Google's strangulating independent political media on Youtube

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Advertisers have always been free to pull advertising content from broadcasts to which they object. It's one of the levers companies have for trying to influence broadcasting.

I remember a lot of people here being all in favour of Intel pulling advertising from Gamasutra because of a gamergate article. I have no interest in reopening the gamergate topic, but this situation is no different in principle to that one. Someone produces a video or article that is controversial, companies withdraw their advertising.

Google is making it one step removed by being the advertiser rather than the product seller who withdraws advertising. They are making a decision on behalf of the product seller (all product sellers), but they I would be highly surprised if they are doing that without at least the tacit consent of the companies involved. So the answer is, boycott the companies who have agreed to this policy and make it known, through social media, that this is the reason you are boycotting.

Fortunately for Youtube content creators Google can't actually prevent these people from continuing to upload their videos, they can only remove direct monetisation. Also fortunately for Youtube content creators they have things like patreon which can be used as a source of income that is not dependant on Youtube advertising.

And finally, this could backfire badly on Google. Given we all actually find the ads on Youtube to be annoying and intrusive, people are going to tend to gravitate to channels that have no advertising because Google has demonetised those channels as being too controversial. Which thus makes those so-called controversial channels even more popular.

There is a smart solution of course. When I sign up to news feeds I get to choose what subjects I want to receive as notifications. Surely companies advertising through Google can tick the boxes of the types of subjects or key words with which they don't want to be associated through advertising content. That way there is no need for Google to take a sledgehammer to all "controversial" content and deny all monetisation.

If I'm a conservative pro-lifer I may not want to advertise my products on channels that promote a pro-choice agenda, and I will probably want to advertise on a channel that promotes a pro-life agenda. And If I am a liberal pro-choicer I will probably want to do the opposite. Can't Google cater to both?