Is Crypto Content Shunned on Mainstream Social Media?

The treatment of cryptocurrencies and their users is unfortunately always a relevant issue. The wider public often does not have any clear notion about bitcoin or crypto in general, but only a few of these will state a neutral opinion. Instead, many will likely latch onto any fact they might recall and more often than not, this is some kind of negative story. The level of negativity can range from believing that crypto funds terrorists to relatively minor issues like the volatility level (if compared to the notion of being a terrorist financing tool). However, the general sentiment still appears to be mainly negative when it comes to public awareness of cryptocurrencies in general or even its smaller cousins.

For many, this alone showcases why crypto adoption is such a slow and problematic process. Furthermore, this public perception of cryptocurrencies continues to be heavily influenced by sources that might not have a good grasp of neither the technology that allows them to work nor the price of bitcoin and other crypto tokens that regularly capture the mainstream media headlines. Recently another huge social media outlet once again demonstrated how problematic this entire setup continues to be even in 2020.

YouTube Decision

Not long ago, it seems that YouTube again began its campaign against crypto content. This started with content creators complaining on social media that the same platform is taking down there videos featuring cryptocurrency subjects. This will immediately bring back bitter memories for many in the crypto content creator community. The original anti-crypto initiative at YouTube began some months ago. It was back then that the platform started taking down these videos. To their defense, YouTube returned many of these to the content creators and basically restored any videos that went down. However, this new process once again signals the possibility that the biggest video sharing platform in the world is about to crack down on all content of this nature.

Clearly, this is worrisome for a large number of content creators who are exclusively making videos, clips even live streams that focus on the cryptocurrency ecosystem. For them, like for any other professional content creator, the possibility of losing their videos basically means staying without anything and also a revenue slashing process that can destroy their business model. There is no doubt that many worried YouTubers are frantically checking social media for any sign that this process had YouTube might be kicking in on a larger scale.

Penalty Strikes

YouTube is notorious for putting content creators in a position where they lose their videos because of the platform’s decisions, but the authors are still left in the dark about the precise form of their transgression. Instead, they have an insight into the amount and nature of so-called strikes – the YouTube term for violations of some of their terms and services. The same applies to everyone who uses this social media, from daily vlog authors to gaming and esports clips.

The crypto content creators that have been recently affected by these YouTube strikes once more present the non-transparent process that YouTube so often employs. Instead of any detailed explanation, they were simply informed by YouTube that their content is violating the community guidelines of the platform. But, behind the plain notification is a series of drastic measures – besides taking down of a particular video, YouTube also blocks man advanced features of the same platform, blocking the users from doing live streams and so forth.

Decentralized Video Platforms

Like in previous situations where YouTube pulled down content related to crypto, there are renewed calls for the crypto content creators to jump ship. This is sadly a general trend in any creator circle and over the years, it tends to pop up from time to time. In this case, however, the authors have the possibility of using decentralized platforms for hosting content. Sadly, unlike situations where gamers have been pressed by the YouTube terms and services, there are no viable solutions.

Crypto content providers cannot just move to Twitch or Mixer and expect to not encounter these problems as well. The truly decentralized video sharing platforms, on the other hand, do not have access even to small percentages of the big guns. Because of this, any crypto content creator on YouTube will likely remain on the same platform and try to figure out how to evade any future problems like this.

Underlying Issues

The problem with the content creator strikes, in this case, is the fact that the exact nature of the transgression is not known. This is something that is familiar to many creators on YouTube but in the case of crypto, the same issue is elevated even further. The easiest explanation is that ever since 2017, crypto content is not a welcomed guest on social media from the perspective of their owners. This is not related to their volatility of BTC price or some similar element.

Instead, the presence of this continent in the eyes of social media management puts potential hazards in terms of legal liability while it does not provide many bonuses in return. This setup was elevated in the midst of the corporate managers during the boom of the ICOs. At that time, many companies aggressively promoted their initial coin offerings while trying to attain new customers. The means of doing that was rooted in social media paid exposure, so ads on Facebook and Google were rife with crypto ICO offers and crypto exchanges.

This provided a big revenue spike but also resulted in some sobering facts. In China, for example, it was revealed that a huge percentage of ICOs were outright fraudulent ventures. Other territories offered similar pitfalls and there was no way – still the same is true – of checking which ICO was legitimate and which one was a scam. No big social media wants to be associated with a venture that will finish as a huge scandal in which countless individuals lost money and the same company indirectly had a hand in it. To make sure this does not happen, YouTube will always be more cautious than open to crypto content, at least in the coming years of no regulatory recognition for cryptocurrencies.