YouTube promises better communication and stronger policies in 2018

Last year was a rough one for YouTube, and it plans on fixing a lot in 2018.

Whether you're a creator or just an occasional viewer, you probably heard a thing or two about YouTube having a rough 2017. Between multiple Ad-apocalypses, the whole Logan Paul debacle, and stricter partnership requirements for smaller channels, there was no shortage of events and controversial decisions that made last year one of YouTube's roughest.

CEO Susan Wojcicki recently took to the YouTube Creator Blog to share her top five priorities for the site for 2018, and while it remains to be seen how these words will be turned into actions, it sounds like YouTube is on the right path.

Starting first with the elephant in the room, it's said that YouTube is working on new policies to better handle bad behavior from the site's biggest names.

Wojcicki says:

We're also currently developing policies that would lead to consequences if a creator does something egregious that causes significant harm to our community as a whole. While these instances are rare, they can damage the reputation and revenue of your fellow creators, so we want to make sure we have policies in place that allow us to respond appropriately.

On a similar note, Wojcicki also reiterates the fact that YouTube will be increasing its number of human employees to 10,000 for manually reviewing content, in addition to further improving its machine learning system that's had a tendency to demonize videos and entire channels that weren't actually deserving of it.

More humans for (hopefully) less unnecessary demonitizations.

Improvements here are important and need to happen, but in an effort to help creators continue to make money even without advertisements, YouTube Red will expand to additional markets alongside "a revamped YouTube Music experience."

Communication has also been a weak point for YouTube, but changes are coming here, too. YouTube will supposedly start making better use of its @YTCreators and @TeamYouTube Twitter accounts to be more engaged and active with community questions/concerns, and emails will be sent out for any major news or updates.

Lastly, YouTube will also use 2018 as a year to invest more in its educational content. More specifically –

That includes working with our educational creators to bring more of their content to the platform as well as expert organizations like Goodwill to provide and feature even more high-quality job skills videos on YouTube.

No matter if you're a creator or viewer, what are your thoughts on this update? Do you think these changes are enough, or is there more you think that needs to be addressed? Sound off in the comments below.

Some YouTube ads forced users' computers to mine cryptocurrency