YouTube Attempts To Make Amends Following Widespread Video Demonetization (VIDEO)
YouTube’s policies have faced a fair amount of criticism over the years, but the flames reached peak levels earlier this year when the platform implemented its new upload algorithm. The update was supposed to discourage “advertiser unfriendly” content, but ended up drastically reducing many users’ income. The resulting video demonetization received widespread backlash, including several big names in the YouTube community, though complaints often failed to receive any effective solution.
It seems YouTube is finally looking to fix the problem in a new algorithm update, which will reconfigure many of the much maligned account limitations and reduce content flagged for video demonetization by 30 percent. The official update notes are as follows:
Since August, over a million human reviews have helped train and improve this technology and today, we’re releasing an important update that will result in fewer misclassifications overall. As a result, there will be a 30 percent reduction in the number of videos receiving limited ads as they move to being fully monetized. In other words, millions more videos will become fully monetized.
We will begin this update today at 2:30pm PT, and it will be complete by 2:30am PT tomorrow. For your channel, you may see icons that were previously yellow turn to green. You may also see icons that were previously green turn to yellow–this updated system is an improvement, but it’s not perfect. We know there’s much more work to do, so if you feel the yellow icon is a mistake, please continue to appeal.
Please note, the status of videos already manually reviewed prior to this update will not change.
Today’s performance improvement update was only possible because of the feedback you gave to the system through the appeals process. As we continue to make improvements, we’ll keep you updated on changes. The creator community is incredibly important to YouTube and we’re grateful for your patience as we’ve worked to make our systems better, bring advertisers back to the platform and push updates that help protect your revenue.”
Video demonetization isn’t a new problem with YouTube, but it is one that has increased in visibility in recent months. “CaseyNeistat” is one of a large number of prominent personalities that have brought the issue to the forefront. He takes a deep look into the video demonetization issue below in this video:
Gaming YouTubers have been hit particularly hard with the limitations, as many modern games contain material that YouTube’s algorithm may consider inappropriate. For example, Ubisoft’s new game South Park: The Fractured But Whole was recently singled out for offensive content. Even though the new update promises to rectify a few looming issues, YouTube admits that it won’t be a fix for everyone, and encourages people to report any issues on their website.
What do you think? Is YouTube doing enough to repair the damage done to their reputation, or is some algorithm the least of their problems? Let us know in the comments below and be sure to follow Don’t Feed the Gamers on Twitter to be informed of the latest gaming and entertainment news 24 hours a day! For more YouTube-related news from recent weeks, check out these next few stories below:
Eric Hall2712 Posts
Phone-browsing Wikipedia in one hand and clutching his trusty controller in the other, the legendary Eric Hall spreads his wealth of knowledge as a writer for Don't Feed the Gamers. Be sure to catch his biweekly "Throwback Thursday" segment for a nostalgic look at trivia from the past.
