Will YouTube kill my channel next?

[Music] there comes a time in every youtubers career it's in Korea do I have a career I'm not sure if I have a career and I'm going to say career for want of a better word in every youtubers career when he ends up making a video about YouTube now I'm not sure that I wanted to join that group to be honest I thought I may as well just stick to the point to make videos about axes and tanks and stuff but I've ended up because of something that happened yesterday making this video which is going to be about YouTube and working for YouTube which is a very strange thing and I'm aware that an awful lot of people end up making these videos complaining about being a youtuber but you know what being a youtuber isn't so bad it's pretty good really I mean this year I got invited to to drive a tank there's going to be a good thing and I got invited to to Lisbon I haven't made that public yet but I went to Lisbon early this year I haven't edited any of the footage though I made that but I went to Lisbon which is good and yeah so good things have happened to me thanks to YouTube and you know not my career's doing all right I think at the moment but there have been a number of bumps in the road some of which I think have been somewhat unnecessary and I'm going to talk about some of those now I don't know what you do for a living but the likelihood is that you're not self-employed that likelihood is did you work for someone else and that you get a wage or a salary and that you know how much you're going to earn next month or even if you don't know exactly and when you do get paid you know why you got paid that amount because of the number of hours you worked or something now you can imagine that almost every country on earth has got laws about certain things you know best not to murder people rape is frowned on don't steal stuff and basic contract law I imagine just about the legal system of every country on earth has got some basic contract law pay people what you owe them and of course at part of paying people what you owe them is knowing how much you owe them in the first place and letting them know how much you owe them but Google who owns those YouTube doesn't do this every month I get money from Google that's generated by the adverts that accompany my videos on on YouTube and Google says here's that amount of money we owe you I have no idea how much money they owed me I just get an amount of money and you know it's sometimes oh that's not bad and other months I think oh is that it sometimes I'll see estimated earnings so much and then when the earnings actually arrive it's not even half that amount so that estimated earnings figure can be quite misleading and annoyingly so so I've written to Google many times asking them how do you work out how much you pay me I find it a bit annoying confusing for instance when one month I'll have very large number of views and not very much money and then the next month I'll get far fewer views and more money you might see what more money that's good yeah but it's a bit confusing I didn't weigh more videos last month and got loads more views and those more minutes watched so outcome I've earned so much but they don't tell you but they won't tell you that they won't tell you instead after many many emails back and forth you eventually get the impression they're never going to tell me they all say oh well it's it's calculated according to an algorithm yeah great so what's the algorithm oh well it depends on many factors fine what factors oh well it's quite complicated and that's all I ever got and I realized after 10 emails back and forth they were just never going to tell me I asked them very straightforward simple questions things like where is this algorithm published and they didn't tell me in as many words that it's not published anywhere but after a while ended up with the impression that they weren't going to tell me where it was published because it isn't published anywhere you can google for the the algorithms by which google actually pays all the the people that it owes money to and you will find nothing isn't that weird Google doesn't tell me how much it owes me it just gives me an amount of money and says here's amount of money that we've calculated out of the ether somehow by our secret method now you know some months the amount of money I get quite pleasing and I can remember the first time when the amount of revenue that my YouTube was channel was generating was actually enough to pay my rent Wow it wasn't just a bit of pocket money actually was enough to pay my rent I still didn't need to do other things in order to do stuff like eat but wow it was enough to pay my rent and that was wonderful I remember there was a definite stage reached in my youtube career and but wouldn't you get a bit annoyed if your employer just said here's other amount of money we owe you and it's not what you were expecting whether it be too much or too little it's just not what you were expecting and you don't know how much you're gonna get next month and now I noticed a while ago that my advertising revenue was going down and down and down at quite a rate even though my channel was growing and so it was then that I was eventually persuaded after holding out for a few years to have a patreon account which I now have I didn't want it to hold out the begging bowl in sort of feel right somehow but then I realized oh if my YouTube revenue still continues to go down at this rate I won't actually be able to keep this channel running so I sort of have to and my patrons have been wonderfully generous and I'm now as you may know having a suit of armor made thanks to their generosity and I also get sponsors and of course however I wouldn't have sponsors all patrons if it weren't for my youtube channel they're only interested in sponsoring me in being my patron because I have this established YouTube channel so ultimately everything depends on YouTube and because ultimately everything depends on YouTube I would say that YouTube is effectively my employer now some people say no no no no like you're you want you not you don't work for YouTube yourself employed you run a YouTube channel but they're not your employer not technically and I'm sure that in a court of law YouTube's lawyers could wriggle out of the responsibilities that go with being an employer but by simply saying we're not the employer just like we're not a publisher we're not an employer either so we're not responsible for loads of things well actually you know I think that effectively YouTube is my employer you tube holds my livelihood in its grasp I am entirely in its power if it shut down my channel tomorrow I would have no livelihood that's it no one would be sponsoring me anymore that won't be patronizing me anymore patronizing anymore that didn't quite sound right there won't be my patron anymore I would lose my patronage because ultimately it all built on the foundations of YouTube YouTube therefore is responsible for my livelihood and therefore even if I can't take them to court and prove legally that they are my employer and have the responsibilities of an employer they surely have some of the responsibilities of an employer because they stand in the stead of an employer they pay me I go to work and make videos for YouTube that attract people like you to watch the videos then they get money from that via at the time this is just like a job you won't go to a company the company pays you to do stuff which makes the company more money than its paying you that's how it works well that's what's happening between me and YouTube so I feel that I really sort of work for YouTube so it can be a bit annoying when I have none of the rights associated with being an employee so for instance a couple of months ago my entire channel yes my entire channel was d monetized none of my videos was earning anything at all only I wasn't told this they never sent an email to me saying oh by the way we've demonetized all your videos and I didn't notice straightaway and weeks went by and then I remember one of the reasons that I didn't notice was that I would look at my channel and see a list of my videos and there's a column for whether a video is monetized or not now what do you think the icon is for ad monetized video hmm what would you what would you what would you make it well I'll tell you it's a dollar sign that's right a dollar sign is this the icon for ad monetized video only that dollar sign is black you know black like all the other writing that's on the screen so it doesn't really grab your attention the fact that it's black because well all the numbers and figures they're all they're all black why should it matter that this this dollar sign is black well I uploaded a new video notice that the dollar sign for that one was Green why is the dollar sign for that one Green and all the others black and then I looked into this and OH notice that my entire channel had been demonetized a few weeks before I ended up losing a month earnings as you can imagine I wrote to YouTube saying what now you may find it very difficult to contact YouTube but because I'm a reasonably big channel I forget how many subscribers you have to have but if you're a channel bigger than a certain number of I think it's subscribers or minutes watched per month or something bigger than a certain size you get access to another level of support so I can write to support people at YouTube and they are definitely employees of YouTube and then they can solve problems for me which is great so I write to them and I say what's happened here then my entire channel has just been demonetized and they wrote back emails with with it a name at the bottom and it was all quite casual it seemed to be written by a person he claimed to be written by a person because it had a person's name at the bottom and so forth and he was in quite colloquial language and he would say that oh sorry about this blood law but they would ask completely irrelevant and stupid questions they would say oh could you send us the URL of the of the video you are having trouble with what no it's not a video of it my entire channel has been demonetized oh yes I'm sorry to hear but sorry sorry to hear that and sorry about the back and forth but I just needed a bit more clarification could you send us the URL of the and so forth the same stupid questions over and over again and after while I started getting suspicious and thought am I actually dealing with a person here or is this actually a bot very cleverly disguised as a person so I wrote yet another time really amazingly clearly pointing out what the questions were and saying right when was it demonetized why was it demonetised what are you going to do about it you know really simple questions one two three wouldn't get answers and at the bottom of this one I said I'm beginning to get suspicious that you are actually a bot and not a person so just to allay my fears on this issue could you just answer this extra following question why would anyone chumina smooth peanut butter when crunchy is available the reply was interesting the reply said law i get the pun now could you give us the URL of the year fail okay so I was dealing with a bot clearly a more advanced bata than than one usually deals with on the internet but yeah I was dealing with a bot now I think later I did get in touch with a person and they promised a few times that they would get to the bottom of this and I have heard nothing so I lost a month's earnings I have no idea why and they've done nothing about it and it seems that YouTube can get away with doing stuff like this so you shocked me well not to experience you think oh well at least I've got my sponsorship money in my patrons money so you know I can carry on and I was able to ream onit eyes everything but I still lost a month's earning it was annoying it was extremely frustrating that I could get absolutely no explanation whatsoever for this but hey ho life goes on yesterday a channel run by same friend he does first he's done a few reply videos to my videos he's a guy who MUC surrounded his backyard throwing axes and just trying stuff out you throwing javelins into into various types of armor and blocks of ballistic gel and so forth to see what effect they have and how you hope that that's that's that was his channel and it seemed fine and it's gone you can't have a little bit today because it's gone why is it gone well I recently if you upload something no in fact it's on retro actively they've looked at all videos and they've set out the bots and the bots look for words like war in battle and killing and so forth and and I don't know what the algorithm is I don't know exactly what word they're looking for word don't know how many words you have to have to trigger but they will D monetize a video if it has presumably more than so many points worth on this we we think this might be a bit dodgy video score because they're worried about what advertisers want to be associated with and they can even take down an entire video or they can take down as they did with 10th round the entire channel but without warning that's right it's like being sacked by algorithm can you imagine turning up to to work one day in your normal place of employment and they say oh sorry the computer sacked you last night no idea why but good bye and that's it no human made the decision a bot decided Oh too many points apparently that the trigger was some video they made ages ago which they think would have sacrificed have they been given the warning they're gonna said alright we'll just take that one down because you think it's just too much because he was about to the feasibility of ninjas using little little fire pop things which I suppose are a little bit like grenades so if someone could possibly say that this was his instructions and how to be a terrorist but now he wasn't it was a guy - talking in terms of experimental archeology about the feasibility of some ancient weapon that no one today knew seriousness would be using so they'd taken this channel down for a stupid reason almost certainly no human has been involved and yet they're getting away with this now am I going to be next is this child going to be next because they keep D monetizing more and more and more of my videos and I'm finding it harder and harder and harder to get them re-- monetized and at the moment of Adam I think about seven eight something like that on my videos Rd monetized because sometimes I have no idea one of them is tutti-frutti of the army way it's got the word army in the title but it's just a stupid song thing I just have no idea why that one other than it's got army in the title one of them had the word Nazi in the title but it wasn't a political video another one had a picture of a pistol in the in the thumbnail I think that's why that one got demonetized there's no explanation they're just gone you don't earn anything more from those oh well so anyway more and more of these get demonetized over time and you realize oh they're adding more and more keywords presumably that they're getting a bit worried about so is tank going to be next because I've made several tank videos and I plan to make several more tank videos so should I upload these videos but not put the word tank in any of the keyword and keep tank out of the description in case that's a keyword that's going to get me into trouble is that the way I want to proceed always looking over my shoulder worrying about what how I should describe each one of my videos I start moderating my contact content in order to fit in with YouTube it's bonkers I bring people like you to YouTube to watch videos the mainstream media has to produce polished professional expensive things that have to be fairly mainstream you have to appeal to a fairly wide audience its imagine been too got a jar and you fill it full of ping-pong balls those that's the mainstream media they've you know they've they've got a catch quite a lot of people but YouTube it's like the sand or the water poured into in between those balls filling up the rest of the jar all these little niches all those tiny niches of there's tiny interest groups that YouTube can appeal to YouTube has been very successful more successful than a lot of modern television because it's able to reach those tiny niches and cater to all those tiny tiny niches in a way that mainstream television can't which is great and my channel caters to a little niche and there are a lot of allied channels like Scalla Grimm and Scala gladiatorial and and same trend as it was the Metatron adversity so for dealing with with the realism of movies ancient and medieval warfare swords Spears axes all that stuff we all share that and so we have that in common and well they're just taking down thin thread am i next you know I'm actually a bit worried because my livelihood could be taken away as has happened to fame friend and many others and this is I mean it's near suicidal for for YouTube it's going to kill me if they start killing off their content creators without explanation without warning and without appeal like this people are going to start moving away from YouTube and and perhaps the trickle will turn into a flood because of what happened yesterday to thinthread already Metatron has said that he's going to start doing videos Oh for vid me in order to migrate his audience across from YouTube to vid me and give the people on YouTube a reason to go to vid me to see those extra videos that are only there scholar gladiatorial is also going to put all his videos on to vid me perhaps I will I don't know I haven't thought it through yet but I am genuinely worried because they've taken out one very similar channel to mine and I've done videos on fire arrows and and stuff that perhaps some stupid unintelligent but tomorrow is going to decide is unacceptable so that's the situation but something's being done about this there is a petition that you can sign it's appearing on the screen now but if you not so keen on typing you can look into the description underneath this video and there will be a link to the description on change.org although I do have a little warning about this the petition on change.org and that is that if you're on Facebook as I am if you click the sign button the big red sign button and you don't notice that next to it is a tiny little tiny little check box that is by default checked you will have your status updated on Facebook automatically which is extremely naughty and possibly actually illegal the way they do it whatever you type or with regard to your your your vote I'm voting because I think that there will become automatically your status update in facebook without your asking so be careful what you type because if you new types and swear words in there all your friends will see that this swear words so that's very naughty of them and really utterly unacceptably immoral of them is that the the the the change.org petition will be attributed falsely to you your friends will see a post on Facebook and I think possibly there's Twitter and other other social media platforms that similarly affected and it will look to them as though it's your petition that you have started the petition and that they that you are asking them to help you get more likes and signs on your petition which is which makes me want to now start a petition on change.org for change.org not to do that because that is that mendacity on a mass scale which is completely unacceptable I would say so with that warning go to that link I would like you to sign the petition to show YouTube that there is a sizable community that is that finds this completely unacceptable you cannot just take someone's livelihood away with with no warning no explanation and so far as I can tell no human decision-making sacked by algorithm how would you like to have a job where that's a possibility [Music] the man [Music]

Channel: Lindybeige

Views: 294,153

Rating: 4.9507194 out of 5

Keywords: rant, opinion, youtube, monetisation, employer, banning, free speech, advertiser, friendly, content, petition, employment, lindybeige, channel, video, demonetised, monetization, demonetization, algorithm, computer, human, decision, campaign, reinstate, change, .org, sign, signature

Id: tzb8U0Bje5A

Length: 21min 7sec (1267 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 23 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/ZambieD]

This whole thing really sucks, I wish you the best of luck.

[u/thebendavis]

Did anyone else notice that there wasn't a single cut during the entire video? It was just one twenty minute long take. That's legitimately commendable for many reasons. This Guy is just competently verbose in his script and delivery.

Maybe it's because I'll be forty next year, and I'm feeling my age. But these other constant jump-cut videos are getting really hard to watch. It's like watching someone playing a video game and they constantly exploit the F5 and F9 every five seconds.

[u/TheWildBunt]

Come on Amazon, make a YouTube.

[u/d3l3t3rious]

Goddammit, they better not lay a finger on Forgotten Weapons.

[u/AltairEgos]

Finally, something to be upset about with Youtube this week.

[u/Cazraac]

In a completely unprecedented move, YouTube allies itself with corporations who want people to only care about consuming goods and entertainment.

Troublesome things like war make people sad and can make them stop and think about things. And as we all know, sad, thinking people don't mindlessly consume and watch bullshit adverts as much.

[u/Dr_fish]

Not Lindybeige too :(

[u/Vok250]

I laughed at his comment about "can you imagine showing up for worked and being sacked by an algorithm?". Sadly stuff like that happens in the corporate world too. Six sigma is all the rage in my area. My current company got a lot of it's best employees due to layoffs recommended by dumb algorithms and arbitrary scoring systems.

This is all just a result of corporate attitudes driving the decisions at google. They don't care about content creators like this guy. He is just collateral damage to the system. It's all about what can lower costs and increase revenue.

[u/mialolikush]

YouTube has started to get a bit boring I wonder if it's too do with the adpocalypse