Felix Kjellberg, aka PewDiePie, is YouTube's biggest star. YouTube Nearly five years to the day YouTube made its Partner Program available to anyone, essentially letting people create a channel and immediately start making money, the company said Thursday that creators would no longer be able to monetize their channels until they received 10,000 lifetime views.

Once a channel reaches that threshold, YouTube will review it against its policies to see if the channel is OK to begin making money.

YouTube says this is designed to help discourage scam artists and content creators that violate YouTube's policy from making money on the platform, the company said in a blog post.

"In a few weeks, we'll also be adding a review process for new creators who apply to be in the YouTube Partner Program. After a creator hits 10k lifetime views on their channel, we'll review their activity against our policies," Ariel Bardin, YouTube's vice president of product management, said in the blog post. "If everything looks good, we'll bring this channel into YPP and begin serving ads against their content. Together these new thresholds will help ensure revenue only flows to creators who are playing by the rules."

YouTube has been under fire since revelations that the ads of several large brands were appearing next to offensive videos and other objectionable content. That caused more than 250 brands to freeze their campaigns aside from search with Google, which owns YouTube.

Though Google is doing its best to assuage these concerns about brand safety, Nomura Instinet analysts have estimated it could lose up to $750 million from the boycott.