Prompted by recent scandals involving offensive videos appearing on the platform, the company announced a series of changes including a pledge to have every video in its “Google Preferred” program approved by a human.

The changes, designed to improve “compliance with advertiser-friendly guidelines,” also require that posters have 1,000 subscribers and generate 4,000 hours of “watchtime” over a year before they can benefit from ad revenue. The previous threshold was just 10,000 overall views. Google described the new rules as “tough but necessary.”

Some accused YouTube of turning its back on new and smaller creators – the people who critics claim made the video streaming service into what it is today.