Casey Neistat On Erroneous Demonetization: “YouTube Should Assume The Burden”

Though Apple prioritized YouTube creators ahead of traditional tech journalists with respect to coverage of the iPhone X launch, it looks like YouTube may have — at least temporarily — taken issue with several of the platform’s most popular iPhone X-related videos.

Clips by massive creators like Casey Neistat, Marques ‘MKBHD’ Brownlee, and Justine ‘iJustine’ Ezarik were temporarily demonetized earlier today, according to the creators’ Twitter accounts. Ezarik said that her video (below) had been re-monetized after requesting a review. Meanwhile, Neistat — who spoke out about YouTube’s failure to support its creator community following a similar demonetization issue last month — tweeted a suggestion about how the platform might deal with such mistakes going forward.

“When the algorithm flags a video for bigger creators (those

with more than 10,000 subs? 100,000 subs?), why not have the video immediately reviewed by a human before demonetizing?” he wrote. “YouTube should assume the burden of the inaccuracies of their algorithm, not pass it on to their creators. For many big creators, their AdSense is their livelihood. It’s how they pay their bills.”

In recent weeks, YouTube has taken steps to fix the mistaken demonetization of videos, which many creators say has increased in the wake of the ‘Adpocalypse‘. Last week, for instance, YouTube said it had updated its flagging technology so that 30% fewer videos would be deemed ad-unfriendly. Clearly, in the eyes of some creators, the platform still has a lot of work to do.

Check out YouTube’s response to Neistat’s plea below: