The adpocalypse was really just a blip, youtube managed to address the problem very quickly with their "algorithms". But there is considerable colateral damage done by those algorithms.
Inappropriate content flag is heavily weighted by viewer generated 'flags'. Show a Canadian donut chain's response to a protest poop. You'll see how easily a co-ordinated group can have videos removed.
CZcams is improving on the weight they give to certain flaggers- If I flag too many videos, my flags become close to meaningless, If I only flag one of your videos, it is much more meaningful. Im sure you know that when you have 1M subs, you tend to override algorithms more than the typical. You have become the algorithm
i didnt even scroll down to the comments but i immediately thought about yours or cody's channel as for beeing either scientific or lets say adult speech humor - but in general nothing wrong with that. lets fuck the google bots by opening LGBT videos and alex jones reuploads in the same browser window :^
Last year I've got demonetised on a video right after 1-2h after publishing. My suspicition is that I've used the words "joint" and "joinery" in tags and also description😀 How the hell to define otherwise a mortice and tenon? 😀😀
We have a channel that just features what happens on our little farm in Ireland - and we got 7 videos demonetised. Nothing to do with politics or drag-racing or anything. Just ordinary stuff like sheep mating (because that's what happens here sometimes, no big deal). And they were hardly graphic and certainly not pornographic - it's a child-friendly channel, after all. They were just a very small part of what goes on here. The sad part is that the knock-on effect was that the views across ALL our other 350 videos was severely cut back - for which we are really angry with CZcams, of course. Basically they stopped suggesting ALL our videos because their uptight puritanical algorythm didn't like 7 of them. And the other sad result is that we dare not put up any more of that sort of video again. So our channel is poorer for it, and of course we are too.
did the demonetising start with the chicken slauter video? I've seen it and even this video was children friendly. But you earned a lot of thumbs down for it as far as I remember. And your whole channel was offline for a while 😢 I hope, that did not happen again. Cheers, Florian
Love your channel. But views going down has other reasons too. It used to be that at least every tenth video I made would continue to get lots of views over time, but that stopped more than a year ago.
Před 5 lety+10
I made a video about a magic wand, like in the Harry Potter movie, the video was demonetized by YT. I had no idea why until I googled "magic wand", it was clear to me. .
If you can change the title, try Hogwarts wand, or use the name of the store where Harry Potter purchased his wand. But yeah, those that do iniquity always come up with ways to corrupt the language.
There's no place like home and for me that happens to be Southern California. You're being quite generous with your assessment of some people being 'less educated'....what that really is, is a state of mind that refuses to grow and enrich itself because it is weak and knows it. It is stupendously lazy dead weight on society living an illogical, day to day fantasy. And for the sake of balance, nobody's perfect, but I also agree your view is correct insofar as YT is not a U.S. Govt media outlet and therefore any claim of censorship is void due to 1st Amendment protections. You want your own outlet different from the philosophy of YT's admins, make your own outlet.
@@Dutch1954 build a wall and leave califonria out! Give it back to the mexicans so all california will look like san francisco. Enjoy your dirty needles and your street defecation
Even my sister-in-law, a lifetime liberal Democrat, who has been living in Santa Barbara for the past ten years, has finally come around and acknowledged that California is being destroyed by the Democrats running it. It's ashame that such a beautiful place is rotting from the inside out as prosperity escapes to more sensible States while the open border mentality lets poverty flow in.
I'm pretty sure Google has more tools to analyze videos than just audience profiling, for example running speech recognition on the audio and deep learning computer vision to recognize certain "naughty" objects (weapons, body parts, etc).
I believe your views would go up again if you were to come out with projects similar to pantarouter and your other DYI machine tool builds. Unique content pays off, seems to me. That's how I got here, at least. Once your tendinitis subsides, that is.
The other part of it is that the main stream media news outlets are competing with CZcams for advertising money. So them getting to report negatively on other avenues where companies could spend their advertising money is money in their own pocket. So you really had people actively looking for something on CZcams with an ad on it that somebody would get upset about, and they only have to find one out of millions upon millions. CZcams really put themselves in a no win situation there, but people have a limited attention span for being outraged about things. I imagine it will come back around again in the future though.
I believe the WSJ that started the apocalypse have lost out on quite a bit of revenue, I belive the ads on their website are provided by Google, I forgot the name...
I would be interested in your views on AI in general, and the detrimental/positive effects "helpful" algorithms have. Where can we seek justice when AI is unfair?
My advertising went to almost zero. Every video being demonetized automatically. I could appeal but by the time that was done and they reinstated the videos the views had already dropped, so it didn't help much to appeal but I kept doing it in hopes of fixing the algorithm. It seems that about a month ago they fixed their algorithm and none of my videos are being demonetized now.
Subbed and will check out your videos as I'm looking for a cheap and easy to use knife sharpening system ( so others can use it too and not just me ) but not for fancy knifes but just a general usage for household knifes !
a few things: * i'm glad it didn't hurt you * i found you during the mouse spike, and have been a subscriber ever since. * it isn't JUST "obvious" things like medieval weapons type videos that are getting demonitized unfairly. it's also factual videos that are perceived to be threatening. for instance "china uncensored" reveals human rights abuses in china, and it is regularly demonitized in the critical few days when all the views happen. they also have changed it so if you start or finish typing the name of the channel, or any of the videos, it will not help you find it by suggesting the right channel or video, making it harder for them to find.
I've been watching your videos for years, started by reading articles on your website, I've gained lots of insights from them, thank you. I think there's a correlation between the time, effort and enthusiasm you put into projects and your changes in personal circumstances (leaving bachelorhood, becoming a father, moving, and perhaps other family matters that may or may not be relevant). That's in no way a criticism, people's priorities change as a result of adapting to their changes in responsibility, or something like that. It seems like at some point things gradually changed and your motivation for making videos was less born out of an enthusiasm to experiment and create projects, and perhaps more because videos make money, and we need money to live (although you could have gone all "self sufficient" on the land I suppose, that's still a growing genre I believe)? In any case, it comes across that the videos were becoming more chore than fun, and if you're not excited about them, it's hard for your audience to be, particularly new members of that audience. I guess what I'm trying to say is: You used to have so much enthusiasm for what you did that you made three fricken bandsaws along with oodles of videos to go with them! If you ever regain that enthusiasm then please don't hesitate to make more videos, people will watch them!
Thank you Matthias for this interesting analysis. I am happy that, despite the lull in views, you are increasing your revenue, as indicated by the trend lines. You are obviously doing what it takes to make Utube repay the effort you put in. Such an analytical approach may help you to efficiently use your time to optimise the return on your efforts. I like your thinking, including your physical testing of joints by developing simple but effective experimental techniques. Fracture mechanics and mechanical testing (in metals) has been a part of my life, hence my interest in your analytical and mechanical testing methodology. Good work.
the answer is more channels, each channel has specific opinions on whatever subject is in the video. It's up to channel users' discretion what they tell and put on each channel.
I have one video demonetized. It was a pretty dry tutorial about how to take certain measurements in the woods for forestry. Not really a big deal, but I am curious as to what caused it.
That's an easy one. If you're teaching people how to properly analyze the environment, they will come to the conclusion that global warming is a farce. Or worse yet,discover that some rich leftist businesses have dumped toxic waste in the environment. They can't have that no can they?
PS: Don't you just hate it when your gut instinct says that this is completely ridiculous, yet your brain says: but highly probable because of the way the left is acting?
If you chose and unlucky thumbnail the algorithm might see a gun, penis or boobs in there and bam there is your demonetization. Or maybe you used a bad combination of keywords or it was just an error. For the first 6 months i had the impression that the algorithm just flags stuff to see what happens... No need for any political reasons ;)
Algorithms training algorithms. Look into the genesis of machine learning when it met big-data, you'll see many cases of algorithms attempting to parse a data-set, and doing so very accurately, but referring to criteria that no human has ever been able to make sense of. For instance medical pictures of cancerous cells. Train an algorithm by showing it pictures of cancerous cells, then have it look at pictures of cells that may or may not be cancerous. People have done this and had great success diagnosing cancer that way (of course confirmed with traditional testing) However, when the machine learning engineers attempted to learn how the algorithms are deducing, accurately, that cancer is present in particular photos, they found that those algorithms were often referencing what human observers would call irrelevant details about the photos. Looking at the noise and making conclusions about the signal, in other words. All across the board people have been attempting you ascertain a rule-set to understand what arcane logic these algorithm-trained algorithms are tapping into to in order to make accurate analyses of data-sets, and afaik they haven't really figured it out. If you'll excuse a bit of exaggeration, something as simple as "is this photo a car" could be determined by looking at an ostensibly irrelevant pixel-group that isn't even a part of the car image.
Tldr: algorithms can find inappropriate content with great (tho imperfect) accuracy, without even looking for the inappropriate content itself. More likely, they are looking at a single graphic representation of an entire video (which is how they find intellectual property infractions) and over time determining the likeliest shapes that will include inappropriate content. Look up ted talks about cyber warfare, there's one by the guy who developed the technology of compressing digital data into single images for parsing
I really enjoy this kind of content. Math, logic, ethical dilemmas... unfortunately I do understand that this type of content doesn't drive views. This phenomenon too often results in the dumbing down of youtube.
I hope I this isn't an inappropriate question but in the past I have watched the advertisements that come before the videos I want to watch, and plan to continue doing so. I was wondering how much of the advertisement a person has to watch for the CZcams publisher to get the maximum revenue. The reason I ask is that I have seen some ads that are over two minutes and I really object to watching an ad that is that long. Thanks for all of the great content you have shared with us.
I don't know how much your have to watch. But it's not worth your time to watch ads for people you like about. Your time is worth more than maybe one cent per minute.
If CZcams was effectively identifying a certain audience, wouldn't it make sense to market to advertisers that serve that audience? In drag racing for instance, why not sell ads to auto parts stores, etc.?
You are missing ideology in your equation. CZcams is not neutral and doesnt care only about profits. Its been shown sevrral times with ceo's openly bshing nonleftists politicians and such
You're both missing my point. I think CZcams is not relying on demographics as suggested by MW. I'm not looking for a political debate. I'm just saying I don't think CZcams had created an advertising unicorn.
Hi Matt, your channel rose to fame due to the fantastic homemade workshop machines and your engineering skills. You have not posted any of that kind of content for a long time now due to illness and that is what is affecting your views. The same for John when he posts videos just ranting that is not what we as viewers want to see. Content is king my friend. Drag racing will get flagged because of the word "drag" as in drag queen. My cupboard video was flagged because I used the word "knob" for the door handle. The words you use in the description can have double meanings. Hope you feel better soon so you can get back to your brillaint build videos
I've only had one video demonetized (it's since been fixed), but that was the life sized carving of my own naked leg. Probably a good move on CZcams's part 😀
I am more concerned with the adds that play and interrupt the videos that I choose to watch. CZcams knows enough about each viewer to ensure the relevance of the adds they make us see. I don’t mind getting one or two adds in a 20 to 30 minute video. I understand that is the way to ensure the survival of CZcams and the content producer. But adds should have a minimum of relevance to the viewer and not so frequent as to disrupt the entire viewer experience. For example, I am a 72 year old, Venezuelan, with an MBA degree. My main interests are woodworking and other DIY topics and classical music. I also enjoy the CZcams Chanels of some TV talk shows and News programs (The Late Night Show, 60 Minutes, and others) I am sure that CZcams (Google) can find more than enough adds that fit my interests better than Indian Pop Music and Video Games. If they do that , not only will they enhance my experience as a CZcams watcher, they will better serve the interests of their add paying clients and everybody will be better off .
You're definitely wrong about the algorithm (tm) hitting only right wing content as collateral damage. The adpocolypse also hit LGBT channels extremely hard, as well as sexual health and education channels, although admittedly the latter would be more understandably confused. For context, I posted a video with the letters g, a and y, in the title *as part of an entirely different word* and the video was demonetized before I could even publish it. Remove that from the title, re-upload, no issue. Several lesbian youtubers I follow have pretty much written off ad revenue as a form of income because it's more likely they'll get demonetized than not, and on videos that don't get demonetized, the videos are being targeted with christian and anti-gay advertisements. Unskippable ads that tell you you're a devil worshiper for not being straight. It's not even an advertisement, it's just downright abuse in video form that they've targeted towards LGBT youtubers, and youtube doesn't seem to have an issue with it.
Interesting topic Matthias. Of course I have never considered this while watching your main channel. I just enjoy woodworking which you are a master at. I do realize there are health issues going on at this time.
Companies also tend to spend a lot more money on ads at the end of each quarter and the Ad money goes WAY up in november and december cause of the holidays. Take a look at your revenue in Jan 2019... it will decrease significantly.
interesting... if speculation about algorithms is true, I can see type-casting consumers is possible then the real problem evidently would be type-casting videos and matching consumers to content and hence the drag racing problem. The end result over time would seem to be lots of videos with similar content competiting for views and a stifuling of innovation
2:27 ad revenue is based more on the actual content. My numbers are not as big, but "tools" do more than double than "toys". Also, watch time with multiple ads per video are not discussed. Id like to see ad time vs view time vss revenue. I've found that revenue per hour viewed(same genre videos) has gone down for myself everyone Ive talked to.
Dear Matthias, I love all your videos :-) I know it's offtopic but I have one little improvment proposal: Could you look in the lens instead of the camera display? It looks a bit as if you squint :-). Lieben Gruß aus Deutschland, Florian 😍
Squinting can and is often caused by a sensitivity to bright light. I have this problem and at times will wear sun glasses when it's cloudy because those bright white clouds are not much different than a bright blue sky to my eyes.
Hi Scott, oh - I didn't know that. I think, I misspelled it. It's just a bit irritating that he do not look in the eyes of the spectators (in the lens of the camera) but in the cameras monitor which is a bit obove the lens. Cheers, Florian
That's is a really interesting point of view! I believe the overall problem is that people are really complicated machines. The algorithm can never be so sophisticated to actually understand people and interpret their behavior! Even the most brilliant humans can't do that!
I think it’s hard to say, or put a finger on. Could be politics, could be advertisers. From a business perspective, I could see how a lot of advertisers would only want their ads on family friendly content, but really who decides what is family friendly? What’s family friendly to some, may not be for others. I know they cut people back too. My channel used to have monetization enabled, but about a year ago I noticed it was disabled. Can’t get it back until I reach 1k subs, which is fine. Until then I’ll just keep putting in the work, I enjoy making my videos and don’t put a lot of thought into things like algorithms and trends. It may be naive, but I just rely on viewers to decide if they wanna watch my videos or not.
Agreed. The thought-police that is Google is basically the business version of everything I am against, and I currently make my living online. Hence a forthcoming plan to divert my sources of income elsewhere, before they shut down my ability to earn.
sorry about us Californians, I remember when it used to be cool to be from California. Im afraid to even say Screw "Gun" on my channel now haha...Screwing device?
If that views vs revenue trend continues, you'll eventually be making infinite money for zero views, which would be great. On a more serious note, I notice you'll occasionally leave in a "shit" in a video - does one mild swear affect age ratings and flags, or is that all fine according to youtube?
I'm sure audience profiling isn't *all* there is to the algorithm. I have a low views (350-ish) video about making a circuit to control Christmas lights that was flagged as "not appropriate for most advertisers". No swearing, no explosions, nothing political... No idea what the algorithm objected to. Fortunately, (I guess) it's such a low views video that the lack of monetization really doesn't matter.
I have other videos with the words "Christmas lights" in the title that aren't demonetized. 'sides, pretty much nobody "hates" Christmas (outside of strawman arguments).
I believe they might be using sentiment analysis to try to deduce the underlying concept behind the video using words from the transcript. They could also generate another transcript by using image recognition and analyze that as well, but I think that'd be very expensive energy wise, so they are only using the subtitles, the titles and possibly the comments. After the russian attack on the site I'd bet flagging has little effect now, until it's massive in number and origin. But it's just a guess. Also, don't be cheap. The collateral damage isn't (just) because of liberal agenda, it's because of the nastiness emanating from the far-right that has sht-stained all the conservative side of the spectrum with their murderous hatred.
I'm not really sure what your point of the video was. Your views went up around the time of Adpocalypse but it could be completely unrelated. I can name dozens of channels that were drastically affected negatively by it. You didn't really provide WHY you think adpocalpyse was a good thing and in a somewhat condescending way acted like people are uninformed when they believe it to be a bad thing. Videos being named advertiser friendly or not did not exist in the way we see it today before adpocalypse.
Being unserious, the shadow of the "camera" looks like a half mecha-robot with a gripper-hand, lol :) I coundn't help myself mentioning about it, sorry :D
Censorship wont affect you if you talk about how the sky is blue. It is about controversial topics that free speech really is needed with. But hey, as long as you ate making a buck, who cares about freedom and justice, right? A merchant will always be a merchant...
Don, I think you're a bit confused. CZcams is a private company, owned by Google, you can talk about freedom of speech and justice all you want, but it's not considered as a public space, and hence freedom of speech does not apply. It's therefore not censorship either. Private companies can dictate how you carry yourself, and how they manage your presence on their site, pretty much any way they want as long as they adhere to existing laws, like discrimination and so forth. Just as McDonald's can dictate whether they serve you or not depending on what you do in their restaurant, so can CZcams. If you agree to their EULA then you know what you get yourself into, or at the very least you should.
p penca nope, sorry, CZcams is neither a monopoly (as long as other big videos sites like Vimeo, Daily Motion et al exist) nor is freedom of speech applicable in private spaces like a website like CZcams. There is an excellent article at Lifehacker called “What Exactly Is Freedom of Speech and How Does It Apply to the Internet?” which I would recommend you to read if you are curious how freedom of speech applies online. Freedom of speech prevents the government from squashing what you say in a public space, not private entities in private spaces.
Your fortunate, causalities include news channels include a syndicated radio host. Thankfully, patreon and memberships have helped some survive. And apparently, a video showing "naked electrons" solvated in liquid ammonia is too sexy for YT.
Sorry Matthias. I'm most certainly one of those "undesirables" in your imagined algorithm. If CZcams is doing that, and you get demonetized, I'm the reason.
One should not count on yt-ad-money at all. Because when you do, you will always be on the mercy of yt Algorithms you have no insight of (other than guessing, as Matthias did) and certainly no way to change it. One time it might go well for you (as for Matthias), another time they might change something and suddenly you are fucked. I think seeing YT as a plattform that provides free webspace AND (relatively) easy access to the largest potential audience group is all one can count on for now. For money one should look at different sources of income (or at least: additional ones).
I think the TV stations are feeling the hurt of loss of revenue ,when big money starts to lose the 1 or 2 cents of profitability,well they start the whining ,then start paying the politicians who intern start to implement the changes they want
so, one thing you did not consider is that ad revenue increases slowly until Christmas when it drops. most channels should see a similar curve regardless of the adpocalypse
Interesting. I am have a hard time getting mind around advertisers caring about what content their ads appear on. The more views a video gets the more an ad will be seen. Only the people interested in inappropriate content are watch it so, why would the ad company care - they are in the business of making money. Very confusing.
On the other hand a killing, real or staged, or pornography has no place on CZcams and should be blocked. Not try to be argumentative, just expressing my frustration with how the world works. In the US advertisers certainly have no compunctions about making money on politically charged news shows or late night talk shows where half the population might be offended by the content.
A simple filter using terms that Google already had in place from "safe search" plus a few more likely could be doing similar things, or maybe is included along with the audience profiling.
I'm guessing that the adpocalypse had much more to do with ROI for the advertiser going down per view than any political bias. Google is headquartered in California sure but they're a publicly traded business and have to make as much money as possible first and foremost.
These tech companies cannot have their cake and eat it. Either they are a publisher or they are a utility. To date they have been claiming to be a utility but at the same time have been deciding what content to publish. There at some point will be a legal case on this.
@@Czeckie If they are a utility that means they cannot pick content because that would imply that they have an editorial. So that means they cannot for example ban channels based on content they have to have a neutral stance. If they are a utility that means they cannot be held responsible for content but if they are an editorial that means everything that is put up is their responsibility as they are publishing.
These massive tech corporations have a massive problem coming over the horizon that I do not think they see coming. At the moment these tech corporations are classified as a utility which means it saves them from being liable for the content. So if some conspiracy theorists makes false claims that are known to be a lie they will not be held responsible when classified as a utility just like a phone company. There problem is that they are not acting as a utility because they picking content. Deciding who gets to publish on their platform. Coming in the not to distant future we are going to see cases that will work their way up to the supreme court.
If it's "anything goes", then spam rules. Look at email. Without a company like google filtering out the spam, it becomes unusable because of all the garbage.
I would say whether or not add pocalypse helps or hurts a CZcams channel depends on the content of that CZcams channel your content is completely advertiser-friendly no controversial subject matter no objectionable language no reason to pull advertising dollars away from you there are other channels that are not so lucky
may not have hurt you. Took my pages down! And mine wasn't inappropriate content. Kaleidoscope, calligraphy, and flying model rocket kits! how to's and DIY!!!! All helpful videos!
I saw a dip in the adds the but now I actually make more then before. Maybe I get the money that the people with unapropriate videos got. I'm a small channel so I don't get a lot. Have a great weekend, Andreas 🇸🇪
I've seen creators get content flagged, and demonetized, that make absolutely no sense. Oneloneylfarmer, for example. Posts videos about every day stuff that happens in his farming life. Equipment repairs, how weather impacts his hay production, plans for around the farm, etc. Constantly having videos flagged and demonetized. Mrhevyshevy. is another example. Makes videos about working in the garage, with his wife and two youngest children. Has had videos flagged and demonetized. A huge number of the videos, that get hit, are getting hit without cause. It's a poorly designed, badly broken, system.
I find it frustrating that your highest reward came from a mouse in a maze video. I have nothing against the video, but you have done (in my humble and obviously not truely mass market opinion) so much other brilliant stuff.
Yes, I'd rather make more on my other videos. But... having a popular mouse video that does well doesn't take away from my other videos, so I'll take what I can get.
I would say it is rather hard to square the circle in the case of creating a perfect way to weed out bad videos to good videos. Who knows, collateral damage happens to every leaning, I would argue that the collateral damage is on a sector of thinking then political followings.
I know you're not wild about viewer ideas or suggestions, but I'm going to try one more time. You're a great teacher. Considering your current physical limitations, how about making a series of videos about raspberry pi projects. But if you decide to do so, could you PLEASE start from zero? I know the name and the gist, that's it. I was told look on CZcams. Well, most of the folks who've put up videos about raspberry pi are either horrible presenters, or they start by assuming I know the difference between a Raspberry Pi2 and a Pi3. How about starting by assuming I don't the difference between a Raspberry Pi and a waffle iron...
It was used mostly against conservatives who were not airing inappropriate material. There was many channels that did not use bad language, threats or tell lies but were affected by it.
Very interesting. It's a bit hard to see from your data, but I was expecting to see a small spike in ad revenue after Feb. 20th 2018, the day CZcams removed all channels with less than 1K subs and 4000 hours in the past 12 months.
those very tiny channels together made for a very tiny fraction of views, so it would be all lost in the noise. 1k subs is very small in the grand scheme of things.
@@HeiszWandelproject I loved how they said almost none those channels had made any money or had any views, but I was making enough to pay for my coffee habit and had nearly 2 million views. I probably still meet then 4k hour threshhold, but I don't do well with subs. I know that's nothing in the grand scheme of things, but it did suck for some of us.
Why should an advertiser care about inappropriate content. They're happy with their adverts being shown on news channels that show graphic content. They're happy with their adverts being show on film channels that show horror and violent movies. To an advertiser anyone viewing their advert is good. And many companies who advertise want everyone to buy their product, be that person on the far left or far right or totally sane or loopy or clever or dumb. Like toilet paper manufacturers. Are they going to only sell to one particular group of people? Maybe they might for market differentiation reasons, but that's on a price point, not on a brand recognition point which is what advertising is.
The whole thing was BS. Network television has no lack of ads yet the content is certainly as bad (sex, violence, guns, stereotyping, etc...) as CZcams.
The only issue is what is "appropriate". There are so many possible angles (age, gender, country of origin, religious leaning etc). What I do find really interesting is even when a video maker puts a warning, either written or verbal, on a video explaining that there may be content that people may not like, there are still those that feel the need to watch and then complain. Or even worse, not watch and complain. Example - there is a channel which is basically about mouse/rat/mole traps. Vintage/modern/home made/3D printed etc etc. Odds are if you are going to watch a channel about rodent traps and how effective they are you are going to see some mice whacked. But you guessed it, the moment where the mouse/rat/mole is whacked is now removed from the videos as well as dead rodents blurred out to keep the whingers happy. And if I remember correctly there was even comments about cruelty (far from it) on Matthias channel when he did the video on the mice maze. I get it, it takes all kinds of people. But if you don't want to see something then don't watch a channel dedicated to "that thing". At the end of the day your pissing and moaning about "it" is not going to change people!
I’m glad you’re getting more $$/view, but choosing “advertiser friendly” by the audience is just a bad idea - and the textbook definition of discrimination. What makes something wrong is the content, not the viewers.
This holds true only if your assumption is correct. Have 'conservative' channels actually tested this, by uploading apolitical content? Otherwise I'd presume all Of their videos would get demonetized
I'm more offended by the ads that play on my toddlers videos, which I can't seem to avoid, than some people making money on videos that I can choose whether or not to watch. There are spring break type raunchy commercials, horror movie previews, and kids playing with toy poop being shown sometimes every couple minutes... I used to flag the ads, but now I don't have that option it seems... I think that youtube makers should have some say in what they are being sponsored by... but greed runs deep in so many ways... My tv has been gone for years, I guess YT might be next to go.
jim 187187 Seriously consider youtube premium (formerly youtube red). They have a family discount that is pretty cheap and your kids can use it on their own accounts. You will probably not be able to stop your kids from watching youtube but you can at least stop the ads ;)
Most of the time it's machines that decide which is what, and humans only become involved once the creator of the video tries to refute the demonetisation. The issue with this however is, that these humans themselves aren't given guidelines to decide whether or not to let the video regain its ability to make money. An example of this is with the CZcams Rusty Cage, who had made a shock humour video with friends. This video was uploaded to both his own account and one of his friends', and in the end, only one of those videos was allowed to be monetised while the other was completely denied. This was caused because the operators who were contacted to review each video, were different people with very different mindsets on what is appropriate and what isn't. I don't fully recall all the details so my information may require corrections. If you wish to look into this issue yourself, this link will lead to the Rusty Cage's experience with the event [czcams.com/video/fU8IfoyygVI/video.html] Rusty Cage isn't one of the most respectable people, and his videos reflect that, so if you are not a fan of overly edgy jokes and the like, I wouldn't recommend watching it.
Peasie The SPLC and ADL are businesses and entrepreneurs? Those are the groups that pay everyone's bills here. They are the ones that triggered the adpocolyple. Seems like that pro-capitalism, anti-regulation, low-tax, small government would be something they'd heavily support. I wonder what kind of content would scare away organizations trying to attract as many customers as they can.
CZcams has billions in content viewers and creators. They can shed millions of viewers and still make an obscene amount of money. They arent in the business of spreading ideas. They're in for the money.
*"certain types of people like this inappropriate content."* I've got some bad news for you, I'm probably one of these "types of people" and I'm also watching YOUR content.
@ bexpi Your statement is both illogical and uninformed. The inappropriate content that is mostly demonetized are conservative Christian content. At least that's what I've been hearing. Hmm, maybe I should test that claim and enable ads on my channel when I start uploading bible tutorial videos? If that content is being intentionally demonetized, it would be obvious and evident once I reach the monetization threshold.
bexpi: How do you know that folks like Peasie are in a minority? I watch many channels that also could be categorized as collateral damaged by the adpocalypse, channels that despite the fact, produce intelligent and well produced content that is targeted because who knows why.
His quote wasn't his own view it was him describing theoretically how the algorithm that brands a video as inappropriate works. Prager U is in a lawsuit with Google about this very issue.
@Scott tovey His statement is logical, and you are also uninformed, since no one (other than CZcams) actually holds the data to accurately assess exactly what type of content is being demonetized. His logic is flawless by the way. Matthias states that if a number high enough of a "certain type" of viewer watches your content you are more likely to get flagged. Peasie is "that type of viewer", but his impact is insufficient to have an effect and that is a fact because Mathias states such is the case, and he holds the google analytics data to back it up.
The funny part about all this is lately with the election coming up I’ve been getting a ton of ads about a local politician who was “caught in a strip club during a drug bust” which is more sensitive of a subject than any of the videos I’m actually watching.
I think the decisions about what gets flagged as inappropriate are much more automated than you seem to imply. CZcams probably uses a neural net trained on a set of videos that have been manually flagged in the past. So any biases likely reflect biases in the sample rather then conscious choices to censor particular content.
Yeah. If the AI was trained by videos that were previously flagged by youtube staffers, then it would likely learn the same bias that Mathias alludes to. Note that the AI would probably have access to the list of people who have viewed the video. So it is entirely possible that the AI would consider that information (as Mathias suggests) even if it is not the only information.
McKenzie Keith I wonder what dataset they use. It may be videos flagged by staff, but it could very well be any videos flagged by a significant number of viewers, in which case any bias would not necessarily be CZcams’s own culture but more the general public’s. If that’s the case, videos that offend people on either end of the political spectrum would probably be more likely to be flagged. But it is also possible that people who identify with certain political views are also statistically more likely to report videos as offensive, in which case the videos they disagree with would be more likely to be demonetized than their own. This is speculation. It would be interesting to see statistical studies that look at the relationship between videos political leaning and demonetization/banning.
Yeah. What I was thinking is that they would use videos which had not only been flagged by viewers, but had then been reviewed by youtube also. But it would be very interesting to know how it really was done. Not that I think they will ever voluntarily reveal that information. But it could be leaked or they could be forced to disclose it by a court order.
Here's an obvious problem with this sort of theorizing: just about everything we've heard about "the adpocalypse" has been anecdotal and therefore will suffer mightily from self-selection bias. Treating complaints as data is unscientific. It's bad engineering. Maybe some demographics just complain louder than others. In fact I hardly think anyone would disagree, even if we can't agree on who the loudest complainers are. With actual no-kidding Fascists running for office all over the Americas, I think it's a strange time to decide to feed the flames of the phony-baloney "conservatives are persecuted" narrative. I think it's a strange place to inject a bunch of half-baked political analysis and culture war nonsense into a debate that really doesn't need it.
Inappropriate content flag is heavily weighted by viewer generated 'flags'. Show a Canadian donut chain's response to a protest poop. You'll see how easily a co-ordinated group can have videos removed.
Because the adpocalypse was the cock-ford ollie to increase his revenue of course sees it as a good thing.
CZcams is improving on the weight they give to certain flaggers- If I flag too many videos, my flags become close to meaningless, If I only flag one of your videos, it is much more meaningful. Im sure you know that when you have 1M subs, you tend to override algorithms more than the typical. You have become the algorithm
AvE Was that the video that you uploaded recently that disappeared before I had a chance to see it?
@@markschwarz2137 he definitely threw a copy of that up- I previously thought he took it down
i didnt even scroll down to the comments but i immediately thought about yours or cody's channel as for beeing either scientific or lets say adult speech humor - but in general nothing wrong with that.
lets fuck the google bots by opening LGBT videos and alex jones reuploads in the same browser window :^
Last year I've got demonetised on a video right after 1-2h after publishing. My suspicition is that I've used the words "joint" and "joinery" in tags and also description😀 How the hell to define otherwise a mortice and tenon? 😀😀
i got a video demonetized cause i wrote "brutal style" on the title (it was a knifemaking video). i changed in "rough style" and it was remonetized...
We have a channel that just features what happens on our little farm in Ireland - and we got 7 videos demonetised. Nothing to do with politics or drag-racing or anything. Just ordinary stuff like sheep mating (because that's what happens here sometimes, no big deal). And they were hardly graphic and certainly not pornographic - it's a child-friendly channel, after all. They were just a very small part of what goes on here.
The sad part is that the knock-on effect was that the views across ALL our other 350 videos was severely cut back - for which we are really angry with CZcams, of course. Basically they stopped suggesting ALL our videos because their uptight puritanical algorythm didn't like 7 of them.
And the other sad result is that we dare not put up any more of that sort of video again. So our channel is poorer for it, and of course we are too.
Way Out West Blow-in blog you have a fantastic channel...I really like your style and content...be encouraged!
did the demonetising start with the chicken slauter video? I've seen it and even this video was children friendly. But you earned a lot of thumbs down for it as far as I remember. And your whole channel was offline for a while 😢 I hope, that did not happen again. Cheers, Florian
Ha! Thank you. We are : - )
I think it was Ernie the boar - a lovely pig!
Love your channel. But views going down has other reasons too. It used to be that at least every tenth video I made would continue to get lots of views over time, but that stopped more than a year ago.
I made a video about a magic wand, like in the Harry Potter movie, the video was demonetized by YT. I had no idea why until I googled "magic wand", it was clear to me. .
You just made me google "magic wand"... :-)
If you can change the title, try Hogwarts wand, or use the name of the store where Harry Potter purchased his wand. But yeah, those that do iniquity always come up with ways to corrupt the language.
A Strike? or demonetized? Big difference.
You are right, sorry it was demonetized and not a strike, I will correct it.
Well, you could ask Hitachi to compensate you for it - after all, it was advertisement for their product :-)
As a Californian. I find your view on the majority of my state in line with my observations.
Ya that what I see I may not like it but there is not much I can do about it
But it's still an awesome place to live! 😊
There's no place like home and for me that happens to be Southern California. You're being quite generous with your assessment of some people being 'less educated'....what that really is, is a state of mind that refuses to grow and enrich itself because it is weak and knows it. It is stupendously lazy dead weight on society living an illogical, day to day fantasy. And for the sake of balance, nobody's perfect, but I also agree your view is correct insofar as YT is not a U.S. Govt media outlet and therefore any claim of censorship is void due to 1st Amendment protections. You want your own outlet different from the philosophy of YT's admins, make your own outlet.
@@Dutch1954 build a wall and leave califonria out!
Give it back to the mexicans so all california will look like san francisco.
Enjoy your dirty needles and your street defecation
Even my sister-in-law, a lifetime liberal Democrat, who has been living in Santa Barbara for the past ten years, has finally come around and acknowledged that California is being destroyed by the Democrats running it. It's ashame that such a beautiful place is rotting from the inside out as prosperity escapes to more sensible States while the open border mentality lets poverty flow in.
I'm pretty sure Google has more tools to analyze videos than just audience profiling, for example running speech recognition on the audio and deep learning computer vision to recognize certain "naughty" objects (weapons, body parts, etc).
I believe your views would go up again if you were to come out with projects similar to pantarouter and your other DYI machine tool builds.
Unique content pays off, seems to me. That's how I got here, at least.
Once your tendinitis subsides, that is.
The Evil Prophet no one knows better than Mathias he charts everything. Engineer you know
The other part of it is that the main stream media news outlets are competing with CZcams for advertising money. So them getting to report negatively on other avenues where companies could spend their advertising money is money in their own pocket. So you really had people actively looking for something on CZcams with an ad on it that somebody would get upset about, and they only have to find one out of millions upon millions. CZcams really put themselves in a no win situation there, but people have a limited attention span for being outraged about things. I imagine it will come back around again in the future though.
I believe the WSJ that started the apocalypse have lost out on quite a bit of revenue, I belive the ads on their website are provided by Google, I forgot the name...
I would be interested in your views on AI in general, and the detrimental/positive effects "helpful" algorithms have. Where can we seek justice when AI is unfair?
with his background in IT that would be pretty interresting to follow as a vlog
The CZcams algorithms are killing many great science and engineering channels, its really a shame.
My advertising went to almost zero. Every video being demonetized automatically. I could appeal but by the time that was done and they reinstated the videos the views had already dropped, so it didn't help much to appeal but I kept doing it in hopes of fixing the algorithm. It seems that about a month ago they fixed their algorithm and none of my videos are being demonetized now.
Subbed and will check out your videos as I'm looking for a cheap and easy to use knife sharpening system ( so others can use it too and not just me ) but not for fancy knifes but just a general usage for household knifes !
a few things:
* i'm glad it didn't hurt you
* i found you during the mouse spike, and have been a subscriber ever since.
* it isn't JUST "obvious" things like medieval weapons type videos that are getting demonitized unfairly. it's also factual videos that are perceived to be threatening. for instance "china uncensored" reveals human rights abuses in china, and it is regularly demonitized in the critical few days when all the views happen. they also have changed it so if you start or finish typing the name of the channel, or any of the videos, it will not help you find it by suggesting the right channel or video, making it harder for them to find.
I've been watching your videos for years, started by reading articles on your website, I've gained lots of insights from them, thank you.
I think there's a correlation between the time, effort and enthusiasm you put into projects and your changes in personal circumstances (leaving bachelorhood, becoming a father, moving, and perhaps other family matters that may or may not be relevant). That's in no way a criticism, people's priorities change as a result of adapting to their changes in responsibility, or something like that.
It seems like at some point things gradually changed and your motivation for making videos was less born out of an enthusiasm to experiment and create projects, and perhaps more because videos make money, and we need money to live (although you could have gone all "self sufficient" on the land I suppose, that's still a growing genre I believe)?
In any case, it comes across that the videos were becoming more chore than fun, and if you're not excited about them, it's hard for your audience to be, particularly new members of that audience.
I guess what I'm trying to say is: You used to have so much enthusiasm for what you did that you made three fricken bandsaws along with oodles of videos to go with them! If you ever regain that enthusiasm then please don't hesitate to make more videos, people will watch them!
I used to have about 3x as much time for making videos than I do now.
Thank you Matthias for this interesting analysis. I am happy that, despite the lull in views, you are increasing your revenue, as indicated by the trend lines. You are obviously doing what it takes to make Utube repay the effort you put in. Such an analytical approach may help you to efficiently use your time to optimise the return on your efforts. I like your thinking, including your physical testing of joints by developing simple but effective experimental techniques. Fracture mechanics and mechanical testing (in metals) has been a part of my life, hence my interest in your analytical and mechanical testing methodology. Good work.
the answer is more channels, each channel has specific opinions on whatever subject is in the video. It's up to channel users' discretion what they tell and put on each channel.
Thank you for enabling captions!
I have one video demonetized. It was a pretty dry tutorial about how to take certain measurements in the woods for forestry. Not really a big deal, but I am curious as to what caused it.
That's an easy one.
If you're teaching people how to properly analyze the environment, they will come to the conclusion that global warming is a farce.
Or worse yet,discover that some rich leftist businesses have dumped toxic waste in the environment.
They can't have that no can they?
PS: Don't you just hate it when your gut instinct says that this is completely ridiculous, yet your brain says: but highly probable because of the way the left is acting?
If you chose and unlucky thumbnail the algorithm might see a gun, penis or boobs in there and bam there is your demonetization.
Or maybe you used a bad combination of keywords or it was just an error.
For the first 6 months i had the impression that the algorithm just flags stuff to see what happens...
No need for any political reasons ;)
Algorithms training algorithms. Look into the genesis of machine learning when it met big-data, you'll see many cases of algorithms attempting to parse a data-set, and doing so very accurately, but referring to criteria that no human has ever been able to make sense of.
For instance medical pictures of cancerous cells. Train an algorithm by showing it pictures of cancerous cells, then have it look at pictures of cells that may or may not be cancerous. People have done this and had great success diagnosing cancer that way (of course confirmed with traditional testing) However, when the machine learning engineers attempted to learn how the algorithms are deducing, accurately, that cancer is present in particular photos, they found that those algorithms were often referencing what human observers would call irrelevant details about the photos. Looking at the noise and making conclusions about the signal, in other words.
All across the board people have been attempting you ascertain a rule-set to understand what arcane logic these algorithm-trained algorithms are tapping into to in order to make accurate analyses of data-sets, and afaik they haven't really figured it out.
If you'll excuse a bit of exaggeration, something as simple as "is this photo a car" could be determined by looking at an ostensibly irrelevant pixel-group that isn't even a part of the car image.
Tldr: algorithms can find inappropriate content with great (tho imperfect) accuracy, without even looking for the inappropriate content itself. More likely, they are looking at a single graphic representation of an entire video (which is how they find intellectual property infractions) and over time determining the likeliest shapes that will include inappropriate content.
Look up ted talks about cyber warfare, there's one by the guy who developed the technology of compressing digital data into single images for parsing
I really enjoy this kind of content. Math, logic, ethical dilemmas... unfortunately I do understand that this type of content doesn't drive views. This phenomenon too often results in the dumbing down of youtube.
Yes, these videos will never get a million views. I try to do them without spending too much time to make it justifiable.
Do you have a way to independently verify your data or is all your data straight from Google?
I hope I this isn't an inappropriate question but in the past I have watched the advertisements that come before the videos I want to watch, and plan to continue doing so. I was wondering how much of the advertisement a person has to watch for the CZcams publisher to get the maximum revenue. The reason I ask is that I have seen some ads that are over two minutes and I really object to watching an ad that is that long.
Thanks for all of the great content you have shared with us.
I don't know how much your have to watch. But it's not worth your time to watch ads for people you like about. Your time is worth more than maybe one cent per minute.
Sounds like a citizens ranking system.
If CZcams was effectively identifying a certain audience, wouldn't it make sense to market to advertisers that serve that audience? In drag racing for instance, why not sell ads to auto parts stores, etc.?
As a result of their true intention, which is to squash and hide the truth, leftists would rather loose the ad revenue and censor the speech.
You are missing ideology in your equation.
CZcams is not neutral and doesnt care only about profits. Its been shown sevrral times with ceo's openly bshing nonleftists politicians and such
You're both missing my point. I think CZcams is not relying on demographics as suggested by MW. I'm not looking for a political debate. I'm just saying I don't think CZcams had created an advertising unicorn.
Hi Matt, your channel rose to fame due to the fantastic homemade workshop machines and your engineering skills. You have not posted any of that kind of content for a long time now due to illness and that is what is affecting your views. The same for John when he posts videos just ranting that is not what we as viewers want to see. Content is king my friend.
Drag racing will get flagged because of the word "drag" as in drag queen. My cupboard video was flagged because I used the word "knob" for the door handle.
The words you use in the description can have double meanings. Hope you feel better soon so you can get back to your brillaint build videos
This channel isn't about that, nor has it ever been about that.
Wasnt you showing the decline in views on your main channel?
The numbers were in the hundreds of thousands?
My main channel is a different channel from this channel. Just because I refer to it doesn't mean it's the same channel.
I was talking about your main channel not this one. 😀
Greg Virgoe I agree Greg. You nailed it in one.
I've only had one video demonetized (it's since been fixed), but that was the life sized carving of my own naked leg. Probably a good move on CZcams's part 😀
I am more concerned with the adds that play and interrupt the videos that I choose to watch. CZcams knows enough about each viewer to ensure the relevance of the adds they make us see. I don’t mind getting one or two adds in a 20 to 30 minute video. I understand that is the way to ensure the survival of CZcams and the content producer. But adds should have a minimum of relevance to the viewer and not so frequent as to disrupt the entire viewer experience. For example, I am a 72 year old, Venezuelan, with an MBA degree. My main interests are woodworking and other DIY topics and classical music. I also enjoy the CZcams Chanels of some TV talk shows and News programs (The Late Night Show, 60 Minutes, and others) I am sure that CZcams (Google) can find more than enough adds that fit my interests better than Indian Pop Music and Video Games. If they do that , not only will they enhance my experience as a CZcams watcher, they will better serve the interests of their add paying clients and everybody will be better off .
This was an interesting video and you brought up some points I hadn't considered before. Thank you.
You're definitely wrong about the algorithm (tm) hitting only right wing content as collateral damage.
The adpocolypse also hit LGBT channels extremely hard, as well as sexual health and education channels, although admittedly the latter would be more understandably confused. For context, I posted a video with the letters g, a and y, in the title *as part of an entirely different word* and the video was demonetized before I could even publish it. Remove that from the title, re-upload, no issue. Several lesbian youtubers I follow have pretty much written off ad revenue as a form of income because it's more likely they'll get demonetized than not, and on videos that don't get demonetized, the videos are being targeted with christian and anti-gay advertisements. Unskippable ads that tell you you're a devil worshiper for not being straight. It's not even an advertisement, it's just downright abuse in video form that they've targeted towards LGBT youtubers, and youtube doesn't seem to have an issue with it.
Interesting topic Matthias. Of course I have never considered this while watching your main channel. I just enjoy woodworking which you are a master at. I do realize there are health issues going on at this time.
Companies also tend to spend a lot more money on ads at the end of each quarter and the Ad money goes WAY up in november and december cause of the holidays. Take a look at your revenue in Jan 2019... it will decrease significantly.
Do you still receive income when CZcams Red subscribers watch your videos? I see no adds anymore since I am a subscriber.
yes
interesting... if speculation about algorithms is true, I can see type-casting consumers is possible then the real problem evidently would be type-casting videos and matching consumers to content and hence the drag racing problem. The end result over time would seem to be lots of videos with similar content competiting for views and a stifuling of innovation
2:27 ad revenue is based more on the actual content. My numbers are not as big, but "tools" do more than double than "toys". Also, watch time with multiple ads per video are not discussed. Id like to see ad time vs view time vss revenue. I've found that revenue per hour viewed(same genre videos) has gone down for myself everyone Ive talked to.
Dear Matthias, I love all your videos :-) I know it's offtopic but I have one little improvment proposal: Could you look in the lens instead of the camera display? It looks a bit as if you squint :-).
Lieben Gruß aus Deutschland, Florian 😍
Squinting can and is often caused by a sensitivity to bright light.
I have this problem and at times will wear sun glasses when it's cloudy because those bright white clouds are not much different than a bright blue sky to my eyes.
Hi Scott, oh - I didn't know that. I think, I misspelled it. It's just a bit irritating that he do not look in the eyes of the spectators (in the lens of the camera) but in the cameras monitor which is a bit obove the lens.
Cheers,
Florian
Shots fired left, right and centre. I'm pretty shocked CZcams didn't demonetise the rat videos for being "unethical."
I'm surprised some SJW vegan didn't object that having to see an animal made them feel uncomfortable and they had to go and hide in their safe space.
Lets make it happen and mass flagthem.
Fence-sitting is not an optuon anymore
That's is a really interesting point of view! I believe the overall problem is that people are really complicated machines. The algorithm can never be so sophisticated to actually understand people and interpret their behavior! Even the most brilliant humans can't do that!
I found this very astute. Thanks for making it more meaningful wit the revenue/views information.
Could it also be that since CZcams auto-generate transcripts that a simple naughty word search can get you flagged? (ex. Micheal Reeves)
I think it’s hard to say, or put a finger on. Could be politics, could be advertisers. From a business perspective, I could see how a lot of advertisers would only want their ads on family friendly content, but really who decides what is family friendly? What’s family friendly to some, may not be for others. I know they cut people back too. My channel used to have monetization enabled, but about a year ago I noticed it was disabled. Can’t get it back until I reach 1k subs, which is fine. Until then I’ll just keep putting in the work, I enjoy making my videos and don’t put a lot of thought into things like algorithms and trends. It may be naive, but I just rely on viewers to decide if they wanna watch my videos or not.
Agreed. The thought-police that is Google is basically the business version of everything I am against, and I currently make my living online. Hence a forthcoming plan to divert my sources of income elsewhere, before they shut down my ability to earn.
Well put Matthias.
sorry about us Californians, I remember when it used to be cool to be from California. Im afraid to even say Screw "Gun" on my channel now haha...Screwing device?
maybe "screwing" is to risky too? "rotary fastener applicator device"?
Jonny DIY Orbital Fastener Applicator
Ahhhh the california mythos. Always tickled by it, as a lifetime resident
A pissed off Calipoop is a good thing
You should test it out. Make a video about making a model of a wooden gun and see if it gets popped.
When do we get a tour of the new house and "workshop?"
If that views vs revenue trend continues, you'll eventually be making infinite money for zero views, which would be great.
On a more serious note, I notice you'll occasionally leave in a "shit" in a video - does one mild swear affect age ratings and flags, or is that all fine according to youtube?
I'm sure audience profiling isn't *all* there is to the algorithm.
I have a low views (350-ish) video about making a circuit to control Christmas lights that was flagged as "not appropriate for most advertisers". No swearing, no explosions, nothing political...
No idea what the algorithm objected to.
Fortunately, (I guess) it's such a low views video that the lack of monetization really doesn't matter.
Ill give you a hint, it was the Christmas term used in your video. Who doesn't like Christmas? hint hint.
Unlikely.
I remember when I was as idealistic as you are. I sometimes miss those times.
I have other videos with the words "Christmas lights" in the title that aren't demonetized.
'sides, pretty much nobody "hates" Christmas (outside of strawman arguments).
Arguments can't hate things. Must have been one of those 'problematic' viewers.
I believe they might be using sentiment analysis to try to deduce the underlying concept behind the video using words from the transcript. They could also generate another transcript by using image recognition and analyze that as well, but I think that'd be very expensive energy wise, so they are only using the subtitles, the titles and possibly the comments. After the russian attack on the site I'd bet flagging has little effect now, until it's massive in number and origin. But it's just a guess. Also, don't be cheap. The collateral damage isn't (just) because of liberal agenda, it's because of the nastiness emanating from the far-right that has sht-stained all the conservative side of the spectrum with their murderous hatred.
I'm not really sure what your point of the video was. Your views went up around the time of Adpocalypse but it could be completely unrelated. I can name dozens of channels that were drastically affected negatively by it. You didn't really provide WHY you think adpocalpyse was a good thing and in a somewhat condescending way acted like people are uninformed when they believe it to be a bad thing. Videos being named advertiser friendly or not did not exist in the way we see it today before adpocalypse.
Being unserious, the shadow of the "camera" looks like a half mecha-robot with a gripper-hand, lol :) I coundn't help myself mentioning about it, sorry :D
Ever since the "adpocalypse" my ad revenue has gone way up as well. So it definitely wasn't bad for everyone.
Censorship wont affect you if you talk about how the sky is blue. It is about controversial topics that free speech really is needed with. But hey, as long as you ate making a buck, who cares about freedom and justice, right?
A merchant will always be a merchant...
steel beams
Don, I think you're a bit confused. CZcams is a private company, owned by Google, you can talk about freedom of speech and justice all you want, but it's not considered as a public space, and hence freedom of speech does not apply. It's therefore not censorship either. Private companies can dictate how you carry yourself, and how they manage your presence on their site, pretty much any way they want as long as they adhere to existing laws, like discrimination and so forth. Just as McDonald's can dictate whether they serve you or not depending on what you do in their restaurant, so can CZcams. If you agree to their EULA then you know what you get yourself into, or at the very least you should.
@@SwitchAndLever you are wrong in this case they are a de facto monopoly. Laws are made to keep these companies accountable
p penca nope, sorry, CZcams is neither a monopoly (as long as other big videos sites like Vimeo, Daily Motion et al exist) nor is freedom of speech applicable in private spaces like a website like CZcams.
There is an excellent article at Lifehacker called “What Exactly Is Freedom of Speech and How Does It Apply to the Internet?” which I would recommend you to read if you are curious how freedom of speech applies online. Freedom of speech prevents the government from squashing what you say in a public space, not private entities in private spaces.
This is so meta, you are experimenting with de-monetization with a video about de-monetization. Cool.
Your fortunate, causalities include news channels include a syndicated radio host. Thankfully, patreon and memberships have helped some survive.
And apparently, a video showing "naked electrons" solvated in liquid ammonia is too sexy for YT.
California speaks, the world follows, that’s what’s wrong with the world.
Sorry Matthias. I'm most certainly one of those "undesirables" in your imagined algorithm. If CZcams is doing that, and you get demonetized, I'm the reason.
It takes more than one :) So far still good.
One should not count on yt-ad-money at all. Because when you do, you will always be on the mercy of yt Algorithms you have no insight of (other than guessing, as Matthias did) and certainly no way to change it. One time it might go well for you (as for Matthias), another time they might change something and suddenly you are fucked.
I think seeing YT as a plattform that provides free webspace AND (relatively) easy access to the largest potential audience group is all one can count on for now. For money one should look at different sources of income (or at least: additional ones).
CZcams is the only way to make money by making videos about how making money on youtube.
I think the TV stations are feeling the hurt of loss of revenue ,when big money starts to lose the 1 or 2 cents of profitability,well they start the whining ,then start paying the politicians who intern start to implement the changes they want
I hope they will take reason now when so many channels talked about those problems...
so, one thing you did not consider is that ad revenue increases slowly until Christmas when it drops. most channels should see a similar curve regardless of the adpocalypse
yes, christmas helps. But I was looking at more than just a year timespan.
@@HeiszWandelproject OK. Cool, glad to hear that. It's always important to look at the big picture when it comes to trends like these. Good stuff.
Interesting. I am have a hard time getting mind around advertisers caring about what content their ads appear on. The more views a video gets the more an ad will be seen. Only the people interested in inappropriate content are watch it so, why would the ad company care - they are in the business of making money. Very confusing.
It depends on how inappropriate the content is. Suppose it was people getting killed, or pornography? I think some organizations would care a lot.
On the other hand a killing, real or staged, or pornography has no place on CZcams and should be blocked. Not try to be argumentative, just expressing my frustration with how the world works. In the US advertisers certainly have no compunctions about making money on politically charged news shows or late night talk shows where half the population might be offended by the content.
A simple filter using terms that Google already had in place from "safe search" plus a few more likely could be doing similar things, or maybe is included along with the audience profiling.
It's only a matter of time before videos are served on multiple platforms. CZcams will be left behind.
I'm guessing that the adpocalypse had much more to do with ROI for the advertiser going down per view than any political bias. Google is headquartered in California sure but they're a publicly traded business and have to make as much money as possible first and foremost.
These tech companies cannot have their cake and eat it. Either they are a publisher or they are a utility.
To date they have been claiming to be a utility but at the same time have been deciding what content to publish. There at some point will be a legal case on this.
they are utility, but for the advertisers! They have no obligation for viewers or content creators really.
@@Czeckie
If they are a utility that means they cannot pick content because that would imply that they have an editorial.
So that means they cannot for example ban channels based on content they have to have a neutral stance.
If they are a utility that means they cannot be held responsible for content but if they are an editorial that means everything that is put up is their responsibility as they are publishing.
If you use an algorithm based on the viewers you have to profile them by what videos they watch, so you are back to have to profile the video content.
I know that they almost always demonetize if they detect a swear word even if it misreads a word.
These massive tech corporations have a massive problem coming over the horizon that I do not think they see coming.
At the moment these tech corporations are classified as a utility which means it saves them from being liable for the content. So if some conspiracy theorists makes false claims that are known to be a lie they will not be held responsible when classified as a utility just like a phone company.
There problem is that they are not acting as a utility because they picking content. Deciding who gets to publish on their platform.
Coming in the not to distant future we are going to see cases that will work their way up to the supreme court.
If it's "anything goes", then spam rules. Look at email. Without a company like google filtering out the spam, it becomes unusable because of all the garbage.
I would say whether or not add pocalypse helps or hurts a CZcams channel depends on the content of that CZcams channel your content is completely advertiser-friendly no controversial subject matter no objectionable language no reason to pull advertising dollars away from you there are other channels that are not so lucky
may not have hurt you. Took my pages down! And mine wasn't inappropriate content. Kaleidoscope, calligraphy, and flying model rocket kits! how to's and DIY!!!! All helpful videos!
I saw a dip in the adds the but now I actually make more then before. Maybe I get the money that the people with unapropriate videos got. I'm a small channel so I don't get a lot. Have a great weekend, Andreas 🇸🇪
I've seen creators get content flagged, and demonetized, that make absolutely no sense. Oneloneylfarmer, for example. Posts videos about every day stuff that happens in his farming life. Equipment repairs, how weather impacts his hay production, plans for around the farm, etc. Constantly having videos flagged and demonetized. Mrhevyshevy. is another example. Makes videos about working in the garage, with his wife and two youngest children. Has had videos flagged and demonetized.
A huge number of the videos, that get hit, are getting hit without cause. It's a poorly designed, badly broken, system.
I find it frustrating that your highest reward came from a mouse in a maze video. I have nothing against the video, but you have done (in my humble and obviously not truely mass market opinion) so much other brilliant stuff.
Yes, I'd rather make more on my other videos. But... having a popular mouse video that does well doesn't take away from my other videos, so I'll take what I can get.
As a side note to the declining views, has subscriber numbers been affected?
I got your channel recommended via your mouse maze videos...
I would say it is rather hard to square the circle in the case of creating a perfect way to weed out bad videos to good videos. Who knows, collateral damage happens to every leaning, I would argue that the collateral damage is on a sector of thinking then political followings.
Well done mate. Great vid.
I know you're not wild about viewer ideas or suggestions, but I'm going to try one more time. You're a great teacher. Considering your current physical limitations, how about making a series of videos about raspberry pi projects. But if you decide to do so, could you PLEASE start from zero? I know the name and the gist, that's it. I was told look on CZcams. Well, most of the folks who've put up videos about raspberry pi are either horrible presenters, or they start by assuming I know the difference between a Raspberry Pi2 and a Pi3. How about starting by assuming I don't the difference between a Raspberry Pi and a waffle iron...
the audio is really hard to listen too
Steve Ramsey is from California......hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
😃 I'll take the blame!
He is a socialists though, so he is in favor of this indirect censorship
It was used mostly against conservatives who were not airing inappropriate material. There was many channels that did not use bad language, threats or tell lies but were affected by it.
Very interesting. It's a bit hard to see from your data, but I was expecting to see a small spike in ad revenue after Feb. 20th 2018, the day CZcams removed all channels with less than 1K subs and 4000 hours in the past 12 months.
those very tiny channels together made for a very tiny fraction of views, so it would be all lost in the noise. 1k subs is very small in the grand scheme of things.
@@HeiszWandelproject I loved how they said almost none those channels had made any money or had any views, but I was making enough to pay for my coffee habit and had nearly 2 million views. I probably still meet then 4k hour threshhold, but I don't do well with subs. I know that's nothing in the grand scheme of things, but it did suck for some of us.
@@SkewToob I believe they said 90% hadn't made $100 in the past year.
Why should an advertiser care about inappropriate content. They're happy with their adverts being shown on news channels that show graphic content. They're happy with their adverts being show on film channels that show horror and violent movies. To an advertiser anyone viewing their advert is good. And many companies who advertise want everyone to buy their product, be that person on the far left or far right or totally sane or loopy or clever or dumb. Like toilet paper manufacturers. Are they going to only sell to one particular group of people? Maybe they might for market differentiation reasons, but that's on a price point, not on a brand recognition point which is what advertising is.
"to heck with you, got mine"
In the form of a youtube video.
The whole thing was BS. Network television has no lack of ads yet the content is certainly as bad (sex, violence, guns, stereotyping, etc...) as CZcams.
Very interesting
The only issue is what is "appropriate". There are so many possible angles (age, gender, country of origin, religious leaning etc). What I do find really interesting is even when a video maker puts a warning, either written or verbal, on a video explaining that there may be content that people may not like, there are still those that feel the need to watch and then complain. Or even worse, not watch and complain. Example - there is a channel which is basically about mouse/rat/mole traps. Vintage/modern/home made/3D printed etc etc. Odds are if you are going to watch a channel about rodent traps and how effective they are you are going to see some mice whacked. But you guessed it, the moment where the mouse/rat/mole is whacked is now removed from the videos as well as dead rodents blurred out to keep the whingers happy. And if I remember correctly there was even comments about cruelty (far from it) on Matthias channel when he did the video on the mice maze.
I get it, it takes all kinds of people. But if you don't want to see something then don't watch a channel dedicated to "that thing". At the end of the day your pissing and moaning about "it" is not going to change people!
Matthias walking on egg-shells.
Someone is stirring the pot! I love it.
I’m glad you’re getting more $$/view, but choosing “advertiser friendly” by the audience is just a bad idea - and the textbook definition of discrimination. What makes something wrong is the content, not the viewers.
This holds true only if your assumption is correct. Have 'conservative' channels actually tested this, by uploading apolitical content? Otherwise I'd presume all Of their videos would get demonetized
I'm more offended by the ads that play on my toddlers videos, which I can't seem to avoid, than some people making money on videos that I can choose whether or not to watch. There are spring break type raunchy commercials, horror movie previews, and kids playing with toy poop being shown sometimes every couple minutes... I used to flag the ads, but now I don't have that option it seems... I think that youtube makers should have some say in what they are being sponsored by... but greed runs deep in so many ways... My tv has been gone for years, I guess YT might be next to go.
That’s why I use CZcams Red. I miss out on any and every ad, and still support the content creators I watch.
Remove those "interests" in your Google settings
jim 187187 Seriously consider youtube premium (formerly youtube red).
They have a family discount that is pretty cheap and your kids can use it on their own accounts.
You will probably not be able to stop your kids from watching youtube but you can at least stop the ads ;)
@@Ultrazaubererger and give in even more money to the socialists at youtube?
Not a chance. Mate
@don trump Please treat your political view like your Dingdong: It's nice that you have one and you may be proud of it but don't shove it in my Face 😉
Who decides what's "appropriate"?
The SPLC and ADL amongst others.
Most of the time it's machines that decide which is what, and humans only become involved once the creator of the video tries to refute the demonetisation. The issue with this however is, that these humans themselves aren't given guidelines to decide whether or not to let the video regain its ability to make money.
An example of this is with the CZcams Rusty Cage, who had made a shock humour video with friends. This video was uploaded to both his own account and one of his friends', and in the end, only one of those videos was allowed to be monetised while the other was completely denied. This was caused because the operators who were contacted to review each video, were different people with very different mindsets on what is appropriate and what isn't.
I don't fully recall all the details so my information may require corrections. If you wish to look into this issue yourself, this link will lead to the Rusty Cage's experience with the event [czcams.com/video/fU8IfoyygVI/video.html]
Rusty Cage isn't one of the most respectable people, and his videos reflect that, so if you are not a fan of overly edgy jokes and the like, I wouldn't recommend watching it.
I do :P but I'm open to bribery :D
Peasie
The SPLC and ADL are businesses and entrepreneurs? Those are the groups that pay everyone's bills here. They are the ones that triggered the adpocolyple. Seems like that pro-capitalism, anti-regulation, low-tax, small government would be something they'd heavily support. I wonder what kind of content would scare away organizations trying to attract as many customers as they can.
Planetesimal
It's humans who make the first and last decisions. People created and set the parameters of the algorithms, remember.
CZcams has billions in content viewers and creators. They can shed millions of viewers and still make an obscene amount of money. They arent in the business of spreading ideas. They're in for the money.
Today, the weather is good to go to tour. ^^
interesting stuff
*Were you in Office Space?*
czcams.com/video/XASNM1XEQPs/video.html
*"certain types of people like this inappropriate content."*
I've got some bad news for you, I'm probably one of these "types of people" and I'm also watching YOUR content.
The important part of that logic is that you fall into the minority of his viewers, so it doesn't affect it that much.
@ bexpi
Your statement is both illogical and uninformed.
The inappropriate content that is mostly demonetized are conservative Christian content. At least that's what I've been hearing.
Hmm, maybe I should test that claim and enable ads on my channel when I start uploading bible tutorial videos?
If that content is being intentionally demonetized, it would be obvious and evident once I reach the monetization threshold.
bexpi: How do you know that folks like Peasie are in a minority?
I watch many channels that also could be categorized as collateral damaged by the adpocalypse, channels that despite the fact, produce intelligent and well produced content that is targeted because who knows why.
His quote wasn't his own view it was him describing theoretically how the algorithm that brands a video as inappropriate works. Prager U is in a lawsuit with Google about this very issue.
@Scott tovey
His statement is logical, and you are also uninformed, since no one (other than CZcams) actually holds the data to accurately assess exactly what type of content is being demonetized.
His logic is flawless by the way. Matthias states that if a number high enough of a "certain type" of viewer watches your content you are more likely to get flagged. Peasie is "that type of viewer", but his impact is insufficient to have an effect and that is a fact because Mathias states such is the case, and he holds the google analytics data to back it up.
The funny part about all this is lately with the election coming up I’ve been getting a ton of ads about a local politician who was “caught in a strip club during a drug bust” which is more sensitive of a subject than any of the videos I’m actually watching.
🤣 the irony of it all! 👏
I think the decisions about what gets flagged as inappropriate are much more automated than you seem to imply. CZcams probably uses a neural net trained on a set of videos that have been manually flagged in the past. So any biases likely reflect biases in the sample rather then conscious choices to censor particular content.
Yeah. If the AI was trained by videos that were previously flagged by youtube staffers, then it would likely learn the same bias that Mathias alludes to. Note that the AI would probably have access to the list of people who have viewed the video. So it is entirely possible that the AI would consider that information (as Mathias suggests) even if it is not the only information.
McKenzie Keith I wonder what dataset they use. It may be videos flagged by staff, but it could very well be any videos flagged by a significant number of viewers, in which case any bias would not necessarily be CZcams’s own culture but more the general public’s. If that’s the case, videos that offend people on either end of the political spectrum would probably be more likely to be flagged. But it is also possible that people who identify with certain political views are also statistically more likely to report videos as offensive, in which case the videos they disagree with would be more likely to be demonetized than their own.
This is speculation. It would be interesting to see statistical studies that look at the relationship between videos political leaning and demonetization/banning.
Yeah. What I was thinking is that they would use videos which had not only been flagged by viewers, but had then been reviewed by youtube also. But it would be very interesting to know how it really was done. Not that I think they will ever voluntarily reveal that information. But it could be leaked or they could be forced to disclose it by a court order.
Great video - but watch ya back! lol
Here's an obvious problem with this sort of theorizing: just about everything we've heard about "the adpocalypse" has been anecdotal and therefore will suffer mightily from self-selection bias. Treating complaints as data is unscientific. It's bad engineering.
Maybe some demographics just complain louder than others. In fact I hardly think anyone would disagree, even if we can't agree on who the loudest complainers are.
With actual no-kidding Fascists running for office all over the Americas, I think it's a strange time to decide to feed the flames of the phony-baloney "conservatives are persecuted" narrative. I think it's a strange place to inject a bunch of half-baked political analysis and culture war nonsense into a debate that really doesn't need it.