http://reason.com/blog/2016/09/01/youtu ... d-politics

Watch the big time YouTubers that get affected leave. Hopefully this gives way to the opportunity for other video hosting sites to emerge.

Pretty sure this violates Freedom of Speech and Freedom of the Press in some way. Which would be illegal.

From what it sounds like, they're just removing any ad revenue you can make off those types of topics, which is their right to do. If they outright banned/deleted all those videos, that would be a problem. The biggest problem, though, is that this is very broad in scope, and even people who make videos that try to help people with difficult problems (like suicide), those videos can't be monetized because of the "suicide" part. But this isn't really surprising. Facebook has banned Libertarian/Liberty type pages for the past few months, some of which were making fun of Hillary Clinton. This is type of thing will continue to happen on platforms.

Youtube is not a public entity. While it's just as free to decide what it does with its terms of service and videos uploaded to its servers, people are just as free to leave and seek an alternative. Once youtube starts realizing there's serious competition out there and how it's losing big bucks, it will realize the incentive to stop these things.

All I know is, there's at least one news channel on Youtube that has had all their monetization taken away.

If they talk about politics, that's grounds to lose monetization.

This sounds a lot like the "Where's the fair use?" thing from several months back, which sounded a lot to me like "Where's my money from fair use?" All you have to do is go non-profit. The love of money...

Nostalgia Critic: "Youtube is a place where anyone can become famous. Let's keep it that way!"

Translation: "Youtube is a place where anyone can become famous and make a lot of money. Let's keep it that way!"

The Fair Use thing was because companies were abusing Youtube's copyright system to remove videos and take down channels.

Advertisers are companies that pay Youtube to show their ads on videos. It's a service that Youtube offers as a service and they are here to make THEM happy first, and us second. This is where Youtube is making ends meat. And in the end, that's what's paying the Youtuber's as well. The thing is, these advertisers are not obligated or forced to advertise on anyone's videos. So, essentially, those who want to make money off of their videos HAVE to make the advertisers happy with their content. If ads are playing on videos they don't want them on, they have every right to pull their advertising from that video.

Problem is, Youtube is the one who actually has pull the trigger. So absolutely everyone is blaming Youtube for doing what their main customers (the advertisers) told them to do. They aren't going to pay for a service they don't want. And what's Youtube going to do? Hold them at gunpoint and demand they advertise on something they don't want to? Also, the videos that have been demonotized are videos that have titles and tags involving sh*t like ISIS, rape, suicide, and many combinations of words that, if you were trying to sell a product, would most likely NOT want your product associated with.

Finally, this isn't violation of freedom of speech. Everyone is still free to say absolutely anything they want. They might not get paid for it, but they can say it.

Yeah, what Lantis said.

And all you gotta do is go non-profit on the offensive vids or vids that might be considered offensive to advertisers. Or go non-profit altogether. But the love of money...

Violation of free speech ONLY applies to the government. That's something a lot of people forget when making an argument.

Private entities can establish their own rules when it comes to things like this.

Yup.

Okay, fine. But it's still dumb that this affects news channels.