YouTube’s gaming community had reacted angrily to the company’s sudden demonetization of certain producers’ previous content.
The culprit is a new policy implemented by the firm in November to make some types of material more advertisement friendly. This modification to YouTube’s advertiser-friendly content restrictions completely revamped the platform’s attitude toward profanity and violence.
The good news is that while we don’t quite know what the company will do yet, YouTube is apparently listening to creators’ concerns.
Youtube spokesperson Michael Aciman said, “In recent weeks, we’ve heard from many creators regarding this update. That feedback is important to us, and we are in the process of making some adjustments to this policy to address their concerns. We will follow up shortly with our creator community as soon as we have more to share.”
YouTube extended its definition of violence to include in-game violent content “directed at a real named person or acts that are manufactured to create shocking experiences (such as brutal mass killing).” in November. The business stated that gore was acceptable in “standard gameplay,” but only after the first 8 seconds of a video. For better or worse, the entire section left lots of space for interpretation.
More drastic adjustments were made to its profanity policy. YouTube said that it would no longer consider ‘hell’ and ‘damn’ to be profane words but that all other profanity would be grouped together rather than distinguished based on severity. Additionally, “profanity used in the title, thumbnails, or the first 7 seconds of the video or utilized regularly throughout the video may not get ad income,” according to the new policy.
