YouTube offers an endless plethora of videos. The website provides a vortex of randomness, fascination and distraction — at fault for keeping people up until 3 a.m., distracted by puppy and kitty videos.
I can choose to watch the presidential debates or a woman licking a lollipop for 20 minutes. It’s a circus stage with a business behind the name: Google.
YouTube works as a subsidiary business with Google and is constantly changing.
I follow several YouTuber’s that I have seen develop over the past four years. Some of these members have developed in maturity and quality, while others have faded away from the public eye.
Many are recognizable with a large platform of subscribers. Vsauce teaches science and mathematics, Philip DeFranco informs about events, Emma Blackery is an opinion informer and Domics is a cartoon entertainer.
Catherin Keenan | Argonaut
As a subscriber, I watch these entertainers on a weekly basis — even when I don’t have time to.
Two years ago, PewDiePie was criticized for receiving an annual salary of $7.5 million with nearly 40 million subscribers at the time. This flickered a debate over whether or not YouTubers should make an income for sitting in front of a camera.
YouTube statistics show that an abhorrent 1 billion videos are uploaded to the website daily. This causes a dilemma for the business on how to filter videos that are against their policies. If a video is deemed inappropriate, then YouTube can demonetize the video from any advertisement funding.
In late summer, reporters informed viewers that YouTube was demonetizing videos without informing users who produced said videos.
The company policy requires that a video must not have graphic content or excessive strong language in order to be considered advertiser friendly. When a user reports a video, it is sent to a website administrator, who can then demonetize the video.
Why would I find a problem with filtering inappropriate videos? This is because of the unstructured censorship YouTube uses on their community.
LukeisNotSexy is a YouTuber whose “My Depression Story” video was demonetized and considered inappropriate for viewers. It’s about the struggles of mental illness and how the speaker overcame it. However, LukeisNotSexy was still paid advertisement money for a video called “I Want Boobies,” that he considered against YouTube policy for having curse words and sexual content.
Since the website receives an excessive amount of videos, the administration doesn’t have time to review every single one. Their solution was removing videos with certain hashtag links attached. For example, if a video is uploaded with #terrorism or #mentalillness an administrator can remove advertisements by simply removing the tag.
YouTube has this right as a private company. What I’m against is its contradictory standards.
It is hard to take this seriously when YouTubers make a high income on advertisement and viewership. Some of them make millions. But I’m not defending the rich — I’m defending the right for people to speak their mind.
YouTube is like the universe — it is constantly exploding with new stars and expanding with new content. But I don’t support them demonetizing users like DeFranco for using the word “terrorist” or Lacy Green for informing on sexism.
It presents to me a sign of idleness and lack of care in the company’s reputation. I want to see YouTube supporting its community instead of using vague policies and inconsistent filtering.
I hope YouTuber’s come together as a community to defeat the evil forces of the YouTube monster.
Catherine Keenan can be reached at [email protected]