YouTube announces that it is relaxing the rules on profanity and how its affects monetization on the platform. The rules were updated at the end of last year and the company came under huge fire for the new policies. The rules created a “stricter approach“ than the company intended. It has been reviewed to allow creators to use strong or moderate profanity without the risk of demonetization.
The policy was introduced in November of last year and was to mark every video that uses profanity in the first 15 secs and disqualifies it for monetization. This meant no ads will run such videos. The change caused a lot of creators uproar and came with the consequence of some losing their monetization status.
YouTube reported that it was reviewing its policies back in January when last year’s update came with a lot of complaints. This was to curb the discords around the policy change. The new policy doesn’t return to the old one but makes active changes to allow creators to monetize the content if profanity is used within the first few seconds of the video. This would have been a problem under the old policies.
In the new policy update, it’s noted that videos with profanity in the first 7 secs will be eligible for monetization but the monetization will be rescinded if it continues throughout the video. The company stated that music with profanity will be allowed to be monetized and the same goes for backing tracks, intros, and outros. This was something that the old rules held monetization from. Also, videos with profanity in their titles and thumbnails will still be demonetized and won’t be able to run ads.
The new policy comes into effect from 7th March. Creators’ concern following the November update hasn’t all resulted but these vague new policies will help a big size of creators to be able to monetize their content. YouTube clearly stated that it will re-review the content of creators that were barred under the previous policies.
YouTube is clearly trying to make a big chunk of its catalog very age-appropriate and advertiser-friendly by retrofitting new monetization rules on the platform. This can cause a massive backlash if not threaded carefully. This is a tightrope the company is trying to walk because it can cause massive problems for the creators on the platform. The creators are very important to the company since they are the backbone on which the platform is built.
