On April 24, 2005, the first video was posted on YouTube. Less than two years later, on Tuesday January 9, 2007, the Swollen Pickles YouTube channel was born. From there it took me almost 18 months to upload my first video in 2008. It was a dodgy animation that I created when I was learning how to use Flash. It didn’t break the internet.
In 2011, I uploaded an old 30 second Bruce Lee quote that I had saved from somewhere and a couple of old crash test videos from the 80’s. Then, the channel lay dormant.
Fast forward ten years. I’d survived the first 12 months of the pandemic, living with various restrictions, in and out of lockdown. Then the great clusterfrak of June 2021 happened. Like half of Australia I ended up locked down, bored and I was hooked on the daily press conferences.
The more of them that I watched, the more I started to realise that what was being said in the mornings, was not necessarily what came out the other end of the nightly news sausage maker.
I started to pull together short videos to try and highlight some of the contradictions and spin. Politics can be boring. I think politicians often bank on that fact to get by. I thought I’d try and cut down hours of waffle into something digestible
On August 10, 2021, this channel passed the requirements to apply for the YouTube monetisation program. So, I applied. An event 14 years in the making. Later that day I got my first rejection. The cold sting of rejection.
Reviewers classified the channel as “Reused content”. “Channel uses someone else’s content without making changes that add significant value”.
I figured that the problem must have been the old Bruce Lee clip, and maybe the two old crash test videos, so I deleted them.
As part of the appeal process you have to create a video, referring to the content guidelines, and demonstrating why the channel meets the guidelines. You also have to walk through how you go about creating content.
I don’t have a fancy camera, lighting rig or microphone set up. I’ve got a head for radio and a voice for silent cinema.
Two days later, my appeal was rejected. Why? Because the channel had been modified since it’s suspension.
Our reviewers found that you significantly changed your channel before you appealed. Appeals are only meant to be used if you think we made a mistake, so to have your appeal considered, you cannot delete or change large portions of your content.
To be perfectly clear, I deleted three videos in total, one 30 second clip of Bruce Lee, and two 30 odd second clips of crash tests from the 80’s.
There’s no way a human being could define this as a significant change to the channel, but apparently it’s enough to give YouTube a reason not to consider an appeal.
Once you’ve been rejected and exhausted your one appeal you have to wait 30 days before you can reapply.
Simple me figured that YouTube had just made a boo boo and that a human hadn’t reviewed anything so I wait out the 30 days and re-submit. Rejected. Same reason.
YouTube really don’t make this process easy. You’re not provided with specific examples of what you’ve done wrong, you’re really left to try and figure that out yourself.
Reused Content:
“Channel uses someone else’s content without making changes that add significant value.”
Now accepting that I’m biased I set up a poll. I was genuinely shocked by the number of people that responded. 2,660 votes. 97% of people that responded said that there was a meaningful difference between the videos I’d created versus the source material. I can’t account for the 3%.
Based on viewer feedback, there are plenty of people getting something out of these videos, and I’d think that it’s fairly obvious how much time, and effort, goes into pulling them together, so I’m really not sure what the issue is. There’s no way to contact YouTube directly either.
I spun up a second channel just in case this one was being penalised for some reason. I’ve been uploading the longer, more ‘serious’, stuff over there, at least for the time being, so check it out.
YouTube seem to have no problem monetizing channels like these:
Text to speech channels that literally just read out Reddit threads.
Channels that just re-upload movie trailers.
Channels that just loop rain noise for hours on end. These all get approved by YouTube.
But highlighting how frustrating and crazy Australian Politics can be?
Thinking about this again tonight, it reminded me of a problem I had with Adsense in 2012 where my old site was disqualified from displaying Adsense ads for a 4 year period because one of the stories I’d written apparently triggered some Google scanning bot or something. You can read about my four years without Adsense here.