YouTube creators are currently at risk of having their revenues cut as the platform has rolled out new policy enforcement changes due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The video streaming platform has announced that it will be mainly relying on AI video moderation for videos on its site during the COVID-19 pandemic.
According to the platform, YouTube prioritizes its employees’ health, hence the platform will for now rely less on human moderators as many of its human reviewers are being sent home to limit the spread of the virus.
“As a result of the new measures we’re taking, we will temporarily start relying more on technology to help with some of the work normally done by reviewers. This means automated systems will start removing some content without human review, so we can continue to act quickly to remove violative content and protect our ecosystem, while we have workplace protections in place.”
YouTube
Prior to this stand, YouTube has always regulated videos uploaded to its platform using a combination of people and technology. Once Machine learning detects potentially harmful content, based on YouTube policies, the video is sent to a human reviewer for further assessment. This is to confirm if the content should be taken down or not.
These human moderators are always required to work from an office space. But following the Coronavirus pandemic, more companies are enforcing their employees to work remotely. This is to curtail the spread of the novel coronavirus outbreak.
How Does This Affect YouTube Creators?
Simply put, more content on YouTube will be pulled down. With reduced human reviews, the automated system is likely to remove more videos from the platform – including some videos that may not violate YouTube policies.
With more videos pulled down, it means a reduced number of monetized videos for creators.
However, YouTube has put systems in place for these errors that might happen. Should a YouTube creator’s video be pulled down wrongfully, it can be appealed. But there might be delays in appeal reviews due to the workforce precautions.
This means it could take a while for YouTubers to have their content back up on the platform should it be taken down. The new policy doesn’t affect monetization, as eligible creators will be able to monetize their videos still.
On the other hand, there might be an increase in content streaming for creators as more self-quarantined people will turn to video streaming platforms for entertainment.