"Demonetization" - Same thing Google did to RMN two years ago

Along with many others, I find this development a bit disturbing, for the reason that it puts advertisers (Big Pharma? Big Oil? Big Agro?) somewhat in control of content.

However, in fairness to YouTube, they're not talking about anything new in terms of limiting YouTube content - certain policies in that regard have been in place for a long time and often say, quite reasonably, that "context" is important; in other words, how a video is presented may help make it acceptable even if its content might be 'borderline' - but what they're talking about is whether they will _monetize_ content that makes advertisers less than happy.

Advertiser-friendly content guidelines

Advertiser-friendly content is content that's appropriate for all audiences. It has little to no inappropriate or mature content in the video stream, thumbnail, or metadata (such as in the video title). If the video does contain inappropriate content, the context is usually newsworthy or comedic and the creator�s intent is to inform or entertain (not offend or shock).

Content that may be acceptable for YouTube under YouTube policies may not be appropriate for Google advertising. Google's program policies provide additional guidelines for what can be monetized, and advertisers also have their own standards and requirements for content.

Content that is considered inappropriate for advertising

Content that is considered "not advertiser-friendly" includes, but is not limited to:

Sexually suggestive content, including partial nudity and sexual humor

Violence, including display of serious injury and events related to violent extremism

Inappropriate language, including harassment, profanity and vulgar language

Promotion of drugs and regulated substances, including selling, use and abuse of such items

Controversial or sensitive subjects and events, including subjects related to war, political conflicts, natural disasters and tragedies, even if graphic imagery is not shown

If any of the above describes any portion of your video, then the video may not be approved for monetization. If monetization is approved, your video may not be eligible for all available ad formats. YouTube reserves the right to not monetize a video, as well as suspend monetization features on channels that repeatedly submit videos violating our policies.

Can we actually object to this? I don't see how - can't a business (YouTube, Google) set its own policies, especially when it's providing a profitable-to-the-company but free-for-users platform to publish their videos? They're not censoring, exactly; they're just choosing not to support certain things, monetarily.

HOWEVER, I do find objectionable the effect this is likely to have on various "citizen reporters" and anyone else who may have come to rely on YouTube monetization for their or their organization's livelihood. (Luke Rudkowski and WeAreChange.org comes to mind.)

Two years ago this month, Google suddenly dropped Rumor Mill News as an AdSense publisher. Their claim at the time was that RMN had posted material that was unacceptable in terms of AdSense policy.

One of the things they pointed to was an old archived post on the harmful effects of the bite of a brown recluse spider. The post included photos of damaged flesh - and AdSense chose to view this as an infringement of their "no gore" policy, ignoring the context in which the photos were presented. I believe they also found a few other posts not to their liking, though I don't recall which ones. It was as though someone had given instructions to "find a way to drop this site".

In our case, this did not have a chilling effect on what RMN would publish - but it's easy to see how it might have such an effect on YouTube publishers, who might now adjust what they post in order to keep their "revenue stream" from collapsing.

This move by AdSense brought considerable hardship to RMN and is one of the things, not the only thing but a significant one, that has kept Rayelan somewhat "sidelined" for so long.

Just a few weeks later, a hacker making use of the 'shellshock' vulnerability got onto the RMN server and proceeded to delete over 300,000 files, including most of the content of the RMN Archive. This had the effect of 'breaking' links all over the Web and of drastically diminishing RMN's presence in Internet search engines (like Google...hmm...) - thus reducing revenue from any other advertisers that were still with us and actually making RMN unattractive to other significant remote ad suppliers. We still haven't found any suitable replacement for AdSense, now two years later.

What will the eventual effect be on YouTube publishers and YouTube content? We'll have to wait and see, I guess.