The future of YouTube: Is it slowly getting worse and becoming too “Advertiser Friendly?”

What's up, you guys? It's Graham here. So this video is gonna be entirely different from anything else I've ever uploaded. It's not about real estate, it's not about money, it's not about mindset. I'm talking about YouTube today and why they're going through such a nasty problem and a little bit about my thoughts on this.

Because we're losing a lot of my favorite YouTubers out there right now who just are making no money. It looks like at this pace there's gonna be no way for them to continue to make money, and I'm thinking like if YouTube doesn't fix this, it's gonna be dying out fairly quickly. If you're not already aware, earlier this year, YouTube went through this "ad apocalypse." Basically, long story short, advertisers were having their ads placed on controversial videos that promoted hate speech, terrorism, racism, things like that.

And the thing is YouTube gets so many videos uploaded every single minute; it's gonna be impossible for them to look through every video, to determine like what's suitable, what's good, what's bad. And it's a big problem that YouTube needs to figure out immediately. But until they were able to figure that out, a lot of advertisers pulled out from YouTube. Then immediately after that, almost every single YouTuber noticed a huge decline in their ad revenue.

Now, for someone like me, it's not a problem. I do YouTube for fun; it doesn't really make a difference for me how much money I make. The problem lies in channels that have built their entire identity and their entire brand about doing this full-time. I've been watching YouTube channels since like 2010-2011, and these are people who started doing it on/off for fun, realized that they can actually do this full-time and make money from it, quit their jobs, and then hired staff to do this full-time and rely on that income to continue making videos. That's where the problem lies.

So a lot of these people were making no money whatsoever during the ad apocalypse. I knew this was going to be something that was just gonna be temporary. It might have lasted just a few months until YouTube kind of figures out what to do, and then the channels would resume as normal. But what I noticed is that I don't say half the channels I watched straight-up like went out of business in a few months. They just weren't earning any money. There was no incentive for them to like ever upload on YouTube.

And I hate to say it, but like a lot of these dudes deserve to get paid for creating some like hilarious content, growing their channel for years, and making things we all enjoy. So I would say immediately right after that, half the channels just like stopped uploading. It's a big problem there because now it affects us. Now we don't get as cool content. But okay, sure, so half the channels got demonetized and don't upload.

Fine. Back when I started watching YouTube, they were so lax about what could be monetized and what was. I mean, pretty much like you could upload any like prank in the hood gone sexual, like you know, title it whatever you want, and like YouTube will monetize that. So I get that there was some tweaking to do, but they kind of went to an extreme in terms of making advertisers happy. I also understand YouTube is a business there to make money, and the advertisers are the ones that are giving YouTube the money.

My understanding too is that YouTube actually operates at a loss because it costs so much money to maintain YouTube and to hire the manpower to make all this happen and to support, you know, the video that I'm uploading that you're watching right now. So I get that they need money coming in, but the problem here is that they went to an extreme.

So after a few months from this whole ad apocalypse thing, they rolled out a few new features. They're a little bit more strict about what they'd monetize. A lot of the channels that weren't earning any money started earning a little bit more money after that. Then they deemed it like okay, so to monetize your channel, you need 10,000 views minimum on your channel, which you know I think it's a good idea. It's a good measure because the money you get anyway from 10,000 views is really not much. So I don't really see the downside in that, you know, fine, so be it if that's what it takes. Cool.

But then YouTube unleashed this like crazy algorithm fight. It's insane! It's like the Terminator of ad revenue, and this bot searches through videos and determines if there's anything in the video that could be deemed unsuitable for all advertisers. This bot is super aggressive. Now, it's a self-learning bot, so eventually, it's gonna figure out what's monetizable and what's not. But the problem is here: this bot is so aggressive that they just demonetize pretty much any video they're even unsure about.

Then once they demonetize it, you get the option to have it manually reviewed and see if it's deemed suitable for advertisers. Here's the problem. Even my videos are getting demonetized. Don't consider this as like I'm complaining about it because, like I said, to me, it makes absolutely no difference if my videos are monetized or not. I do not rely on this income at all. The money I make from YouTube is really it's probably equivalent to like minimum wage, so like to me, it doesn't make a difference.

The problem here is it makes a huge difference to the YouTubers who rely on that. From my perspective, what happens is that I'll get a purely innocent video demonetized. Like my credit card video is demonetized. I had my renovation video demonetized. I had my stock market crash video demonetized. I had most of my videos demonetized. The problem here is that they're demonetized right when you upload and post them. That's where you get the most of your views.

I would say I get like 90% of my views in the first day, maybe day and a half. So that whole wave of money coming in from all the people watching you is not monetized at all. YouTube now takes between two and three days to manually review a video and then monetize it. So after three days, YouTube determines, hey, you know what? Our bot was wrong, okay? Your video is suitable; here you go. But by that point, everyone has already watched your video. It doesn't really get much traction after that because now YouTube's algorithm promotes new content all the time. They don't want to push older content.

So now your video is pretty much dead; it earned no money, and YouTube's like, well, there you go. And that's a problem. Like I said, it's not a problem for me, but it's a problem for a lot of other YouTubers that are much bigger than me that rely on that income. I mean, this could be the difference of like hundreds of dollars, and then some of these people thousands of dollars in the first like two days that they're missing out on because YouTube's bot is so strict about what's suitable and what's not.

This is something that affects all of us. And when YouTubers aren't able to get the ad revenue they want in the very beginning, they miss out on that income and that hinders our ability to continue making videos and posting them and uploading them. If they rely on that money that they make, and let's be real here, I mean yes, they could ask for Patreon. But from what I've found, it's a lot easier for most people just to watch a five-15 second ad than it is for them to like put in their credit card information and donate to a channel every single month.

And I think a lot of people are in that same boat; they just rather watch the ad than donate, which is totally understandable. I totally get that. But like I said, if these channels aren't making money, they're not gonna be incentivized to continue uploading content. They just sometimes they physically can't because they need money to upload that content, and they're gonna be going out of business.

When they go out of business, either they go elsewhere, they stop uploading, and it's gonna be the slow trickle down effect where it's gonna be the top YouTubers that are gonna be fed up with this. It could be like, you know what? I'm going to Vidme, you know? Or like some other little channel like that, and other people are gonna slowly start to follow that. They just can't do it, and when those people leave, a large segment of YouTube's audience is also going to leave with that.

Because I'm sure some people found me through like maybe they watch a prank channel who watches, you know, something else, who watched something else, and then you found someone like me. It's just going to disincentivize almost every other YouTuber when they see people leaving. It’s going to be something where a lot of people I think are gonna start to follow. When that happens, I think we're gonna lose a lot of what YouTube is and the whole community that they built up.

One of the problems I see here is that it's very difficult to create a different type of streaming source. It's very expensive to upload these videos, host these videos, and support the whole programs and people involved in that. It's not going to be an easy task, and I don't know what the outcome is gonna be from something like this. I mean, the real problem here is just the censorship that goes on.

Because what happens when you censor these YouTubers is that they just filter themselves and just so they're like PG and can actually make money. They lose the authenticity and the integrity of the channel. Like let's say Ownage Pranks, for example. Like he's not even swearing; he's like bleeping out all the swearing in his videos, and that's what makes it funny. Even take NELK, for example. I had a lot of their videos demonetized, and they swear and they do like funny pranks and stuff like that. I want to still see those pranks uncensored, but it's like, you know, what's the point if they have to be like, you know, all PG about it and swear? If they can't do anything that's like too controversial because they're worried about losing their ad revenue, it just completely ruins this, in my opinion.

YouTube and the free speech we have. The bigger problem here, I think, is that it's hard to take something away from someone who's already used to getting money. If this has always been free, people would somewhat like plan around that. YouTubers would be like, alright, so I still got this job, but I can post what I want, and it's just for fun, since a hobby. It's hard to take something away from somebody who's been like, I have earning, you know, ten thousand a month from this, and I pay someone this amount every month for editing and stuff like that. Now that I'm out earning that, like I can't stay afloat, and I had nowhere else to go, and I think it's just a tragedy for all of us.

Again, don't take this as complaining, but it's me recognizing that there is a problem with YouTube. There is a problem with the ad revenue here and it needs to be addressed. I have no idea how they're gonna address it; I have no idea how to fix this. But I felt it is something at least worth bringing to everyone's attention because it is a real problem. If YouTube goes down, and don't think that like YouTube will ever go down, but I'm worried it's just gonna be this place of just like everything is G-rated, everything is politically correct.

People are afraid to express their minds on YouTube because they're afraid their whole channel is gonna get demonetized and they're gonna lose their job, which is true for a lot of the full-time YouTubers, and that affects everybody. I have no idea how it's gonna be fixed, but at the very least, I wanted to make a video about it. Express, you know, that I'm not cool with this, and that I hope it gets fixed and that I hope the self-learning algorithms get a little bit better about deeming what's suitable and what's not.

And that advertisers gonna hopefully lighten up a little bit and allow videos to be monetized. You know, it just kind of sucks. Again, don’t take this as me complaining because for me it doesn't really matter if my videos get monetized or not. It's more so that I want to see the other channels that do this full-time continue to make a living from this, continue to support this. The reality of the situation is that, you know, YouTube is in a very tight spot right now between advertisers and what they need to do to stay afloat.

So anyway, that's it. I wanted to make a video about this. Thank you for watching. Until next time!