Police say shooter’s anger over YouTube policies ‘appears to be the motive’

As someone who follows digital advertising industry, I want to add some context to this discussion.<p>People tend to view youtube &quot;de-monetization&quot; act as something out of the blue. Story goes as &quot;evil youtube cornered the market of online videos and now acting like a spoiled child, f--king with people who were making some small buck from their videos&quot;.<p>This is not the case. In fact, for last 2 years large advertisers were getting more and more unhappy and angry about digital advertising, citing the lack of transparency, fraud and lack of brand safety as their main concerns. It was brewing for a long time now.<p>P&amp;G, the largest advertiser in the world, and trend-setter in general advertising, cut hundreds of millions from their digital budgets in 2017. [0]<p>Youtube, unlike google search engine, depends on large brands doing &quot;brand advertising&quot;, as opposed to &quot;performance advertising&quot;. You can&#x27;t force 10000&#x27;s of small businesses advertise on youtube, ROI is just not here. It&#x27;s P&amp;G, Ford, Unilever and others giants who keep the lights on in youtube offices, and giants were clearly revolting. And when they cut spend, they cut it not from youtube only, but from all digital, meaning that google mothership also hurt from their move.<p>So, youtube tried to save the situation, clumsily. Ads are now appearing in much smaller subset of videos, which are vettoed, and youtube jacked up the prices [1] of such inventory, to make up the lost revenue from long tail of videos.<p>Take into account the fact that youtube is rumored to be unprofitable or making very modest profit (due to enormous technical costs they have) and you see it more like move out of desperation than anything else.<p>[0] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.adweek.com&#x2F;digital&#x2F;procter-gamble-cut-140-million-in-digital-ad-spending-because-of-brand-safety-concerns&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.adweek.com&#x2F;digital&#x2F;procter-gamble-cut-140-million...</a><p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;marketingland.com&#x2F;report-youtube-set-raise-ad-prices-premium-ad-inventory-229814" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;marketingland.com&#x2F;report-youtube-set-raise-ad-prices...</a>

I don&#x27;t get Youtube policies. Why not let the advertisers decide which channels to advertise on? Why demonetize anything? This babysitting attitude makes so many creators unhappy.<p>If a video is allowed on YT, why not make more money off of it?

Youtube videos are getting demonetized based on advertisers not wanting to be associated with certain things.<p>However, watching online and TV coverage of the shooting where people were actually severely injured and someone died, there didn&#x27;t seem to be a dearth of advertising. If advertisers don&#x27;t mind being associated with death and destruction, I think that when push comes to shove advertisers care more about reaching people with ads than the content they are associated with.

This incident has certainly turned out to be a Rorschach test of mass shootings: Whatever you feel like complaining about, tack it on. &quot;This does highlight X, caused by people like Y, and we need to address this with Z.&quot;

If the unfairness over YouTube&#x27;s policies resulted in this kind of outcome, I wonder what the majority of people will do once they realize[0] that the world is stacked against them. Tax breaks for the rich, &quot;too big to fail&quot; organizations, with tax payers footing the bill, etc.<p>I won&#x27;t say the &quot;end is nigh&quot;, but if there were a &quot;Revolution Clock&quot;, akin to the Doomsday Clock, I think it&#x27;s slowly nearing midnight.<p>I&#x27;ve read some stuff that also says that inequality and perceived unfairness also can hinder your mental health, which no doubt also contributed here.<p>[0] When I say realize, I mean <i>realize</i>. The gap between the poor and the rich, and the middle-class and the rich is far larger than most realize.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cambridge.org&#x2F;core&#x2F;journals&#x2F;the-british-journal-of-psychiatry&#x2F;article&#x2F;inequality-an-underacknowledged-source-of-mental-illness-and-distress&#x2F;985DE9F19CEA4165BE1E85A022BEFDFB" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cambridge.org&#x2F;core&#x2F;journals&#x2F;the-british-journal-...</a><p>EDIT:<p>I should add that I don&#x27;t think the world is turning to garbage. Rather, said Revolution Clock simply is getting closer to midnight, as opposed to away from it. I&#x27;d say we&#x27;re like at maybe 10:00pm.

Beyond the censorship issues &amp; lawsuits, Google regularly gets a pass when their crummy policies negatively impact people. While it is horrible that some were hurt in the process, I wonder if this will make Google start approaching their huge amounts of power with some civility.

Yet another licensed and legal weapon.

&quot;We know that she was upset with YouTube; whether that rises to the level of terrorism will hopefully be determined in the coming weeks.”<p>I was really shocked that she is not labeled terrorist yet! and here it is!

While what this lady did was atrocious, it does highlight a big problem inside Youtube. That their completely biased, unfair demonetization system is costing people enough money in ad revenue to ruin online careers. Smaller channels and politically incorrect channels get flagged pretty much every video, while bigger, white listed channels that post clear ToS breaking content are still allowed to rake in ad money. This woman didn&#x27;t have that many followers in the respect to what others do, she wasn&#x27;t making millions of dollars. Here&#x27;s someone who was making a few dollars here and there, trying to act like it was her livelihood that was at stake, like most medium sized content creators with no real world skills do.<p>I should follow this up by saying I believe Youtube careers are pathetic, and shouldn&#x27;t exist. Just as with Twitch, Youtube has become nothing more than a money making opportunity that is getting flooded with people who would rather deceive people than get a real job. Just people who want an easy ride begging for money. However, for those who do decide to take that route, the way Youtube flags videos absolutely impacts them. If I were making money, and my income were to be suddenly cut due to something that was entirely out of my hands yet fixable, I imagine I would be pretty jaded as well. Losing a few dollars is no reason to shoot people, this woman was just psycho. You can tell from one look at her on her site, she has the look of one.