We're recording. Awww look! You can see Quitan. Oh.
He didn't wanna be in it.
Hey guys!
Too bad for you, sucker! You're in it now!
I apologize for the state of my voice in this video.
I'm getting over a cold.
I spent some time with a baby on the weekend
and that baby was sick and what I caught it's cold.
You know what the say:
"kids are the future".
I did not want to talk about this.
I did not want to make a video on this subject.
I feel like there are already a ton of creators who have made
eloquent, thought, provoking videos
and I just didn't think that my two cents would add anything.
But YouTube's back at it again
- with the white vans -
with quietly throwing LGBTQ content under the bus
and so...
here we are.
I can't not talk about it anymore.
Also I asked in the super-secret Fender family Facebook group
what you guys wanted to see
(you can get into that group by signing up for the $3 tier on Patreon),
so thank you - bang! - for the suggestion because
I'm doing it. So,
what am I even talking about?
I think by now most of you will have heard in some way
of the situation going on between YouTube and LGBTQ content,
but I'm going to give you a rundown from my side of things.
What's happening to my channel.
This all started months ago.
YouTube announced new ad policies saying essentially that
they would be demonetizing videos that weren't "advertiser-friendly",
content that included things like hate speech, graphic violence
and so YouTube, rightfully so, said
"Hey! We're going to be demonetizing these videos that are not advertiser-friendly.
Great.
The problem with that
was that so many videos that were simply about the LGBTQ community
were being demonetized and the videos whose ads were being pulled
make no sense whatsoever.
There was nothing at all about them that was not "advertiser-friendly".
My channel specifically -
the video that gets under my skin that got hit by this
was the video that I made titled "In response to Orlando, in response to ignorance".
In that video I briefly talked about the shooting in Orlando.
Nothing graphic. I didn't even cover it like a news story.
I essentially mentioned what it had happened
and then went into a story about a kid who's been bullied for my hometown.
That was the video.
And they demonetized it.
I sent in the video for review, thinking that they just made a mistake
and they emailed me back
to let me know that the video had been reviewed
and it was in fact "not advertiser-friendly"
which irks me.
And not because I want the money
- that's not what this video is about.
This is not about "Oh boohoo, give me that Adsense revenue dollah dollah bills, y'all".
This video is about YouTube consistently
demonetizing, restricting and pulling ads
from specifically LGBTQ content.
This is about the message that that sends.
Fast forward a couple of months to recently,
YouTube's restricted mode.
The restricted mode itself is not new,
but creators finding out
what kind of videos were restricted is new.
YouTube's restricted mode is meant to
keep YouTube family-friendly.
So parents can turn on this parental control
and then YouTube will filter out any "not family-friendly" content.
And once again, what's the content that's considered not family-friendly?
LGBTQ content.
Any video that includes a non-straight couple
giving each other a peck?
Restricted.
Make-up tutorials were restricted.
But not all make-up tutorials:
make-up tutorials done by trans women.
Restricted.
My channel specifically?
All of I Don't Bi It is restricted, which
I understand.
Not mad about that, no shade there.
But my lesbian youtuber crushes video?
Restricted.
Once again, for whatever reason,
it appeared that YouTube was targeting LGBTQ content
and deeming it not family-friendly.
First we're being told that we're not safe for advertisers
and then we're being told that we're not safe
for children?
I do want to say, to YouTube's credit in that case,
when they were contacted by my network "Much" about this,
they did say "Send us a list of all these videos that have been restricted.
It is not at all our intention to target the LGBTQ community.
We will unrestrict those videos".
So I really don't think that this is malicious. I'm not trying to say that.
I think that this was a case of a poorly written algorithm gone rogue.
This brings us to today.
Someone tweeted me asking me if my videos on bisexuality
had been losing ad revenue and I was like "Uh?"
So I went into my analytics
and I noticed that my overall revenue on my channel
had dropped significantly, over 50%.
And this was in the last two weeks, which makes sense
because if you haven't heard,
advertisers all over the world are boycotting YouTube
and YouTube is losing advertiser funds by the minute.
So, us content creators are also losing advertiser money by the minute.
Here's the thing.
When I go into specific videos,
which you have to kind of dive deep into your analytics in order to even do this,
you can pull up specific videos and see each videos revenue over time.
I'm going to show you some screenshots of some videos that I checked.
Let's see if you can spot the difference.
This is my ad revenue over the past 28 days for my "Top 15 Canadian stereotypes" video.
Super old video but you can see the ad revenue
dips a little bit, like there is a downward trend
but it's gradual.
Here's the screenshot of the ad revenue from my I Don't Bi It episode
"How lesbians have sex".
Oh, that's weird. The ad revenue
completely disappeared about two weeks ago.
Here's a screenshot of my ad revenue from the video Dallas and I did
about testing our DNA, testing our genetics.
Again, there is a bit of a downward trend
but nothing like that
cliffside dive we saw in the last one.
And I see that cliffside drop for most of my I Don't Bi It content
or most of my super sexual content which okay, I can understand that to a point,
but this is a screenshot of my ad revenue from my lesbian youtuber crushes video.
This is a completely harmless video that does nothing but show a lady
who has crushes on other ladies.
And this is really bothering me
because these videos are still "monetized".
It's not a case where I can appeal the video and say
"Hey, why did you demonetize this?" and potentially have it remedied.
This is a case of ads simply being pulled from my videos
for no apparent reason and with no notification to me.
I tweeted about this when I saw the changes in my ad revenue
and so many of my friends were tweeting back
saying that the exact same thing was happening to them,
specifically targeting queer content.
In this case it just feels sneaky,
just quietly pulling ads in the background in a way that no one's gonna notice
unless they dive deep into their analytics
and dig through their ad revenue video by video.
I don't understand why this is happening
and I'm just tired, YouTube.
I'm tired of this. I'm tired of LGBTQ content
being considered controversial content.
It's NOT.
All you're doing by catering to advertisers who don't wanna be associated with the queer community
is sending the message that our identities are controversial
and that it's okay to not work with us
based on that alone.
I just cannot understand, I cannot wrap my head around
why this keeps happening.
YouTube, fix it!
I don't know. What do you guys think? Is this fixable?
Let me know in the comments down below.
That's it for this video. I hope that you enjoyed it.
Here's this kitty right here.
Awww, I don't wanna pick him up to give you guys kisses.
Look how nice he's sleeping.
Look this.
He blew you a kiss.
I love you guys. Thanks for watching. Bye!