But he’s also seen programmatic ads yanked from a portion of his videos,<br />and he’s become a symbol for the resistance to the “adpocalypse.” He’s taken to churning out satirical videos presenting himself as the brand-safe character “Family-Friendly Felix.”<br />Last month’s changes signaled that YouTube’s ad rules had become even stricter and less clear.<br />Recent ad changes have hit some of YouTube’s most popular channels: The comedy channel h3h3Productions has seen YouTube’s system grow stricter in recent weeks, while the Military Arms Channel, which tests<br />and reviews firearms, has registered a complete drop in ad revenue before rebounding to 25 percent of its usual income.<br />“I have no boss above me,” Mr. Pakman said, and because of YouTube’s automated ad systems, “I’ve never<br />had any contact with advertisers, so it’s impossible for me to ‘sell out’ to satisfy them.”<br />Instead, he’s subject to the whims of the algorithm.<br />All of that means that new media creators hoping to make a living online need to play by YouTube’s rules,<br />and steer clear of anything “potentially objectionable” — not to real people, who might actually be offended, but to robots.<br />YouTube’s comedians, political commentators and experts on subjects from military arms to video games<br />have reported being squeezed by the ad shake-up — often in videos they’ve posted to YouTube.<br />While the young broadcaster got his show syndicated on a few public radio stations, it was a YouTube channel he began in 2009, “The David Pakman Show,”<br />that opened up his progressive political commentary to a whole new digital audience.
