Tuesday, June 18, 2024

A notice regarding Youtube's rumored ad injection

YouTube 's rumored new policies regarding ad injection I believe is a violation of copyright of my own videos uploaded to the platform, on this channel and the other channels I own.

It is modifying my videos, without my permission, and without any legal reasoning, for purposes of profiting off of viewership for which I receive no cut as I do not monetize any of my channels. My videos are not paid ads (unless specifically specified, which hasn't happened yet), and video injection is violating what I have produced by turning parts of it into an ad.

This has potential for generative AI to become involved and alter the videos more significantly, depending on how quickly ad blockers block injected ads. Ads are highly repetitive and easy to spot. They're designed to grab attention and they're essentially a pattern, all things which make computer vision algorithms easy to spot the ads. The only way around this would be to turn the video in its entirety into one hidden ad, doable with AI as it progresses; this is an absolute violation of ownership of my video, as I consider this copying and heavily modifying my video without my consent, and likely using data that wasn't consented to to train the AI either. It has not come to this, but it may inevitably go to this.

Whether or not YouTube would consider this to be a violation of TOS in uploading videos to the platform, I plan to take action if the platform continues with this. What this will look like I am not sure, but I've been considering setting all my videos to private, moving to and advertising here, a competitor platform like Twitch, or uploading videos to fight against the advertisement policies.

I understand the challenges of running an otherwise free service for millions of users, to attempt to gain some amount of funding; reminder that YouTube is owned by Google/Alphabet, one of the largest companies in the world with insane amounts of funding from their various other services which can and have helped maintain YouTube; this doesn't give an excuse however to damage the platform in the name of a chance of profits when it appears to be already well funded and is designed to have no other realistic competition. Youtube's team needs to realize that this platform has formed part of the world wide internet from its starting in the 2000s to today, and continues to be leading, not because it's adding features from other apps, but because it was the leading platform to set the standard of online videos, and allow people to express themselves freely or see what others have to offer with no restriction.

Advertisement and unwarranted modification of the content on the platform violate that very purpose, and turns YouTube into nothing more than a cable network filled with premade clickbait channels and disruptive ads. There are instances of advertisement which is not disruptive while still as or even more effective. Such techniques don't involve turning videos into cable programs; such techniques give people a choice, of something new to watch or read or see, and in turn provides the exchange of ad revenue from something someone chose to look at. The platform has hundreds of thousands of channels, from people trying to make a living from their content (and increasing revenue via self-imposed ads), to companies with the funds to push ads to the platform. Advertisements can work on Youtube, if given to the viewer in a non-disruptive way. Youtube as a whole can work by emphasizing everyone's creative works as the creator sees fit, rather than leaning into clickbait video templates and injecting ads whether self-imposed or automatic on the platform.

In case this is removed for whatever reason, it will be available at https://quantum.quantonium.net . Check out my other channel,  @AndyHerbert254  for some interesting non-gaming stuff, which would be following this channel if ad injections becomes a reality. Stay alert on the website, and other social media and discord (linked on the website) for more updates regarding this.

If you're a creator and are worried about the unauthorized injection of ads into your video, I urge you to take action if this becomes a reality.

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