Nasim Najafi Aghdam, the woman who attacked YouTube’s headquarters, was part of a sprawling ecosystem of “creators”—the hundreds of thousands of independent producers who upload material to the world’s largest video site.
Police have said her bitterness over the company’s policies appeared to have motivated the shooting that left three YouTube employees wounded. She then killed herself. Ms. Aghdam in January had posted a video accusing YouTube of limiting viewer traffic to some of her videos and suggested on her personal website that the site paid her a lower amount of ad revenue than she deserves.
Many fellow creators, while condemning Ms. Aghdam’s actions, say that there are underlying problems with how YouTube treats the people who make its videos. Thousands of independent video makers rely on the site and the ad revenue it generates for their income. Their concerns, broadcast regularly through videos, Instagram posts and tweets, highlight the challenge YouTube faces as it grows its business and finds the demands of its advertisers in conflict with the wishes of its video creators.
A YouTube spokeswoman declined to comment on Ms. Aghdam’s complaints and how they were handled.
The company has previously said its policies are designed to curtail bad actors on the video site and ensure a stable source of revenue for everyone else.
YouTube, a unit of Alphabet Inc.’s Google, relies on hundreds of thousands of people to upload short films and build audiences of regular viewers. In return, the company pays them 55% of the ad revenue generated by many of the videos on the site. That revenue share has been unchanged for years.
As the number of creators has grown and uploaded a wider range of videos, advertisers have grown more skittish about putting their messages next to what they deem objectionable content. Top brands including Procter & Gamble Co. pulled spending from the site last year after discovering YouTube running their ads before extremist, racist and hateful videos.
In response, YouTube last year began requiring video producers to have more than 10,000 views from their combined videos before they can start making any money from ads. The company also hired more human reviewers to vet videos, removing clips or entire accounts they see as violating their terms of service.
YouTube prohibits nudity, violence, and other categories of content it deems potentially harmful or dangerous. Its terms also restrict copyrighted content and personal information uploaded without consent.
Earlier this year, YouTube raised the bar even more for its video creators that want to carry ads. Rather than 10,000 views, YouTube channels must now have accumulated at least 4,000 hours of watch time in the past 12 months and 1,000 subscribers. YouTube said a “significant” number of channels would be affected but declined to provide more details. The company said nearly all affected channels make less than $100 a year in ad revenue.
The changes had little impact on YouTube’s most popular stars, some who make more than $100,000 on a single video, including sponsorships, according to Evan Asano, chief executive of Mediakix, a marketing agency for YouTube creators. But the new policies cut tens of thousands of smaller video makers off from getting paid, Mr. Asano said.
Some of them, like Chris Thompson, said the company has gone too far in removing content without being clear about what rules it violates. Mr. Thompson, a 36-year-old Los Angeles resident who shares videos about his life and social issues under the name SupDaily, stopped uploading videos regularly to YouTube after he said too many of his videos were being unfairly flagged as inappropriate.
“Any video that is deemed controversial whatsoever—which is very subjective—gets demonetized,” said Mr. Thompson, who moved to Amazon.com Inc.’s video site Twitch last year, where he said he makes three times as much a month. Twitch and Facebook Inc. have tried to court video creators from YouTube by making it easy to upload videos and generate revenue.
Ms. Aghdam had written on her website that “close-minded” employees at the company had set age restrictions on one of her videos depicting an ab workout routine. She said she had contacted the company’s support team about the issue, and that she was told her video contained inappropriate content, without clarifying what was inappropriate about it.
YouTube has an appeals process for reviewing videos that may have been erroneously blocked. It is unclear whether Ms. Aghdam submitted a formal appeal.
Ms. Agham, who shared videos about veganism, graphic depictions of animal cruelty and videotaped herself dancing and impersonating celebrities like Justin Bieber, had amassed an audience of more than 60,000 followers across two Instagram accounts. At least two YouTube accounts belonging to Ms. Agham have been “terminated due to multiple or severe violations of YouTube’s policy against spam, deceptive practices, and misleading content or other Terms of Service violations,” the website says.
She posted a screenshot showing her analytics dashboard on YouTube in which she alleged she made just 10 cents for some 300,000 video views.
—Zusha Elinson contributed to this article.
Write to Douglas MacMillan at douglas.macmillan@wsj.com
Bagikan Berita Ini
