[Aunche]

YouTube doesn't print money out of thin air. They make money by making advertisers happy, and advertisers will only buy ads if their customers are happy. This isn't anything new either. Creatives have always been beholden to censorship boards in traditional media too, which are typically much stricter. The fact that you so many YouTubers make money from criticizing YouTube is evidence of how much YouTubers don't understand their own privilege.

[xanderlewis]

Which customers are offended by the word ‘suicide’ and would prefer something like ‘unalive’?

As with all of this crap, it’s about taking offence on behalf of those who aren’t offended or don’t even exist.

> censorship boards in traditional media too, which are typically much stricter.

Which ones? In which country would the word ‘suicide’ be censored? There are countless other examples of topics that YouTube has decided are beyond discussion — even the left-leaning BBC aren’t as censorious.

Yes, they can do what they like on their platform. But by the same token, we can complain about it.

[Aunche]

I'm pretty sure that unalive came from TikTok because they wanted to keep their app upbeat.

My point is that average YouTube is going to be less censoring overall. The perception may be that there is more censorship because there is simply more content on it that can be censored and they have more stakeholders that they have to appease. BBC released The Modi Question, which got censored on YouTube. However, YouTube has significantly more Modi criticism than anything on TV in India. Likewise, YouTube censors covid related conspiracy theories, but you're still going to find more of them on YouTube than the BBC.

[xanderlewis]

Your point seemed to be that if advertisers are unhappy, then YouTube can’t make money. And advertisers are unhappy if their customers are unhappy.

This is true; the problem is that the customers aren’t unhappy. No sensible person cares about this kind of posturing, virtue-signalling, euphemism treadmill-riding for-lack-of-a-better-word ‘wokery’. It’s pushed by an incredibly small vocal minority of people who stand to benefit — mainly because it’s now possible not only to gain social cache but to have a whole career and make lots of money pushing this stuff.

Yes, YouTube may find that advertisers choose to virtue signal, ‘make a stand’ and leave their platform when their chosen magic words are not used, but ultimately they’ll come grovelling back. YouTube shouldn’t be so soft. Ultimately it’s just the endless cycle of unsolicited offence-taking.

And, by the way: this is all totally separate from Musk’s management of X, which purports to be rules-based and morally sound but is in reality entirely ad hoc. What Elon says goes… until he changes his mind tomorrow. At least YouTube has policies, even if they’re bonkers.

[specialist]

Are their advertisers happy?

[Jensson]

They continue to pay for ads, so yeah for now. That is the kind of "happiness" companies care about.