YouTube Now Allows Creators to Monetize Videos About COVID-19

YouTube makes a change in their advertising guidelines policy and has revealed to monetize the videos with a concern of COVID-19.

YouTube has announced a policy change in concern to novel coronavirus (COVID-19). Previously, YouTube’s advertising guidelines barred monetization of videos that included more than passing mention of the coronavirus as a part of its ‘sensitive events’ policy. The policy which protects advertisers from being associated with the videos relating to terrorist acts, global health crisis, mass shootings, and armed conflicts. Now, YouTube has announced the policy change to allow some creators to monetize videos on the same, said the statement.

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The community of YouTube was unhappy with the decision to demonetize any video featuring discussions about the virus. But by not allowing creators to profit from videos about the coronavirus or COVID-19, YouTube was putting a damper on informative, newsworthy videos as well as those capitalizing on the human tragedy and people’s fears about the emerging pandemic.

The prohibition on monetization is also for news organizations covering coronavirus wouldn’t be able to generate the revenue from their videos, after which the topic became the main coverage area. YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki said, “the company’s decision to re-open monetization on videos referencing the health crisis.” She says that the sensitive action policy was designed to apply to short-term events of a considerable scale, like a natural disaster.

“It is now clearly the issue that is an ongoing and important part of everyday conversation,” Wojcicki said, in reference to the coronavirus, “And we want to make sure news associations and creators can continue sustainably producing quality videos,” she added.

Not every video creator will be eligible to monetize their coronavirus videos, she mentions. YouTube says ads will be enabled on “a limited number of channels,” including those belonging to news partners and creators “who accurately self-certify.”
The system of Self Certification is where creators use a dashboard to tell YouTube whether their videos comply with respected advertiser guidelines of automated review of their content. During this time, YouTube will depend on the creators’ input instead of their systems if the creators have a history of accurate self-certifications.

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The system doesn’t prevent creators from publishing misinformation in their videos, then labeling the video as advertiser-friendly. To combat misinformation, YouTube is also raising reliable sources in its search results and suggestions and is showing information panels on which videos are highlighted. Even though these efforts are made, there continues to be a massive amount of misinformation circulating across social media, including sites like Facebook and Twitter, with YouTube. 

Considering the misinformation problem, YouTube’s decision to open up monetization on videos about the coronavirus will be a controversial choice. By doing so, the signals to the creator community that one of the most-searched topics on the internet can now be leveraged for views and ad dollars. That invites exploitation.