Youtube is continuously pressed by advertisers to take action against negative content on the site. The question is are they taking it too far?

The most notable of the current community guidelines will take down videos containing  “nudity or sexual content, harmful or dangerous content, hateful content, violent or graphic content, harassment, cyberbullying and copyright.” Other guidelines still apply and can be viewed here.

Youtube has a questionable history of enforcing their guideline, the most recent issue against youtube was its lack of action against the Logan Paul and his video exploring a Japanese forest known for being a place, unfortunately, for suicide victims. Paul came across a suicide victim during his video and decided to keep his inhumane reaction to the body. Some people on twitter were appalled that Paul did not elect to remove the footage even though he had ample time to remove that section of the film.

Dear @LoganPaul,

When my brother found my sister’s body, he screamed with horror & confusion & grief & tried to save her. That body was a person someone loved.

You do not walk into a suicide forest with a camera and claim mental health awareness.

— Anna Akana (@AnnaAkana) January 2, 2018

Youtube nor Google ever took action against the video at the time. Paul took it down after controversy ensued.

Youtube also has a long history of terrible communication in new policies with the community. Google has recently stepped in to help monitor Youtube and its content. They plan on hiring 10,000 employees to monitor the content and keep advertisers assured that their ads will be placed before appropriate content.

Here’s where the “adpocalypse” comes in, advertisers have dropped their ads from Youtube due to creators like Paul and extremist content that ads were appearing before. Now Youtube staff has gone into a frenzy, going so far as to demonetize history videos that mention “Hitler” or any sensitive content or people.

Creators are now being drawn to other platform such as Amazon’s Twitch, Dailymotion and Vimeo. Is this the end for Youtube? It could possibly be the start of a decline for the video hosting giant.