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YouTube warns that it will punish creators that ‘harm’ its community

YouTube warns that it will punish creators that ‘harm’ its community

Video site YouTube has once again promised a harsher approach to creators who bring its platform into disrepute.

Following the suspension of ads on Logan Paul’s channel last week, the site now says that it is implementing a three step plan to act against those who behave inappropriately.

Specifically, it has said it will drop premium monetisation programs and content development partnerships, including removal of Google Preferred status and YouTube Original, along with access to YouTube Spaces.

It also reserves the right to ditch monetisation and creator support privileges, as well as removing ads entirely. Lastly it will also stop recommending content from offenders from its home page, trending tab and watch next feature.

Exactly what creators need to do to incur this wrath remains slightly vague – although cynics will presume that the main offense will be creating negative media coverage for the service. 

Our report on YouTube's recent actions discusses the changes to the platform in more detail.

Reactive

“Recently, we faced situations where the egregious actions of a handful of YouTubers harmed the reputation of the broader creator community among advertisers, the media industry and most importantly, the general public,” YouTube said.

“When one creator does something particularly blatant — like conducts a heinous prank where people are traumatized, promotes violence or hate toward a group, demonstrates cruelty, or sensationalizes the pain of others in an attempt to gain views or subscribers — it can cause lasting damage to the community, including viewers, creators and the outside world. That damage can have real-world consequences not only to users, but also to other creators, leading to missed creative opportunities, lost revenue and serious harm to your livelihoods.

“In the past, we felt our responses to some of these situations were slow and didn’t always address our broader community’s concerns. Our ultimate goal here is to streamline our response so we can make better, faster decisions and communicate them clearly.

“We believe strongly in the freedom of expression and we know that the overwhelming majority of you follow the guidelines and understand that you’re part of a large, influential, and interconnected community. But we also know that we have a responsibility to protect the entire community of creators, viewers, and advertisers from these rare but often damaging situations. We expect to issue these new consequences only in a rare handful of egregious cases, but hope they will help us prevent the actions of a few from harming the broader community.”


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