YouTubers protest 'advertiser friendly' policy
SAN FRANCISCO — YouTube creators led by Philip DeFranco are protesting the popular video-sharing service, saying its policy of disabling advertisements on videos with objectionable content is threatening their livelihoods.
The controversy springs from YouTube's recent efforts to notify creators when their videos are deemed to be unfriendly to advertisers, meaning the videos contain violent or sexually suggestive content or profanity, among other things.
The notifications caught YouTube creators off guard, prompting DeFranco and others to complain that YouTube is censoring them. The protest led to a trending Twitter hashtag: #YouTubeIsOverParty.
"Without us you would have no content to advertise over top of," tweeted beauty vlogger Samantha Ravndahl.
YouTube says it has made no changes to its policy. Rather it is alerting creators when their videos are "demonetized" and giving them the option to appeal the decision, part of YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki's initiative to improve communication with YouTube creators.
"While our policy of demonetizing videos due to advertiser-friendly concerns hasn’t changed, we’ve recently improved the notification and appeal process to ensure better communication to our creators," the company said in an emailed statement.
Yet YouTube creators are questioning how YouTube decides what's "advertiser friendly."
DeFranco, who has 4.5 million subscribers to his YouTube channel, has led the charge. He uploaded a video Wednesday: "YouTube Is Shutting Down My Channel and I'm Not Sure What To Do." In the video that has been viewed more than 1.6 million times, he says YouTube issued warnings about 40 of his videos, telling him the language he uses and the topics he discusses are not "advertiser friendly."
Not all YouTubers object to the policy. Adande Thorne, known as sWooZie on YouTube, says YouTube has the right not to put ads on videos "if you're dropping f-bombs every five seconds."
"A lot of people are freaking out," Thorne says. "If you keep yourself clean, you'll always get yourself a better situation."