For the past 4 years I have been putting all my time and efforts into YouTube, while making a living off of it. I am the producer of world5list and Angelo is the producer for @theywillkillyou. We swapped action on our channels a long time ago and have been working together closely ever since. In addition, Angelo introduced me to Steemit a few days ago which, even though it’s still very early, has been an awesome ride so far!
Overall, YouTube has been a fun adventure. Coming from a poker background, it was great to look at the graphs every time and see consistent growth. I still praise myself lucky for being able to work this kind of job, but the days that I really enjoyed doing what I’m doing are long gone and it’s all “thanks to” Youtube’s inconsistent and unfair policies.
I wrote a post earlier today about the constant insults that creators and their followers have to put up with on the platform (@world5list/my-first-day-on-steemit-vs-4-poisonous-years-on-youtube). In all those years, those insults have gotten worse and worse without YouTube taking any serious action. I doubt that they ever will and based on that, none of what you are about to read should come as a surprise. I truly believe that YouTube is digging its own grave!
Instead of focusing on cleaning up their website, YouTube is coming down harder and harder on content creators without ANY regards to the so called “partnershitp” that every channel is involved in with them. In reality, it’s more like a sweatshop than a partnership.
Many big channels had and have been suffering for a long time and some were forced to close shop a long time ago, because of YouTube’s sad efforts to influence its audience, which @alexpmorris provided us with a good example of in:
@alexpmorris/youtuber-s-guide-to-re-monetizing-with-steemit-and-thank-you-to-my-first-253-subs
Regardless of whether or not you share the same ideological beliefs as Alexander and the people he was running this channel with, it is insane that they basically had their right to free speech taken away by YouTube.
On March 25th of this year, things took a turn for the worst. A bunch of major brands pulled millions of dollars in advertising from YouTube amid rows over extremist content on the site. YouTube was showing ads of high and low profile companies in videos that were aimed at recruiting jihadists. Something that in my wild imagination would have boiled down to : “Come to Walmart, buy yourself a nice gun and join ISIS”, “Join Verizon and use our plan to set of your car bomb!”. It’s such an epic fail on their end...
YouTube has been in existence for 12 years now. You would think that by now, they would have a handle on these things.
Naturally, their “partners” took the hit for this unfortunate “mishap”. Earnings dropped faster than when I pull my pants down after I have been holding it for too long and countless of perfectly fine videos got demonetized. Instead of getting their shit together, they are completely overreacting, making all their so called “partners” suffer in the process.
A few days ago, I posted a video about '7 Of the most heart warming good deeds' and guess what….? Yep you guessed it, it’s demonetized! Cause of course, I’m sure companies like Pepsi, AT&T and L'Oreal would not want to be associated with that kind of REVOLTING content!
You can’t count on anything anymore when it comes to YouTube. Angelo and I invested a lot of money into flying out to Colombia and bringing a camera crew to interview one of Pablo Escobar’s former assassins, which we thought would make for great original content ( you can read more about that and see a part of the interview here @world5list/interviewing-a-hitman-damnable-or-not.) After what happened on March 25th and because of the way YouTube reacted to it, that's money down the drain! We are lucky enough to have been successful for a few years so we can afford to take that hit, but many others can’t.
In the past, you could at least predict which topics would have a bigger chance of getting demonetized but now, all the guidelines are out the window and it has turned into a crap shoot because YouTube opted to tighten the reins in their sweatshop, instead of getting their own shit together up in the ivory tower.
More and more creators are abandoning YouTube and most of them are not even doing it to prove a point! They are doing it because they are left with no other choice. But with every disadvantage comes an advantage, so let’s hope that a lot of these former YouTubers find their way to Steemit and will help grow this awesome community!