by Adam Dreyfuss

Even though they may seem useless, those advertisements before a YouTube video and that little banner that pops up during the video are there to serve two purposes: to help generate profit for YouTube as well as the creator of said video.

Many people’s full time jobs are to make YouTube videos, and they don’t just supply a reasonable living, YouTube advertising revenue can make you a fortune.

In fact, this past year Forbes estimated that PewDiePie, the most subscribed channel on YouTube, has a net worth of around $12 million.

While YouTube’s monetization process has been very beneficial for these content creators, recently there has been a shift in the way YouTube has run things.

The new, updated YouTube community guidelines and terms of service have cracked down recently, specifically on swearing and “bullying.” The reason that bullying is in quotations is because many people on the site believe that the changes are in response to the massive blow-up for two channels: RiceGum and LeafyIsHere.

RiceGum became famous for making “diss tracks” and “roasts” of other content creators spread across several platforms. LeafyIsHere is very similar, as he makes “roasts” of content creators as well.

Recently, news has come out that YouTube has started to “de-monetize” some of the videos posted on the site. This simply means that there are no ads on the video meaning that the creator of the video cannot make any money from the de-monetized video.

The reason that this is getting such a big uproar is that apparently YouTube did not inform the creators that their video will get demonetized.

Popular YouTuber Philip DeFranco, who delivers daily news of world events, said in one of his videos, “But what really bugs me about this is that this was either a purposeful move that they did not give creators a heads up on, because I’ve seen a ton of people complaining on it. Or, they’re just asleep at the wheel.”

Later on in the episode, DeFranco gives an update talking about how one of his producers talked to YouTube and the people from YouTube said it was 100 percent purposeful.

DeFranco then mentions how in the past year, 12 of his videos had been de-monetized because they covered controversial issues. Reminder, he covers the real world news on his YouTube channel.

The following day YouTube issued a statement that read as this: “While our policy of de-monetizing videos due to advertiser-friendly concerns hasn’t changed, we’ve recently improved the notification and appeal process to ensure better communication.”

While this statement is a step in the right direction for YouTube, ensuring that their creators can be better informed of when their video is de-monetized, it begs the question about the past.

If creators didn’t know that their videos were being de-monetized, what does that say about YouTube? If all of these YouTubers allegations are true, then YouTube purposely blocked their ability to make money, which is a form of censorship. To make matters worse, they were not informing the content creators.

While the dust has started to settle on this issue, there are still many YouTubers who are still upset with YouTube blocking the monetization on their videos.

With that said, what are your thoughts on the matter? Do you think YouTube was well within their rights to de-monetize without telling, or did they mess up? Let us know in the comments down below!