Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

YouTube blocks Russell Brand from making money through its platform

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 1001 posts

Re: YouTube blocks Russell Brand from making money through its platform

#51

Post by Pet_Ant »

throw310822 wrote: post #41
Pet_Ant wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a matter of guilt, it's a matter of profitability. If there were advertisers beating down their doors now to get their products placed alongside Russel Brand's face they'd leave him monetised. YouTube is truly neutral here, they are just revenue maximizing, don't mistake this for a moral position. If they make a statement later, it'll be for ROI as well.

Can't advertisers just explicitly ask not to have their ads run on RB's contents? Why would YT have to take this decision for them?

Well it's an aggregate. Advertisers don't want to spend money on a platform that allowed Russel Brand to make money. The problem with advertiser's and the public is that platforms are seen as whole. Advertising on the platform is seen as a vague approval of the platform as a whole.

There are plenty of rappers monetizing their videos. King Von was never demonetized despite being known to have killed at least 7 people. That is much worse than what Brand is alleged to have done. So this isn't a moral judgement, this is a business decision.

Re: YouTube blocks Russell Brand from making money through its platform

#52

Post by kylebenzle »

jahsome wrote: post #43
_mxdo wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

YouTube ads are a tiny % of revenue. Celebrities on YT make their money from brand deals, not ads. Remember "Adpocalypse" and the beginning of all this ultra clean PC talk online? Before all that, sure you could make a living from YT ads, but many channels don't even have them on because it's cents. For example I have over 50k views on some videos, but the ad revenue is nothing.

That's not what I asked.

No, but it is kind of a good point because it looks like they turned of youtubes "in-video" ads but he still has clearly marked paid promotions and "built in" ads/promotions he does like a podcast. So both Brand and YouTube are still making almost the same money right now even though they, "aren't monetizing".

Re: YouTube blocks Russell Brand from making money through its platform

#53

Post by [deleted] »

realce wrote: post #26
jahsome wrote: post #23

When a channel is demonetized does that mean YouTube doesn't run ads at all on the channel's content, or do they still run ads and just don't pay out the share to the creator?

They're still hosting the videos, still running ads, but YT keeps all the money. Seems... not right and backwards to me.

[deleted]

Re: YouTube blocks Russell Brand from making money through its platform

#54

Post by woooooo »

nimos wrote: post #30

The Monetization Window is the new Overton Window. I think people underestimate how much Youtube's monetization policy influences what popular creators put in videos. Because it's not just the money - it also effects how videos are promoted by the algorithm.

Matt Taibbi brought up a case of a guy who put up montages of Trump saying the 2020 election was rigged cut up with clips of liberal media figures saying the Russians stole 2016.

Pure trolling, kind of funny, 100% clips of public figures with no commentary. Demonetized.

Re: YouTube blocks Russell Brand from making money through its platform

#55

Post by Fezzik »

ultra_nick wrote: post #15

[flagged]

Innocent until proven guilty is a standard for court proceedings. I am not a court, and I can even disagree with what a court decides. I can use my own judgment to draw conclusions and form opinions. For example, I can be confident that OJ is a murderer even though be was not convicted and was declared not guilty.

Re: YouTube blocks Russell Brand from making money through its platform

#56

Post by bennyschmidt »

kylebenzle wrote: post #52
jahsome wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not what I asked.

No, but it is kind of a good point because it looks like they turned of youtubes "in-video" ads but he still has clearly marked paid promotions and "built in" ads/promotions he does like a podcast. So both Brand and YouTube are still making almost the same money right now even though they, "aren't monetizing".

[flagged]

Re: YouTube blocks Russell Brand from making money through its platform

#57

Post by sbuttgereit »

realce wrote: post #26
jahsome wrote: post #23

When a channel is demonetized does that mean YouTube doesn't run ads at all on the channel's content, or do they still run ads and just don't pay out the share to the creator?

They're still hosting the videos, still running ads, but YT keeps all the money. Seems... not right and backwards to me.

Agree. One can only interpret this as ham-fisted virtue signaling by YouTube management and perhaps with staff support.

If they are continuing to host and serve the Brand videos, they are defacto saying, "content by this person doesn't hurt our platform in a material way, but we've decided this person is bad and we want to show ourselves punishing him." And the best part is they are tangibly rewarded in this by not having to pay the creator's share of the revenue. No matter what Brand may or may not be guilty of... continuing to stream his content without paying for it is despicable and immoral.

Properly thought about, moral judgement of what YouTube is doing is completely independent of anything Brand had done.

Re: YouTube blocks Russell Brand from making money through its platform

#58

Post by jahsome »

bennyschmidt wrote: post #56
kylebenzle wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, but it is kind of a good point because it looks like they turned of youtubes "in-video" ads but he still has clearly marked paid promotions and "built in" ads/promotions he does like a podcast. So both Brand and YouTube are still making almost the same money right now even though they, "aren't monetizing".

[flagged]

No I didn't. And complaining about votes is against hn guidelines.

Re: YouTube blocks Russell Brand from making money through its platform

#59

Post by coldpie »

cameldrv wrote: post #47
gdulli wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So, this is literally, "an allegation is enough" scenario. If you're a private entity without the investigative powers of law enforcement, then public knowledge and your best judgement better be enough, because they're all you have. > Whatever happened to "innocent until proven guilty" ? That's a standard of the legal system. Private parties have lesser powers of punishment and investigation, so correspondingly a l…

Of course the issue is that Google is not just a “private party” like you or I. It is a 190,000 person organization worth almost 2 trillion dollars. They have a huge market share for monetized video hosting. If there were 100 nearly equally sized video platforms your argument would me much more persuasive, but at YouTube’s size, to me, they have an obligation to treat video creators with a greater degree of fairness…

> they have an obligation to treat video creators with a greater degree of fairness and formal process

There isn't really a way to enforce this that doesn't violate a private company's rights. Protected classes are the closest thing, but I think you'll have a tough time getting "person accused of being a jerk" to be declared a protected class.

> perhaps they are simply too big and should be broken up

This, however, there's tons of precedent for. It's the right solution, and we should absolutely be breaking all of the big tech companies up. The current FTC & DOJ are heading in that direction[1,2]. If you like that direction, it's something to consider when you're filling out the ballot each November.

[1] The first stab from the FTC is at Amazon: "if the FTC succeeds in court, it could result in a forced breakup or restructuring of Amazon" https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/08/amazons-final-ta...

[2] And DOJ is taking a stab at Google: "[The DOJ] might even become emboldened to break up some of the biggest tech companies" https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/09/heres-exactly-wh...

Post reply on HN