The Power of Words
I occasionally discuss things going on with LGBTQ+ media and the difficulty of support for it in many places where you would not expect it. Today's post is one of those...
Companies get a lot of good press when they express positive LGBTQ+ slogans and when they have floats in Pride Parades or when they put out feel good images of loving, committed LGBTQ+ people. And you think that means that surely that company wouldn't classify all gay content as "not advertiser friendly" and suppress it from viral lists despite it having more views and more velocity of likes/comments/engagement than other non-LGBTQ+ content with less views, less velocity, less engagement, right?
RIGHT?
Well, you'd be wrong if we're talking about YouTube. Definitely watch this first video by Nerd City. It's brilliant and damning and will give you all the details of what is going on and likely why:
It's always been an open secret that YouTube demonitizes and suppresses LGBTQ+ content. What I mean by demonitize is that those videos are not allowed to have ads placed upon them. Most YouTube creators get the majority of the money to make their videos from Adsense that comes from having those ads at the beginning or somewhere in their videos (you know, the ones you quickly click SKIP on. lol, I do it too).
There has been tons of anecdotal evidence that those channels that produced any kind of LGBTQ+ content would immediately have a black mark or the dreaded Yellow Dollar Sign. It didn't matter if the creator was talking about, for example, support for coming out, videos on safe sex (not sexual content but stuff like condoms, etc.) or discussions of gay marriage and had nothing adult in those topics, more than anything else. It didn't matter. If the words "gay" or "lesbian" or "trans" appeared anywhere, that content was immediately flagged by the AI, demonitized and suppressed from the recommendations. See Rogue Rocket.
But YouTube executives claimed otherwise...
In the above videos, various YouTube officers claimed that there was no list of words that would lead to automatic demonitization, especially for LGBTQ+ content. Cross their hearts and hope to die. But then several YouTube creators decided to test whether the anecdotal experiences were correct or the YoutTube officers were....
Guess what? The YouTube Exes Were Incorrect...
Or were speaking legalese or in a way to obscure the actual truth, which can be summed up by the following simple example:
The words "GAY" and "HOMOSEXUAL" were always demonitized, while the words "STRAIGHT" and "HETEROSEXUAL" were always monetized.
There is literally a list of words these creators managed to test and could say without doubt would lead to demonitization on YouTube and many of them target LGTBQ+ content.
Why Is This Important To You/To Raythe Reign?
It's just a reminder that the fight for acceptance is really hardly over.
I know I am guilty of this, which is a sort of wishful thinking that LGBTQ+ people and content being accepted is the NORM, at least among these companies that tout how LBGTQ+ friendly they appear to be on the surface. Yet the truth is that many of these companies will suppress or outright ban content that should be completely inline with their positive stance on LGBTQ+ content. Yet they do this because they care far more about their bottom line than actually putting their money where their mouth is. Don't want to offend those advertisers that might NOT put those floats in the Pride Parade, right, YouTube?
Kat and I have ample personal experience with advertising Raythe Reign and prejudice. Simply the use of the word "gay" would get our advertisements on Google (who is also owned by the same company as YouTube) classified as "non-family friendly" despite the fact that we restricted our audience to those 25 years or older. It didn't matter. The ad with the word "gay" would not be shown.
We had many people who didn't believe us (despite screen shots where the ad with the word "gay" was not approved while the exact same ad without the word "gay" was). And the reason was that Google was so forward thinking! It was LGBTQ+ friendly! Hadn't we seen all of their advertisements with rainbow flags and the floats????!!!!! We were mistaken!
Except we weren't.
And the creators on YouTube who knew their videos were automatically being suppressed and demonitized because they contained the word "gay" were right, too.
And that we all have to remember that words are cheap in many ways. Actions are what counts.
Are you guys surprised by this? Or is this par for the course in your opinion?
Comments
That's a great point.
If the youtube ban is really focused against LGBT words for homophobic reasons that would be absolutely horrible. But I wonder if this is the whole picture? (maybe yes! i just want to propose a theory and discuss it with your guys ^^ I can't watch the videos right now, I will check them tonight and maybe they already talk about it)
I want to ask, is the ban targeted on LGBT words, or on sexual terms in general?
Because I know that Youtube demonetizes all the videos that talk about sex and sexuality - whether it's hetero or gay sex. My theory is that the lgbt words could be getting demonetized because they're perceived by youtube as sex-related content, and not because youtube don't want the LGBT community to have visibility (though it’s obviously a consequence of the sex-ban, like it was on tumblr).
Of course it doesn't mean that there isn't a problem here. It means the problem is MUCH BIGGER!
Youtube demonetizes any video that talks about sex: that includes videos that explain how to protect yourself against STDs and how to avoid getting pregnant for example. To me, having access to this kind of knowledge can be a matter of life or death, and I'm absolutely revolted that youtube would demonetize those videos.
Now, is there a ban against LGBT content in addition to the ban on sex-related videos? I don't know. Videos with the words "gay" or "lesbian" will often talk about sexuality, and thus would be demonetized because of the sex-ban. I see in the list of words that "same-sex marriage" and "gay marriage" are allowed. "Hetero" is demonetized. "Gay" is sometimes demonetized but it depends on the context. So my scientific mind would like to do more research on the subject to see if gay content is more targeted than hetero content when it's not sex-related...
But of course it doesn't change much. Even if the ban isn't specifically on lgbt content, the ban on sex-related terms necessarily affect the LGBT community more. Videos explaining that "heterosexual people exist and must have the same rights" don't exist, so they can't be demonetized.
For the little personal story: I have two friends who wanted to start an educational channel on youtube in Bengladesh that would talk about sexuality. They were planning to talk about consent, protection, STDs, contraception, alternative sexualities (gay, ace, etc.), and so on. Because people over there just don't have access to any information about all this if they don't speak english. The lack of content on the topic in their language is horrifying. But because Youtube stoped monetizing this kind of videos, my friends had to abandon the project... (I still hope they'll find a way to do it, but they can’t afford to make videos for free)
I really hope that Youtube will lift this stupid ban. I don’t know why they put it in the first place. To avoid porn maybe?? i don’t know. But demonetizing videos talking about sex is a really poor choice. People must have access to this content. And the people suffering most from the lack of access to this kind of information are women and lgbtq+ people.
I tried to make this clear in what I said because I know not everyone can watch the videos. There does not have to be anything sexual in the videos. It’s simply the use of the term. You could be using gay instead of the word happy and your video would get demonitized.
YouTube isn’t banning the content. You can put up lgbtq content you just won’t get paid for it. They automatically won’t run commercials against it like they do all other content. They are assuming that whatever type of gay content you make it is better to simply eliminate the chance of offense and not advertise in front of it.
So yes it is a ban on the words regardless of content.
Also, and you put this really well, but I wanted to emphasize how awful it is that a project such as your friends' (which is so desperately needed) that Youtube's "public" face would support, but it won't put its money where its mouth is!
This, and questionable IP licensing, are why I don't want to put any content I create on certain platforms, including YouTube. And it's not like they have to be this way. Twitch has an LGBTQIA tag for channels to use, and streamers report that it actually reduces the ratio of trolls they deal with - most of the people searching the tag are queer or queer allies. There's a push for a second tag for trans/intersex folks, as well. They also have front-paged trans-rights related charity streams. Even when those streams are often ostensibly just about helping trans kids get puberty blockers, the streamers and content involved are very politically charged and leftist as heck. Twitch would have more cause to quietly not front-page those charity drives because they actually are alienating to, say, the center-right and even neo-liberal LGB folks. But they do it anyway. Are they still a corporation and we should probably never trust them? Sure, but they're doing better than some of the others.
There are definitely companies who do it much better. Google/YouTube is one of the most powerful companies out there and this shadow banning from them is made that much worse because of it. But good to know about twitch which is ironically owned by amazon which has its own issues.