Light criticism is no longer tolerated in the halls of the Ministry of Truth. If you don’t like something being shoved down your throat, be prepared to find yourself either being excoriated by the prefects, deplatformed by the cultists, or demonetized by the Social Justice Judges.
Anyone who has been following the box office disaster that is Birds of Prey know that the film bombed hard at theaters, enabling it to make it onto the great Get Woke, Go Broke Master List.
YouTubers have been following the trend as it’s unfolded since the movie’s opening. However, YouTube outlet Clownfish TV noticed that their recent videos were demonetized. The videos reported on the movie’s failure and the fact that the name was changed in light of said failure.
Interesting.
Last two videos on Birds of Prey inexplicably demonetized. Nothing risqué at all — just talking about the box office.
Someone at Google a Birds of Prey fan?
Has it become another “naughty” term like Vic Mignogna and Johnny Depp? pic.twitter.com/1rbGVQesCe
— Clownfish TV (@RealClownfishTV) February 11, 2020
Um, well okay then… pic.twitter.com/wlgSJ06D2W
— Clownfish TV (@RealClownfishTV) February 12, 2020
The interesting thing about it is that Clownfish TV leans more Left than not, and yet even light criticism of Birds of Prey with nothing flashy, controversial, or spicy, still netted them demonetization.
You can watch the video below to judge for yourself.
But Clownfish wasn’t the only one getting demonetized for milquetoast takes on the milk-faced money-foil.
Geeks + Gamers’ Jeremy also chimed in to let them know that their video about Harley Quinn: Birds of Prey was also demonetized.
First video we’ve had demonetized in forever.
Nothing spicy, just talking about the weird decision to rename the movie.
Warner Bros threatening to withhold a big ad spend or something?
— Clownfish TV (@RealClownfishTV) February 12, 2020
However, he did a follow-up tweet noting that it could have been because he had “Coronavirus” in the title.
Mine had “coronavirus” in the title so I’m thinking that’s what did it in for me. It’s so weird though pic.twitter.com/cQbmv7hlgf
— Jeremy Prime (@DDayCobra) February 12, 2020
You can see the video for yourself to try to understand what was worth the demonetization, but I doubt you’ll find anything spicy enough to justify the slash in ad revenue.
We saw similar things happen before with other channels, including Nerdette’s Newsstand, Sargon of Akkad, some visual novel channels, and almost everything associated with Mortal Kombat 11.
There are tons of other videos and topical matters also getting hit with very specific demonetization.
Typically YouTube uses demonetization to demoralize and deter content creators from making similar kinds of content. It’s to herd people into a certain kind of groupthink about a topic to avoid the spread of news and/or information they don’t want to become viral.
Right now it doesn’t seem to be widespread, but that could change depending on how the film performs, how YouTubers respond, and what the general feedback from the audience is like.
According to Geeks + Gamers and Clownfish TV, this demonetization on Birds of Prey content only happened over the weekend, so it could be the start of something new or YouTube’s way of slapping content creators on the wrist.
(Thanks for the news tip Clownfish TV)
