YouTube has introduced new monetization policies designed to be more lenient to creators with videos that contain strong profanity.
This was confirmed by YouTube’s Head of Monetization Policy Experience, Conor Kavanagh, in a video, stating that creators will now be allowed to use strong language in the first seven seconds of their videos while still retaining full monetization.
According to Conor, the new rules are designed to “align with broadcast standards” and “advertisers expected ads on YouTube to have distance between profanity and the ad that just served”.
However, the policy update is not intended to increase profanity in YouTube content, but rather to enable advertisers to better match commercials with specific content they may want.
The update is primarily meant to be a change of expectations. Previously, there used to be an expectation of a gap between the actual profanity and the ad that was going to be displayed.
Well, YouTube now hopes that advertisers will be free to choose the kind of creators they want to work with without having a limited number of options.
The Google-owned platform has also detailed exactly which words will count as profanity. Words like “asshle” are considered moderate profanity, while stronger terms include words like “fck” and others.
As per YouTube, using such language within the first seven seconds of a video no longer impacts monetization. However, using profanity in thumbnails or subtitles will still result in limited monetization. Therefore, creators will still need to be cautious with the words they share.
The video also goes in-depth about what can result in a limited monetization status.
Videos like a compilation of a character’s top swear words from a specific TV show, or something similar, wherein strong profanities are repeated, remain a violation of the advertiser-friendly guidelines on the video-sharing platform.
