What pissed you off today? Mark II

[Bramblethorn]

Some jerk charged $888 on my credit card. I'm still not sure how they got my info. I should be able to get a refund but it's going to be annoying trying to track down the recurring bills etc. that I need to update.

 

[WS_D]

A phone call.

 

[Farawyn]

My kitchen won't clean itself.

 

[lurkingguy1978]

Boxes. Everywhere.

And a dryer that doesn't like to vent.

 

[Farawyn]

Boxes. Everywhere.

And a dryer that doesn't like to vent.

Give it a glass of wine and a willing ear.

 

[lurkingguy1978]

Give it a glass of wine and a willing ear.

How about a shot with a wrench and a flowery vocabulary of swear words?

 

[RubiDia]

^^^doesn't know the secret handshake

 

[Bramblethorn]

My kitchen won't clean itself.

You're just not giving it enough time.

 

[RubiDia]

^^^is vaguely aware of the secret handshake

 

[Farawyn]

You're just not giving it enough time.

WPMOT?
Accidentally taking a long open mouth drooly nap today after work.

 

[La damnee elle la licorne]

 

[RubiDia]

^^^likes poking people with needles

 

[Blue]

Giant corporations stomping their jack-boot on the neck of the little guy as usual.

Some backstory: On youtube you can monetize content you make which many hundreds of thousands of people & online businesses and organizations use to support themselves as either a full-time job or to gain funding. This works by Google allocating advertisements to youtube videos from which the owner of the video receives a share of any money generated by that ad.

Google/Youtube just steamrolled the very concept of small business on their monopolized platform by enacting new content guidelines that content creators must follow to be able to monetize their content, but the new rules are clearly absolutely impossible for people and specifically small business to abide by and still retain an audience, so their revenue is slashed by being less able to attain an audience. And if they do anything which doesn't align with the new guidelines then they won't be able to acquire revenue from the content anyway.

The new rulebook was brought into action a few days ago without any notification of anybody on the platform and is now blowing up a bit because everybody but the cute-cat-video makers have started noticing that as much as >70% of their revenue just vanished.

Google says it's to keep the advertisers happy, I say it's to stomp out viable online competition with the existing major news and entertainment outlets by drying up their funding and forcing them to shut down, leaving large corporate entities mostly unaffected as google monetization will only be a tiny chunk of their revenue. These advertisement companies have no problem sticking their ads all over giant Hollywood movies and big TV news and stand up comedians, but as soon as small independent producers make the exact same content then all of a sudden "oh no, can't put ads there"? No.

 

[TheOldWidow]

My internet provider yesterday, and so far today, doesn't look any better.

 

[RjThoughts]

My internet provider yesterday, and so far today, doesn't look any better.

I think we've ALL been there!

 

[MeekMe]

Leaks. Neighbors. Housing market.

:sigh: the doctor I want is nowhere to be found.

 

[Farawyn]

Me. Myself. I.

 

[TongueLust]

Waiting

 

[LucyBee01]

Getting a grilling for something that happened years ago

 

[Primalex]

Google/Youtube just steamrolled the very concept of small business on their monopolized platform by enacting new content guidelines that content creators must follow to be able to monetize their content, but the new rules are clearly absolutely impossible for people and specifically small business to abide by and still retain an audience, so their revenue is slashed by being less able to attain an audience.

If your small business depended on sexually suggestive content, including partial nudity and sexual humor; violence, including display of serious injury and events related to violent extremism; inappropriate language, including harassment, profanity and vulgar language or promotion of drugs and regulated substances, including selling, use and abuse of such items:

good riddance

 

[RjThoughts]

Coming home from work and feeling like someone is in my sinuses trying to get out!

 

[Blue]

If your small business depended on sexually suggestive content, including partial nudity and sexual humor; violence, including display of serious injury and events related to violent extremism; inappropriate language, including harassment, profanity and vulgar language or promotion of drugs and regulated substances, including selling, use and abuse of such items:

good riddance

But in the actual implementation of those guidelines, Youtube's algorithms financially outlaw discussion about race/sexuality/religion/politics in all instances.

So it's demonetizing songs that contain any 'vulgar language', all news broadcasts and political commentary, anybody saying anything about any important current events (wars, political dispute and natural disasters), entertainment shows or broadcasts that contain sexual humor or proper use of legal drugs, and even anything that contains swearing. As in, the platform has literally banned swearing in all contexts. You say one naughty word and your revenue stream gets cut 50% in a best-case scenario.

I have also heard that they now demonetize if you mention certain words. E.g. Any use of the term "Nazi" by anybody at any point in any context is potentially going to have the entire video/stream/whatever prevented from gaining ad' revenue.

The literal goal of these actions is to financially restrict all content creators to producing bland, generic, completely inoffensive videos of cats chasing string.
Even clips from Stephen Colbert's show and cuts from a stand up comedy routine classify as content that will not be monetized. It's sent pretty much everybody but the cute cat and make-up video makers into an financially unsustainable state which is most definitely going to collapse a ton of small businesses that rely on youtube's online media monopoly to exist.

~ ~ ~

Here's an example of what I mean. This is the youtube channel of a political commentator who is partnered with the largest online news media company, TYT. Has a history of nothing but left-wing commentary on current events dating back to 2008. He's not a stand-out example, the 90% cut in revenue is par for the course now for many people. He explains it better than I can too.

 

[seela]

The new dress makes sitting impossible, unless I keep my back straight, and the train seats are not built for good posture. Major wardrobe malfunction waiting to happen!

I need to place a few strategic stiches to keep things more family friendly in the future. I hope I can fix it, because I really like the dress.

 

[Primalex]

The literal goal of these actions is to financially restrict all content creators to producing bland, generic, completely inoffensive videos of cats chasing string.

That's nonsense. Google is a business. The literal goal is to make money. The people who pay for ads don't want their ads shown next to such content. Simple as that.

Maybe you don't know, but you are not entitled to get money from Google just because you like money.

 

[Blue]

That's nonsense. Google is a business. The literal goal is to make money. The people who pay for ads don't want their ads shown next to such content. Simple as that.

Maybe you don't know, but you are not entitled to get money from Google just because you like money.

Sorry for the wall of text, this is a long story.

~ ~ ~

Google is the one that algorithmically decides where ads will be placed so will still make money from only advertising on e.g. cute cat videos, they are only concerned with having advertisers in the first place. The advertisers taking part get paid either way.

Ok so, it's not the advertisers that are causing this sweeping financial crippling, the specific backstory and financial reasoning is as follows:

The mass-demonetization occurred because many large advertising companies suddenly detached from the youtube advertisement program due to two news outlets (Washington post and The Independent I think) publishing a story making an extremely misleading implication that ads on youtube (e.g. Coca Cola ads) were being shown on pro-Nazi / ISIS / [insert bogyman here] content and so ipso facto Coca Cola is affiliated with Nazis.

In actuality; not only do youtube advertisement algorithms already exclude content like Nazi and ISIS propaganda from having ads shown on it based on the title and video tags, making the one instance of it occurring that both outlets cited merely the one that got away...the way advertisements work puts a barrier between content creators and advertisers. No creator ever talks to an advertiser and no advertiser can selectively decide where to place their ads, to eliminate conflicts of interest.

Everybody, even the advertisers, have known from the moment that monetization was introduced that their ads might appear on content they ideologically disagree with. But have been A-Ok with it until now because it is understood that anybody who sees those ads also knows that Coca Cola is in fact not affiliated with Nazis. The reason they all fled at once due to the publication of this one article is, I presume, because they think they are saving face. The advertising companies assume that the public are going to take this one mostly unknown, misleading article at face value and suddenly backlash against companies that would dare advertise their products on Nazi propaganda, even if it's entirely untrue and would not be the result anyway.

Google introduced the new aforementioned guidelines to try and attract advertisers back to the platform by preventing a -
*Trump voice*
- tremendous amount of videos and channels on youtube from being able to continue to take a piece of ad' revenue. Advertisers still won't be able to decide where to place their ads other than guide them with certain broad tags, it's google which is the reason for the crippling of many small youtube businesses, not the ads.
E.g. regardless of whether somebody is promoting Nazism, denouncing Nazism, or performing an academic lecture in a political science class about Nazism, they will all be unable to have ads shown on their videos.

So, circling back to the first post I made, I should rephrase and say that it's the traditional media outlets which published the article and ones like them that are trying to stamp out online competition.
They couldn't win the ideological competition (hence the boom of online left-wing and right-wing media companies.),
they couldn't win over the audiences (That TYT corporation is literally the biggest online news outlet in the world now. Has a larger viewership than FOX, BBC, MSNBC, Reuters, etc etc.),
So now they're trying to win the money battle.

I know nobody is entitled to get money from *the advertisers, but this is still annoying B.S.

I don't know the specific details of how Google makes money from ads but this sweeping demonetization doesn't sound totally financially viable from what I know. If all the advertising companies suddenly came back and advertised at the rate they did originally, then due to Google's new guidelines their ads would only be gaining a tiny fraction of the views and clicks that they previously did. So perhaps this is a drastic temporary measure, but I dunno. Youtube as a platform makes a net loss annually so maybe it's a permanent feature for the overarching google brand to supposedly save face.