- Recently, some rather prominent YouTubers,
particularly in the gaming space,
have had their content demonetized en masse,
and so today we need to keep you
from suffering the same fate.
So back in November,
YouTube posted this in their Community help center.
Now, this post may not look very long, but keep in mind,
these are only updates to a particular section
of the Advertiser-Friendly Guidelines,
which is actually in itself very long.
I'm gonna link it down below
in case you wanna dive a little bit deeper.
But if you break any of these guidelines,
then your videos could be demonetized.
The first bullet point here is adult content,
and I'm not gonna read these word for word, but essentially,
if your thumbnail, title, et cetera contain adult content,
then your videos could be demonetized.
I would imagine possibly pulled from YouTube altogether
depending on what you do.
There's been some updates to policies around violence,
and this actually does pertain to gaming channels
it seems more so than anything else in this update.
And if you have game violence directed at somebody
in a video game with an actual real person's name,
that could get you demonetized.
However, standard gameplay, where gory injuries are present
after the first eight seconds can still receive ad revenue.
What you'll find with a lot of these policy updates
is that as long as certain things happen
after the first eight seconds,
they are still eligible for monetization on YouTube.
I'm not exactly clear on what's significant
about the first eight seconds versus the rest of a video,
but I have to imagine it's because possibly
an ad just played and they don't want people
going out of an ad into something
that's a little bit more edgy or inappropriate.
So in my own opinion, I think the eight seconds
just kind of provides
a more comfortable buffer for advertisers.
There's been an update to harmful and dangerous acts,
so dangerous acts or stunts where minors are participants
or victims may not receive ad revenue.
But then we get to the big one,
and that is inappropriate language.
All varieties of profanity are now treated equally,
meaning they are not differentiated
based on levels of severity.
This bullet point makes everything sound pretty simple.
Content where profanity is used
after the first eight seconds may still receive ad revenue.
However, if you're using profanity
in the first eight seconds of your video,
that video may not receive monetization.
This particular part of the policy update
is kind of where things got a bit dicey on the internet
because creators were kind of swept up
in this new enforcement
and they were using profanity in their videos,
some claiming it wasn't in the first eight seconds,
but YouTube in a recent Creator Insider video
actually said that if you are using profanity
throughout the video consistently,
that could also get you demonetized.
That's why this document we're looking at right now
is not the be-all-end-all, and you should really make sure
you're boned up on all the different things
that have changed.
I'll help with that more in a minute,
but there's a couple more things we need to go over.
It's this last paragraph I wanted to draw your attention to,
because it seems pretty specific.
We're also introducing new guidelines
under the enabling dishonest behavior guideline.
So this new guideline keeps the following type of content
from receiving ad revenue.
Pretending to be a retail store employee
without the property owner's permission
or violating their code of conduct.
Using or encouraging the usage of hacking software
in competitive eSports.
So if you have kind of a prank channel
where you go into specific stores
wearing a similar kind of shirt
to the employees that work there and you just pretend
that you work there and you play around with the customers,
yeah, that's not gonna fly anymore
and as far as advertisers are concerned.
And then it kind of surprised me
to see that last bullet point there
about competitive eSports and hacking,
because that is a huge industry,
and the fact that people were monetizing that content
perhaps all along and only just now can't anymore
is a little bit surprising.
As for my own personal opinions on these changes,
I think ultimately they are a good thing.
These types of updates ensure me that YouTube
is working with advertisers to make sure
that everything is on the up and up and we avoid something
like an Adpocalypse again in the future.
What I don't love is how difficult it was
for me to find all the information I needed to find
to make this video.
So for example, in this video,
I used YouTube's own Community forum post
that went over the update and some of the changes,
but they've also as a result updated other helpful guides
that go even a little bit deeper than this.
And then on the Creator Insider channel,
which is a channel I absolutely adore,
it did go into these changes, but they mentioned things
that were not in the post we just looked at.
So as a creator, it makes it really difficult
to know what is and is not okay,
at least as far as monetization goes in this case.
But fortunately for you,
I've linked all those resources down below
if you want to dive a little bit deeper.
And if your channel hasn't even reached monetization yet,
then I've linked this video right here,
which will help you do that,
and then this video will be even more relevant to you,
which is great for me.