Official Blog
Live from VidCon: Creating new opportunities for creators
Thursday, July 11, 2019
For the last decade, VidCon has brought fans, creators and industry leaders together to celebrate the power of online video. In honor of VidCon’s 10th anniversary, I took the stage to highlight how YouTube will continue to support and spark new opportunities for creators for the next ten years and beyond.
More revenue streams, more money for creators
Last year at VidCon, I announced our next big step for creator monetization with new ways for creators to engage with their community while generating revenue. We've built on a number of these initiatives and added a few more.
Super Chat allows fans to purchase messages that stand out within a live chat during live streams and Premieres. There are now over 90,000 channels who have received Super Chats, with some streams earning more than $400 per minute. And Super Chat is now the number one revenue stream on YouTube for nearly 20,000 channels - an increase of over 65% over last year.
Leaning into this momentum, we’re introducing Super Stickers. This new feature will allow fans to purchase animated stickers during live streams and Premieres to show their favorite creators just how much they enjoy their content. Stickers will come in a variety of designs across different languages and categories, such as gaming, fashion and beauty, sports, music, food, and more. These stickers are fun, and we can’t wait for you to use them in the coming months!
With Channel Memberships, fans pay a monthly fee of $4.99 to get unique badges, new emojis, and access to special perks, such as exclusive live streams, extra videos, or shoutouts. Today, we’re adding one of the most-requested features: membership levels. With levels, creators can now set up to five different price points for channel memberships, each with varying perks. We've been testing levels with creators like the Fine Brothers Entertainment on their REACT channel, who have seen their memberships revenue increase by 6 times after introducing two higher-priced tiers.
Our Merch shelf with Teespring allows creators to sell merch to their fans directly from their channel. And today, we are adding 5 new partners, so eligible creators merchandising with Crowdmade, DFTBA, Fanjoy, Represent, and Rooster Teeth can also use the Merch shelf.
Early last year, creator revenue on YouTube from Super Chat, Channel Memberships and merch was nearly zero. Today, these products are generating meaningful results to creators across the globe. In fact, thousands of channels have more than doubled their total YouTube revenue by using these new tools in addition to advertising.
Helping creators amplify their positive impact
Every day, people from around the world come to YouTube to learn something new - from math, science and literature to language lessons, music tutorials and test prep. Today, we’re introducing Learning Playlists to provide a dedicated learning environment for people who come to YouTube to learn. New organizational features will provide more structure, dividing a collection of videos into chapters around key concepts, starting from beginner to more advanced. Additionally, recommendations will be hidden from the watch page, allowing the viewer to focus on the lesson at hand. We understand the importance of getting this right, so we will start with content from a handful of our most trusted partners, like Khan Academy, TED-Ed and Crash Course, testing a variety of categories from professional skills like
working in Java
, to academic topics such as
chemistry
.
We’ve also seen creators use their megaphone to inspire their communities to join them in supporting those in need. To make that even easier, last year, we began to test YouTube Giving, our fundraising tool that allows creators to use their voice on YouTube to support the charitable causes they care about. YouTube Giving is moving out of beta and will be available to thousands of creators in the U.S. in the coming months! Creators simply select a nonprofit to create a fundraising campaign right next to their videos and live streams. Fans can donate directly on YouTube via a “Donate” button, making it easier than ever for creators and fans to raise funds for causes they care about on the platform.
YouTube creators are living proof that an open and responsible internet can change the world for the better. We’re going to continue working to give them the tools they need to do that.
Posted by Neal Mohan, Chief Product Officer
Giving you more control over your Homepage and Up Next videos
Wednesday, June 26, 2019
Connecting our users with the content they love is important to us. We want to help viewers find new interests and passions — such as a new favorite artist, a new creator they can follow or simply the best food recipes. But there's one true expert in what you want to watch: you. One thing we’ve consistently heard from you is that you want more control over what videos appear on your homepage and in Up Next suggestions. So we're doing more to put you in the driver's seat. Three specific changes we will be rolling out in the coming days:
Explore topics and related videos on your Homepage and in Up Next videos:
You can now more easily explore topics and related videos — such as baking videos, the latest late-night talk shows or your favorite music genre, and see more of what you love on YouTube. The options that you see are based on your existing personalized suggestions and are meant to help you find what you're looking for faster. They could be videos related to the one you’re watching, videos published by the channel you’re watching, or other topics which may be of interest to you. This new feature can be found on the homepage when you scroll up, and on Up Next when browsing. It will be available for signed-in users in English on the YouTube app for Android and will be available on iOS, desktop and other languages soon.
Remove suggestions from channels you don’t want to watch:
Although we try our best to suggest videos you’ll enjoy, we don't always get it right, so we are giving you more controls for when we don’t. We’ve now made it simple for you to tell us to stop suggesting videos from a particular channel. Just tap the three-dot menu next to a video on the homepage or Up Next, then “Don’t recommend channel.” After that, you should no longer see videos from that channel suggested to you on YouTube. You may still be able to find them if you subscribe, search for them, or visit the channel page or Trending tab. This new feature is available globally on the YouTube app for Android and iOS today, and will be available on desktop soon.
Learn more about why a video may be suggested to you:
Finally, sometimes, we recommend videos from channels you haven’t seen before based on what other viewers with similar interests have liked and watched in the past. When we’re suggesting videos based on this, you'll now see more information underneath the video in a small box. Our goal is to explain why these videos surface on your homepage in order to help you find videos from new channels you might like. This new feature is available globally on the YouTube app for iOS today, and will be available on Android and desktop soon.
We hope you’ll find that these new features help you navigate the incredible breadth of content available on YouTube and more easily find great videos to watch. We're looking forward to hearing your feedback.
Essam El-Dardiry, Product Manager, YouTube
YouTube Music and Universal Music Group change the way you see music
Wednesday, June 19, 2019
Great music videos are works of art that continue to drive cultural influence across generations. And just like priceless paintings or sculptures in museums, from time to time they need some TLC.
Now, in a pioneering partnership, YouTube is working with Universal Music Group to remaster some of the most iconic music videos of all time, to ensure current and future generations will get to enjoy these timeless classics as they’ve never before been experienced.
Starting today, exclusively on YouTube, you’ll find more than 100 music videos in the highest available video and audio quality, including titles from
Billy Idol
,
Beastie Boys
,
Boyz II Men
,
George Strait
,
Janet Jackson
,
Kiss
,
Lady Antebellum
,
Lady Gaga
,
Lionel Richie
,
Maroon 5
,
Meat Loaf
,
No Doubt
/
Gwen Stefani
,
Smokey Robinson
,
The Killers
,
Tom Petty
and more!
And this is just the beginning. YouTube and Universal Music Group are committed to fully upgrading nearly 1,000 music videos, painstakingly remastering some of the most important works in the history of the format to the highest possible standards. Each week over the next year, we’ll add more titles, with all 1,000 titles expected to be available before the end of 2020.
“It’s really an honor to partner with Universal Music Group and change the way fans around the globe will experience viewing some of the most classic and iconic videos. The quality is truly stunning,” said Stephen Bryan, Global Head of Label Relations at YouTube. “It's our goal to ensure that today's music videos — true works of art — meet the high quality standards that artists' works deserve and today's music fans expect.”
For years, some of the greatest music videos in YouTube’s catalog have been available only in the outdated standards originally intended for tube televisions with mono speakers. With this new initiative, we’re upgrading videos, vastly improving the viewing experience, whether on mobile, desktop or living room screens. The new videos will seamlessly replace the original versions on both YouTube and within YouTube Music, while retaining the same url, view-counts and “likes.”
Michael Nash, Executive Vice President of Digital Strategy at UMG, said, “We’re excited to partner with YouTube to present these iconic music videos in the highest audio and video quality possible. Our recording artists and video directors imbued these videos with so much creativity; it’s great to enable the full experience of their vision and music. These videos not only look amazing on any screen now, they will be enjoyed by music fans for decades to come.”
Celebrate the anniversary of some of the most iconic music videos of all time by seeing the remastered versions for the first time ever on YouTube, including:
Tom Petty’s music video for
“Free Fallin’”
released 30 years ago
Beastie Boys’ music video for
“Sabotage”
released 25 years ago
Lady Gaga’s music video for
“Bad Romance”
released 10 years ago
YouTube Music will continue to roll out remastered music videos from your favorite UMG artists, so be on the lookout for “Remastered” in the description of videos as they transform from SD to HD, exclusively on YouTube!
— YouTube Music Team
Taking a harder look at harassment
Wednesday, June 5, 2019
There have been a lot of questions over the last few days about our policies on harassment, particularly around two YouTube creators: Carlos Maza and Steven Crowder. These are important issues and we’d like to provide more details and context than is possible in any one string of tweets.
Since YouTube started 14 years ago, we have focused on providing a platform where anyone can broadcast themselves, connect with people, and share their voices and their experiences with the world. This has brought a lot of good — like
Jouelzy
, who founded the #smartbrowngirl movement to empower women of color, or
MatPat
, a gaming creator — who, along with his fans and other creators — raised over $200,000 to combat mental illness. But it has also created many challenges. One of the most important issues we face is around harassment. We
enforce
our policies here rigorously and regardless of the creator in question: In the first quarter of 2019, we removed tens of thousands of videos and accounts for violation of our policies on cyberbullying and harassment. We also removed hundreds of millions of comments, many of which were flagged and removed due to harassment.
That said, policies need to keep up with current problems. One particular challenge we face more and more these days is creator-on-creator harassment. It’s an issue that Susan addressed in her
latest creator letter.
We update our policies on an ongoing basis to make sure they’re current. Just today, we
took another step
in our fight against hate speech and our responsibility to reduce the spread of harmful borderline content. As mentioned, one of our upcoming projects will reexamine our harassment policy, as well.
As an open platform, we sometimes host opinions and views that many, ourselves included, may find offensive. These could include edgy stand-up comedy routines, a chart-topping song, or a charged political rant — and more. Short moments from these videos spliced together paint a troubling picture. But, individually, they don’t always cross the line.
There are two key policies at play here:
harassment
and
hate speech
. For harassment, we look at whether the purpose of the video is to incite harassment, threaten or humiliate an individual; or whether personal information is revealed. We consider the entire video: For example, is it a two-minute video dedicated to going after an individual? A 30-minute video of political speech where different individuals are called out a handful of times? Is it focused on a public or private figure? For hate speech, we look at whether the primary purpose of the video is to incite hatred toward or promote supremacism over a protected group; or whether it seeks to incite violence. To be clear, using racial, homophobic, or sexist epithets on their own would not necessarily violate either of these policies. For example, as noted above, lewd or offensive language is often used in songs and comedic routines. It's when the primary purpose of the video is hate or harassment. And when videos violate these policies, we remove them.
Not everyone will agree with the calls we make — some will say we haven’t done enough; others will say we’ve gone too far. And, sometimes, a decision to leave an offensive video on the site will look like us defending people who have used their platforms and audiences to bully, demean, marginalize or ignore others. If we were to take all potentially offensive content down, we’d be losing valuable speech — speech that allows people everywhere to raise their voices, tell their stories, question those in power, and participate in the critical cultural and political conversations of our day.
Even if a creator’s content doesn’t violate our community guidelines, we will take a look at the broader context and impact, and if their behavior is egregious and harms the broader community, we may
take action
. In the case of Crowder’s channel, a thorough review over the weekend found that individually, the flagged videos did not violate our
Community Guidelines
. However, in the subsequent days, we saw the widespread harm to the YouTube community resulting from the ongoing pattern of egregious behavior, took a deeper look, and made the decision to suspend monetization. In order to be considered for reinstatement, all relevant issues with the channel need to be addressed, including any videos that violate our policies, as well as things like offensive merchandise.
In the coming months, we will be taking a hard look at our harassment policies with an aim to update them — just as we have to so many policies over the years — in consultation with experts, creators, journalists and those who have, themselves, been victims of harassment. We are determined to evolve our policies, and continue to hold our creators and ourselves to a higher standard.
—Chris Dale, YouTube
Our ongoing work to tackle hate
Wednesday, June 5, 2019
Over the past few years, we’ve been investing in the policies, resources and products needed to live up to our responsibility and protect the YouTube community from harmful content. This work has focused on four pillars: removing
violative content
, raising up
authoritative content
, reducing the spread of
borderline content
and
rewarding trusted creators
. Thanks to these investments, videos that violate our policies are removed faster than ever and users are seeing less borderline content and harmful misinformation. As we do this, we’re
partnering closely
with lawmakers and civil society around the globe to limit the spread of violent extremist content online.
We review our policies on an ongoing basis to make sure we are drawing the line in the right place: In 2018 alone, we made more than 30 policy updates. One of the most complex and constantly evolving areas we deal with is hate speech. We’ve been taking a close look at our approach towards hateful content in consultation with dozens of experts in subjects like violent extremism, supremacism, civil rights, and free speech. Based on those learnings, we are making several updates:
Removing more hateful and supremacist content from YouTube
YouTube has always had
rules of the road
, including a longstanding policy against hate speech. In 2017, we
introduced
a tougher stance towards videos with supremacist content, including limiting recommendations and features like comments and the ability to share the video. This step dramatically reduced views to these videos (on average 80%). Today, we're taking another step in our hate speech
policy
by specifically prohibiting videos alleging that a group is superior in order to justify discrimination, segregation or exclusion based on qualities like age, gender, race, caste, religion, sexual orientation or veteran status. This would include, for example, videos that promote or glorify Nazi ideology, which is inherently discriminatory. Finally, we will remove content denying that well-documented violent events, like the Holocaust or the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary, took place.
We recognize some of this content has value to researchers and NGOs looking to understand hate in order to combat it, and we are exploring options to make it available to them in the future. And as always, context matters, so some videos could remain up because they discuss topics like pending legislation, aim to condemn or expose hate, or provide analysis of current events. We will begin enforcing this updated policy today; however, it will take time for our systems to fully ramp up and we’ll be gradually expanding coverage over the next several months.
Reducing borderline content and raising up authoritative voices
In addition to removing videos that violate our policies, we also want to reduce the spread of content that comes right up to the line. In
January
, we piloted an update of our systems in the U.S. to limit recommendations of borderline content and harmful misinformation, such as videos promoting a phony miracle cure for a serious illness, or claiming the earth is flat. We’re looking to bring this updated system to more countries by the end of 2019. Thanks to this change, the number of views this type of content gets from recommendations has dropped by over 50% in the U.S. Our systems are also getting smarter about what types of videos should get this treatment, and we’ll be able to apply it to even more borderline videos moving forward. As we do this, we’ll also start raising up more authoritative content in recommendations, building on the changes we made to news last
year
. For example, if a user is watching a video that comes close to violating our policies, our systems may include more videos from authoritative sources (like top news channels) in the "watch next" panel.
Continuing to reward trusted creators and enforce our monetization policies
Finally, it’s critical that our monetization systems reward trusted creators who add value to YouTube. We have longstanding
advertiser-friendly guidelines
that prohibit ads from running on videos that include hateful content and we enforce these rigorously. And in order to protect our ecosystem of creators, advertisers and viewers, we
tightened
our advertising criteria in 2017. In the case of hate speech, we are strengthening enforcement of our existing
YouTube Partner Program
policies. Channels that repeatedly brush up against our hate speech policies will be suspended from the YouTube Partner program, meaning they can’t run ads on their channel or use other monetization features like Super Chat.
The openness of YouTube’s platform has helped creativity and access to information thrive. It’s our responsibility to protect that, and prevent our platform from being used to incite hatred, harassment, discrimination and violence. We are committed to taking the steps needed to live up to this responsibility today, tomorrow and in the years to come.
— The YouTube Team
More ways to buy tour tickets on YouTube
Tuesday, June 4, 2019
Starting today, fans will be able to purchase even more tickets to upcoming shows in the U.S. by their favorite artists. Read more about our new partnership with AXS, the second-largest ticket provider in North America, on our
YouTube for Artists
blog.
An update on our efforts to protect minors and families
Monday, June 3, 2019
Responsibility is our number one priority, and chief among our areas of focus is protecting minors and families. Over the years, we’ve heavily invested in a number of technologies and efforts to protect young people on our platform, such as our
CSAI Match technology
. And in 2015, because YouTube has never been for kids under 13, we created
YouTube Kids
as a way for kids to be able to safely explore their interests and for parents to have more control. Accounts belonging to people under 13 are terminated when discovered. In fact, we terminate thousands of accounts per week as part of this process.
We also enforce a strong set of policies to protect minors on our platform, including those that prohibit exploiting minors, encouraging dangerous or inappropriate behaviors, and aggregating videos of minors in potentially exploitative ways. In the
first quarter of 2019 alone
, we removed more than 800,000 videos for violations of our child safety policies, the majority of these before they had ten views.
The vast majority of videos featuring minors on YouTube, including those referenced in recent news reports, do not violate our policies and are innocently posted
—
a family creator providing educational tips, or a parent sharing a proud moment. But when it comes to kids, we take an extra cautious approach towards our enforcement and we’re always making improvements to our protections. Here are a few updates we’ve made over the past several months:
Restricting live features:
We updated enforcement of our
live streaming policy
to specifically disallow younger minors from live streaming unless they are clearly accompanied by an adult. Channels not in compliance with this policy may lose their ability to live stream. We also launched new classifiers (machine learning tools that help us identify specific types of content) on our live products to find and remove more of this content.
Disabling comments on videos featuring minors:
We
disabled comments
on tens of millions of videos featuring minors across the platform, to limit the risk of exploitation. Additionally, we implemented a classifier that helped us remove 2x the number of violative comments. We recognize that comments are a core part of the YouTube experience and creators have told us they feel we removed a valuable way for them to connect with and grow audiences. But we strongly believe this is an important step to keeping young people safe on YouTube.
Reducing recommendations:
We expanded our efforts from earlier this year around
limiting recommendations
of borderline content to include videos featuring minors in risky situations. While the content itself does not violate our policies, we recognize the minors could be at risk of online or offline exploitation. We’ve already applied these changes to tens of millions of videos across YouTube.
Over the last 2+ years, we’ve been making regular improvements to the machine learning classifier that helps us protect minors and families. We rolled out our most recent improvement earlier this month. With this update, we’ll be able to better identify videos that may put minors at risk and apply our protections, including those described above, across even more videos.
To stay informed of the latest research and advances in child safety, we work with civil society and law enforcement. In the last two years, we've shared tens of thousands of reports with NCMEC, leading to numerous law enforcement investigations.
1
Additionally, we share our technologies and expertise with the industry, and consult with outside experts to complement our team of in-house experts.
YouTube is a company made up of parents and families, and we’ll always do everything we can to prevent any use of our platform that attempts to exploit or endanger minors. Kids and families deserve the best protection we have to offer: We’re committed to investing in the teams and technology to make sure they get it.
—
The YouTube Team
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