According to the vid creators, both YouTube’s algorithms and human reviewers single out content with words like “gay,” “lesbian,” etc, and put it behind an age-restriction gate. Age-restricted videos aren’t eligible for monetization, meaning the creators can’t make money from them. Age-restriction barriers are intended to be for potentially vulgar or offensive content, but the creators allege YouTube applies them to their videos strictly for their LGBTQ+ content. Bria Kam and Chrissy Chambers, of the channel BriaAndChrissy, claim YouTube has diminished their monthly revenue from $3,500 to $500 by doing this. The lead attorney on the case, Peter Obstler of the firm Browne George Ross, told the Washington Post that YouTube’s monopoly of the online video industry means discrimination is all but inevitable: Part of the problem is that YouTube is notoriously opaque about its monetization and recommendation algorithms. YouTube is infamous for demonetizing creators for seemingly inconsistent reasons. The biggest example of this is probably 2017’s “Adpocalypse,” which began when YouTube changed its rules for what kinds of videos would be ineligible for monetization. Multiple channels reported their existing videos were retroactively demonetized despite not having any of the controversial content YouTube was trying to restrict. This resulted in several channels allegedly taking a serious revenue hit. The platform also has a history with restricting LGBTQ+ content: in 2017, an apparent glitch caused harmless videos that fell into this category to be filtered out of YouTube’s restricted mode. YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki and VP Johanna Wright both apologized for this and claimed the site’s moderators had adjusted the algorithm accordingly. In 2018, content creators claimed that using the words “trans” or “transgender” triggered instant demonetization of their videos. YouTube responded with the following quote to The Verge: We’ve reached out to Google for comment.
