YouTubehas recently changed its controversial policy on swearing in videos, and a big reason for this change is because one prominent content creator decided to make “YouTube” into a swear word to combat the issue. In November 2022, the video platform made a change to its monetization restrictions where videos that had a decent amount of profanity in them, or even just one in the first eight seconds of a video, would either be demonetized or be age restricted.YouTube decided to enforce this surprise policy changeon content that predated the change.
This affected YouTuber RTGame in a rather dramatic way as he found many of his videos, including bigger contributions to the site like a “Best of 2022” compilation, to be demonetized and age restricted without any warning to him and other content creators onYouTube. RTGame later had the brilliant idea to fight back by making the word “YouTube” into a swear word.
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RTGame’s goal was to turn the word “YouTube” into the kind of word the video platform’s algorithms wouldn’t know what to do with. As a swear, “YouTube” would either be an insult or praise depending on the context it was used in. It was a humorous way to fight back that RTGame’s viewers happily went along with, proceeding to call the situation a “YouTube” moment or call the entire website a “YouTube"in the video comments. RTGame himself doubled down on his own idea and edited out any swears to be replaced by “YouTube” on his more recent uploads after the policy change.RTGame has now uploaded a videosaying that this helped the platform change the policy to be more creator friendly.
These changes allow creators to swear in their content as long as they don’t use any strong profanity within the first seven seconds of the video, along with saying other swears in moderation are fine formonetized videos on YouTube. Following this addendum to the original restrictions, many of RTGame’s videos have been reinstated. The content creator has thanked his fans, saying that if they hadn’t gone with his idea and continued to talk about the problem, there’s a high chance the problematic rules would still be in place today.
However, RTGame also says that there’s more that needs to be done. In the video in which he informs his fans that some of his content has been restored, he also mentionedYouTube’s appeal policiestowards demonetized videos and how it doesn’t give creators a second chance. He makes a point that the video platform has a way to censor and edit videos, and if YouTubers were just given a chance to know what needs to be removed from their videos, there would be less trouble withYouTubevideos that break any rules, regardless on if they’re old or completely new.
