Also because a lot of marketers were royally taken to task for letting their ads appear on political videos. Part of it might also not be that Google demonetised them directly, but allowed us the tools to opt out of having our ads shown on those types of videos altogether.

We now have a load of hoops to jump through to justify spend on YouTube advertising - and political videos are a strict no-go area.

Can I ask why advertisers care? You do realise everybody understands that YouTube videos are tailored to them and not an endorsement of the content, right? It's having the horrible side effect of destroying independent journalism which has nowhere else to go but YouTube (and neither does anyone else).

Hm. Is that to suppress a particular set of ideas, do you think, or just cynically pandering to controversy-phobic advertisers? Not that either one is good, but that latter at least seems even-handed, I guess.

The latter.