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YouTube is a video-sharing platform with over one billion users and is the most popular website as of 2020. With over 37 million active YouTube channels, there are over 22,000 Youtubers with over one million subscribers, but is YouTube being fair to said creators?
In 2009, YouTube began running ads during videos in an effort to begin monetization of certain videos with a high number of views. With the most recent gain of content creators in the current years, YouTube has made changes to their video monetization guidelines and creators aren’t happy.
Creators who are a part of the YouTube Partner Program (YPP) receive a share of the ad revenue from each ad that runs during their video. However, with the platform’s update to their terms of service, creators who are not a part of the YPP are subject to advertisements to run during their videos even if they do not opt for it. Changes to this policy means that YouTube will not share compensation from those ads with content creators.
While creators are attempting to adapt to this new policy or change their main content streaming platform, they are not allowed to talk about it as their video will be flagged by YouTube. YouTubers served with one or more strikes automatically have the video deleted and the ability to monetize restricted in the future.
The ability to gain those features back takes months of work especially for creators with smaller channels who have to compete with creators with a major following. With these new monetization guidelines, many small creators will begin to falter in profits due to YouTube taking advantage of advertisement revenue.