It appears that YouTube doesn’t think it’s making enough money. In a recent update to the popular video-sharing platform’s terms of service agreement (via Forbes), Google added a new section titled “Right to Monetize,” which gives the company the right to add advertisements to all uploaded content. That would include videos from creators who aren’t eligible to earn money from ads as part of the YouTube Partner Program.
“You grant to YouTube the right to monetize your Content on the Service (and such monetization may include displaying ads on or within Content or charging users a fee for access),” the new section reads. “This Agreement does not entitle you to any payments.”
“[…] starting today we’ll begin slowly rolling out ads on a limited number of videos from channels not in YPP. This means as a creator that’s not in YPP, you may see ads on some of your videos.”
What this seems to imply is that YouTube will begin profiting off of many people’s work without paying them. That would be pretty slimy.
“This is nuts,” tweeted one user. “If you’re a small channel, struggling to grow and haven’t yet gotten monetization, YouTube will run ads now and take 100% of the profit from your work. This is the greediest move I’ve ever seen.”
This is nuts. If you're a small channel, struggling to grow and haven't yet gotten monetization, YouTube will run ads now and take 100% of the profit from your work. This is the greediest move I've ever seen.
— Mastar (@MastarMedia) November 18, 2020
I've always kept my YouTube channel ad-free on purpose.
— Ethan Siegel (@StartsWithABang) November 19, 2020
Looks like that's changing for all ad-free YouTube channels.
Please reconsider, @google. pic.twitter.com/E8LdvsmPkl