Does taking money out of the pockets of creators who post controversial, problematic or full of nonsense and fake news videos on Youtube work? In other words, that demonetization that social platforms often indicate as an important method to penalize those who violate their conditions of use, or move to the limits, does it have any effectiveness? Not so.
This is the result of a study by Cornell Tech of New York together with the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne dedicated to investigating how
youtubers make money. Demonetization would not always achieve the desired effects and the reason is one: it’s easy for creators to direct their audience to other platforms or systems where you can keep making money with your content, like Patreon or SubscribeStar.
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that move fully in line with the conditions of use, which evidently suffice the flow of money collected through advertisements, channel subscriptions and monetizations during live broadcasts with Superchat and Supersticker.
However, this is not the most interesting result. The most significant is in fact, says the study, the tendency of these creators to produce and upload more and more content, and not less. Precisely because they are penalized by demonetization. Indeed, being “punished” in that way often leads them to insist on even more extreme and divisive content because at that point at that point they go in search of audiences already oriented towards certain approaches, topics or worldviews rather than the general YouTube user who just wants to have fun or get informed.
“On the one hand, the weakening of the link between exposure and earnings may allow the production of higher quality content,” the experts write in the paper. “On the other hand, it could also encourage creators to embrace divisive rhetoric. Even if videos are demonetized by YouTube for violating their policies, it is possible that, due to alternative monetization strategies, creators still have substantial financial incentives. to create content that marries false, hateful and divisive narratives “. In short, even if Youtube does not pay more or pay less, it still remains a showcase and an essential channel as a first step, following which to lead the audience a little where you want: on other platforms, to the purchase of a book. , to donations through other channels and who knows what else.
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The issue remains rather hot for the platform led by Susan Wojcicki for eight years. Last month, Chief Product Officer Neal Mahon, for example, explained that the group was fighting over the possible adoption of new, more aggressive measures to block the virality of certain divisive content on the most diverse topics, for example by suspending the related sharing tools. and thus preventing them from relaunching them outside the platform and therefore bringing them new audiences.