Is YouTube Responsible?

By now you've likely heard about the shooting on the YouTube campus.

The first time I heard about it, I thought that it was likely related to the YouTube demonetization and now it seems I may have been correct.

YouTube has been avoiding dealing with its content problems for quite a while.

Their excuses do hold some water though. There is simply too much content uploaded to YouTube on a daily basis for them to review it all.

The shit hit the fan when news outlets decided to report on the issue in relation to content that was advertised on and advertisers started to pull out.

Losing millions, YouTube panicked and tried to fix the issue, by using machine learning that obviously wasn't ready to be set off on its own. These algorithms started demonetizing content left and right, for seemingly unknown reasons. People freaked out because they couldn't easily tell what was demonetized at first, or why it was. Videos would be demonetized for weeks before they would find out. People's income from YouTube dropped off considerably.

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They didn't know what to do. They didn't know what they did wrong. Did they say a wrong word? Was the subject something they couldn't talk about? What had they done?

As time went on and YouTube remained silent, people's lives they had built fell apart. Companies built on YouTube closed their doors, unable to sustain their income. And still, YouTube remained silent.

YouTube did ruin lives. They made something that people put their hopes and dreams into, then they changed it without notice, and gave people nothing to be able to know what they needed to do to keep earning money. Of course, these people shouldn't have "put all their eggs in one basket" but hindsight is always 20/20.

One of these people who felt that YouTube had ruined her life took her own life, after wounding 3 others on the YouTube campus. Is YouTube responsible?

They even got sued by content creators because of their silence. These people were just trying to make money and YouTube was remaining silent on what they had to do to remain monetized.

For many, all they had to do was talk to them so they knew how to change their content to be acceptable for the platform. But they didn't.

YouTube wasn't censoring lives, but they were denying payment to creators with no reason given and no recourse.

I can't say I'm surprised this happened. I don't condone it. I don't think anyone should go out and shoot someone, or themselves. I understand it though. This person felt powerless. They felt like everything they had worked for was being taken away and they didn't know what to do, so they lashed out.

My heart goes out to the girl who committed suicide the other day after shooting a few others on the YouTube campus. I only wish you had had someone there to give you hope and make you realize there are other much better courses of action to undertake.

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