Gambling Channels Are the Latest Victims Of YouTube’s Arbitrary Moderation Process

June 6, 2018 Black Truth News Business News, Recent Posts

In the two years since Christopher has been running BrianChristopherSlots, he’s produced more than 1,100 vlogs of himself gambling, mostly on slot machines, and racked up 50 million views and 80,000 subscribers.

But then, last week, his account was suspended, along with many other prominent YouTube gambling channels. In an email, YouTube explained the suspension was due to “repeated or severe violations” of its community guidelines, which prohibit “violent or dangerous acts that have an inherent risk of serious physical harm or death.” (YouTube did not respond to requests for comment from The Atlantic.)

Like many top creators, Christopher makes his full-time living from YouTube, and he’s terrified of losing his primary income source. He said he’s careful to get approval from the casinos he vlogs from as well as the slot-machine manufacturers before publishing his videos. He doesn’t swear, feature explicit content, or do anything else he thinks might be perceived as violating YouTube’s notoriously vague guidelines, which he and many creators can almost recite by heart.

Christopher and other top creators are in a precarious position: Though their videos provide a steady stream of income to YouTube via advertising, they don’t work for YouTube directly, and the company has a long history of deleting channels, demonetizing videos or accounts without warning, and leaving creators with little to no recourse or explanation.

In January, YouTube made sweeping, sudden changes to the qualifications it used to judge whether channels were eligible to earn money on the platform. Thousands of small channels lost their ability to generate money on YouTube overnight and had no way to appeal. For the vast majority of YouTube creators who aren’t members of YouTube’s top 3 percent, there’s almost no direct line of communication to the company: Creators get automated emails saying their channels are penalized. When they try to reach out to YouTube, rather than get a person, they get more automated responses. While some encourage their fans to tweet at YouTube’s various Twitter handles, that usually proves fruitless, too.

This spring, some creators attempted to ban together and start a union, hoping that collective bargaining might help them better reach the company. Others simply quit the job entirely.

Ben, a vetted volunteer “ trusted flagger,” who helps YouTube identify problematic content and offensive channels, said that after four years as a volunteer for YouTube, he’s seen tensions between YouTube and its creators peak in the past year.

“YouTube needs to be more transparent in their policies and give in-depth information to creators,” he said. “If a YouTube Trusted Flagger can’t distinguish whether there has been a violation based on the public information they give out I cannot see how they could expect most users to do so either.”