HN Theater @HNTheaterMonth

⬐ bryanlarsen

It's also impacting the substantive bloggers, like Perun. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCC3ehuUksTyQ7bbjGntmx3Q/com...

⬐ modriano

I was wondering why he hadn't posted yet today, and honestly I think this should have been the main post. Artur Rehi's videos are essentially just mashups of no-context war-gore and he offers no insights, and I'm fine with him being demonetized (also, I watched two of his videos a while back and IIRC he ran ads saying that YouTube demonetizes his content so he needs ads and donations). But if there's an issue that would keep Perun demonetized (despite the fact that Perun just presents a word-heavy, gore-free powerpoint each week), that's a much bigger issue.

I hope this gets sorted soon. I'd hate for Perun to have to depend on ads (I know he's run some VPN and Ground News ads, but those are appropriate for his content, and he claims to donate the money (and I believe he does)).

Update: It looks like Denys Davydov's channel [0] (which is just maps overlaid with arrows and troop boundaries) is also demonetized. How odd.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6HBaIRPhClw

⬐ doktrin

Apparently Vlad Vexler has also been demonetized. Which, if true, is as confusing as Perun.

⬐ rossdavidh

I follow two individual YouTube channels with a lot of Ukraine war coverage:

Reporting From Ukraine https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBEoIbDZFpw Denys Davydov https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6HBaIRPhClw

Both were mostly maps and discussion of news, occasional video from the war but never actual killing, that I saw. Both definitely journalistic in tone. Both are demonetized today. I think this is not just about this person's channel.

⬐ dewey

Looking at the "Popular uploads" of said person I have to say that I'm not that shocked it happened.

It's classic low quality YouTube clickbait videos with a "shocked face" on the thumbnail: "Analyzing 5 new combat videos from Ukraine war", "Estonian soldier reacts to M1 Abrams Tank",... - Maybe not worth demonitizing for, but also not something of worth being lost.

⬐ hindsightbias

Filed under “I want to monetize other peoples videos for my war pr0n channel and YT won’t let me.”

⬐ seydor

Yeah he should get a TV show instead

⬐ MonkeyMalarky

Though he'll have to compete with FoxNews and CNN for monetizing peoples' suffering.

⬐ ranger_danger

Scott the Woz's TV show makes me suffer more than watching Fox News.

⬐ porridges

Oh well. Looks like this guy will have to get a proper job now that jabbering on and on while other people's war footage plays in the background is no longer profitable. Big shrug from me.

⬐ sandworm101

Cat vids. Minecraft. Makup tutorials. Girls in bikinis falling down. This is the way of youtube. Everything else is on thin ice 24/7.

⬐ Scoundreller

I got demonetized when YouTube moves the goalpost and required 1000 subscribers. Sorry that my content only managed to gets views, but was more useful than entertaining.

Google is a search engine. Subscribing to a channel is what you do when search sucks/doesn’t exist.

I guess I’ll work on an “ow, my balls” channel.

⬐ bryanlarsen

OTOH Perun seems to do very well doing hour-long powerpoint presentations on Youtube.

⬐ seydor

If you are just looking to grow to million subscribers, youtube makes it easy: just copy and upload videos from tiktok, they ll push them hard to the 'shorts' section. Don't worry, youtube will not complain at all, if anything they ll be happy about it (because copyrights matter only when you re the leader). And tiktokers wont really care

⬐ Scoundreller

I think the blackberry App Store effectively functioned like this. Take Google Play store apk, upload to blackberry store. Voilà.

⬐ xnx

Same goes for TikTok. A lot of the most liked videos are poorly cropped snippets of years-old YouTube videos.

⬐ mkl95

All this guy does is upload other people's videos with some random comments like "Russia has taken the lead in donating tanks to Ukraine". I don't think it should be demonetized but it's not a big loss for the world either.

⬐ causi

Youtube are of course a pack of jerks but I don't know where this idea you have some kind of entitlement to the Youtube Partner Program came from. Youtube is already hosting your video content for free. The partner program is another free service where they do the work of an entire ad agency for you. Losing monetization doesn't stop you from getting paid, it stops you from getting paid automatically for no effort. You're still completely free to get sponsorships and run ad placements to make money exactly the way you had to before Youtube started handing out careers on a silver platter.

⬐ BiteCode_dev

It's 2022, if you haven't realized by now that google is not your friend and based all your revenue on the company, what do you expect people to say?

⬐ Maxburn

One of the best things of the past couple years; we have never had a clearer view of where everyone’s motives are.

The real question; what are we doing now that we know these things?

⬐ ThrowawayR2

Nothing. The old school "information wants to be free" nerds and the tech companies they founded have irreversibly conditioned the public not to pay for anything on the Internet so now everybody and everything dances to the tune of ad brokers/advertisers to make their living. Until a new revenue model comes along to replace ad dollars, nothing is going to change no matter how many people grumble abut it.

⬐ BiteCode_dev

And that's why netlix and itunes were never popular since you could download that all for free.

Oh, wait.

⬐ ThrowawayR2

Rather ironic you should mention Netflix since they're just about to implement a new partially-ad supported tier to their plans.

⬐ ghaff

While I'm sure there's some overlap, the information wants to be free crowd isn't necessarily the same as the crowd that mostly cares about convenience.

The other factor here is that selling creative content/getting people to pay to see you has pretty much always been a long odds crapshoot as far as earning a living wage is concerned and there have likewise pretty much always been random gatekeepers standing in your way for all sorts of arbitrary reasons.

⬐ Brian_K_White

I consider it reasonable to say that something is wrong as long as it remains wrong.

You might say it does no good to complain but I say it does no good to stop complaining.

⬐ ouid

The more people complain about how bad it is to be a youtube creator, the more likely google will be to get in trouble when they hide those complaints from people searching for information about youtube monetization.

⬐ BiteCode_dev

I think it's good to keep increasing awareness, but it must be followed by actions. Which it is not. People have been complaining gafams were abusive for a decade now, and kept giving them more power over them.

You don't see much youtube publishing elsewhere to build an alternative, people keep sending all their data to facebook, few people migrate from gmail and firefox usage is not growing.

⬐ chimen

I hope they do. Stupid click-baits with childish reaction faces on someone else's videos to begin with. This whole monetisation thing lowered the quality of content down to nothing. People create stuff just for the algorithms not for other people. It's on par with "SEO content", not content for an audience.

Putting "funny" reactions, sounds and faces on videos where people are dying literally on camera from bombardments is something that should not be supported in any way.

Nothing of value is lost here.

⬐ kelseyfrog

Value is only possible to attribute to things through market mediated exchange. Sorry, but that's how reality works. Anything that is not possible to purchase by definition does not have value.

⬐ NicolasL-S

Thousands of channels were demonetized at once. Did you (or Google) checked them before passing judgement?

Among those demonetized is Perun who makes neutral hour-long PowerPoint presentations on war logistics with text, graphs and the occasional harmless picture. His content is higher quality than most news outlet by a margin. This is what he wrote today:

"I am extremely disappointed given that this week's video includes an interview with the former commander of the US Army in Europe, Lieutenant General Ben Hodges (Ret.), on the topic of Ukrainian force generation over the winter and into 2023."

⬐ MrFoof

Looks like Perun may have had things sorted out. This week's presentation went live about an hour ago.

⬐ aolo2

This channel has thumbnails of people getting killed by bombs with big red circles around them and a reaction face.

⬐ oceanplexian

And? Aren’t people entitled to that information?

This is exactly what Wikileaks and Chelsea Manning did, they leaked content showing what a real war looks like and boy did politicians and mainstream media throw a hissy fit. It looks like innocent people being mowed down while our soldiers laugh about it.

IMHO journalists absolutely should be posting video of bombs blowing up civilians and put it up in 4K for everyone to see. Because too many people cheer on war like it’s a video game or like rooting for your favorite sports team when it’s really it’s a horrific activity that should be avoided at all costs.

⬐ gruez

Mind linking to some examples? The closest I was able to find were a few videos of explosions (but unclear as to whether someone actually died) with a reaction face.

⬐ owlninja

I mean if you pull up his channel and see his tiles of thumbnails, he's making the stereotypical exaggerated reaction face in all of them. It's not egregious but its right there.

⬐ gruez

>he's making the stereotypical exaggerated reaction face in all of them

That's not the part in dispute. The part I couldn't find was "getting killed by bombs".

⬐ goatsi

Here is a video that he specifically titled as "drone kills". NSFW obviously: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQ4HxpQQ3Sg

⬐ saxonww

This is kind of an aggressive take on it. It's circles around targets and often shows a bomb or grenade. When I read your comment I thought you meant there was gore; there was not.

It's true that this guy is essentially profiting off tragedy, though. It's war porn. Not upset at all if he's lost his funding.

⬐ ethotool

I hate hearing about this. I’d be angry too if I invested all those hours and was banned by a bot.

The risks involved investing your time into building out your project on a 3rd party platform make it not worth it.

I hear about Google and Apple Apps being banned on the regular. Even a few weeks ago the Google Stadia platform being shutdown after a gaming developer spent several months building out their game. When will people learn?

I also hear about way too many of the younger generation who invest much of their time on social media aspiring to become an influencer on YouTube/Instagram/TikTok. It’s not sustainable long term and it never will be.

It’s important that the message gets delivered that these platforms are not sustainable. Sure there’s a small minority out there making it work for them but for the 99% you’re better off investing in higher education and working a lucrative career starting in your late 20s - early 30s.

⬐ ghaff

>Sure there’s a small minority out there making it work for them but for the 99% you’re better off investing in higher education and working a lucrative career starting in your late 20s - early 30s.

While you're at it you should probably deliver the same message to all the would-be actors waiting tables in LA, the mid-level college athletes with dreams of the NFL, etc. Most of these endeavors aren't going to pan out. I'm not sure how different YouTube, Instagram, or TikTok are.

⬐ ethotool

Everyone should be encouraged to pursue higher education. But that comparison is wrong.

My account doesn’t get banned by a bot and I can’t get in touch with a human behind the platform working as a waiter or trying to become an NFL player.. social media is not normal. It’s Zuck and others creation along with their paid team of nerds who are having their way and harvesting data on their users. It’s unethical in every way and brings no good to society.

⬐ ghaff

You don't get banned from working as a waiter but there's a great deal of capriciousness and randomness with gatekeeping humans and their mental heuristics whether directors at auditions, talent and casting agents, scouts, studios, publishers, etc. I don't really see social media as a particularly stringent or even especially random gatekeeper--and of course there's always the option of self-hosting and asking for donations or subscriptions.

⬐ rboes2

This isn't just this youtuber, it's all of them

⬐ NicolasL-S

I'm guessing the choice made by Google went like:

Option 1) Hire more staff to do a proper monitoring job on a per-video or per-channel basis. Option 2) Just demonetize every small youtuber who talks about the Ukraine war right now, no matter the guidelines.

1) costs money. 2) some mild reputation impact for us, but who cares about the livelihood of innocent bystanders who trusted our platform and actually respected our guidelines.

⬐ MonkeyMalarky

How expensive is it to self-host videos nowadays? And are there any display ads providers that buy video advertising spots? Is it feasible to cobble together a page that has your content and splices a few ads into the videos? Kind of like a modernized version of the WordPress+AdSense blogs everyone used to have.

⬐ phantomathkg

Self hosted video vs self host streaming is two different things.

You might have cheap S3 storage to tons tons of MP4 video, but to transcode it, add CDN and everything added up.

Cloudflare pricing example is a good guide here. 6 dollar for storage, but egress fee is 72.

https://www.cloudflare.com/en-gb/products/cloudflare-stream/

⬐ MonkeyMalarky

That seems surprisingly reasonable? It's saying $78/month for:

>Streaming a library of 500 GB of HD videos over the course of one month with approximately 72,000 minutes of viewing time to a global market.

And below is:

>Streaming costs at a rate of $1 per 1,000 minutes delivered.

So if you have tiktok style short videos of ~1 min, you only need a $1 CPM to break even.

⬐ LinuxBender

A trend I've been seeing is people keeping popular but within-the-guidelines content on Youtube for discovery and monetization, then putting the outside-the-guidelines on their own sites. The heavy bandwidth stays on Youtube and the fringe groups can handle the semi-overloaded handful of VPS CDN-Less nodes. One can scale up/down caching/streaming nodes via most VPS provider API's and Cloud-init/Ansible.

Anything with monetization will have to be within the guidelines of the provider or the advertisers will make the platform provider cancel the content regardless of platform.

⬐ iLoveOncall

> How expensive is it to self-host videos nowadays?

Insanely.

If you take MrBeast's last video which is 200MB when downloaded in 1080p and has been viewed 40M times, we have 0.2GB * 40,000,000 = 20M GB of data transferred just for this one video.

If you look at the price of AWS's CloudFront (a CDN) transfer out to the internet, it would cost $200,000 just to serve that video to the internet.

This is just for pure data transfer. It's not viable even a second.

⬐ majou

Keep in mind 30 seconds watched counts as a view.

Might buffer 3 minutes of video in that time, but hardly any of those views are the full video.

⬐ baybal2

None

⬐ dewey

I don't think "blowing up like MrBeast" is the scenario you should optimize for. If you would suddenly have traffic like MrBeast you'd also have sponsorships like MrBeast to pay for the traffic.

On a regular scale fine to host videos if you are with a regular hoster and not pay AWS/GCP network prices. The problem is that you won't get traffic, you won't be discovered, you'd have to do a lot of things that you'll get for free on dedicated video platforms (transcoding, keeping a lot of different formats available to work with all devices,...)

⬐ iLoveOncall

> I don't think "blowing up like MrBeast" is the scenario you should optimize for. If you would suddenly have traffic like MrBeast you'd also have sponsorships like MrBeast to pay for the traffic.

I'm sorry but this is just completely wrong.

The price scales linearly, not exponentially, so it doesn't matter if you have 100,000 views or 40M, you will pay more in serving the video than anything you would earn on it.

> On a regular scale fine to host videos if you are with a regular hoster and not pay AWS/GCP network prices.

This is also wrong. If you are lucky your hosting provider will allow 1TB of transfer per month as fair use.

That gets you a grand total of 5,000 views on that 200MB video we talked about. A 17 minutes, heavily compressed video.

If your scope is bigger than sharing a video once in a while with your not-so-extended family, it will NOT be accommodated by a standard provider.

⬐ dewey

> If you are lucky your hosting provider will allow 1TB of transfer per month as fair use.

Where did you get that from? That's very outdated information. Popular hosters in that kind of space:

Hetzner (For a 90 Euro / month server): "In this special case, we will charge the usage over 20TB with € 1.19/TB"

OVH: Even on a 20 Euro / month server you can push ~10TB / month easily without problems. Ask all the people hosting their seedboxes there.

⬐ mynameisvlad

Your channel will die. Period.

YouTube’s biggest feature is discovery. “The algorithm.”

Sure, you might be able to self host videos, for relatively little money. But who is going to watch them? Alternatives like Floatplane, CuriosityStream, Nebula, etc all are great platforms and far more creator-friendly (mostly because they were built and owned by creators) but they all flounder when it comes to the discovery and hooking aspect because the amount of content on them is minuscule, and at the end of the day the viewer just goes back to YT.

⬐ dawnerd

I’d try reaching out to nebula to see if you’d be a match for their platform. Will it be profitable? Maybe not but they currently have the best alternative to YouTube so far.

⬐ tmaly

You might want to consider diversifying your distribution of content.

You are at the mercy of one companies political biases if you put all your eggs in one bias.

⬐ Krisjohn

"Person whose YouTube channel should have been shut down years ago surprised it's finally happening"

⬐ fareesh

Is it true that according to the latest Facebook/other platform policies a user can make a post advocating for the death of Putin but not the same type of post for Zelensky, George W Bush, Barack Obama, or any other world leader?

⬐ mkl95

There's no formal rule, but Facebook allow it semi officially

⬐ exabrial

What a tasteless move by Google.

⬐ Crosseye_Jack

Ignoring the content of this channel (as I have not watched it, so dunno if it breaks YT monetization rules or not), pretty much the "fastest" way of getting a channel "re-reviewed" is twitter. But you also need some high profile, "high engagement" account tweeting @teamyoutube about your cause. This method is often quicker than and/or more favorable than YT own appeal tools.

YouTube's own human appeals process is often done by a low paid contractor who often won't view the video as a whole to gain context and only watch the section flagged by the AI, may have the language of the video as a second language, so may miss certain idioms of your speech. These contractors want to process as many reviews as quick as possible so they aint got time to look more closely / get another opinion of what was actually said or not actually be reviewed by a human at all and an AI takes a stab at trying to figure out if you "heavly reuse content".

One of the current "tricks" to getting a video monetized is to upload multiple copies of it with very slight changes (a perfect hash match triggers a "you already uploaded this" error iirc) and playing the numbers game, waiting for the bot to review them all, if none are "green" for ads, request review on all the uploads, chances are they will be reviewed by differnt people and hope of them sees that your content follows the guidelines and approves it, delete the ones that don't get approved, if you get multiple approvals pick one to make public and delete the rest.

The Twitter path (if you can get enough engagement) usually gets it infront of a YT employee to have a closer more indepth look and may come to another decision, if you can't get the engagement then with a whole channel demonetization then your next best thing if to still pump out the content as best as you can to YT's specs and re-apply in 30 days.

But the Twitter method can also "backfire", we have seen on multiple occasion when one channel got a video agegated or demonetized, complaigned on Twitter that other channels covered the same thing and were fine, got the restriction removed and then got the restriction reapplied and also getting the other channels videos restricted/demonetized.

I understand why YT don't publish a CLEAR set of guidelines (much like why game dev's don't publish extactly what they use to detect cheats) because someone will always game the system, however I know more and more YT creators getting highly frustrated with YT because they follow the guidlines, get struck/restricted/demonetized and on follow up get told they broke a rule YT have never publicly published. So they feel its a bit like playing football blindfolded, you know roughly where the goal posts are but you can never be sure when you kick the ball if you are going to hit the goal esp if you feel that YT are moving the posts and changing the size of the goal without telling anyone.

⬐ mtlchk

None

⬐ aaron695

None

⬐ zackees

None

⬐ T3RMINATED

None

⬐ macinjosh

This guy is a war profiteer not a journalist.

⬐ jmyeet

This a teachable moment for media literacy.

Generally speaking, companies don't publicly state why one of their users was punished, banned or whatever. That leaves the user with the ability to claim whatever they want. They may believe what they're saying. It might be putting a spin on it. It may well be outright lies and they know it. No one is going to correct them.

But even if what they believe what they're saying, they've tried to present the situation fairly and all of their facts are, in fact, facts, you still only half the story.

People do this because there's an audience for this. There are a lot of people who will believe you because it confirms and validates their own feelings about something. rather than their being any kind of objective principle in play.

So for the claim "demonetized for covering the war [in Ukraine]", first it doesn't even pass the smell test. Youtube has way worse stuff than that. There's a legitimate interest in the subject. A cursory look will find plenty of other channels covering Ukraine without being demonetized just fine.

So already the claim falls apart and you can move on what really happened. Other commenters note low-quality clickbait-y videos with questionable material included. That may or may not be the reason but it strikes me as a whole lot more likely that there are issues with this creeator's content more than a general issue with Ukraine content being demonetized.

⬐ jasode

>demonetized because I cover the war

I understand his instinct to self-title his video as "I cover the war" which implies a noble journalistic service for viewers but in comparing other youtube channels talking about Ukraine that did not get de-monetized, I'm guessing his type of content crosses the line.

E.g. one of his videos shows a grenade being dropped on a soldier while he has his pants down taking a dump. His commentary is to joke about it and vocalize a "boom" sound effect. The video is not blurred out and he did not set the "age restricted" flag. I won't link the video directly but you can easily find it.

Another perspective to look at the above scenario... if Google Youtube splits ad revenue 55% creator + 45% to Google.... Is the public ok with Google getting 45% of ad money from someone cheerleading a war death?

That's not a rhetorical question. I didn't do a survey so I really don't know what the answer is.

I noticed that several other Youtube channels cover Ukraine topics without getting demonetized:

https://www.youtube.com/c/RealLifeLore/search?query=ukraine

https://www.youtube.com/c/Taskandpurpose/search?query=ukrain...

https://www.youtube.com/c/CaspianReport/search?query=ukraine

I'm guessing those channels will be fine because they don't show raw war footage while jeering at human suffering.

I don't know if Youtube automatically demonetizes because of an algorithm sweeping through the channels or there was a human that decided his particular channel.

⬐ topynate

The term 'demonetization' can be misleading. It's the creator who is demonetized on a demonetized video or channel. YouTube still often shows ads on such videos, it just keeps all the money instead of 45% of it.

⬐ jasode

> It's the creator who is demonetized on a demonetized video or channel. YouTube still often shows ads on such videos, it just keeps all the money instead of 45% of it.

I may be wrong but I don't see evidence that Youtube continues showing ads on demonetized content like these explicit Ukraine war videos. The reason is that the advertisers who pay money to Google don't want their brands associated with certain types of lurid content. (See Adpocalypse: https://www.google.com/search?q=biggest+advertisers+abandon+...)

So, Google is being extra strict with ads on these videos to avoid an angry call from a giant advertiser like Proctor & Gamble complaining, "Why are you showing my dish soap ads on a video of a naked guy getting killed while pooping?!?" (E.g.: https://www.tubefilter.com/2018/04/20/pg-resumes-youtube-spe...)

There also may be some confusion about some videos with ads and creators not getting the money: the creator has not been accepted into the Partner Program for revenue sharing. Yes, in those cases, the creators are not getting ad $$$ -- even for safe advertiser-friendly videos.

But these Ukraine demonetization videos seem more like not repeating the Adpocalypse debacle and Google will not run ads on them.

Of course, Google/Youtube's system isn't perfect so there will be false-positives. Will there be indecent videos that Google improperly display ads on? Yes. Will there also be high-quality channels that got unfairly demonetized even if advertisers would have no objection to their content? Yes.

⬐ topynate

I just opened the YouTube android app and looked at some videos from this channel. I saw three ads from about 15 videos watched. I then looked at some videos from an apolitical channel I'm subscribed to and saw considerably more ads. They also seemed to be 'higher quality' in some sense. The ads on the Ukraine channel were for things like an earwax removal tool. The ads on the other channel were for luxury sunglasses, a political party†, and so on.

You're quite right that there's some confusion between Partner Program eligibility and demonetization proper. This Ukraine war creator actually talks about being removed from the Partner Program in the video linked in this post.

† It was a deepfake of the current Israeli Prime Minister explaining why I should vote for Shas, a party of which he is most definitely not a member. Not relevant to this issue but too crazy not to mention.

⬐ londons_explore

Is this true? I don't think they show any pre-roll ads, mid roll ads or post roll ads on demonetizrd content.

The only ad they show is a regular display and on the right hand side out of the video frame, and as far as I know revenue from that ad is never given to the creator anyway.

⬐ topynate

See for instance the replies to this guy's clever idea yesterday: https://www.reddit.com/r/youtubers/comments/xxlkvi/using_dem...

It may depend on what country you're in or if you're on mobile or not. I wouldn't know for certain, I'm a uBO/NewPipe man.

⬐ kortex

I watch this channel on the regular and... yeeeahhhh this is right on the money. It's definitely not neutral journalistic reporting of the war, and plays pretty fast and loose with "footage that some viewers might find disturbing". Heck, his catchphrase, "Knock em out cold" is pretty obviously a euphemism for killing russian soldiers. If anything I'm surprised he has survived this long without being demonetized or straight up stricken out (Cody's Lab nearly got struck out for far less).

⬐ tomohawk

> a war death

You are suggesting that there is some sort of moral equivalence between a Ukrainian fighting a war to defend the existence of their country and a Russian fighting to conquer said country.

That is just sad.

It's OK to cheer when the bad guy has a bad day.

In any case, why would you begrudge someone trying to tell the rest of the world what is going on there? It's not like you're going to find any dispassionate, unopinionated, completely neutral news agency out there. That just doesn't exist.

⬐ mardifoufs

Post videos cheering the death of US soldiers in the invasion Iraq and you will get demonetized just as fast. It's not about moral equivalency between Russia and Ukraine, it's that advertisers still don't want to be associated with that stuff. So why would Google monetize the channel?

(And by the way there's a massive difference between biaised news, and posting what is basically snuff content... Advertisers have no issue rolling ads on CNN even when it covers wars, but there's a reason why they don't broadcast gore/graphical content.)

⬐ 0x0

But war is not age restricted, so why set the flag? If you have a problem with it maybe appeal to the people in charge of war.

⬐ im3w1l

Other channels did get demonetized just now over Ukraine war coverage too, so there does seem to have been a wave.

⬐ rossdavidh

So, you raise some interesting points, but this morning I saw this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6HBaIRPhClw Denys Davydov is a Ukrainian, hometown Sevastopol, whose channel was mostly about his life as a commercial aviation pilot until the war started. He does not show any of the sort of content you discuss, and is definitely not cheerleading anyone's death. He started a Telegram channel recently so that he could post videos which he did not think would be wanted on a YouTube channel. He never posted videos that showed actual killing, nor did he otherwise cross the line you describe. Nonetheless, he's demonetized today, apparently.

Which all suggests, there is something going on other than "no cheerleading deaths".

⬐ chimen

Except he is VERY subjective towards Ukrainians and cheering for their gains in war which falls within "condones, exploits or dismisses". His channel is a propaganda for Ukrainians, understandably so. Denys has higher quality content and I watch him from time to time but this is business. When/If this war ends you will have the entire "woke" population turning on YT for monetising this type of content, benefiting from death and drama of war.

Now let's say you're on the other end, an advertiser that pays for placements, and you see your ads showing on videos where people literally die on camera, with funny reactions, videos and sounds. Do you think that it has the potential of ruining your business or not? Sorry to say but I take YT's side in this matter.

⬐ Fatnino

I think it's a very rare viewer who actually thinks the advertiser YouTube slapped on a video actually condones or even saw what is in the video.

Nobody thinks an advertiser paid for a video of death and destruction. Everyone knows that sort of content is 100% between the uploader and YouTube.

⬐ ncmncm

I doubled my Patreon contribution to Denys this morning.

Patreon offers no way to add a one-time boost, which sucks.

Also added one for Suchomimus, who I assume has also been hit.

⬐ oceanplexian

The US government probably didn’t like what he had to say. It leaked out a few months back that during COVID-19 the executive branch was reaching out to social media companies with requests to ban individual users (https://www.deseret.com/2022/9/7/23340108/biden-censoring-fa...), it also leaked more recently that the Federal government was planning to reach out to talk show hosts, famous comedians, celebrities, even Tom Brady to push COVID vaccine propaganda (https://www.judicialwatch.org/covid-19-vaccine-campaign/).

The question I’d ask, is if it’s not above the Feds and Social Media to collude to censor COVID content, why wouldn’t they use the same techniques in an actual war? It’s pretty obvious what we’re seeing is a public-private partnership to censor content.

⬐ jasode

>Denys Davydov is a Ukrainian, hometown Sevastopol, whose channel was mostly about his life as a commercial aviation pilot until the war started. He does not show any of the sort of content you discuss, and is definitely not cheerleading anyone's death [...] Which all suggests, there is something going on other than "no cheerleading deaths".

Couple of possibilities:

- it may be a temporary false-positive for demonetization : their A.I. algorithm with (with imperfect heuristics) scanned a bunch of channels for controversial Ukraine content and automatically demonetized them skipping any human judgement. In some cases, the youtubers appeal it and they get re-monetized again. As an example, the youtube aviation channel "blancolirio" went through this. He started making videos about Boeing 737-MAX which automatically got de-monetized by the algorithm because it had "737MAX" in the titles but his later crash-analysis videos got monetized after human review. E.g. He wrote[1] "(Note: after initially demonetizing this video, after a human review YT re-monetized it...Why? I have No Idea.)" And his recent video analyzing Las Vegas plane crash is also monetized with Youtube ads.[2]

- Youtube suddenly got stricter about the Ukraine topic so more channels are getting caught up in the dragnet. If that's the case, hopefully the high-quality channels will appeal and a human reviewing it will turn on monetization again. I'm guessing a quality channel like Perun will pass human review and get re-monetized to override the auto-demonetization. However, the channel (Artur Rehi) cited by this particular thread probably will not because his type of content is not "advertiser-friendly".

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8_vl3theT8, [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2Up_Cw8X-g

⬐ mandelbrotwurst

Having "imperfect heuristics" seems like an awfully charitable way to describe an algorithm that would block all content that mentions a particular model of airplane.