YouTube and Twitch have recently made changes to their community guidelines to combat misuse of the platform.
In light of this, we asked out Viral Visionaries: are these changes enough? What else could these companies be doing to further regulate content and punish those that are abusing their power on these platforms?
If you'd like to be involved with our Viral Visionaries debate, get in touch with the editor at
[email protected].
Honestly, the changes are a step in the right direction but they also feel a little too vague in such a way that they continue to allow the platforms to make decisions on a case by case basis.
I think Mixer took the right approach with their community guidelines by really defining exactly what actions are considered misuse of their platform, but it may be easier for them given their stage and the fact they don't have creators making them millions of dollars yet.
YouTube's stance re: Logan Paul is pretty weak, I can understand giving a creator a second chance but having a creator have two incidents in such a short period of time should lead to a straight up ban. It definitely feels like the money is guiding their stance.
I'm fairly sure if a smaller creator had done the things Logan Paul has done they would have been banned. In my opinion, the only way to effect real change is to establish strict guidelines, rigidly enforce them and hit creators in the pocket for breaching them.
A nice potential alternative to these temporary suspensions of monetization on accounts could be to continue monetising the channels but then donating the revenue from the suspension period to a group of 'partner charities' that represent a cross section of the potential social issues generally represented by these breaches (i.e. suicide helplines, animal cruelty charities, bullying and harassment charities etc.)
Pascal Clarysse started looking for so-called Growth Hacks a good decade before the buzzword was coined.
Clarysse used to be the marketing driving force at Lik-Sang.com, where he was in charge of relentlessly spotting new trends, waves and magic holes. In recent years, he's served as a marketing consultant for various indie studios, participating in launching mobile games and the occasional Kickstarter campaign.
The guidelines are well written and from an ethical point of view, I'm strongly backing their combat and its aims.
But then again, guidelines are just that: written words. The trick really is how they are enforced. Especially when it's one of your top influencers slipping (or provoking deliberately).
Like for example I haven't quite seen Twitter ban Donald J. Trump, or decrease his reach or even just merely give him a slap on the wrist, for his blatant disregard for their guidelines.
And here lies the billion dollar question: if you are Twitch or YouTube and think as a platform-holder, how far do you want to go? On one side, you have the brands and their millions of dollars who don't want to be associated with too much controversy and you're facing an ad dollar exodus for a couple of weeks every time one of your stars makes headlines for crassly juvenile behavior.
But then again these brands and their money came to you because your channels got views and engagement. Now who are these channels historically and why do they get the views? Or put it in another way, what is the essence of these platforms?
Open upload services for everyone and their cat to post whatever comes to their mind with a lot of freedom and little to no pre-publication curation or filtering. At the core, it relies on User Generated Content. And it grew because these users would generate content that we didn't see on TV or other media before.
Because it was raw, rough, poorly edited, offensive, edgy, silly or all of that at once. Kids today call it "authentic". Now you got that dilemma: how far do you go to protect the golden platform without killing what makes the golden platform golden?
Deep down we all know what happens when the hot social club becomes dull and boring - youth moves on to the next social club to act stupid. They won't stop acting their age just because we rewrote the guidelines a bit better, that's for sure.
I think one of the noted challenges withany guidelines let alone changes to guidelines on any digital platform are the consistent use and enforcement of said guidelines.
Where I see a lot of questions being asked is around why some Influencers are bearing the brunt of the guidelines and others are not.
I’m starting to wonder if the “golden children” of the internet will ever get a wake up call?
