YouTubers explain why the ‘adpocalypse’ is destroying their business -- and why they're suing

YouTube creators can make a living from ad money after building up a big enough following on the site, but a recent content crackdown has left channels like ZombieGoBoom in the lurch.

After advertisers complained, YouTube instated an algorithm that doesn’t serve ads for certain videos based on their violent content. Video creators James Sweet and Chuck Meré have sued the company for allegedly yanking as much as 95 percent of their revenue through the ad algorithm system. They hope to force YouTube to be more transparent with creators.

“It wrecked our livelihood,” Meré said on this week’s episode of “The Jeff Fisher Show.”

The new algorithm works based on certain words and can’t have a human perception of their videos, which intersect “Mythbusters” and “The Walking Dead” to test various weapons on dummies that look like zombies.

After spending six years building up a company based on YouTube’s ad revenue system, the channel is getting only about 80 cents of revenue for 100,000 views, Meré asserted.

“They push a button, and our company’s basically worth nothing,” he said.

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