YouTube's Strict New Standards Leaves Many Content Creators High And Dry

The video channel YouTube has been hitting some serious speed bumps as of late, with growing concern from advertisers, as well as questionable content that has been hitting its service, such as the actions of Logan Paul, who recently uploaded a controversial video featuring a suicide victim. So, the company has decided to "right the ship" as it were, putting new standards in place for its content creators – although some believe they're too strict for their own good.

The channel announced earlier this week a new revenue-sharing program that requires streamers and content creators to accumulate 4,000 hours of video watch-time for their videos over the past twelve months. For that matter, they also need a minimum 1,000 subscribers in order to continue onward. Otherwise, their partnered money-earning programs are pretty much terminated over the next 30 days.

This is a huge change from the previously required 10,000 lifetime views for a channel, and forces a lot of creators to scramble in order to keep their monetization active. The 30-day grace period doesn't help either.

YouTube has promised to work "to schedule conversations" with creators to see what can be changed in the program, but, for now, these rules seem to be pretty ironclad – and they're affecting a lot of folks in a not-so-favorable way.

We've posted a few of the responses to the changes to the program below, and, man, are they hurting a lot of people:

Well thank you @youtube You have now just screwed over small creators even more now. We don't get fed into the algorithm that pushes videos without monetization options. So how do we grow if we don't get exposure? You realize your strangling us? #Youtube #YouTubePartnerProgram pic.twitter.com/jNXCBfYCLn

— PVG (@OdinPVG) January 17, 2018

So Logan Paul films a dead body, so all small-time vloggers are being punished? That seems like a fair solution @YouTube- You’re absolutely squelching all the little guys who are simply trying to make honest & decent content. Absolutely ridiculous! #YouTubePartnerProgram #youtube

— Luke Hearfield (@LukeHearfield) January 17, 2018

After making content for #YouTube since October of 2013, struggling to make a name for myself and have earned partnership after all of the hard times, this feels like a direct slap in the face. Anyone else feeling this way please let YouTube know.#YPP #YouTubePartnerProgram pic.twitter.com/e8C22opA2p

— Cody Lint (@DustInLint54321) January 17, 2018

As if I needed more signs I need some life changes, pronto. Thanks to the few hundred of you who subscribed over the years, but this was never gonna work for me anyway, and now there's no reason to try at all anymore. #YouTubePartnerProgram #YouTube pic.twitter.com/UBkypq9ZqY

— Ray Carsillo (@RayCarsillo) January 17, 2018

YouTubers are calling upon one another to try and bump up their subscriber counts so that their channel doesn't have to go away, but, yeah, it doesn't seem like the Google-owned channel is really listening, despite promising meetings to do so. Now the only real question is how this will affect the nature of the business following this 30-day exodus, as it were.