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Creator Weekly: YouTube AI Training, AdSense Policy, WordPress on Holiday

Creator Weekly: YouTube AI Training, AdSense Policy, WordPress on Holiday

Peggy K
December 21, 2024

Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, and Joyous Holidays to all who celebrate! This is the last Creator Weekly for 2024. Next week’s edition will have a recap of the year and a look towards 2025.

This week there are updates for YouTube, AdSense, Threads, Bluesky, the Fediverse, Google’s AI and more, as companies push out their final updates for the year.

Tracking Santa

A long-standing tradition is tracking Santa as he delivers gifts around the world, and not, you know, shooting him down as an unidentified incursion into US airspace.

NORAD (the North American Aerospace Defense Command) has updated its Santa tracker site with an AI-powered multilingual “Radar the Elf” chatbot from Microsoft Bing. (I find the AI-generated “Radar the Elf” image on that page rather disturbing).

Google has its own Santa Tracker with kid-friendly games. And no chatbots that I can see.

Top news and updates this week

Your YouTube 2024 Creator recap.
Opt in to allow 3rd parties to use your YouTube content for AI training.
YouTube Partners can set Super Chat goals.
Add a Q&A sticker to your YouTube mobile live stream.
Google Drive now plays your uploaded videos immediately.
CapCut raised prices and put popular features behind a subscription.
WordPress(dot)org is on an indefinite “Holiday Break”.
AdSense policy update around identifying users.
AdSense is adding PayPal Hyperwallet as a payment method for US publishers and YouTubers.
Google Search released the December spam update and core update.
Substack released automatic shareable video clips, new read-aloud voices in the Substack app and Notes stats.
Surf lets you create your own feeds from Bluesky, Mastodon, Threads, YouTube, blogs and more.
Sub.club, a platform for monetizing Fediverse content, is shutting down.
A New Social is a new non-profit focused on building the open social web.
OpenVibe social web app now lets you create multiple profiles.
Bluesky added a Mentions tab in notifications and will receive your original username if you add your domain.
Threads (which now has 300M monthly active users) will let you reshare just the media from someone’s post. You can opt out.
Facebook is displaying affiliate links more prominently.
X updated the Home feed to make it “more relevant”.
SnapChat’s monetization program now adds ads to both Stories and longer videos.
Google released updated AI models: text-to-video Veo 2 and text-to-image Imagen 3.
More AI updates from Bing, OpenAI, and LinkedIn.
To try: Whisk AI image generator.
And read to the end for a roundup of end-of-the-year roundups.

Creator Weekly Live 🔴
What do you think about this week’s updates? Join the live Creator Weekly on Sunday, 10:30AM Pacific time (6:30PM UTC).

Take this week’s quiz ✅
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New Tips and Tutorials

If you use AdSense to monetize your own website or blog, you should have received an email about a policy update going into effect in February. I’ve recapped the main changes to policy around identifying users.
If you want to opt in to having your YouTube content used for AI training by non-Google companies, I have a Short that shows you how. (Your channel is opted out by default)

To Do & Try

Look for an email from YouTube Creators with your channel’s year end recap. It has your stats (views, new subscribers, comments, and so forth) and shows your most watched video, Short and live stream. Here’s mine.
Whisk is a new AI toy from Google, where you can start with images to inspire the Subject, Scene and Style. Gemini generates a caption for the images, and feeds those to the Imagen 3 text-to-image generator. If you are in the US, you can give it a try.
Instagram lets you create a 2024 Collage in Stories, through the first week of January.
Openverse (openverse.org ) is a database of images and audio that is either in the public domain, or has a Creator Commons license. You can filter search results to find content that can be used commercially and does not require attribution.

Google’s Last AI Updates for 2024

Google released its updated text-to-image AI model Imagen 3 and text-to-video AI model Veo 2.

Veo 2 highlights:

Improved real-world physics.
Improved human movement and expressions.
More realistic output, less “hallucinations”.
It understands movie-making terminology: “ask it for a genre, specify a lens, suggest cinematic effects”.

Marques Brownlee (MKBHD) compared Veo 2 to Open AI’s Sora and Veo’s output looks more realistic, but there aren’t as many output controls as there are for Sora. He notes the difference “feels like the difference between using a little bit of YouTube data that they're getting away with, versus owning YouTube and just using all of it."

This is available in Google Labs VideoFX. Sign up for the waitlist.

It will be available in the YouTube Shorts editor some time next year.

Open the “More Information” section here to see the detailed prompts.

Imagen 3 highlights:

Better composed images.
Follows prompts more faithfully.
Understands more art styles.

This is available in Google Labs ImageFX. Give it a try.

Google also updated their Generative AI Prohibited Use Policy.

The policy hasn’t changed, but now it uses simplified language and includes “clear examples of conduct that is not acceptable.”

The updated policy also “allows for exceptions for certain educational, artistic, journalistic or academic use cases that might otherwise violate our policies.”

WordPress(dot)org is on “Holiday Break”

As I noted last week, WP Engine won a preliminary injunction against Matt Mullenweg and his company, Automattic, which requires that the managed WordPress hosting company have their access to WordPress(dot)org restored.

WordPress(dot)org is the default repository for WordPress software, themes and plugins, which (surprisingly) is wholly owned by Mullenweg.

When WP Engine sued Mullenweg personally, for interfering with their business, Mullenweg cut off their access to WordPress(dot)org. That prevented WP Engine from updating its free plugins there and blocked their customers from easily updating their plugins and themes.

Not surprisingly, Mullenweg is not taking his legal loss well.

The checkbox he added to WordPress(dot)org sign-in, requiring a declaration of non-affiliation with WP Engine, had to be removed. But instead of just removing it, he childishly replaced it with a mandatory “Pineapple is delicious on pizza” checkbox.

And now, a few days later, Mullenweg has declared a “holiday break” at WordPress (dot) org. People can still download and install WordPress, and existing themes and plugins, but no one can create a new account or submit new themes or plugins. Giving volunteers a break is nice, but that isn’t really what this is about. He writes:

“I hope to find the time, energy, and money to reopen all of this sometime in the new year. Right now much of the time I would spend making WordPress better is being taken up defending against WP Engine’s legal attacks. Their attacks are against Automattic, but also me individually as the owner of WordPress.org, which means if they win I can be personally liable for millions of dollars of damages.”

People had to point out that WordCamps (WordPress conferences) require WordPress(dot)org accounts for registration (something implemented to prevent WP Engine employees from registering), so sign-ups had to be re-enabled for people coming from those registration pages. It has also been noted that it doesn’t make sense to require people to create an account on Mullenweg’s personal website just to attend a WordCamp.

My view from outside is that a fully independent WordPress Foundation should be managing the website for developers and users. It shouldn’t be anyone’s personal site that can be shut down in a fit of pique.

Video Creator and Live Streaming Updates

YouTube now lets you opt in to allowing your content to be used by third parties (such as Adobe, Meta, OpenAI, xAI and others) for training their AI models. This is a setting in YouTube Studio on desktop under Settings > Channel > Advanced. See how to change the settings. Note that Google has no control over what those third parties do with your content. Also note that this setting does not control whether Google or YouTube use your content (they likely do).

YouTube is rolling out Super Chat goals to all creators in the YouTube Partner Program with Supers enabled. Super Chats let fans give you a monetary tip with a highlighted comment. You can set your goal, decide what color comments to include and - importantly! - share what you will do if your goal is met. Learn about Super Chat eligibility.

YouTube is partnering with the entertainment and sports talent agency Creative Artists Agency (CAA) to work with celebrities to test likeness management technology (detecting AI-generated replicas).

If you use the YouTube mobile app to live stream, you can now add a Q&A sticker. Viewers can respond to the question in the comments. You can also engage your audience with a Poll sticker. Short that shows how it works. How to mobile live stream to YouTube. (Note that polls and Q&A are also available in regular live chats.)

YouTube is testing voice replies to comments. If you are in the test group, you will see a sound wave icon that lets you record a response. Note that during the test this will only be available to testers in the US on their own channel in the YouTube iOS app.

Twitch is running their End-of-Year Bonus Round from December 23 to January 2, with discounts for subs, discounts in the Twitch Loot Cave (Twitch merch) and free gift subs. All the details.

LinkedIn is testing a new mobile video feed design with larger videos, the Creator name at the top and captions at the bottom.

StreamYard has made it easier to style broadcasts, with 50 new fonts and better organized Brand style and media assets.

Google Drive will now play uploaded videos immediately, so you don’t need to wait for them to process.

TikTok apparently now lets users download all their videos without a watermark.

CapCut has updated its subscription pricing. Now there are 4 tiers: Free (just the basics), Standard, Pro and Teams. The price has gone up for most subscribers, and many features that were previously free now require a Pro subscription. People aren’t happy. It’s also not clear what will happen if TikTok is banned in the US on January 19, as CapCut is also from parent company ByteDance.

AdSense

Google is adding PayPal Hyperwallet as a payment method in the US for AdSense and AdSense for YouTube. This is not your standard PayPal account, it’s a separate account that you need to set up and go through identity verification. Once your payment is transferred to your Hyperwallet account, you can cash out using PayPal, Venmo, Cash Pickup and more. You can learn more from AdSense here (note that you will only be able to access the link if you are in the US and signed into a Google Account with AdSense), or from Hyperwallet for AdSense and Hyperwallet for AdSense for YouTube. Note that this may not yet be available for your account, even if you are in the US.

AdSense is introducing new terms that go into effect on February 16, 2025. See the new terms here and get a comparison to the current terms. The policy change about identifying users corresponds to changes in the way Google tracks users. Related from Zak Doffman: Forget Chrome—Google Starts Tracking All Your Devices In 8 Weeks.

Web Publishers and Search

Google Search released the December 2024 spam update and completed the rollout of the December 2024 core update.

Substack released several updates, including Notes stats (Notes are posts in its Twitter-like feed), new “read-aloud” voices in the Substack app, and automatic shareable video clips. Note that all of these features are for creators and readers on the Substack platform, not in emailed newsletters (which would be portable to a different platform).

Blog and newsletter platform Ghost now supports custom fonts.

A New Social (anew.social) is a new non-profit that “believes in an open social web centered on people, not platforms. We build bridges, not walls”. Its founders are CEO Anuj Ahooja (@quillmatiq.com) and CTO Ryan Barrett (creator of Bridgy Fed). They will be working with developers and advocating for users of the Open Social Web (including Mastodon, Bluesky and other services built on open protocols).

Sub.club, a platform for monetizing fediverse content, blogs and newsletters is shutting down. It launched in August, and has run out of funding. They apparently only had 150 users.

Surf (about.surf.social) is a new service from Flipboard that lets you make your own custom feeds from Bluesky, Mastodon, Threads, Flipboard, YouTube, blogs and news RSS feeds and more. It’s currently in beta, but you can apply to try it.

OpenVibe (openvibe.social) which lets you read and post from your Mastodon, Bluesky, Threads, and Nostr accounts, now lets you create multiple profiles. You can have your connected networks for your personal profile, and then switch to a business profile.

Bluesky just updated with two notable new features: a Mentions tab in Notifications and if you change your bsky.social username to your own domain, your original username is reserved for you (so you can revert back).

Bluesky COO Rose Wang told Buffer that their team is working on a subscription model and monetization. Watch the interview.

Threads is rolling out an option that lets you reshare just a photo or video and not the entire post. Tap the repost icon and select “share media”. The media will appear in your new post with the original poster’s handle (but it does not link back to that post). You can disable this option in your Media settings. From the comments, photographers aren’t keen on this. And my concern is that it strips away the context of the original image.

Threads is testing scheduled posts, and soon it will be more widely available.

Threads now has 300 million monthly active users and 100 million daily active users. For comparison, X currently claims closer to 500 million monthly active users .

Facebook is displaying affiliate links more prominently on Reels, videos, photos and text posts. Learn more about how Creators can share product links.

SnapChat has expanded their monetization program so that it not only places ads in Stories, but also in longer videos. Eligibility requirements are 50,000 followers, minimum number of views in the past 28 days (either 10 million Snap views, 1 million Spotlight views, or 12,000 hours of view time), plus a minimum number of posts. The current Spotlight Rewards Program ends on January 31, and this new program begins February 1.

X rolled out a new home timeline ranking model that should make the posts you see “more relevant”.

Communication and Collaboration

Features are available to free accounts unless otherwise noted.

Google Groups has updated its keyboard shortcuts. The old keyboard shortcuts will only work until “early 2025”. Instead of single letter shortcuts (like “o” to open a conversation), you will need to use alt-letter (Windows or ChromeOS) or option-letter (MacOS).

Google Workspace organizations can now migrate messages from Microsoft Teams channels to Google Chat spaces.

AI Updates

Bing Image Creator has updated to use the DALL-E3 PR16 image generation model for faster generation of higher quality images. You can try it at Bing.com/create.

TechCrunch reports: OpenAI announces new o3 models, but it may not be as “smart” as claimed.

Blake Dodge @ Business Insider reports: YouTube star Marques Brownlee has pointed questions for OpenAI after its Sora video model created a plant just like his

Adam Mosseri, head of Instagram teased Movie Gen, Meta’s AI video generation tool, that they “hope to bring to Instagram next year”.

Noor Al-Sibai @ The Byte: OpenAI pleads that it can’t make money without using copyrighted materials for free.

The xAI Grok chatbot has some improvements, along with deeper integration on X. It can now web search and access X realtime data, and adds links and citations to its output. And they have improved its image generation model.

LinkedIn is “building [AI] agents that should be efficient task-doers supervised by you, picking up the tasks you don’t want to do so that you can focus on what you do best.” Their first agent is the LinkedIn Hiring Assistant, released in October.