Today, the CEO of YouTube, Susan Wojcicki posted an important message on their Creator Blog. Giving an update on upcoming changes that have been frustrating content creators in recent years. YouTube’s algorithms have lowered viewership in channels by not showing their latest videos on subscribed viewers’ watch page. Their content ID system have created havoc by automatically demonetizing videos with alleged copyrighted content triggering a copyright strike. In addition, alleged copyright owners have also manually flagged content they claim as their own. A claim can be as little as 1-second of copyrighted content which of course is unfair.
With creators having to fight the claim that affects their revenue stream. Sometimes having to surrender the fight because they lack resources to legally fight them if it proceeds to a court battle. The common solution that creators use in most cases is ‘fair use’ for their copyright claim explanation. Unfortunately during this period of time, the alleged copyright owner will receive the ad-revenue from the video if monetized. Fortunately in the blog post, YouTube in the future will clarify on community guidelines and advertiser friendly policies to be more transparent. This should help creators to understand what they can actually claim as original content and fair use.
On the issue of trending page that have caused viewership in channels to go down. YouTube will a balance of at least 50% creator content and the other half as traditional media. This will hopefully allow a resurgence of traffic to these channels. In the blog post, YouTube claims to have already been working to improve this issue. With the classification’s precision adjusted by 25%.
Aside from creators’ woes, they also focused on recent graphic content in global events. With terrorists attacks being recorded and quickly posted on YouTube thus going viral. YouTube has been working around the clock when these events occur to quickly take them down. However, their swift response had lead to some news sources and others to be targeted as well. YouTube states that if these channels explain the situation. Most of the time will result in reinstatement of their video.
YouTube has been hard at work at improving the transparency between being advertiser friendly and creator friendly. Hopefully YouTube heads in the right direction again as the ever-changing world tests their ability to tackle them.
Source: The Verge
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