I’m in a WeChat group with a lot of the foreign social media talent that’s based in China. This includes a number of YouTubers who essentially run the biggest channels based in China (outside of Chinese state-media that is). This basically means I get the inside scoop on what’s going on behind the scenes with these personalities and all the gripes they have.

One recent gripe is with YouTube monetization — or rather demonetization. One of the guys who runs one of these popular channels (and would like to remain anonymous) was livid the other day. He found out YouTube had demonetized 25 of his videos without his knowledge. He noticed his monthly ad revenue was coming in shorter than usual and found out these videos had been shutoff from advertising.

His revenue had gone down by thousands of dollars each month. His videos are not controversial, not political, and do not even include foul language most of the time. He went ahead and disputed the shutdowns with YouTube customer service and most of them got resolved and back up and running shortly after. It seems they had just arbitrarily demonetized them.

It wasn’t just demonetization either. They had done some “limited monetization” on other videos. These videos were only allowed to have lousier ad placements where CPM’s are significantly lower, and hence, less profitable.

Moreover, he even had a video that was unlisted that got demonetized. This video had not yet been promoted, people couldn’t find it on his channel, and it still had restrictions on it toward monetization.

So he’s not sure what the deal is, but YouTube demonetization seems to be a growing trend. A number of political commentators, especially right-wing ones, seem to be getting hit the hardest. This includes Tim Black, a host, speaker, journalist and activist, Diamond & Silk, a couple of really funny ladies and two of Donald Trump’s most prominent black supporters, and Paul Joseph Watson, the most prominent British face on InfoWars.

Large-scale demonetization has been going on since YouTube got caught in a controversy when “major brands’ content was found to be appearing next to videos promoting extremist views or hate speech, with a cut of the advertising spend going to the creators.”

Monetization is one thing keeping a lot of YouTubers going. Without it, they feel less motivated to be on the platform. Being a YouTuber is essentially a job, or at least part-time job in the case of many. Creators make great content that keeps people engaged on the platform and both YouTube and the creators benefit through advertising revenue. Seems like a great system.

But things started to get shaky nearly a year ago when YouTube launched its “Heroes” program, where users can gain points for captioning, flagging and reporting videos. The problem here for creators is that they feared this system of “flagging for points” would be gamed and exploited. Mob rule shutting down free speech was also a concern.

YouTube has also recently brought on the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) to direct the course of its Trusted Flagger program. The demonetization of prominent YouTubers has picked up significantly since. This has coincided with a list the ADL put out titled “From Alt Right to Alt Lite: Naming the Hate,” which includes a number of ethno-nationalists and thought-leaders from hate groups such as Richard Spencer. This list also includes people who consider themselves “New Right” such as Jack Posobiec, who distance themselves from the Alt Right and hate groups and promote conservative values and American nationalism — a far cry from racism and white supremacy.

So where is YouTube going with all of this? Google’s internal company culture has been demonstrated with the recent firing of James Damore, an engineer who wrote a controversial internal memo on Google’s diversity efforts. So is Google bringing this outward on the public with its services, such as YouTube?

YouTube is demonetizing political voices left and right. But now they’re even demonetizing China-based vloggers who do not produce anything political or controversial at all. People I’ve told this to jump to the conclusion that YouTube is doing this on behalf of the Chinese government, but I don’t think this is the case. It just seems to be part of the overall trend of suppression that’s picking up on the platform. It’s all rather stunning and the future of the platform does not look promising if it keeps going at this rate.