YouTube did an oopsie… And more on DCC News. Pew pew! YouTube is reversing course on announced changes to its verification process, after they enraged thousands of creators and likely millions of fans.
Within 24 hours of the company announcing changes that would unverify thousands of creators. The company backtracked saying it “completely missed the mark”. YouTube had sent thousands (maybe more) of YouTube creators emails saying that they would lose their verified badge.
Like most social media platforms, YouTube offers a verification badge to indicate that the account belongs to the authentic public figure or brand. In the past the company allowed anyone with over 100,000 subscribers to request verification. The company says it will now continue to allow this, something they a day before, said would be stopped completely.
Normally a company making a bad decision that is quickly changed as a result of consumer backlash isn’t a big deal. But in this case it was symbolic, because YouTube isn’t known for changing it’s decisions often.
As YouTuber penguinz0 said “This is huge for the internet because everyone banded together and actually made a change on YouTube. Which has never happened in the 13 years I’ve been on YouTube… Not once, not a single time have I seen them reverse an update or change they have made.” Adding that he had never seen them backpedal on even the most insane ideas YouTube has tried.
Other YouTubers agreed. Huggbees made a video “detailing my current thoughts on YouTube. I’ll give you a hint: They’re not positive” Among other complaints he said:
“YouTube is incompetent. YouTube is in every single possible way incompetent. In every community outreach effort they have provided and in every recent change they have made to their platform, and in every way they have tried to work alongside copyright law they are fully and utterly incompetent. This is a sentiment I am not alone in every single other creator and every single other channel manager I have spoken to in my last 13 years of doing this has agreed in one way or another. YouTube has no idea what they’re doing.”
Mason Pelt agreed wholeheartedly with that competence assessment of YouTube. Pelt started as a YouTube creator back in 2009, and shifted into a YouTube channel manager role, becoming YouTube certified in audience growth back in 2014, when he managed the COVERGIRL YouTube channel. He maintained that certification for several more years, later founded his own agency doing among other things YouTube Management, and Search engine optimization
Pelt, whose agency once worked with DCC Mag, said, “YouTube has been largely impossible to work with, even as a major brand. Creators tend to think YouTube problems only impact them and not companies. The reality is, YouTube screws up almost uniformly. Going back to 2014, I have gotten completely wrong information out of YouTube reps. I’ve had brand managers forward emails from YouTube saying things we were doing were not technically possible. And I’ve gotten no shortage of otherwise bad advice from the company.”
Pelt cited Google’s hiring and training practises as the reason. Saying, “Financial analysts love citing the percentage of employees from top 30 schools working at a firm. So, Google/YouTube hire from the universities that make these analysts happy to gush on cable news. The company also often fails to train these people properly. Often the person providing support at YouTube is just reading from an internal support document.”
He said that is why you get responses like the one seen in the Huggbees video, when YouTube responded to a question about how to verify yourself without a trademark, by asking for trademark documentation. Reddit has many other examples of Google support being, in general, wrong about everything.
Header Image: Huggbees
