We all love YouTube! It’s a fun way to stay connected, be entertained, and bond with others. But whatever if Youtube was making money in ways it shouldn’t? Today I’m going to be discussing the controversial censorship issue regarding YouTube. 

As many people know youtube makes a majority of their money through advertisement of youtube videos. There are two different ways to make money on youtube. As a youtuber you can either have videos play before your video (this happens mostly on bigger youtube videos for a larger audience to see them), or youtubers can mention the product the company wants them too in their video. All of this seems very straightforward but in March 2017 the people who work for youtube realized something bad was happening. Youtube was making money off of advertisements before hate and extremist videos. Also videos of refugees and victims of war passing away or undergoing awful circumstances was also posted. Youtube realized the way ads were placed could be placed on any video despite the content. Other companies reacted to this by withdrawing their advertisements from Youtube like BBC, Starbucks, and even Mcdonalds. This caused YouTube to lose a lot of money, worse off the creators who mainly use youtube to make a living lost more. 

Eventually youtube changed their policy about user friendly videos, but with this came other issues. Youtubers who would talk about slightly inappropriate things or topics with a touchy subject matter were getting their videos labeled as non user friendly. The LGBTQ+ community took a hit because even their videos were starting to be labelled as inappropriate. Independent news channels are even avoiding topics that could be considered controversial because they do not want their videos to be deemed not user friendly.  

This is a worthy topic of exploration because in a way people are being silenced. It is entirely by choice how video creators are going to handle this but it is censorship because youtube can label a news or a member of the LGBTQ+ communities videos as non user friendly and then they cannot make money off of their videos which like said above was some people’s primary source of income. This is truly affecting people’s livelihood and it is not fair to creators who are passionate about their videos, especially if the videos are only slightly inappropriate.

Other news companies are upset about this news companies such as Diggit magazine do not think it’s fair that youtube is censoring people. Despite their opinion, The writers at Diggit are confident new and current Youtubers will be able to find a way to deliver quality content within the rules of the new policies

Writers at the New York Times also have had some things to say. In their article, they talk to Joan Donovan, the Director of Technology and Social CHange Research Project at Harvard. She wondering if the ban on youtube will just result in everyone who’s banned going to another platform to convey their ideas. This makes me personally wonder if all of the white supremacist content creators who do post inappropriate things are going to branch out and create their own hate sites.

The writers at Iowa State Daily are looking at this in no way other places have yet to. They look at it as Youtube is deciding the law of what is inappropriate. In other words Youtube is defining the meaning of hate speech by censoring things they think are inappropriate. The writers pose the question what stops them from censoring someone’s opinion that they just disagree with. They also wonder how this censorship will eventually conflict with the first amendment. I tend to agree with this because who at youtube decides the law of what is right or wrong?

Business Insider’s take on it has some information regarding politics. Youtube is not the only company who has been doing this, twitter is also censoring people just for voicing their opinions. Donald Trump tweeted, “Twitter should let the banned Conservative Voices back onto their platform, without restriction. It’s called Freedom of Speech, remember. You are making a Giant Mistake!”. This issue even has the President talking thus making the topic of censorship a main focus.

I think this issue is important. Everyone uses Youtube, especially children. Children on youtube is already a bad idea just because they can search for anything and find whatever they want when their parents aren’t looking. If I had a child I wouldn’t want him to watch tragic war footage, or white supremacy videos. When it comes to groups like the white supremacists youtube should have a right to censor them because they are spewing hate speech. When it comes to the LGBTQ+ community Youtube should just back off. It’s not YouTubes place to discriminate against people who haven’t done anything wrong.

Here is a video regarding this issue!