YouTube Gaming is stripping out video descriptions

Advertorials. Advertisements diguised as editorial content. Reviews that are paid for. Where YouTube and games are concerned, this is paying for one or more videos to be made about a game. Sometimes these agreements limit what the person making and publishing the video can say. If you know that's what you're watching, you can take it with a grain of salt. If you don't know that's what you're watching, though, it's a problem.

Regulatory agencies in the US and elsewhere have been trying to get YouTubers to make it more obvious when a video about a game has been paid for by a developer or publisher, but as it stands, a lot of times the only warning viewers get is in the description below the video. If they get any warning at all. And choose to look for it.

As such, the lack of video descriptions on YouTube Gaming is extremely troubling. Will this force video creators to be more up front about paid content in videos in the future? Maybe, but I suspect not. Not unless the current guidelines start being legally enforced. At best, I expect we'll start seeing notices added to the end of videos, where no one will see them.

And what about videos that already exist and are being algorithmically added to the mix? Future changes don't affect two year-old videos to which the creators no longer devote their attention. One could argue that those videos are less likely to get traffic now, but they'll still get some. The question is still valid.

I'm super tired right now and can't think of an eloquent way to end this, so I'll just say: this is bad.