Google Offers YouTube Monetisation Swearing Clarification

Swearing And YouTube

Following a somewhat significant shift in guidelines a couple years ago, YouTube has been rather keen to focus towards content that is suitable for all. It has, however, caused more than a few problems with content creators as many often found their videos were being demonetised for no apparent clear reason.

The good news is, however, that it may have taken them a while, but Google has released some ‘guidelines’ in an attempt to help users understand what language is allowed and what might cause problems.

Monetisation

Now, I’m sorry to disappoint you, but the guidelines released by Google (which you can read in full here) do not give you a list of ‘ok’ and ‘not ok’ words. As such, content creators do still have to make the judgment call themselves. The overall crux of the advice, however, seems to suggest that videos can fall into 3 categories in terms of language.

• Ok – Light/mild profanity (damn, hell, sh*t etc.) with stronger language allowed as long as it is clearly censored/bleeped out.
• Questionable – Moderate/Uncensored usage of swear words.
• Not Ok – Expletive-ridden and the use of any slurs/racism etc.

What Do We Think?

Well, many could (quite rightly) argue that the rules are still too vague for their own good. On the other hand, however, I believe that this is perhaps the first best indication of what you can and can’t get away with. Well, at least if you want to try and earn money from your channel.

A lot of it is just common sense. If you’re going to post a lot of swearing, advertisers probably wouldn’t want any association with it. So, I guess the short version is, learn to moderate yourself. If you can’t, at least be able to edit out some of your more choice f-bombs.

What do you think? – Let us know in the comments!