In addition to recent discussions of demonetization, Youtube has gone a step farther with their automated system to flag certain videos as ‘Not suitable for all advertisers.’ Normally, we try not to step in entertainment news, but a huge number of gamers have taken to youtube to show how destructive it has been not only to veteran youtubers, but those just getting started.

MagikarpUsedFly (aka Matt Castro) went a step farther than many youtubers did in explaining how this actually affects content creators in a recent video. From his channel, he showed two videos side by side with similar statistics; however, the video marked ‘Not suitable for all advertisers’ made 25% less revenue than the non-tagged video. Although this may seem bad on an individual basis, it’s much scarier when other youtubers have reported upwards of 300 videos being tagged as ‘Not suitable for advertisers’.

This is only made worse by the fact that youtubers don’t understand what exactly they did wrong. The auto flag system is rather general in its descriptions, so a title, an image, or language could be any of the culprits, but youtubers have no idea which of these elements is at fault and how to rectify the problem. It leads to hours spent correcting content by guessing randomly at what went wrong.

It shouldn’t come as any surprise that we aren’t much for censorship, but what Youtube has done is a step further. They are essentially fining youtubers for content they don’t like and then not telling them what they don’t like. It would be one thing to send a warning, but the flagging affects videos immediately, and as MagikarpUsedFly points out, the majority of views happen in the first few days, so there is almost no way to get around a loss of profits.

In response to a request to remove ‘Not suitable for all advertisers’

This is all egregious enough, but the worst part of it is the appeals process. To appeal a flag, a video must receive over 1000 views over the course of the next week for Youtube to deem it worthy for them to look into the issue. This is all but a death sentence for gaming youtubers just getting started (since gamers have been hit hardest by these flags). Not only do they have fewer viewers, but as we already stated, most of their views come in the first few days, so of all content creators, those trying to break into the market will suffer the most from this current system.

All of these actions seem not only unwarranted but incredibly confusing since gaming comprises the second most popular category on Youtube. After all, attacking their content creators and forcing them to constantly adjust their content or lose profits seems like a bad way for Youtube to make more money. However, demonetization has been happening since 2012; it was only in 2016 and now especially in 2017 that it became as bad as it has and that youtubers could see what was being done to their videos.

We weren’t able to find much in the way of an explanation for why Youtube has gone down this route. It could be an attempt to corral content to Youtube Red, which would give Youtube a much more consistent flow of profits from subscribers while giving advertisers easy access to PG content, music videos and the like on their free platform. However, this is only a hypothetical based on Youtube’s recent push for Youtube Red and seeing figures like the Game Grumps addressing demonetization and Youtube Red directly.

We contacted Youtube directly about this issue, but they had no comment on the issues outlined above and redirected us to their advertiser policy page on other issues. We will continue to update as and when we know more.