Zero Rating and Demonetization

Format. Break into groups of 4–5. Each group picks one of the two breakouts below (or takes both if time allows). Spend ~5 minutes skimming the prep reads, then ~10 minutes debating. A designated reporter brings the group’s position — and any dissents — back to the full class for a ~3-minute report-back.

Chapters 4.4 and 4.5 argue that money is a censorship instrument. Zero rating does not block content; it just makes some content cheaper to reach, which — as the Kenya and South Africa studies in 4.4 show — durably shifts usage. Demonetization does not remove content; it just removes the ability to earn from it, which pushes creators toward brand-safe topics. In both cases the mechanism is friction, not prohibition.

Breakout A: Free Basics — Access Ladder or Platform Capture?

Motion. “Zero-rating programs like Facebook Free Basics do more harm than good in developing markets: they trade first-time Internet access for durable platform capture, and the trade is not worth it.”

Prep reads (5–10 min).

Beyond ‘zero sum’: the case for context in regulating zero rating in the Global South — Internet Policy Review, 2025. Peer-reviewed analysis arguing regulators should distinguish commercial Free-Basics-style arrangements from public-interest zero-rating (education, government services).
NCC’s Zero-Rating Education Data Plan Could Avoid Mistakes Made During South Africa and Kenya’s Pandemic-Era Rollouts — TechEconomy (Nigeria), 2026. Nigerian Communications Commission’s July 2026 consultation on education-only zero rating; explicitly draws on the South Africa/Kenya evidence base in Chapter 4.4.
What is zero-rating? — Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications, 2026. BEREC’s post-CJEU position: app-specific zero rating is a “clear violation” of the Open Internet Regulation, updated in the 2022 Guidelines.
Zero rating: a global threat to the open internet — Access Now. Access Now’s standing position paper framing zero rating as network discrimination and cataloguing country-by-country regulatory responses.

Discussion prompts.

India (TRAI) banned Free Basics in 2016 on net-neutrality grounds. The Kenya/South Africa study in the book (Cell C zero-rating WhatsApp; MTN zero-rating Twitter during the 2014 World Cup) showed durable usage shifts even after zero rating ended. Was India right? Would a Kenyan or Ghanaian regulator making the same call today be doing users a favor or denying them free access?
The counterfactual matters. If the alternative to Free Basics is “no Internet at all for this user this year,” is a walled garden a net win? At what price point (in $/GB of open data) does that argument flip?
T-Mobile’s Binge On zero-rated categories of streaming video, not specific vendors — arguably a neutral choice. Was that meaningfully different from Free Basics, or is the harm the same either way? Design the test that distinguishes them.
If you accept that zero rating shifts information consumption, does that make it a censorship problem, a competition problem, or a development problem? The three framings imply three very different regulators (FCC-equivalent vs. antitrust vs. USAID/World Bank). Which one has jurisdiction?

Bring back. Your group’s one-sentence rule for when zero rating should be allowed and when it should be banned, applied consistently across Free Basics, Binge On, and any future program.

Breakout B: Demonetization as Speech Control — Do Creators Deserve Due Process?

Motion. “YouTube, TikTok, and other platforms owe creators transparent criteria and a meaningful appeals process before demonetizing them — the current ‘brand safety’ regime is speech control by algorithm and should be regulated as such.”

Prep reads (5–10 min).

2025 YouTube demonetization for inauthentic content — Overview, 2026. Chronology of YouTube’s July 15, 2025 “inauthentic content” policy (renamed from “repetitious content”), the January 2026 sweep that took out 16 channels with 4.7B lifetime views, and the March 2026 expansion to educators and long-form documentary channels.
URBAN STUDIO for Creators — Fair Monetization petition — Creator advocacy campaign, 2026. Grounds its demands explicitly in DSA Articles 14, 17, 20, 24, 27, 34–35 and P2B Regulation Articles 4, 11, 12; useful concrete artifact of “what would DSA-style due process actually look like for demonetization?”
Paying Attention to the Algorithm Behind the Curtain: Bringing Transparency to YouTube’s Demonetization Algorithms — Jiang et al., ACM CSCW, 2022 (with follow-on fairness work through 2024). Peer-reviewed measurement of systematic bias in demonetization decisions — the empirical backbone behind the 2019 LGBTQ-creator complaint.
YouTube 2026: Navigating Copyright, Policy, and the Creator Economy Under Google’s Umbrella — Times Commerce, 2026. Industry-side survey of how DSA transparency rules and YouTube’s automated demonetization enforcement now interact for VLOP-classified platforms.

Discussion prompts.

The 2017 “Adpocalypse” (J&J, Verizon, AT&T pulling ads over extremist adjacency) shifted power decisively from creators to advertisers. Is that a market outcome we should respect, or a governance failure we should correct? Who represents the creator side of that bargain?
The 2019 LGBTQ creator lawsuit was dismissed on the ground that YouTube is a private actor not bound by the First Amendment — but presented evidence that “transgender” in a video title was systematically demonetized, and that a Google AdSense rep once told a creator an ad was rejected “because of the gay thing.” If courts cannot address this, should regulators? Under what statute?
The EU DSA already requires Statements of Reasons for content-moderation actions. Should the same regime apply to demonetization? Does “explain why you took the ads off my video” translate cleanly across the Atlantic, or is it a First Amendment problem in the U.S.?
YouTube’s Partner Program is only available in about 104 countries. A creator in Lagos and a creator in Los Angeles can post identical content and only one gets paid. Is that geographic economic censorship, ordinary platform business logic, or something in between? Does the answer change if the creator’s audience is global?

Bring back. Your group’s minimum viable “creator due process” package (e.g., notice, criteria, human review, appeal) — and one platform behavior you’d leave alone.

Instructor notes

These breakouts map to Section 4.4’s takeaways on pricing-as-friction and Section 4.5’s takeaways on demonetization as an economic chilling effect that escapes First Amendment review. Breakout A is where students often first realize that “net neutrality” (Lecture 12) and “zero rating” (this lecture) are the same argument seen from opposite ends of the price curve — it is worth naming that explicitly. Breakout B is where the creator-economy students engage most directly; if you have a class heavy on CS/engineering students, push them to design the appeals system they are demanding, not just to demand it. If time permits, the strongest cross-breakout question is: “Is losing revenue different in kind from being taken down, or only in degree?”