also reported receiving the same notifications for several of its videos.

The news of what was then thought to be the new YouTube censorship policy caused the hashtag #YouTubeIsOverParty to be tweeted almost 175,000 times with not even a day since its creation.

The video-sharing platform, however, clarifies that it hasn't added or changed anything in its policies and that the improved notification system was implemented to make sure that content creators can appeal for their videos to be reviewed and approved for monetization if they believe them to be ad-friendly.

YouTube Team's tweet was later supplemented by Google, its parent company.

"We recently started rolling out improved notifications in Video Manager to make it clearer to creators when a video is demonetized due to advertiser-friendly content concerns, as well as to make it easy to appeal," writes YT Kat, a Google employee.

"[I]t's become clear to us that there is some confusion in the creator community, so we wanted to take a moment to clarify things: we did not change our policy of demonetizing videos that may not be appropriate for Google's brand advertisers. Nor have we changed how these policies are enforced."

In short, the videos that YouTubers only recently got notifications for have long been demonetized or have never been monetized in accordance with the existing policies. The problem, as it appears, is that none of the content creators got notified about their demonetized or non-monetized videos until YouTube implemented its new notification system.

On the bright side of things, most of the videos that content creators appealed to be reviewed using YouTube's new integration, have been approved for monetization. However, it should also be noted that some of the videos have been up for months, if not a year already, and have had millions of views in total, which means a sizable amount of ad revenue if they were monetized.

Under the YouTube Partner program's advertiser-friendly content guidelines, which were revamped in accordance with Google's advertising policies, YouTube broadly defines what it considers to be inappropriate or "not advertiser-friendly content."

While creators and most of the online community have no qualms regarding the inappropriateness of displaying violence and the promotion of drugs and regulated substances in a content, many call upon YouTube to give specifics regarding partial nudity, inappropriate language and sexual humor.

However, the clause for controversial or sensitive subjects and events are what most people question. YouTube specifies that content related to tragedies, political conflicts, war and natural disasters, even without images shown, may be filtered as inappropriate.