YouTube’s advertisers now want to choose what subject matters and personalities to advertise against. So far, so fair. But rather than be straight about this, YouTube conceals this reality behind an opaque and mechanically indifferent monetization system that seems designed to generate as much ignorance, entitlement and resentment as possible.
A researcher, however, has sleuthed out metadata buried in the source code of YouTube video pages. These, they claim, offer clues about why certain videos are “demonetized” or deprecated in search results — reasons that YouTube has not been keen to disclose or detail.
Here’s their paper. Without further ado:
102: profanity
104: sexually suggestive content
109: sensational and shocking
113: tragedy and conflict
115: Sensitive social issues (controversial, guns, etc)
P.S. The video embedded here is from the researchers, but the one most folks are learning about it from is this unwatchable YouTube viral chum nightmare padded out to nine numbing minutes — a perfect “non-political” example of why advertisers are demanding more control over what they advertise against.