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UTAH COUNTY — Enjoying a Christmas 2016 morning, the Bingham family shows their excitement for presents, family, and snow. It's just one of the many videos on the YouTube channel, This Is How We Bingham, which boasts a humble 110,000 subscribers. But recently, father and husband Branden Bingham started having trouble with what he believed to be wholesome video posts.
"Your little green monetization icon turns to yellow," Bingham described. "And then it progressively got where every single video, every single day was being switched over as not suitable for advertisers."
Bingham says all but two of the videos were later approved for posting and monetization after being screened by an actual person at YouTube. However, he, along with several other contributors to the site, believe the change is a result of an effort to purge the site of inappropriate videos.
"There's too many videos for them to monitor all of them, and so I feel like it's an overreaction the other way," Bingham said.
The so-called purge is in response to a number of videos that featured kids or cartoon characters in disturbing situations. One channel, in particular, featured Disney's Elsa, Spider-Man, and The Joker, engaging in adult-themed scenarios, while the videos descriptions purported to be child-friendly. The problem has been referred to as "ElsaGate" across the Internet.
"It's just sad that it had to come to this because of the behavior, because of the actions of somebody else who took it in a bad direction to make some money. It's sad," Bingham said.
In a written statement to KSL, a YouTube spokesperson said:
"Over the last few months, we’ve used the signals from creator appeals to help improve the machine learning technology that determines whether a video is suitable for ads. Our recent update, for example, decreased the number of impacted videos by 30%. We know it’s important to get this right, and it’s a huge focus for our teams."
KSL found a number of other Utah-based content creators impacted in similar ways. Some even found their channels deleted for review. Those channel owners, however, declined to comment.
Bingham said he's not upset with YouTube. In fact, he's grateful they're making efforts to improve the site. He's just hopeful the concerns will be resolved soon.
"I still believe in sharing the happiness, and the family traditions," Bingham said. "To counteract all of that ElsaGate filth that caused this problem in the first place."
