YouTube has updated its Advertiser-Friendly Content Guidelines, which affect if a video can be monetized or not.

What is “advertiser-friendly content,” anyway? YouTube terms it as content appropriate for all audiences, i.e, without nudity, profanity, violence, drugs, or “controversy.” Yes, commentary on the election is considered “controversy,” so a video bashing either Trump or Hillary can no longer generate revenue.

For many big-name YouTubers, this policy is a big problem. Several Internet celebrities became famous for profane video-game reviews or social commentary. Phillip DeFranco was one of the first to speak out against this, noting that most of his income came from YouTube ads before his videos.Several YouTubers have taken to Twitter, using #YouTubeIsOverParty

As Nathan Siwko, a junior and avid YouTuber put it, “PewDiePie will be out of a job. Rest in peace, YouTube.”

Zach Johnson, a sophomore, concurs, stating, “The big channels are going to get run off because they can’t support their lifestyle anymore and the smaller channels can’t grow and be sustainable without that ad revenue.”

What does this mean for the average YouTube subscriber?

• Several beloved channels might just be taken down, as they were the main or only source of income for their creators.
• There are fears that YouTube might become the new MySpace.
• Everything may just calm down on its own as people get used to the new monetization standard.

Audrey Harper weighed in: “It’s actually smart of YouTube, as someone could benefit from saying offensive or provocative things, but bad for creators who use profanity and politics as a way to get views.”

The most important part of this update is the fact that it notifies the owners of the videos directly, instead of being a small footnote on the video’s analytics page. The current confusion suggests that the monetary policy, which really hasn’t changed, wasn’t well understood. To find the page containing the policy, several links must be followed–making it hard to get to even now while transparency is being emphasized. Also, the policy is being more aggressively pursued, subjecting videos to more scrutiny. Time will tell if this is a step toward decency, or the beginnings of an exodus from a major media platform.