So even if you're not a frequent YouTube user, you may have heard that the website is currently in the process of trying to "clean up" the content upload by video makers to make them more "advertiser friendly." Many high profile (and highly paid) content providers have been hit with a whopping decrease in their revenue, in some cases as much as 80% reportedly.
Recently, I got an email from YouTube informing me that one of my videos was no longer eligible for monetization. Now, mind you, I have yet to make a single real currency dime on anything I've put on my channel but that's because I am very much just a casual content provider. I don't expect to make any money from the videos I put on there, I just do it for fun.
But, on the lottery-like hope that by pure luck one of my videos may somehow go viral or something, I usually do monetize any of my self-created content...just in case.
Here's the kicker about this notification about one of my videos, it's from a video I posted 4 years ago, has a tremendous, stupendous 33 views (yes, I'm being very sarcastic here) and isn't at all inappropriate content. It's a 58 second panning shot of one of the fountains at a memorial site. It shows the fountain on a beautifully sunny day in a park like setting surrounded by nearby buildings. People are there but not featured. No conversations are recorded that can be made out, just random, unintelligible murmurs, along with the sounds of the waters of the fountain cascading down its sides.
So what's the big deal about that? Well it might be what memorial site this is as well as possibly, just possibly, a misunderstanding about less than a second of video content due to a perfectly coincidental and innocent occurrence.
The site is none other than the 9/11 World Trade Center Memorial site including shots of one of the two large, square "void" fountains, the then-incomplete 9/11 Museum building and a quick scan up to the almost-completed One World Trade Center tower or "Freedom Tower."
I personally shot this video during my vacation to Rhode Island, Boston and New York City in June of 2013.
Yes, understandably it's a solemn site and a cutesy, comic ad being placed before it for anything might be inappropriate. So, by the very nature that the content should never be construed in a dismissive or belittling way is going to limit the kind of ad that would be appropriate to it.
But I kinda think the flag was put on this because the algorithm used to hunt down offensive or controversial videos considered that it had the phrase "9/11" in the title. Unfortunately, there are a lot of highly offensive and incendiary videos about the 9/11 tragedy that would, of course, disqualify the uploader to have ads placed along with or in front of their videos. Then there are just the kooky ones that try to use TV coverage clips to "prove" their paranoid conspiracy theories. Unless you're company sells tin foil hats you probably wouldn't want to advertise on them.
There's also the question of a tiny snippet of the video I posted that might, just maybe, be seen as inappropriate if a human viewer assessed that what they're seeing is in there due to skillful manipulation or editing of the video. Let me say right off the bat, before I point it out, that the video is simply raw footage unaltered, unedited and uploaded directly from the MOV file created in camera at the time of shooting.
If you look very carefully, at the 39 second mark of the video, it shows two fast moving birds flying overhead maybe about 30 feet above my head, moving into the shot from top right of the frame to the bottom just as I've pointed the camera about 55 degrees upwards, focusing on the top of the One World Trade Center tower. If you didn't know those were real birds, you might be inclined to think it was the representation of two fast moving planes appearing to collide into the skyscraper.
Now I think you'd be nearly as stupid as one of those conspiracy nuts who see crazy things like the image of the devil's face in smoke rising from the ruins of the twin towers from video of that day or others who contend that the planes didn't crash into the buildings, based on their warped perception of some of the clips they've dug up.
Whatever the reason, I'm not worrying about the demonetization of the video. I never would have seen money from it anyway. I just think it's funny that even little, puny contributors like me are being affected by this sanitization effort being conducted on the site.
But you be the judge. Can you find anything wrong with this video?
Recently, I got an email from YouTube informing me that one of my videos was no longer eligible for monetization. Now, mind you, I have yet to make a single real currency dime on anything I've put on my channel but that's because I am very much just a casual content provider. I don't expect to make any money from the videos I put on there, I just do it for fun.
But, on the lottery-like hope that by pure luck one of my videos may somehow go viral or something, I usually do monetize any of my self-created content...just in case.
Here's the kicker about this notification about one of my videos, it's from a video I posted 4 years ago, has a tremendous, stupendous 33 views (yes, I'm being very sarcastic here) and isn't at all inappropriate content. It's a 58 second panning shot of one of the fountains at a memorial site. It shows the fountain on a beautifully sunny day in a park like setting surrounded by nearby buildings. People are there but not featured. No conversations are recorded that can be made out, just random, unintelligible murmurs, along with the sounds of the waters of the fountain cascading down its sides.
So what's the big deal about that? Well it might be what memorial site this is as well as possibly, just possibly, a misunderstanding about less than a second of video content due to a perfectly coincidental and innocent occurrence.
The site is none other than the 9/11 World Trade Center Memorial site including shots of one of the two large, square "void" fountains, the then-incomplete 9/11 Museum building and a quick scan up to the almost-completed One World Trade Center tower or "Freedom Tower."
I personally shot this video during my vacation to Rhode Island, Boston and New York City in June of 2013.
Yes, understandably it's a solemn site and a cutesy, comic ad being placed before it for anything might be inappropriate. So, by the very nature that the content should never be construed in a dismissive or belittling way is going to limit the kind of ad that would be appropriate to it.
But I kinda think the flag was put on this because the algorithm used to hunt down offensive or controversial videos considered that it had the phrase "9/11" in the title. Unfortunately, there are a lot of highly offensive and incendiary videos about the 9/11 tragedy that would, of course, disqualify the uploader to have ads placed along with or in front of their videos. Then there are just the kooky ones that try to use TV coverage clips to "prove" their paranoid conspiracy theories. Unless you're company sells tin foil hats you probably wouldn't want to advertise on them.
There's also the question of a tiny snippet of the video I posted that might, just maybe, be seen as inappropriate if a human viewer assessed that what they're seeing is in there due to skillful manipulation or editing of the video. Let me say right off the bat, before I point it out, that the video is simply raw footage unaltered, unedited and uploaded directly from the MOV file created in camera at the time of shooting.
If you look very carefully, at the 39 second mark of the video, it shows two fast moving birds flying overhead maybe about 30 feet above my head, moving into the shot from top right of the frame to the bottom just as I've pointed the camera about 55 degrees upwards, focusing on the top of the One World Trade Center tower. If you didn't know those were real birds, you might be inclined to think it was the representation of two fast moving planes appearing to collide into the skyscraper.
Now I think you'd be nearly as stupid as one of those conspiracy nuts who see crazy things like the image of the devil's face in smoke rising from the ruins of the twin towers from video of that day or others who contend that the planes didn't crash into the buildings, based on their warped perception of some of the clips they've dug up.
Whatever the reason, I'm not worrying about the demonetization of the video. I never would have seen money from it anyway. I just think it's funny that even little, puny contributors like me are being affected by this sanitization effort being conducted on the site.
But you be the judge. Can you find anything wrong with this video?