A major news story recently is YouTube changing it’s community advertising standards, due to companies not wanting their products advertised on videos that were, essentially, hate speech.  That’s understandable.  However, YouTube took this to an extreme level.
First, YouTube released a new ‘restricted’ mode, in which content that was deemed ‘unethical’ or ‘immoral’ was hidden completely.  This caused controversy when LGBT YouTubers had content hidden that included words in the title such as ‘Gay’, ‘Lesbian’, ‘Bisexual’, and ‘Trans’, even when other videos on their channels were not restricted discussed sex and violence.

YouTube has since responded to these complaints, stating that their automated system may have accidentally blocked some content that was unintended to be blocked, however there are still some strange videos being restricted, such as a Tegan and Sara music video with nothing sexual or about sexuality featured, while songs that are explicitly about sex are still being blocked.

Recently, these changes have started to affect not only which videos are seen, but which YouTuber’s make money.  Many YouTuber’s create content for their living, and rely on the funds that are made from advertising revenue.  By slashing these funds, many YouTuber’s are having to create fundraising pages on websites such as Patreon, and are having to cut back on the content they are producing.  This happened with one of my favourite wrestling promotions (I know), WhatCulture Pro Wrestling, or WCPW.
WhatCulture was originally a pop culture website (specializing in ‘listicles’), and gained a majority of their fans when they started posting content about wrestling.  They began their own wrestling promotion in May 2016, and have gained a major following, featuring well known wrestlers such as American Olympian Kurt Angle, Cody Rhodes, Alberto del Rio (now Alberto el Patron), Eric Bischoff, Rey Mysterio, and Matt Hardy.  They have also debuted unknown wrestlers, who have since become part of the main roster of the most well known wrestling promotion, WWE.
However, under the new YouTube advertising system, wrestling as a whole is now classified as violence and the advertising funds going towards wrestling videos have been severely cut, to the point where WCPW has had to cancel their weekly YouTube shows.

This creates a major issue, not only for the company who are now losing money, but also for the employees of WCPW.  Wrestlers of smaller promotions work on a show-by-show basis, meaning that when shows get cut, they get less money.  And because there is only so much wrestling that can be put into one show, there will always be wrestlers who miss out, and the company is more likely to go for the higher selling names.  That means that, while wrestlers like Joe Hendry and Martin Kirby may still be able to make ends meet, lesser known, or lesser established, wrestlers in the promotion will have to find other jobs if they want to continue working for WCPW, or move to another, non-online promotion.

The issue with this issue is the use of censorship.  It is understandable (sort of, not so much in the LGBT situation) for parents to want to hide certain content that may be confusing or dangerous to children, so that they have the ability to explain to them what they are watching.  However, this censorship is having serious affects on content creators who rely on advertising revenue.  This rise in censorship was started based on a rise in hate speech on YouTube, but the wrong people are being taken down.  Even when researching this topic, I saw videos titled ‘The Left Gets A Taste Of It’s Own Medicine: LGBT Videos Taken Down’.  There are now hate speech videos that are encouraging YouTube censorship.  That is the opposite of what they were supposed to do!

Advertisers have a lot of power when it comes to censorship.  But there have always been issues with censorship itself.  We used to see censorship used to hide the voices of women, of POCs, and of the LGBT community, and while we are still apparently seeing this today, a majority of censorship is used to remove the voices of those who are preaching hatred, such as videos supporting Nazism.  In a world that is now user-driven, is it fair to try to censor anyone, even if certain voices are causing violence and hatred?
I think yes, but I can see why it’s controversial and difficult to maintain.