Commentary YouTuber Def Noodles touched on some of the hoops that YouTubers have to jump through in terms of self-censorship to get by on the YouTube platform.
Def Noodles has a commentary channel with more than 400k subscribers. In his videos, he satirically attacks notable figures in the entertainment industry. Mostly, his videos focus on controversial figures such as Tana Mongeau, Jake Paul, James Charles, and Nikita Dragun.
His channel has loyal fans who have noticed that he has been self-censoring in his latest videos. Today, in a series of tweets, he gave the reason why he has had to censor his videos.
He started by acknowledging that he has seen the censoring questions people have been asking. He made it clear that he is a free speech advocate and also hates self-censoring because it takes extra time.
“Hi Everyone! I’ve been seeing your comments about censorship in my videos, and I totally relate. I hate having to censor my videos so much. Not only because I am a free speech advocate, but also because censoring my videos adds an extra 2 hours of work to every video I make,” he wrote.
https://twitter.com/defnoodles/status/1291874702168793090
He then continued to explain that some of his past videos have been demonetized. He also outlined the reasons YouTube reviewers gave for the demonetization.
In one video, he showed a tweet with the word “pedo,” and the reviewers demonetized it by alleging it was discussing “war/terrorism issues.”
Another one was demonetized because of the word “prank.” The reviewers concluded that he was discussing “harmful/dangerous acts done by untrained professionals.” And the word “Mormon” in the thumbnail causes demonetization because it is “hateful/inappropriate language.”
Def Noodle explained that the demonetization causes him to stop making money from videos. However, he is more concerned by the fact that the demonetized videos stop getting views because YouTube stops showing them as much in the algorithm.
“Videos that were initially monetized and then got demonetized hours after being published stopped getting views after demonetization. Honestly, I don’t mind losing out on the money, it’s the fact my videos disappear when they get demonetized that concerns me,” Def Noodles explained in another tweet.
His only solution, therefore, is to censor his videos.
“There is nothing I can do at the moment but censor my videos. I wish there was a better solution. My channel is already suffering the consequences of the demonetizations that are hitting not only my recent videos, but also my old videos as well.”
Fans replied to his tweets, expressing their disappointment with YouTube.
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