YouTube is an incredible service. For free, you can host an unlimited number of videos and even use Google’s servers to live-stream. Only Facebook comes close to rivaling these free features.
As a result, churches are all too eager to use YouTube instead of paying for a service to accomplish the same thing, but as the old saying goes, “There’s no such thing as a free lunch.”
Since its debut, YouTube’s live-streaming service has steadily improved some of its functions. Increasingly, it’s become easier to schedule and embed a live-stream, week-in and week-out, but while that’s become better, other things have become worse.
If you go into your creator’s studio and look for the music policies section (https://www.youtube.com/music_policies), you’ll notice that music isn’t a simple black and white/yes or no thing. There are various possible ways that your performance (not merely playing a prerecorded song, but actually performing it) of a song will affect your live-stream and account.
This fact, alone, is a hidden cost to using YouTube. Why? Simply stated, you need to devote time to determining whether your church service will be allowed and, if so, what will happen.
Some songs will be available for monetization; others won’t. For most churches, that’s not a big deal. What is a big deal, though is when a song isn’t available worldwide, especially in a country where your live-stream has been making an impact OR when a song isn’t allowed on YouTube at all.
To combat these problems on other platforms, CCLI and the Christian Copyright Association have created licenses that enable a church to be able to stream music. So, if your student ministry does a video of “Shake it off,” as was the trend a few years ago, if you live stream on a smaller platform and have the Christian Copyright Association license, you’d be legally covered (because that license covers secular music).
Do the exact same thing on YouTube and there’s a good chance your video will disappear, be muted, or you’ll be issued a copyright strike, despite being within your rights to do so.
There’s no one to tell that you’ve got express written permission through a license your church purchased.
This comes down to customer service. There’s no one to tell that you’ve got express written permission through a license your church purchased.
Because of the massive scope of video uploaded to YouTube, and the service's monetization strategy, YouTube has to rely on algorithms and bots to do the majority of the work related to monitoring what’s uploaded to its servers.
This also causes another problem. The algorithms lack the nuance of human judgment.
So while churches might generally tend to applaud community standards intended to make YouTube a safer place for people to watch videos and see what they want to see, this lack of subtlety means that videos can be and often are flagged as inappropriate, in error.
Whether you’re monetized, or not, most of the time, this is no big deal … except when the penalty for violating community standards is that you’re not allowed to live-stream.
So what could cause you to be accused of violating community standards? Nudity, sexual content, harmful or dangerous content, violent or graphic content, harassment and cyberbullying, spam, misleading metadata, and scams, threats, copyright infringement, privacy, impersonation, child endangerment, and hateful content (for descriptions of each, click here: https://www.youtube.com/yt/about/policies/#community-guidelines).
While most of these will not be a problem for your church, there are two that are. We’ve touched on copyright and how YouTube doesn’t have anyone to talk to about supposed violations which aren’t, but “hateful content” might also be a problem.
While the company's description of “hateful content” starts off with “Our products are platforms for free expression,” it goes on to say that “inciting hatred of the basis of these core characteristics” (like “sexual orientation/gender identity,” which are listed specifically) is prohibited.
Is a discussion of the levitical laws in the Old Testament “inciting hatred”? What about a discussion of Romans 1:26-28 or 1 Timothy 1:8-11? Some would say yes.
YouTube operates on a “three strikes and you’re out” system. What’s particularly important for our discussion is that one of the penalties for the first strike could be the loss of the ability to live-stream (https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2802032?hl=en).
Each strike lasts three months, so it’s possible that you could get a copyright community guidelines strike in January, have a speaker from an organization that deals with homosexuality in February, and get a strike then, and then lose your account altogether in March due to a mistake.
You can always appeal, and while most of the time you’ll be successful, there’s no guarantee.
If you’re only live-streaming with your account, that could be very annoying, but if you have years of videos, some of which aren’t backed up locally, that could be disastrous, with years of videos gone, in an instant, never to be recovered.
Remember that while, in general, YouTube subscribes to the idea of free speech, they’re not a government institution. They don’t have to abide by free speech and they can serve or deny service to any individual or group that they want.
All this assumes that your church isn’t doing something more egregious, too. There are churches that assume that doing ministry means they should have carte blanche when it comes to copyright. “We’re not selling it, so it should be fine,” they reason. That’s just not legally the case.
Others think that the truth of the scripture alleviates any need to discuss those truths with love and compassion. So, if what scripture says comes across not as God’s plan to give us abundant lives because of His love, but as a cold, hard “God said it, so get over it,” they assume that’s fine.
The last year has revealed an additional problem with the YouTube ecosystem, as well. Well-known creators like Pewdiepie and Logan Paul have stepped over the line in their content. As a result, advertisers have become more skittish about the content they support.
While that doesn’t directly affect your church’s channel, if it’s not monetized, it does reveal that YouTube is willing to dial back privileges that were, at one time, available to all.
Just as monetization was initially available to only a few, then became available to all only to be scaled back, so other features like live-streaming may soon, no longer, be available to all churches.
So, what should your church do if you depend on YouTube or some other platform? Plan ahead. Maybe you will never run afoul of its policies. Maybe you’ll always be a large enough channel that you won’t have to worry about losing one of the features you depend on.
But, what if you do? There are other places where you can live-stream. There are other services that you can use to archive old videos. Maybe they’re not free. Maybe they don’t help SEO as much as YouTube, but plan ahead, just in case.
