As 2020 continues to bring major issues to light, many people are trying their best to help and spread awareness to other people through the use of social media. They have been sharing posts, signing petitions, and donating to different causes. The younger users of social media, however, have complained about feeling like they are not able to contribute as much to the causes they want to support since many cannot donate. That was when YouTube user Zoe Amira published the hour-long video called “how to donate to BLM with NO MONEY” on May 30th after George Floyd’s tragic passing.
The video featured many African American artists and their songs that talked about the social injustice they face. Unlike most videos, however, this 60-minute long video had many advertisements dispersed every 5 or so minutes. After viewers watched the ads, the creator, Zoe, would then get money from each of the ads watched and then later donate the money to the causes. With the video now ranking up at 10 million views, people are guesstimating that the video has brought in more than $30,000.
One of the problems that Zoe encountered when doing this project was YouTube and Google thinking that the video violated monetization guidelines and that it made “users click or watch ads to increase the contribution”. The main problem YouTube had with the video was that people kept trying to play the video again and again to build fake engagement. However, YouTube later donated twice the amount of money from the video to the same causes because they also supported the idea of the video.
Many other people have been inspired to make similar videos for other issues in the world, including the Yemen crisis, Beirut Lebanon’s explosion, immigrant children in the US, children in Palestine, and many more. Popular YouTubers are also donating all the revenue from certain videos to charities or making fundraisers on their videos as well. This fundraising method has been seen in the past by a big YouTube creator, Mr. Beast, who raised money to plant 20,000,000 trees by the end of 2019. Many other big creators and fans ended up supporting him and collectively replanted 21,000,000 trees.
When you are waiting to watch these videos, it is important to check the description to make sure that the cause is legitimate and is not baiting you for their personal gain. We strongly recommend you to go watch legitimate videos which share similar purposes to Zoe Amira’s to help certain causes.