When YouTube opened its Partner Program (YPP) to everyone, anyone could sign up for the service, start uploading videos, and immediately begin making money. It was a smooth ride until some people started abusing it. These ‘some people’ started creating accounts to upload other people’s content.
Now, YouTube is ready to fight these bad guys as it has updated the thresholds required to join the YouTube Partner Program. According to this post, YouTube says it will no longer serve ads on YPP videos until the channel reaches 10k lifetime views. This new strategy, they say, will give them enough information to determine the validity of a channel. It will also allow them confirm if a channel is following the community guidelines and advertiser policies.
Prior to this update, YouTube made it easy for anyone to, report an impersonating channel to help protect creator revenue. YouTube says that the change has helped them terminate hundreds of thousands of channels violating their policies.
“By keeping the threshold to 10k views, we also ensure that there will be minimal impact on our aspiring creators,” Ariel Bardin, YouTube’s vice president of product management, said in the blog post.
Still to come, the company will also be adding a review process for new creators who apply to be in the YouTube Partner Program. After a creator hits 10k lifetime views on their channel, their activity will be reviewed against the policies. The channel will be accepted into the program only when everything is fine. All these are just to ensure revenue only flows to creators who are playing by the rules.