YouTube loosens profanity rules for monetized videos

YouTube is tweaking its profanity-related rules to allow creators to monetize videos with swearing in them, provided the profanity is limited to the first seven seconds of the video. In November 2022, YouTube changed its rules so that creators who used swear words in the first 8-15 seconds would potentially be ineligible for any ad revenue. After much backlash, the company changed its rules again in March 2023 so that such videos would be eligible for limited ad revenue, unless they use profanity in the majority of the video. Announcing the latest changes, YouTube’s head of monetization, Conor Kavanagh, said in a video late on Tuesday that the changes of two years ago were made to align YouTube videos with broadcast standards. “We introduced this guideline to align with broadcast standards; advertisers expected ads on YouTube to have a distance between profanity and the ad that just served. Those expectations have changed, and advertisers already have the ability to target content to their desired level of profanity,” he said. He noted that if creators use moderate or strong swear words in the title or thumbnail, their videos might have limited monetization.