YouTube demonetized Onision for violating its Creator Responsibility policies off the platform

[MageTank]

11 minutes ago, Vishera said:

Popular Instagram models that promote scams don't damage it's reputation?,

Or extremists that promote really bad stuff on twitter don't damage it's image?

It's just Youtube or it's advertisers that want to control the people on the platform,that is used by billions of people.

I don't know anything about Instagram, but does Twitter pay their users directly through a partner program of some kind? If not, I wouldn't consider your analogies to be an apples to apples comparison. When you accept payment in the form of a partnership, you are under certain obligations to abide by, much like an employee must abide by the terms set forth by their employer or risk termination.

 

You are not wrong in terms of the precedence this sets, but it's important to factor in that YouTube has a bigger stake for their image in this than sites that simply provide a platform with no further compensation. Providing a platform is one thing, but continuing to pay someone for doing what you'd consider to be against your terms sets another precedent entirely. While I don't know the guy involved or the context behind the situation, I wouldn't fault YouTube for terminating a partnership if they do not believe the partnership to be in their best interest. They have the right to do so, much like any of us do.

[divito]

13 hours ago, RejZoR said:

People think Youtube celebrities are anything on a global scale. Mention PewDiePie to casual people and I bet you no one will know who he even is. And he's the biggest Youtuber. Hell, same with Linus and Linus Tech Tips. They are well known in tech circles, but outside of that, they are nobodies. It's just the reality of things where only truly worldwide mainstream celebrities can have that status of "Yeah, that's that guy/girl" that everyone instantly recognizes.

The same could be said about athletes as well. While you might be able to pick out some of the absolute top end based on news / conversations in a sport you rarely or don't follow at all, you'd have no idea some of those players making like $6+ million dollars. 

[Vishera]

17 hours ago, MageTank said:

I don't know anything about Instagram, but does Twitter pay their users directly through a partner program of some kind? If not, I wouldn't consider your analogies to be an apples to apples comparison. When you accept payment in the form of a partnership, you are under certain obligations to abide by, much like an employee must abide by the terms set forth by their employer or risk termination.

 

You are not wrong in terms of the precedence this sets, but it's important to factor in that YouTube has a bigger stake for their image in this than sites that simply provide a platform with no further compensation. Providing a platform is one thing, but continuing to pay someone for doing what you'd consider to be against your terms sets another precedent entirely. While I don't know the guy involved or the context behind the situation, I wouldn't fault YouTube for terminating a partnership if they do not believe the partnership to be in their best interest. They have the right to do so, much like any of us do.

Yes,I compared apples to  oranges and thank you for pointing it out,but my argument still holds water.

I have a good comparison this time:

 

A young woman accuses a young football player (He is her ex) of rape,then his team kicks him out.

When she was encouraged to go with it to court - She admitted that the accusation was false,and was her revenge on her ex.

Meanwhile his career is forever lost.

 

There is a reason why in the court of law you are innocent until proven guilty,and the burden of proof falls on the prosecution - not the defendant,

Here they treated the accusation the same as guilt,without proving it.

And there is the fact that anyone can accuse and spread rumors - it doesn't make them true,nor false.

Yes Onision has gone nuts but it doesn't mean that the accusations against him are true,or false.

Also in the court of law the prosecution must prove the guilt beyond a reasonable doubt,which mean that you have to be 99% sure that he is guilty based on the evidence,court findings and more.

 

And that's why corporations must not have this power.

Onision could be innocent,or guilty,in the court of law accusations don't mean anything if there is no rock solid proof.

Patreon banned him too,what's next?

Corporations play the judge,and that's dangerous.

[MageTank]

53 minutes ago, Vishera said:

Yes,I compared apples to  oranges and thank you for pointing it out,but my argument still holds water.

I have a good comparison this time:

 

A young woman accuses a young football player (He is her ex) of rape,then his team kicks him out.

When she was encouraged to go with it to court - She admitted that the accusation was false,and was her revenge on her ex.

Meanwhile his career is forever lost.

 

There is a reason why in the court of law you are innocent until proven guilty,and the burden of proof falls on the prosecution - not the defendant,

Here they treated the accusation the same as guilt,without proving it.

And there is the fact that anyone can accuse and spread rumors - it doesn't make them true,nor false.

Yes Onision has gone nuts but it doesn't mean that the accusations against him are true,or false.

Also in the court of law the prosecution must prove the guilt beyond a reasonable doubt,which mean that you have to be 99% sure that he is guilty based on the evidence,court findings and more.

 

And that's why corporations must not have this power.

Onision could be innocent,or guilty,in the court of law accusations don't mean anything if there is no rock solid proof.

Patreon banned him too,what's next?

Corporations play the judge,and that's dangerous.

Nobody is arguing whether or not the person is guilty. As previously admitted, I have no understanding of the context behind this situation. My point is that YouTube has the right to terminate a partnership for any reason they deem fit if they deem it no longer beneficial to them. The same can be said for you and I with our various relationships/partnerships. Unless the parties have clauses in writing that specify otherwise, they are free to terminate with or without reason.

 

For this particular situation, it would appear that they are making a claim that the party with whom they are terminating the relationship violated some kind of agreement they had in-place. We do not know if that agreement requires proof or not, but that is irrelevant as YouTube is not a court of law, much like you've already alluded to. They are a business and are paying a person whom they no longer believe is properly representing their brand and are therefore choosing to distance themselves based on public perception of the individual. Whether you want to view that as an YouTube implying the person is guilty or not, that's entirely up to you.

 

I understand your point, and I am in agreeance that peoples livelihoods should not be at risk due to potential false accusations (ignoring this specific situation entirely, just speaking in general here), however I do disagree with your notion that corporations shouldn't have the right to terminate business relationships based on public perceptions of individuals. Understand that we live in a day & age heavily influenced by social media, and people seem to have an axe to grind for even the smallest transgressions. Nobody wants their brand associated with terms and accusations as serious as what is mentioned in this thread (or your example). 

 

At the end of the day, this isn't about "judging" someone, it's simply business. We can try to make it about ethics, but I can assure you that YouTube doesn't care about who is right or wrong, they care only about what will impact their revenue/image.

[Quackers101]

same goes for the animal killer youtube channels, some took a serious long time before being removed and was having all the glorious ads on torturing animals. maybe that was a bit too serious. ooof.

[Kisai]

On 1/21/2021 at 1:39 AM, williamcll said:

Getting banned for grooming? Okay.

Getting banned for breaking exclusivity? ehhhhh.

 

>inb4 LTT gets demonetized for uploading videos on floatplane.

Youtube doesn't have an exclusivity clause. Twitch affiliate/partner does.

 

I'm only vaguely aware of the onison person because one person I follow on twitter was basically posting about them negatively every week for about a year before I kinda stopped caring about the topic.

 

Here's the thing though, there are channels on youtube that are basically drama channels, they look for people to tear down, and will find any grief to do it to. This is completely unchanged behavior from the previous generation of social media, only now the content gets picked up by search engines as "news" if the video gets enough viewership.

 

Again, as the previous post I made, these things are driven by algorithms, it probably took a law enforcement before a human actually looked at the channel, or perhaps someone audited the content for advertisement suitability and went "oh wait, this person is actually engaging in some questionable activities to create this content."

 

I actually have no idea what this person's content is, only the second-hand drama-driven reports about them. The same people who make these drama channels, often have their own haters on the usual cesspool sites.

 

[Quackers101]

11 minutes ago, Kisai said:

I actually have no idea what this person's content is, only the second-hand drama-driven reports about them. The same people who make these drama channels, often have their own haters on the usual cesspool sites.

Some of his content was drama, some was just him acting crazy/silly/stupid, to a channel about him going over pictures minors sent him were it was going a bit... Then drama around relationships, abuse, money, etc. Just too unstable. and a visit from chris hanson that hears the police knew about this guy. lol.

So just too much to mention here.

[whm1974]

On 1/22/2021 at 11:56 AM, DutchGuyTom said:

But that is also why the judicial system has lost favour with a lot of people.

 

When it comes to assaults, harassment, and other non-property related offences, the evidence generally boils down to the testimony of the complainant (i.e., the victim) and the testimony of any witnesses (if they're lucky) and the accused (the defence has no obligation to call the accused as a witness, so they'll generally refrain from doing so). 

When testimony is all you have as evidence, it becomes very difficult to proof someone's guilty beyond reasonable doubt and, worse yet, it will rely heavily on the credibility of the complainant. This means the defence will do anything they can to make the complainant look like a liar. It's a lengthy, uncomfortable experience for complainants and does not guarantee any results.

 

Optionally, you can sue for damages in civil court but that has become prohibitively expense for most people.

 

So it's no wonder then that most people resort to using the so-called "court of public opinion" and this, unfortunately, has no boundaries or clear set of rules. But, while losing a career is awful, at least there's no chance of being imprisoned or fined. 

They should try living living in any Nation that that doesn't have Due Process and even worse, there no such thing as Human Rights. These things were Literally Paid for in Blood. 

 

And Firing an Employee for another person's mere Ascrusation simply wrong.

[BlueChinchillaEatingDorito]

7 minutes ago, valdyrgramr said:

Was there any actual proof that he groomed anyone?  I only saw accusations and know that Hansen and his production team harassed him, but like an accusation doesn't equate to a fact/evidence.  A lot of people get accused of things like this, there's no solid evidence, but their lives are basically ruined due to said accusations.

That's the sad world we live in. People claim this is justice; but all I see is "guilty until proven innocent". And even if you are proven innocent, it's not going to change anything. The damage to your reputation is done and people who think you are guilty are never going to change their perception. You will forever be labeled as that horrible person you were falsely accused of being. 

 

Which is why I don't even want to touch this social media court and social justice/movement stuff. 

[Bombastinator]

Grooming isn’t controversial it’s horrific. Sounds like they were looking for a reason to get rid of him.  No one wants to be even associated with sex crimes.

[whm1974]

9 minutes ago, BlueChinchillaEatingDorito said:

That's the sad world we live in. People claim this is justice; but all I see is "guilty until proven innocent". And even if you are proven innocent, it's not going to change anything. The damage to your reputation is done and people who think you are guilty are never going to change their perception. You will forever be labeled as that horrible person you were falsely accused of being. 

 

Which is why I don't even want to touch this social media court and social justice/movement stuff. 

Unfortunately I know this well. A young Woman I tried to help out tried to Blackmail me by threaten to tell everyone I forced myself on her unless I gave $20 USD. This is after I let her and her "brother" stay a few hours in my apartment around ~5:00 AM. I mumbled something to her and then she screamed at her "brother" and both left.

 

I called the Police to protect myself by filing a Police Report. BTW the "Brother" was actually her boyfriend.

 

But enough about her.

[Kisai]

14 minutes ago, BlueChinchillaEatingDorito said:

That's the sad world we live in. People claim this is justice; but all I see is "guilty until proven innocent". And even if you are proven innocent, it's not going to change anything. The damage to your reputation is done and people who think you are guilty are never going to change their perception. You will forever be labeled as that horrible person you were falsely accused of being. 

 

Which is why I don't even want to touch this social media court and social justice/movement stuff. 

 

The problem, particularly from the "but my freedumbs" crowd is that the longer abusers and abusive content stays up, the more it proliferates. That's why you only have two options:

 

1. Moderate (eg content does not go up until approved, or until AI at least cleared it from "known" abusive content like wholesale copyright infringement, bare chests/crotches, snuff, etc), the site gets "cleared" of liability as long as the AI moderation is 99.9% accurate on stuff it takes down. 

 

2. Trusted creators (eg those in the partner program) get opted out of the AI moderation and instead get reviewed on a "per report" basis. The content site (eg youtube, twitch, twitter, etc) takes on the liability and manual review of reports.

 

Internally the sites can "protect" certain content channels that are targets for whatever reason, eg during 2016-2020, politicians may be protected from suspension during their term in office, but the minute they are no longer elected, their accounts are no longer immune to immediate take downs for any content posted after their exit date. 

 

The right to free speech is not unlimited, and in the US is only legally protected from the government. Not private property, not public spaces owned by private owners. That's why you can protest on the sidewalk (because it's owned by the city) and not on the lawn of places you protest.

 

[kuddlesworth9419]

Who.

[Rugg]

On 1/21/2021 at 2:16 AM, RejZoR said:

People think Youtube celebrities are anything on a global scale. Mention PewDiePie to casual people and I bet you no one will know who he even is. And he's the biggest Youtuber. Hell, same with Linus and Linus Tech Tips. They are well known in tech circles, but outside of that, they are nobodies. It's just the reality of things where only truly worldwide mainstream celebrities can have that status of "Yeah, that's that guy/girl" that everyone instantly recognizes.

 

It makes even more cringy when Instagramers ask for free things from restaurants, hotels and companies in general and then go on and brag how they have 300.000 followers on Instagram. Dude/girl, you're an absolute nobody. Like, literally nobody.

 

Also Onision is a very weird guy on so many levels and for some reason he has a massive fanbase mostly consisting of younger girls. Which makes it even more bizarre. You understand why teenage boys follow PewDiePie, you know why geeky boys follow Linus/LTT, but my god I can't wrap my mind around why young girls follow Onision.

To be fair, he used to be much more popular having hitting 1 million subs sometime within 2013 or 2014 when it was a lot less common to hit 1 million.

[Ezh]

5 hours ago, Kisai said:

 

The right to free speech is not unlimited, and in the US is only legally protected from the government. Not private property, not public spaces owned by private owners. That's why you can protest on the sidewalk (because it's owned by the city) and not on the lawn of places you protest.

 

The only limit on free speech  should be the law. You wouldn't want to live in a society of "guilty until proven innocent".

 

As for "but it's a private company" ppl - that would be fine until they claim to be "public square" and protect themselves with section 230 immunity.

[Guest]

On 1/21/2021 at 8:19 AM, like_ooh_ahh said:

Who the fuck is Onision? Because I seriously don’t know. 

I remember hearing that he was a paedophile and a racist a few years ago and kinda assumed he would get banned for either one.

[Commodus]

4 hours ago, Ezh said:

The only limit on free speech  should be the law. You wouldn't want to live in a society of "guilty until proven innocent".

 

As for "but it's a private company" ppl - that would be fine until they claim to be "public square" and protect themselves with section 230 immunity.

When did YouTube claim to be a public square? It may be the most popular video site, but it's not billed as a public platform.

 

And I'm sorry, but it's still true that forcing private entities to carry non-essential speech is a violation of free speech. If the government isn't supposed to dictate what you're allowed to say (as long as it's otherwise legal)... then it's not allowed to dictate what you don't say.

[StDragon]

35 minutes ago, Commodus said:

And I'm sorry, but it's still true that forcing private entities to carry non-essential speech is a violation of free speech. If the government isn't supposed to dictate what you're allowed to say (as long as it's otherwise legal)... then it's not allowed to dictate what you don't say.

It's the old adage of "You have a right to speak, but not a right to be heard"

 

[Commodus]

55 minutes ago, StDragon said:

It's the old adage of "You have a right to speak, but not a right to be heard"

 

Exactly. YouTube is not the only avenue for self-expression, or even the only major one. And for that matter, this is about demonetization based on numerous allegations, not outright removal. YouTube is well within its scope here.

[Kisai]

56 minutes ago, StDragon said:

It's the old adage of "You have a right to speak, but not a right to be heard"

 

From a purely technical perspective, AI has no idea if speech is good or bad. It only sees engagement, and goes "hey A content and B content have the same engagers, let's suggest A's content to B and B's content to A", without knowing that those might be serial trolls.

 

Youtube has levers it can pull (explicitly demonetization, contentid) it can use to shape the way people interact with the site. What has fueled every conspiracy-pushing clown on that platform is money, and by finally booting certain fake-content off the site (like infow*rs), two more popup to replace it. That's why the sites have policies about what "free speech" they will tolerate. If you keep letting the clowns have a field day, your site will be nothing but clowns getting in brawls with each other over table scraps of revenue the site generates. 

 

That's what curation is for.

 

Monetization should have only, EVER, been an option for content that drives positive engagement. If someone's content is nothing but dredging up lies for drama, or fake news to piss off people on the other side of the fence, then it should be dropped like a hot potato. Your site doesn't need that, it chases away more people from the platform than it attracts, and quite frankly the people who revel in being internet trolls, are in a cult of their own in "trying to own" targets that they don't like. Like who the heck is keeping score.

 

Youtube and Twitch's own monetization, mechanically, should have been divided into three pieces:

a) Membership - Those who are paying a "subscription" to this content creator to support them.

b) Tips - Those who enjoyed this specific piece of content (usually reserved for live production), and the site should not be taking a cut from this pool.

c) Advertisements - How the site itself operates, the content creator can trade ad revenue for membership revenue (eg, members do not see ads, membership revenue share changes accordingly)

 

If someone is producing content that the platform doesn't agree with, then the site should immediately cancel all recurring memberships, refund all partials, and block the creator from uploading any new content. However this just chases that content somewhere else, which is again, cutting off the top of a weed without burning the root system. 

 

Patreon and Paypal have this problem as well, but it's a lot less transparent how they deal with problem customers. Unless Visa/Mastercard/Amex threaten them.

 

For those who don't really know what I'm getting at.

 

Ultimately the order of "how things work" for monetization goes like this:

 

1 ) US Law - If it's illegal, then the buck stops here, and the site is in trouble. So things like CP/Child Abuse and Bestiality/Animal Abuse fall directly under this.

2 ) US-based payment providers (Visa/Amex/Mastercard) - If the card networks decide something is a problem, then any merchant who breaks the rules, loses their account. Rules added by the payment providers include "risky" purchases such as intangibles, adult material, and items that are illegal in only one state, but applies to all states regardless, and by extension the rest of the world. The card merchants also do not want to be involved in money laundering, so putting money back onto cards is usually not an option except as a refund of the original purchase. 2.95+30 cents fees come directly from here.

3 ) Merchants (eg Paypal, Stripe (which backs most crowdfunding type of services)) follow all of the above, and also add rules about which content they do not want to deal with. Amazon, Apple and Google, Valve, Epic, etc are big enough to be their own merchants. Everyone else usually has to go through a merchant account run by a bank, who takes a cut. These services charge between 2.9% and 50% to use their services. The number everyone floats around is 30%, but...

- Paypal, charges the card rate (2.9% + 30c) but tends to charge you highway robbery currency conversion, and tries to do this even when you have a balance in that other currency.

- Patreon, charges 5%-12% on top of 2.9%+30c

- CCBill which deals with adult content, only charges 15%

- Apple/Steam/Google/game consoles charge their app developers/music/film 30% commissions

- Amazon and Youtube charge take from their creators 50%

(BTW Pornhub and Onlyfans are like 15-20%, as worded "keep 80% less 15% processing fee")

4 )  Advertisers are bound by all of the above, plus they take their own cut, and may shovel around ads from one network to another, ultimately all the profit being taken by middle-men and little given to the content creator. Unless it's a direct-sale (which is only possible on Youtube, Facebook, Twitch and Twitter), in which case direct sales, are usually made between the advertiser and the site, not the content creator. Amazon takes 90% of all ad revenue on Twitch from their creators.

 

At no point does a human go "hmm, maybe we shouldn't be paying this clown" unless they break US Law, and hence get a Legal request to remove the content, or too many people contact the advertiser/payment processor (see pornhub) to crack down on the site as a whole. 

 

Meanwhile, broadcast networks (eg ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX, etc) are not subject to 2 and 3, only 1 and 4. Since all the major broadcast networks are owned by a company that runs their own advertising/marketing , 4 often doesn't even apply either except to infomercials at 2am. 

 

So perhaps leveling the playing field is really what should be asked for. If something can be broadcasted OTA or Cable (without complaints to the FCC), then it should not be censored or filtered on social media either. In which case these rules need to be visible on the site, to the content creator, any time they upload the video or other content that might generate a complaint if it were regulated by the FCC.

https://www.fcc.gov/media/engineering/cable-television

 

[JZStudios]

On 1/20/2021 at 11:59 PM, Jet_ski said:

There’s also the issue of why did it take YouTube so long to react. As early as 2019 rumors and allegations surfaced that this guy was taking advantage of his underage viewers. Did it take YouTube 14 months to have someone look into this?

Because immediately firing people for having allegations cast is a stupid thing to do. I don't know about this case, but people have the expectation that if someone gets anyone to file a sexual harassment claim they need to be fired immediately without any investigation or confirmation.

 

On 1/21/2021 at 12:52 PM, Vishera said:

I am not justifying his actions,but what a person is doing off the platform has nothing to do with the platform,

It's like getting banned in a video game for cheating in a different game.

 

It's not Youtube's job to enforce the law,nor their morals outside of Youtube.

If Onision did something illegal the relevant authorities should deal with him,not Youtube.

If he was a YouTube official... partner on the program or whatever, he was effectively employed by YouTube. Finding out your employee is a pedophile is bad for PR and business. It's not like they banned him for having a different political view.

[JZStudios]

On 1/21/2021 at 1:37 PM, Vishera said:

Popular Instagram models that promote scams don't damage it's reputation?,

Or extremists that promote really bad stuff on twitter don't damage it's image?

It's just Youtube or it's advertisers that want to control the people on the platform,that is used by billions of people.

I'm not sure what this is in reference to, but I don't think Instagram directly pays people nor has a partner program. Could be wrong, I don't use it.

Twitter literally banned the US president.

YouTube wants to control it's PARTNERS they're specifically advertising to and for. They're promoting this guy while also specifically setting ads on his account and paying him.

[StDragon]

31 minutes ago, Kisai said:

Youtube has levers it can pull (explicitly demonetization, contentid) it can use to shape the way people interact with the site. What has fueled every conspiracy-pushing clown on that platform is money, and by finally booting certain fake-content off the site (like infow*rs), two more popup to replace it. That's why the sites have policies about what "free speech" they will tolerate. If you keep letting the clowns have a field day, your site will be nothing but clowns getting in brawls with each other over table scraps of revenue the site generates. 

 

FB and Twitter are sewer pits of vile spew. They've both shown no regards to consistent standards and often they're double-standards when applied.

 

That said, I'm not worried in the end. People will just walk from the platform if they haven't already started. Culturally, this will sort itself out. It will take some time, but I'm confident of that fact regardless. And, you know, some people just enjoy swimming in filth. So be it.

[Distinctly Average]

8 hours ago, JZStudios said:

Because immediately firing people for having allegations cast is a stupid thing to do. I don't know about this case, but people have the expectation that if someone gets anyone to file a sexual harassment claim they need to be fired immediately without any investigation or confirmation.

 

If he was a YouTube official... partner on the program or whatever, he was effectively employed by YouTube. Finding out your employee is a pedophile is bad for PR and business. It's not like they banned him for having a different political view.

Here in the UK there is a very famous case involving a serial scumbag, Jimmy Saville. There were rumours about him for years, but lack of proof as well as seemingly some institutional protection meant he died without being punished for his actions. Many people had suspicions about him, one or two even spoke out as far back as the 70s, even on live TV. However, there was never proof. That case has had a big impact worldwide making many media outlets including YouTube more aware of their duties and how it could affect their business. 
 

I too have never heard of this chap. If the allegations are true then he should be punished as far as local laws allow. YouTube seem to for once be doing the right thing and have obviously taken their time in coming to this decision. It is a big case and one where human intervention has obviously been at play rather than just AI. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

[Rugg]

52 minutes ago, Distinctly Average said:

If the allegations are true then he should be punished as far as local laws allow.

I don't think he actually broke any laws.