Ann-Marie Murrell: Why Did YouTube De-Monetize PolitiChicks? You Know Why.

Ann-Marie Murrell (Photo: Tammy Ferguson Photography)

For those who’ve been following PolitiChicks from the start, you’ll remember we began as a webTV show. Before that I was one of the first “New Media” reporters covering Republican and Tea Party events all over Southern California, conducting interviews with movers and shakers in the political world. Back then our PolitiChicks YouTube channel was a very important tool for our brand. It housed all of our webTV shows and it is where all of our videos and interviews are still archived today.

The main reason everyone initially began posting their videos to YouTube (rather than posting directly to Facebook) is because with YouTube you’re given the option to insert advertisements, which ultimately pays you money.

I realize everyone hates all of those annoying ads on websites and in videos. Trust me, even I don’t like seeing ads on my own website. But back in the day, maybe 8-9 years ago, ad revenue more than paid for most successful websites, including mine.
With YouTube, although their ads only amounted to a few pennies per view we have several videos with tens of thousands of views or more. And one of the videos I produced (entitled “Beaten to Death in Plain Sight”) has over 2 million views. On top of that, we have hundreds of videos we can still share to get more views and almost 10,000 subscribers. So although our PolitiChicks YouTube channel is still small potatoes when compared to Prager University, that’s still better than nothing, right?
Well, last week I found out nothing is exactly what we’re getting after all.
When I realized there weren’t any ads in my “Beaten” video, I checked the edit section of YouTube and this is what I found. (I’ve blown it up considerably because it was barely noticeable at the top of the page):

“We’ve determined that your channel is no longer eligible for monetization.”

Notice it doesn’t say one of my videos, or even some of my videos–it says my entire channel is no longer eligible for ad placement/money.
They never sent me an email warning that this might happen nor anything afterwards to let me know that it did. They also didn’t give me an explanation other than a pop-up after-the-fact saying my channel didn’t meet their community standards.
Their “standards”, by the way, include everything from hate speech and violence to pornography–none of which we do here at PolitiChicks, by the way….
They “allowed” me to appeal, which I did, but without any knowledge as to what they’ve deemed offensive I have no idea whether or not my channel will ever get monetized again. I went through my archives and privatized random videos I thought might have “offended” them, but eh. YouTube has perhaps made this unfixable.
To be honest, although I’ve seen larger websites being attacked for their conservative views I thought PolitiChicks was small enough to fly under YouTube’s radar. We haven’t even created any new videos in years. But in case y’all haven’t noticed, the extremists on the left are going after all conservatives now, big and small, without any reason or cause. Their goal is to silence every voice they disagree with anywhere they find them, and one way they’re doing it is by taking away their money.
And it’s certainly not just YouTube–it’s all of Social Media.
When they saw that we were really making a difference, reaching people they didn’t want us to reach, things started going downhill fast. Facebook and Twitter (and even Pinterest, as we’ve recently learned) started messing with algorithms and blocking people from seeing posts to our websites. They created ways to stop traffic and views. In other words, they put up roadblocks to all of our virtual storefronts, aka our websites–and many of us went “bankrupt”.
These days unless you’re a Breitbart or Drudge it really is difficult to keep going. I’ve seen mega-websites disappear that I never thought could fail so I’m very grateful that PolitiChicks is still here, but it hasn’t been easy. This year I chose to stop sending our weekly newsletter to cut costs–until recently, when a reader sent me an email asking if he’d done something wrong because he wasn’t getting his anymore…That broke my heart so I went ahead and sent it and will continue to do so on a weekly basis again. Sometimes even if one person cares, it’s worth the price.
At this point, I can hear some of our dear readers asking, “What can we do?”
In the old days the way I would have asked people to help would be through an action-alert against YouTube to fight their bias against conservatives. Dennis Prager is doing just that now, filing a lawsuit against YouTube. Prager has the power and ability to do this and God bless him for doing so.
But here’s where I’m going to get really “real”, and some might say cynical: I believe we are fighting windmills when it comes to all-things-social media. It’s their game. They created all of the rules, and we’re playing on their field. And for some of us with websites and YouTube channels, they were even giving us money to play! So we shouldn’t be surprised when they decide to change their rules at any whim, and take away that money, especially since they desperately hate us. Not to mention part of the reason they created the game in the first place was to destroy us…
I figure when I can’t keep PolitiChicks going anymore, that is when God is telling me it’s time to stop. There have been many times I thought I was finished but I’m still here because our contributors, such as Dr. Fred Eichelman, Michael Ingmire, Dr. Carolyn A. Roth, John Baldwin, Katherine Daigle, and so many others continue sending me beautiful pieces that might not fit anywhere else. And I cherish being able to read and publish the works of people like Daniel Greenfield and Dr. Jamie Glazov. So as long as PolitiChicks continues to have contributors like these, and as long as we still have an audience of readers who actually care about us, we’ll keep the lights on as long as we can.
And truly, thank you all for sticking with us for as long as you have. Many websites have fallen along the wayside–we’re honored to still be here with you.

Ann-Marie Murrell

Ann-Marie Murrell is one of the creators of PolitiChicks and co-owns the site with Morgan Brittany. Ann-Marie is co-author of two bestselling books, “What Women (Really) Want” and "PolitiChicks: A Clarion Call to Political Activism". She has appeared on dozens of television shows including Fox & Friends, CNN, Hannity, the Dr. Phil Show, Huckabee, Lou Dobbs, C-SPAN, One America News, Stuart Varney & Company, Newsmax, MSNBC, and more. In addition to PolitiChicks, Ann-Marie has written for multiple other news sites. You can find Ann-Marie Murrell on Facebook and Twitter: @PolitichickAM E-mail: thepolitichicks@gmail.com

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