YouTubers in Uproar After Company Notifies Them of Advertising Policy Violations

LIONEL BONAVENTURE/AFP/Getty Images
LIONEL BONAVENTURE/AFP/Getty Images

Some of YouTube’s biggest stars are complaining that the company is removing revenue generating advertisements from their videos for violating YouTube’s guidelines.

YouTubers Philip DeFranco, MrRepzion, and Exurb1a have made videos claiming that the channel has pulled advertising revenues from some videos on their channels.

They claim that they have had their advertising revenue pulled as a result of YouTube’s policy about what the company deems as appropriate for advertising.

According to YouTube’s advertising guidelines, it says that content that should be considered “not advertiser friendly” includes anything with “sexually suggest content,” “violence,” “inappropriate language,” as well as anything discussing “controversial or sensitive subjects and events.”

Both Philip DeFranco and MrRepzion could be deemed to have breached these guidelines, with DeFranco publishing a video about Chris Brown’s police standoff and MrRepzion’s discussing subjects such as mental health, depression, and suicide.

Many other stars on the platform have similarly expressed outrage over the lost revenue and the seemingly bizarre standards, with the hashtag #YouTubePartyIsOver trending on Twitter:

https://twitter.com/TannerLPer/status/771127504698380288

However, prominent YouTuber John “TotalBiscuit” Bain tweeted that the guidelines were not a surprise:

He also claimed that many of the videos being de-monetized were flagged by a bot and that there was an appeal option for YouTubers to re-enable ads on their videos:

A YouTube spokesperson noted that there had not been a change in policy, only that they were now actively notifying YouTubers when ads were removed from their videos. Gizmodo reports:

According to a YouTube spokesperson, there has been no policy or enforcement change put in place by the platform. Instead, the outrage expressed by DeFranco and others appears to be caused by a chance to notifications. Now YouTubers are receiving emails about videos that have been unmonetized.

In the past, YouTubers would have to go into an individual video’s analytics to see it had been unmonetized by the platform. It seems clear the platform is trying to be more transparent in notifying users through easy-to-see notifications and an appeals process, though it’s galling to think these things weren’t in place already.

DeFranco did not respond to Breitbart‘s request for comment.

*Editor’s note: This story has been updated to correct Philip DeFranco’s name.

You can follow Ben Kew on Facebook, on Twitter at @ben_kew, or email him at ben@yiannopoulos.net

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