On Wednesday, YouTube announced an update to its terms of service, as it displays ads via video clips of some content makers, but it will not give them part of the ad revenue because they are not old enough to sign up for the affiliate program.

This means that YouTube will display ads on videos even on small channels where the creators do not get a percentage of the profits.

Usually, when displaying ads on YouTube videos, content creators received part of the profits through their participation in the YouTube Partner Program, which requires that the channel viewership be large.

This is a way for YouTube to profit from all of the content uploaded to the platform, not just the videos uploaded by users who explicitly agree to monetize their content.

YouTube says it will only show ads on "brand safe" content and advertisers will continue to control "brand relevance."

Channel owners who are not part of the affiliate program can still apply once they have reached the threshold of 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 public viewing hours, over the past 12 months.

In addition to changing the advertising policy, YouTube changed the terms for its partners as well.

According to the update, payments to users with income generating channels will now be "treated as revenue from the US tax perspective."

The company says this means it will withhold taxes on these payments when requested to do so.

YouTube announced that content creators "will not generally be affected by these withholding taxes" if they provide the necessary tax documents in their Adsense account.

The update also includes an explicit ban on the collection of facial recognition data on the platform.

Where the site made it clear that this ban is not new, but it has updated the conditions to make them more clear.

The new changes will take effect on YouTube from Wednesday in the United States and from mid-2021 anywhere else.

The angry comments from young content creators on this step continued, and social media filled with angry comments on YouTube for using their channels to display ads without getting them paid, and by requiring certain percentages of views to share with them part of the profits.

This is honestly wrong.

They will be putting ads on our content and not giving us a dime on it?

Do better youtube.

Do better.

https://t.co/fEQ4K18eCk

- Mila (@milaplayssims) November 18, 2020

If you create videos and upload them to YouTube, the platform can now display ads on them whether you like it or not.

And unless the channel owner is part of the affiliate program, creators won't even get a small portion of the pie.