YouTube Promises To Delete Accounts That Are Not Making Enough Money, Users Left Confused & Angry

YouTube recently updated its terms of service, and while most of us accepted them without actually going through what they say, some people did in fact read them, and there’s something that jumped right out. The new terms of service for YouTube state the following:

YouTube may terminate your access, or your Google account’s access to all or part of the Service if YouTube believes, in its sole discretion, that provision of the Service to you is no longer commercially viable.

This raises a lot of questions. Primarily, how does YouTube decide if an account is commercially viable or not. Which type of accounts is YouTube talking about, because far as I can tell, if you are just logged in on YouTube to watch videos only and not post or create any videos, your account isn’t really making them much money. Will that sort of account get deleted?

The wording of this statement is incredibly vague, and it’s leading to a lot of confusion and uproar especially among creators. Based on these terms, YouTube can basically decide to terminate any creator’s account if a video or stream they create doesn’t gather a large enough audience for YouTube to term it “commercially viable”. Moreover, the decision about the commercial viability of an account is in YouTube’s “sole discretion”, which is another thing to be worried about.

There’s been an uproar against these new terms, with posts on Twitter garnering thousands of reactions and comments.

YouTube has new Terms Of Service on December 10th. This basically says that if channels don't make enough money, THEY WILL POSSIBLY TERMINATE THEM!!!

Looks like I fought to the very end but now I may be close to losing my livelihood, losing my passion, my audience and my… pic.twitter.com/P74uQe8jpW

— Christian Maracle (@MaracleMan) November 9, 2019

Smaller content creators are also complaining that this is yet another way that YouTube is supporting its biggest creators while making it increasingly difficult for up and coming creators to even be allowed on the playing field, let alone make it a level field for all. YouTube is expected to issue a statement in the coming days to clarify the confusing terms of service.

Also read: One of Zim’s Biggest YouTube Channels Shut Down Over A Copyright Wrangle, Over 1000 Content Pieces No Longer Accessible