When YouTube first announced their new algorithm that drastically reduced the community’s income, there was a lot of backlash from well-respected names in the video-verse. Demonetization hit everyone and left many creators wondering what was next for the future of their channels, many of which turned into a reliable source of income.
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Now it appears that YouTube is beginning to make amends for their harsh cuts with their latest update to clear the air about what specifications that are being removed, and how YouTube is starting to move back to before all of this mess.
The gist of the update broadens the amount of videos that will be full monetized, instead of the vast limitations set in place beforehand. Here is what the official notice had to say:
The official update notes:
“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.”
The original backlash:
Though the issue of demonetization is nothing new, the conflict did come to a head in recent months when viewers saw many popular creators seemingly jumping ship. Where as some might not see it as a big deal, a lot of content was flagged unfairly and those that enjoy the well-known video platform couldn’t help but to feel that YouTube in themselves “sold out” a bit.
The original overhaul was to make all content incredibly ad-friendly. In a pre-emptive strike to ensure that big companies didn’t take their name elsewhere, YouTube tried to put a tight control on the eligible videos. This backfired, however, with many unfairly demonetized and creators feeling as though the company has put unfair restrictions on the community as a whole in terms of subject matter that had any deeper substance.
One of many YouTubers, as seen below, began to speak out. ‘CaseyNeistat’ is only one of a large amount of well-known YouTubers that spoke up and out about the issue of demonetization.
Though the new changes have been put forth to the community, there’s no telling on how effective it will be or what that means for future content. As the testing phases begins, it’s important for those that feel that it’s “not enough” to respectfully make their thoughts known to YouTube themselves.
