News
Lack of Transparency from Youtube
Cordova, TN; January 1, in the year of our Lord 2018--Family
Friendly Gaming, the industry leader in covering the family
friendly video games is bringing up an important issue to the
millions upon millions of readers in Family Friendly Gaming
Universe. This issue is the lack of transparency from Youtube.
You might have heard about Youtube cracking down on content
creators because some liberals were offended that hate speech
groups had advertisements on their videos. Since that happened
Youtube has created some program that checks videos and
automatically demonetizes them if Youtube thinks it might be
offensive. What is offensive though? Really what are the kinds
of things that should fall under the umbrella of being
offensive? Here is how Youtube defines it:
Controversial issues and
sensitive events: Video content that features or focuses on
sensitive topics or events including, but not limited to, war,
political conflicts, terrorism or extremism, death and
tragedies, sexual abuse, even if graphic imagery is not shown,
is generally not suitable for ads. For example, videos about
recent tragedies, even if presented for news or documentary
purposes, may not be suitable for advertising given the subject
matter.
Drugs and dangerous products or
substances: Video content that promotes or features the sale,
use, or abuse of illegal drugs, regulated drugs or substances,
or other dangerous products is not suitable for advertising.
Videos discussing drugs or dangerous substances for educational,
documentary, and artistic purposes are generally suitable for
advertising, so long as drug use or substance abuse is not
graphic or glorified.
Harmful or dangerous acts: Video
content that promotes harmful or dangerous acts that result in
serious physical, emotional, or psychological injury is not
suitable for advertising. Some examples include videos depicting
painful or invasive surgical or cosmetic procedures, or pranks
involving sexual harassment or humiliation.
Hateful content: Video content that
promotes discrimination or disparages or humiliates an
individual or group of people on the basis of the individual’s
or group’s race, ethnicity or ethnic origin, nationality,
religion, disability, age, veteran status, sexual orientation,
gender identity, or other characteristic that is associated with
systemic discrimination or marginalization is not suitable for
advertising. Content that is satire or comedy may be exempt;
however, simply stating your comedic intent is not sufficient
and that content may still not be suitable for advertising.
Inappropriate language: Video content
that contains frequent uses of strong profanity or vulgarity
throughout the video may not be suitable for advertising.
Occasional use of profanity won’t necessarily result in your
video being unsuitable for advertising, but context matters.
Inappropriate use of family
entertainment characters: Videos depicting family entertainment
characters or content, whether animated or live action, engaged
in violent, sexual, vile, or otherwise inappropriate behavior,
even if done for comedic or satirical purposes, are not suitable
for advertising.
Incendiary and demeaning: Video
content that is gratuitously incendiary, inflammatory, or
demeaning may not be suitable for advertising. For example,
video content that shames or insults an individual or group may
not be suitable for advertising.
Sexually suggestive content: Video
content that features highly sexualized content, such as video
content where the focal point is nudity, body parts, or sexual
simulations, is not suitable for advertising. Content that
features sex toys, sexual devices, or explicit conversation
about sex may also not be suitable for advertising, with limited
exceptions for non-graphic sexual education videos.
Violence: Video content where the
focal point is on blood, violence, or injury, when presented
without additional context, is not suitable for advertising.
Violence in the normal course of video gameplay is generally
acceptable for advertising, but montages where gratuitous
violence is the focal point is not. If you're showing violent
content in a news, educational, artistic, or documentary
context, that additional context is important.
From this page -
https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/6162278?hl=en
Would you believe that Family Friendly Gaming has had hundreds
of videos identified as offensive to advertisers. In fact there
are many days where every single video we upload is targeted by
the Youtube robot. Why is that? We have been asking Youtube for
months now with no answer. The super majority of the videos are
reinstated after we appeal the programs mistakes. That was until
recently. What happened recently? Recently we started getting
videos manually confirmed. That is what the message says.
Supposedly a real live person at Youtube looks at the video and
confirms that it is offensive to advertisers based on the above
criteria. There is no message telling us what exactly is being
defined or redefined by this mystery person as offensive. Here
are some videos that have been declared offensive by Youtube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXqkZ0CHtIo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ee27NK0_eaM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJhr7gqhbgU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qEExCUv5ao
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3O0Bi8sq24
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RR0I6IIpyg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09B801hFE1k
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odb_ZMfaTR0
For videos that have multiple different episodes, the other
episodes are fine. This is really odd in my opinion. Youtube
fails to reveal what exact content they are finding offensive.
This lack of transparency hurts their image. They are such a
large mega corporation that we already have little trust in
them. Their program has been horrible at identifying offensive
content in videos. In fact we have had hundreds of videos
falsely identified since they rolled out the program. Now
someone is agreeing with that faulty and flawed program. This
makes it even more dangerous. We are struggling to get by and
the ad revenue helps us get by each and every month. Are we
being punished because we are Christians? Is Youtube violating
the First Amendment? Are we being discriminated against because
we are conservatives? Read the transcripts of those videos and
you will see we are not discussing any controversial topics.
Youtube needs to clean this up and fast.
Paul Bury
Family Friendly Gaming
{UPDATE}: Attempted to work with Youtube support (which turns
out to be Google support), and they have made all kinds of
suggestions not related to the problem at hand. Our confidence
in confirmed by manual review is even lower now.
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