YouTube has announced changes to its partner program, revealing in a blog post Tuesday that the tweaks were designed to "better protect" creators.
"As [CEO Susanย Wojcicki] mentionedย in December, we're making changes to address the issues that affected our community in 2017 so we can prevent bad actors from harming the inspiring and original creators around the world who make their living on YouTube," Chief Product Officer Neal Mohan and Chief Business Officer Robert Kyncl said in a joint statement. "A big part of that effort will be strengthening our requirements for monetization so spammers, impersonators, and other bad actors canโt hurt our ecosystem or take advantage of you, while continuing to reward those who make our platform great."
Starting this week, creators won't be eligible for monetization of their videos unless they've amassed 4,000 hours of watchtime within the past 12 months. Additionally, creators will be required to have at least 1,000 subscribers. "We've arrived at these new thresholds after thorough analysis and conversations with creators like you,"ย Mohan and Kyncl said. As of Feb. 20, existing channels with less than 1,000 subs or 4,000 watchtime hours will no longer be able to bag money.
The changes have garnered a mixed reaction among current YouTube creators. In the comments section of that blog post, for example, several creators suggested a "sub 4 sub" community as a method of fighting back against what some of them likened to punishment for "small channels" that were already following preexisting guidelines.
As the Daily Dot reported, YouTube also received backlash for the monetization update on Twitter:
The ill-received monetization updates arrive in the wake of the controversy surrounding Logan Paul, the fuckbag who posted a video to his channel showing the corpse of a man who had recently committed suicide.
