After what’s happened with Logan Paul the week that I’m writing this, I have come to believe that YouTube has hit (what is hopefully) rock bottom. I say hopefully because if it gets any worse than this, please get me off of this planet as soon as possible.
For those that don’t know, Logan Paul is an extremely popular “creator” (if you can call him that) that makes daily vlogs. He and his brother Jake have managed to dominate the platform for the past 8 months or so. Their audiences consist of mostly young children that hang onto their every word, which, as you’ll soon see, is dangerous.
Jake Paul was previously in some hot water for his actions, including causing his neighbors considerable agony by encouraging throngs of his fans to come by his house and disturbing his neighbors. However, recently, Logan has gotten into trouble for going to the Japanese Suicide Forest and filming a dead body while making jokes about it, among other things.
This is clearly horrific in and of itself, and everyone is up in arms about it on Twitter and YouTube alike (as they should be). However, this whole situation has shed light on something pretty startling: the YouTube ad bias.
YouTube has set community guidelines to “all” creators about what is and isn’t suitable for ads. These guidelines are pretty vague, but can permanently damage a creator’s income flow, as running ads on videos is the only way to generate revenue on the platform. Content creators have gotten adblocked on a multitude of different things due to these so-called guidelines.To illustrate how ludicrous they can be, Casey Neistat, another vlogger, was hit with the “guidelines” for talking about a charity during the hurricanes this year.
Some of the guidelines include the prohibition of talking about “violence” or “disturbing content.” If showing a dead body on screen isn’t disturbing, then I don’t know what is.So, logically, YouTube would block the video or at least age-restrict it, right? Wrong. They put it on the trending tab. Videos on the trending tab aren’t always chosen algorithmically, but often times they are. Alright, so they put Logan’s video on the trending tab. Surely they’d notice their mistake and remove it...Wrong again. The YouTube staff manually looked at the video and decided to keep it up. Logan eventually removed it himself due to the backlash.
In case it isn’t clear by now, this just demonstrates how absolutely biased YouTube is. The guidelines only exist for those that don’t generate as much revenue for the site. If you’re a huge YouTuber that’s been creating a ton of buzz, then the rules don’t apply to you.
Be consistent. It isn’t that hard.
