Scratching The Surface of YouTube's Flaws

YouTube Rewind, the most hip, cool compilation that the entire site has to offer. It celebrates the most
viral and trending videos of the year; an insight to what people have been watching. A trip of nostalgia
for the past year that really does bring you back to some great moments. But what about the bad ones?
And are all of those good moments really the best, or does the fact that what they have highlighted
compared to the gravity of what they missed in the YouTube year in summary bring on a cringe felt by
millions.

Here’s the thing: YouTube Rewind is simply a very long ad. It’s a 6 ½ minute video that is meant to be
shown to the advertisers putting their ads on the site to show that the platform is a nice friendly place
where millions of people can share their ideas with the entire world. And, though that may be true to an
extent, YouTube has definitely had some very low points. YouTube may believe that they can brainwash
Mr. Money with fidget spinners and slime, but we, the most avid users of the site, and surely the
advertisers themselves, will take a very long time to forget. YouTube needs a reality check.

It has a big problem with how it deals with the content that it wants to highlight. Videos that have millions
of views but are controversial will get demonetized, while a family friendly video with a few hundred
thousand views will get plastered onto the YouTube trending page. The trending tab has videos that
are manually placed onto it; the list is not generated by what videos are actually trending, but the videos
that go along with YouTube’s agenda.
To add onto this, the method used to demonetize content that is not deemed “advertiser friendly” is with
machine learning. This is not a very smart move for the reputation of YouTube in the eyes of its creators
because, since this is machine learning, the process is going to have plenty of flaws for a long time while
the algorithm learns how to do things “correctly.” This literally takes away MILLIONS of dollars from its
creators. To add onto that, even positive videos that are trying to bring positive awareness to any issue
is going to be slammed with the iconic *demonetized* icon. This is certainly a paradox. While trying to
show that the site has great positivity, they’ve made it a part of their Terms of Service that videos that are
about controversial topics, no matter what the ideas expressed in the video are, will not be able to make
any money from YouTube ads whatsoever.

Comments

  1. ViDecember 15, 2017 at 7:08 AM

    still salty that they didn't put pewdiepie in for literally jokes and yet not kick jake paul off??? ggggrrr the rewinds just get worse each year.

    ReplyDelete
  2. UnknownDecember 15, 2017 at 7:31 AM

    I knew about the ad revenue thing, but I never knew about the trending page stuff. I am intrigued by how YouTube is trying to become a modern profit-only business instead of a medium for videos.

    ReplyDelete
  3. UnknownDecember 15, 2017 at 7:43 AM

    Yeah YT Rewind is annoying to see every year. I just keep away from it all together

    ReplyDelete

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