Not trying to make a spinoff thread, was planning on making this thread earlier, but just getting around to it.

So for those who don't know, over the last few weeks, major companies have pulled their ads off of youtube due to the fear that their ads may play before or during videos that aren't advertiser friendly. Coke/Walmart/Microsoft/etc doesn't want their ads showing up before you watch a video by a white supremacist ranting about cleansing the earth and what not, y'know?

This all started a few weeks ago when the Wall Street Journal did an "expose" on PewDiePie, the largest youtuber on the platform with ~55 million subscribers and several million views on every video he uploads. PewDiePie uploaded a video featuring the site "Fiver" where people will do random shite for 5 bucks. In the video, PewDiePie was making fun of the service by seeing what level people would stoop to for a measly 5 bucks. The big one was getting a few people from some 3rd world country to hold up a sign that said "Death to all Jews" or something to that effect. The entire video was clearly satirizing the site and just an exercise in what people will do for 5 bucks. From that, the WSJ went on a mini crusade to "out" PewDiePie as a neo-nazi white supremacist. WSJ cited several of his previous videos as "proof" that were basically shameless mischaracterizations simply to garner clicks. For example, one of the videos they used was of PewDiePie dressed in military garb in a video decrying YouTube's new program that attempts to get users to report or flag offensive videos in exchange for rewards/influence/etc. Basically, PewDiePie was making a joke out of the program by comparing it to the Gestapo.

Another egregious example was a screenshot of PewDiePie giving the "Nazi salute" when in reality it was just an outstretched arm. Like we was literally just stretching on camera. But the WSJ used this as "proof" that he was a nazi/nazi sympathizer.

The article was a shameless example of clickbait journalism aimed at simply getting people all riled up about the boogie man of the week, Nazis. As a result, PewDiePie had his show on youtube's premium service cancelled and he was dropped by his studio, which is owned by Disney (which is kinda ironic given the notorious anti-semite that Walt Disney was).

Since that article dropped, many of youtube's biggest advertisers have pulled their ads from the platform all together. As a result, Youtuber's that were making a healthy living off of producing and creating content are now making virtually nothing.

Yesterday it was revealed that the H3H3 channel only received about 400 bucks from a recent video that has received over a million views. Over a million people were entertained for 12 minutes, and all they got was 400 bucks. I know there's a lot of older folks here on the OT, so just as an FYI, a lot of the youtube content creators aren't just some person with a camera phone recording random shite in their spare time. Obviously there are tons of popular videos on youtube that are just someone random capturing something that goes viral and that's their only video, but there are tons of channels that employ a decent amount of people and a ton of time and money goes into the creation of each video that they upload. Generating only 400 bucks for 7 figure views means that a lot of channels simply won't be able to create content without losing money.

So what does the OT think of this situation? A shitload of really funny and original content on the internet comes from YouTube and that will ultimately go away if the content creators are no longer getting paid for their content.

TL;DR: Original content creators on Youtube are getting killed financially due to a clickbait hit piece article in the WSJ and the age of "free" high quality, original content on the platform may be ending unless the advertisers come back.

Inb4