YouTube has a strict profanity policy and that’s about to be relaxed. The company says the new rules have created a “stricter approach” than it should have been. In a video on the Creator Insider channel, the company says it has reviewed the data resulting from the policy introduced in November last year. A new update relaxes some of the rules.
When the company changed its guidelines last year, a video that contained swearing in the first 15 seconds could have been demonetised, that is, the platform wouldn’t have run ads on it. If there was a lot of profanity throughout the video, there was a rule for that. Plus, videos made before last year’s policy change came in, were no longer advertiser-friendly.
With the new tweaks, creators will be eligible for some ads even if they use “stronger profanity” within the first seven seconds of a video. And video content “using profanity, moderate or strong, after the first seven seconds will now be eligible for monetisation, unless used repetitively throughout the majority of the video”.
What about swearing in background music or intro/outro music? That won’t get the video demonetised but profanity in thumbnails cannot be used.
The last time when a policy change was made, there were complaints from some creators that YouTube didn’t properly communicate the same. The company says that there’ll be a notification about the new changes in the Creator Studio.