We all use YouTube, whether it be for educational purposes, entertainment or music. Since most people use Google’s streaming platform, they run advertisements for revenue. There used to be a program where they only ran ads on a creator’s videos if they were a YouTube partner, giving them a percentage of the ad revenue. Now they are implementing ads on non-partnered videos/channels and not paying the creators at all for including ads in their work.

This comes from the update of their terms of service in their Nov. 18 statement. It states, “Ads can now appear on videos from channels not in the YouTube Partner Program (YPP)…Because these channels are not in YPP, there is no creator revenue share.” 

The official statement from YouTube states that they will not pay smaller creators and non-sponsored channels. The idea of the YPP was so YouTube had to ask for the permission of creators in order to place ads on videos in exchange for a percentage of the ad revenue; now they are overriding creator permission. This has received some backlash.

The criticism is coming from creators big and small. One creator named “MaSTAR Media” with 3.53 million subscribers tweeted about this new term of service, saying, “This is the greediest move I’ve ever seen.” 

Another, much smaller creator named Ethan Siegel with 1,580 subscribers tweeted, “I’ve always kept my YouTube channel ad-free on purpose. Looks like that’s changing for all ad-free YouTube channels.” 

Many creators aren’t very happy with YouTube’s decision to monetize everyone’s content.