Few notes on the @whatculturepw issue with YouTube (who have reportedly been losing a lot of money due to "non ad-friendly" content and now have had their livestreaming rights removed due to a strike on their channel). Firstly, we don't know exactly why their video received a strike, though what we do know is it was a so-called "community guidelines strike" not a copyright strike. This is usually for violating the "community guidelines". These are supposed to be the result of reports by users. Mass reporting of a video can be used to temporarily take down certain videos, it has been used in the past as a form of trolling, though it is usually very quickly ironed out and some channels are immune to it depending on their status. "Spam/Deceptive content" takedowns are fairly common with this particular technique for whatever reason, why I dunno. If I were to speculate its possible they have a lower threshold to trigger than something more specific like hatespeech. Either way, its possible YouTube did this themselves but in most cases, its either a false positive or a deliberately organized mass-flagging effort. With whatever state YouTube Heroes is in (assuming its even operating, I've heard literally nothing about it since its supposed announcement), that throws other possibilities into the mix but most likely, the take down of WhatCultures latest live event was not done directly by YouTube themselves. I would hope WhatCulture immediately appealed the strike.



Some have speculated that due to the events "Fight Back" logo looking similar to Youtubes, it was taken down for that reason. I personally find that highly unlikely. Since it's used in other videos on the channel which are very much still active, that doesn't really make a great deal of sense. Others have said it might be because WhatCulture criticized YouTube in that very video. Again highly unlikely, YouTube doesn't have a history of taking down videos that are critical of their business practices, they have a history of just ignoring everything we say. Personally I'd rather they did the former, at least that means they'd have had to listen to what we said first...



Whatever happened I hope it gets resolved sooner rather than later. Now, onto the on-going advertising problems YouTube is having and the suggestion that Wrestling specifically has been targeted as non-adfriendly.



WhatCulture reported that their match between Rey Mysterio and Alberto El Patron made $44 despite receiving over 1mil views. I can't find that specific video on their channel, though I did find a match on the channel "WCPW" which has 4mil views. That video has been out for 3 weeks now, I'd love to hear what its earned at this point now that it's received 4x the views it had back then. The chances are that Whatculture is correct, their content has been caught up in a knee-jerk panic effort by YouTube to get advertisers back on board which has resulted in good content getting caught up in the crossfire along with the shit that really shouldn't be getting monetized. There's a small possibility that they read the ad revenue numbers way too soon after release. Ad revenue is generally not at all accurate until at least a week after the videos release, in the first couple of days your dashboard will show $0 or close to $0, because that's how long it takes for the system to start figuring that sort of thing out. Like I said I'd love to see the numbers on that video now that its been out for longer. Regardless, if wrestling content is getting classified as "non ad-friendly", this demonstrates how out of touch YouTube is and more to the point, how they are shooting themselves in the foot. YouTube has been pouring money into producing "TV-like" content for a while now with YouTube Red. They want TV-like programming to satisfy traditional advertisers, despite the fact that YouTube's strength is its non-traditional nature. As short-sighted as that is, if you really want to do that, the last thing you should be doing is punishing one of the few channels that actually IS producing TV-like content, specifically live sports entertainment in front of a real, paying audience with world-renowned stars in the ring. What on earth are you doing YouTube? If you actually want this TV-like content, you should be reaching out to the people who are making it and these guys are one of them. They're producing content almost exclusively for YouTube which is television worthy, they're doing it all over the world and instead of working with them you're stonewalling them and screwing them on ads? Are you out of your minds?



Youtubes biggest weakness has always been communication and this continues to be the case. Partners are trying to figure out what's going on, from scraps of information without any input from YouTube at all. That's leading us to all sorts of bizarre conclusions. Some of us are doing fine and are confused to see others proclaiming the end of the platform. Others are getting hammered for seemingly no reason. In the middle of the turmoil YouTube remains silent, refusing to give us the information and feedback we need. You want our content to be more "ad-friendly?" Tell us what the hell you mean by that. If a video is flagged or is getting lower than normal ad rates, tell us exactly WHY that is so we can address it. If a video is taken down and a channel stripped of features it needs to run, like WhatCulture has been, explain why exactly that was and address it with them immediately, don't just give some vague catch-all excuse and expect people to be ok with it.



The inconsistency is ridiculous. When I see my podcast, which is full of harsh language, monetizing normally and doing well while completely clean shows get almost no advertising at all for no obvious reason, I'm just flabbergasted. How are content creators supposed to produce the stuff YouTube supposedly wants if YouTube won't tell us what they want and what' wrong with the stuff we're already making? This latest example is proof of just how damaging Youtubes blind, scatter-shot approach is and how their panicked efforts to mend bridges with advertisers are just hurting the people who are supposed to be making them money in the first place.



One final thing to note. This is wrestling we're talking about and it is entirely possible that this whole thing is a "work" (part of a made up storyline) by WhatCulture to promote their brand. If so it's a hell of a work, getting your own channel hit by a community strike just after you have monetization woes. If you managed to make that up then congratulations, that's some next-level meta shit. It's pretty safe to assume it's not though and it's way past the point where YouTube needs to start talking with its damn partners and communicating what it wants rather than leaving them all twisted in the wind with no direction.