(September
2016): Remember when the internet was like a wide-open frontier, where anyone
with an idea and a computer could start multi-million dollar ventures from
nothing? It was a “Wild West” of sorts,
with people staking their claim to niches and topics with no rules and
seemingly infinite potential. Internet stars popped up out of nowhere with
nothing but videos of raw talent, unrestrained vocabularies, and possibly the
video of someone being injured. These
internet “celebrities” mostly came from the website YouTube. Eventually, some
individuals became known as YouTubers (some vloggers fit into this category as
well) and commanded thousands if not millions of subscribers to their YouTube
channels. YouTubers were given a rare
opportunity to earn revenue from their popularity in the form of advertising on
their videos provided by Google.
For example, at the end of August there was a firestorm of online
protests by people known as YouTubers and vloggers as well as other creators of
online content about the media giant’s enforcement of their advertising policy
of removing the opportunity for advertising revenue from videos that are “not
advertiser friendly.” Although the
policy has been selectively and / or inadequately enforced ever since 2012, YouTube
emails detailing YouTuber videos whose advertising had been pulled for content,
and that the account holder can appeal the process. Social media has been in the news as of late
for such controversies as the vague line between testimonial and advertising of
products by celebrities on Instagram, and Facebook putting forth yet another
algorithm change attempt to crack down on click-bait headlines. Right now, The
YouTube algorithms are focusing on the descriptions and tags of videos,
searching for keywords that will flag a video as being “not advertiser
friendly.” However, the enforcement of
the policy is unpredictable and unevenly imposed to say the least; one video
that breaks all the rules with ads still active could be displayed on the same
screen as someone’s commentary on a news event that has been demonetized as a
result of YouTube’s algorithm flagging it as a video that contains “profanity
and vulgar language.”
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