“After losing all hope of having electricity and hot water, and desperately needing a shower because your scalp is itchy and you’re on the brink of getting scabies,” the YouTuber says, “these circumstances compel you to conclude it’s finally time for a pots shower.”
This is how Abo Bakri, the YouTube persona of Aleppo-based Hosam Wattar, introduces a video posted in January 2023. Dim blue lights glow from a professional Rode wireless microphone clipped to one side of his tracksuit zipper as he details the process of using pots to shower, like demonstrating a recipe in a cooking show. “You start by filling up a big stockpot with water and heating it on the stove,” he says. People in Aleppo, Syria, had to adopt this showering method because of the country’s civil war. The deterioration of infrastructure and the scarcity of the electricity and fuel needed to operate boilers forced people to get creative with bath time.
On the other side of the planet, in Dallas, Texas, makeup artist Rania Koly watched the video. “I laughed for a bit, but then my eyes teared up,” she said. Koly, who moved to the United States from Aleppo in 1999 at the age of 19, came across Wattar’s content by word of mouth and subscribed to his channel. “I like that he turns the difficult circumstances that we live in Syria into comedy, black comedy,” Koly explained. When she visited her brother in Aleppo two summers ago, she and her three children had to endure the same circumstances. “I lived that,” she said.
When the chaos of the civil war hit Aleppo 12 years ago, Wattar, a pharmacist, began to write sardonic Facebook posts about the dire conditions in the city. He talked about falling bombs, inflation and the lack of water, food, internet, electricity and fuel, and became popular among the locals seeking respite from their ordeals. For Wattar and his followers, the posts were a coping mechanism. “You tell dark humor that expresses the reality we live in. It’s a painful reality, but it’s funny,” Wattar said. He later decided to grow his online presence by transforming his blogs into video content on YouTube. He enjoyed the attention he was receiving and was interested in joining YouTube’s Partner Program, which allows YouTubers to earn income through ads placed throughout the video content. However, in a country where even the most basic of life’s necessities had become sources of stress and disappointment, so too did his plans for being a YouTuber.
YouTubers’ experiences on the Google-owned platform are not as globally uniform as one might think, with Syrian YouTubers a case in point. They face numerous inequities that prevent them from benefiting from opportunities available to their counterparts worldwide. Yet their content allows a unique glimpse into postwar Syria. They are the ones left to document the country’s developments after war reporters moved on to assignments elsewhere. For Syrians in the diaspora, these videos offer a way to stay informed about their home country beyond traditional news outlets and provide moments of levity and nostalgia.
Not everyone, admittedly, sees it that way. The Syrian civil war remains a deeply polarizing subject, and many Syrians and their supporters abroad see any influencers inside the country as promoting normalization with the Bashar al-Assad regime. YouTubers, after all, can hardly walk around a country as closely monitored as Syria and film freely. There is also a schism between Syrians in the diaspora and those who never managed to leave the country, during or after the war, and who must now contend with life under Assad regardless of whether or not they support the regime.
One of the main components for succeeding on YouTube is a consistent flow of content, ideally on a weekly basis, but maintaining that consistency in Syria is acutely difficult due to long blackouts of several hours and sluggish internet. Syria is also under economic sanctions from the U.S. government that restrict imports, exports and monetary transactions. For YouTubers, this translates into formidable obstacles to obtaining equipment and licenses for professional software and music libraries, as well as an inability to monetize their channels within their homeland.
Nevertheless, like bathers heating buckets of water to fill their tubs, Syrian YouTubers have developed a range of creative work-arounds to prevail over their problems.
Wattar, 44, runs a small, tidy, eponymous pharmacy near Al-Razi Hospital, a main health care institution in a strategic location that guarantees a good flow of customers. In his youth, he wanted to be a computer engineer but decided to pursue a field considered more prestigious in his community. YouTube was his way of channeling his love for everything digital, and he started with a humble apparatus: He recorded his first video in 2013 with his cellphone and used an ironing board as a tripod to stabilize it.
Over time, his content and face became more recognizable in Aleppo, and he took pleasure in that, which kept him on the video-making path despite the obstacles. “Since this is not what I do full time, I get to continue doing it. If this were my career, I would have stopped a long time ago,” said the father of two. His pharmacy can afford him a comfortable life, but he was eager to monetize because his YouTube practice is a costly endeavor in Syria, with ongoing expenses for power, internet access and equipment. In a country where the local currency has depreciated more than 300% since the beginning of the war, the prospect of earning U.S. dollars is appealing.
The introduction of the Partner Program in 2007 transformed the platform and its vast community of users, making it possible for posting on YouTube to be much more than a pastime. According to an Oxford Dynamics report, YouTube contributed more than $35 billion to U.S. GDP in 2022 and sustained more than 390,000 full-time equivalent jobs. However, qualifying for monetization takes more than a click of a button. Content creators must satisfy several eligibility criteria, such as attaining a minimum of 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 public watch hours in a 12-month period, among other requirements.
Syrian YouTubers face a hurdle far more daunting: the burden of the U.S. economic sanctions on Syria. As a result, AdSense, Google’s advertising platform, is not available in Syria, which means that YouTube videos aren’t monetized with ads when viewed within the country, regardless of their origin. While this spares Syrian viewers from having to watch or skip past ads, it hurts content creators, particularly if their audience is primarily in Syria.
The sanctions against Syria have been in effect since 2004, when the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) instituted the Syria Accountability Act, ostensibly to pressure the government over its involvement in Lebanon. Those sanctions were later expanded in 2011 under the Barack Obama administration in the wake of the Syrian uprising after determining that “the Government of Syria’s human rights abuses … constitute an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States,” according to the executive order.
The U.S. sanctions are designed and targeted to restrict particular groups of people that come under the category of Specially Designated Nationals or SDNs, business entities and agencies tied to the government. They prohibit financial transactions, new investments, the exportation of services, and trade in Syrian petroleum. The sanctions “don’t target Syrian people per se,” explained Andrew Tabler, a senior fellow specializing in Arab politics at the Washington Institute, a nongovernmental organization concerned with U.S. interests in the Middle East. But, Tabler added, “They do have a collateral effect on them in every jurisdiction where sanctions are used.”
The list of restrictions and SDNs is updated periodically. Currently, there are an estimated 572 Syrian SDNs residing in the country, with additional SDNs in other nations who also come under Syrian sanctions. Although the number of Syrian SDNs is relatively low, ordinary Syrians suffer too; an ordinary, non-SDN Syrian cannot monetize a YouTube channel within Syria. “That’s called derisking. … Institutions like banks … don’t want to fall foul of sanctions,” Tabler explained. “They then just cut off all contacts with Syrian touchpoints.”
The administrative complexities of compliance with the sanctions are an additional deterrent to companies. “When there are a lot of [SDN] listings, my compliance research is costing me more than the profit I can make from that transaction,” explained Qutaiba Idlbi, director of the Syria Project at the Atlantic Council, a research institute concerned with transatlantic relations.
In 2019, then-President Donald Trump signed into law the Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act, which leaves any government or institution liable if it conducts any transactions with Damascus. “You either do business with the Assad regime [or] forgo your business, not only with the United States but with anybody who does business with the United States,” Tabler said. “It’s quite a choice.”
As the weight of the war and the sanctions left Syria isolated, the internet gained special meaning for Syrians. “Social media for us was like a window to see what was going on outside,” Wattar said. A year into the uprising, his home city of Aleppo became embroiled in the national conflict, and until the Syrian military took control of it in 2016, it was the epicenter of some of the most brutal battles of the civil war. Once the country’s largest city, Aleppo was reduced to a fraction of its former size, becoming a battered ghost town. The little that was spared from the war then suffered a 7.8 magnitude earthquake that hit southern Turkey and northern Syria in February 2023. After weathering natural disasters, war, emigration and inflation, Aleppo’s vitality dimmed — something that is especially apparent after sundown when blackouts cast it in complete darkness
Severely diminished and erratic electricity is a national problem in Syria. In 2010, the electrification rate was 93%. Of the country’s 13 major power plants, two were destroyed and six were damaged in the war, dropping the generation capacity to less than 35% by 2021. Syria’s poor financial conditions and its inability to import spare parts due to sanctions have hindered repairs and maintenance of infrastructure.
In one video, Wattar captured the problem with a comic sketch portraying a job interview by candlelight at the electricity company. “The plus about working here, son, is that it’s a chill job all day long because there’s always a blackout,” the interviewer says to the candidate. “The negative is that everyone will cuss at you.”
Most homes in Aleppo receive no more than four hours of power a day. When the electricity shuts off, people will often say: “The ‘ampere’ will kick off any minute now.” Ampere (or “amps”) refers to the electrical currents that those with the means can arrange to receive independently, off the power grid. Amp sellers operate fuel-powered motors that produce electrical currents available to purchase for approximately $3-$6 per week per amp, a sizable sum in a country where the average worker earns only $20 per month. There are also the more environmentally friendly solar panels that now cover almost every rooftop in Aleppo. Wattar uses both in his home, with his ampere subscription running from 4 p.m. to midnight. “Two amperes are enough to power the refrigerator, the router, the TV and a lightbulb,” Wattar said. This limited electricity may help with video editing but is insufficient to run air conditioning in the scorching summer or heating in the bitter winter, which are crucial not only for his comfort in front of the camera but also to maintain optimal conditions for the gear to function properly.
After years of making videos at his own expense, Wattar decided to monetize. He partnered with a friend in the United Kingdom and bought an already-monetized channel in 2019 for approximately $2,000. Wattar then reuploaded his previous work to this channel and continued to create new videos. To improve production quality, he upgraded his equipment, buying a camera, microphones and tripods. Due to embargoes on imports and exports, he had to rely on friends abroad to bring these tools to Syria. One of his frustrations is the inability to test and return products if they fail to meet his expectations. “You have to go through trial and error,” Wattar said. So far, he estimates his videos are bringing in $15 to $20 per month — a good sum relative to the income of most Syrians but barely enough to recoup his investment in equipment and far less than YouTubers elsewhere typically earn.
A long-awaited teleprompter, bought by a friend, became his most valued gadget. Excited by how it simplified his process, he placed it meticulously in the center of his dining table to avoid accidental bumps. “When the earthquake happened, the only thing that fell was the teleprompter. The glass cracked,” Wattar said sorrowfully. For video editing, he uses Adobe Premiere and After Effects. When asked how he could purchase their license, he cheerfully explained: “In Syria, they all come ‘mkarrakeen,’” an Arabized term for cracked or hacked software.
Wattar’s most popular videos are ones that playfully and precisely describe Aleppian cultural traditions, costumes, daily lives and struggles. “Abo Bakri isn’t just showing Aleppo. He’s making you feel it,” said Hovig Sarkis about Wattar. Sarkis, 41, fled Aleppo in 2011 and settled in Washington, D.C. He was drawn to Wattar’s videos because they helped him reminisce about his home city, and he admired Wattar’s devotion to creating content. “Despite technical limitations from low-speed internet and no electricity, he painted vivid pictures with his words,” Sarkis said.
Regardless of Wattar’s creativity and talent, his channel has struggled to gain traction. He has only about 7,000 subscribers. His most-watched videos have not exceeded 11,000 views.
Due to the regime’s retribution against those who oppose it, YouTubers in Syria steer away from politics. Wattar goes as far as ensuring that the comments on his videos are free of contentious feedback that could quickly turn into a hotbed of arguments and deletes anything that might be interpreted as political. He also films all of his content inside his home because, in a country with many watchful eyes that can be merciless with those deemed a threat, filming in the streets is risky and requires applications and licenses.
In Damascus, a YouTube couple who go by the names Zeina and Nadim and specialize in travel content sought a filming license from the Ministry of Tourism. The ministry was cooperative, they said, after seeing that their content highlighted Syria’s tourism potential — particularly because the government seeks to promote an image of normalcy in the country. The couple knew their channel had to be as agreeable as possible. “We don’t want anyone to be upset with us,” Nadim said, referring to the government. “If they are upset with us, we can’t film anymore. So we have to be careful about everything we say.”
They also want the feedback on their content to be as politically benign as possible. This is why their videos almost always start with the phrase “discretion is advised,” code for anyone familiar with life inside Syria, where political comments on social media can get locals in trouble with the authorities. “Discretion means don’t talk about politics or religion,” Nadim said. “Anyone who talks politics on my channel is —” he gestured with his hands, signaling that they’d be blocked.
The couple stumbled upon the travel theme by chance. When they got married in 2013, they liked to play video games and used to upload their gaming reactions on YouTube. One day, six years later, feeling disheartened by the one-dimensional portrayal of Syria on television, which often depicted the country as nothing but ruins, Zeina suggested they film a walk through the streets of Damascus. “For us here, the residents of the country, we know that yes, there’s destruction,” Nadim said. “Some areas are lost to the war, but there are areas that are not. So we were like, ‘Why are you spreading an image that doesn’t exist?’”
Travel content about Syria has increased in recent years, showing the country as more than just a war zone and drawing positive feedback from both Syrians in the diaspora and foreigners who have never visited. However, it has also raised skepticism after being promoted by the regime. One renowned travel vlogger, the American Drew Goldberg, known by his YouTube name, Drew Binsky, has faced such accusations in the media and rejected them, insisting that his trip to the country was independently planned and funded. His vlogs about Syria attracted millions of views and he claims that, since his 2019 trip, he has been blacklisted and unable to obtain a visa to return.
Nicknamed “coach” for his training and gym business, Nadim is a lawyer by profession. He has a robust figure with broad shoulders and is almost always spotted wearing a cap and carrying a sizable backpack filled with filming essentials. To make that first travel video, he grabbed his wife’s phone and trailed behind her as they wandered the streets. “The picture was so bad, it was overexposed. It was a terrible, terrible video,” Nadim said. But they uploaded the clip to their channel anyway and went to bed. The next day, they were shocked to find a message from YouTube congratulating them on their latest video. “It had fireworks and stuff,” Nadim said. Within 24 hours, that candid video got more than 100,000 views. Compared to the 400 to 800 views they used to get for their gaming videos, this was, literally and figuratively, a game changer.
Despite the unclear audio and poor picture quality, the concept resonated with viewers. Expats who had fled the conflict provided feedback and asked if it was safe to return for a visit. That’s when the couple decided to document the state of the country. “We didn’t know how to start, but the idea was to start in the streets for people who live abroad to see what the situation is like in Syria now,” Zeina said. With her dark hair catching the sun’s rays and her eyes glistening back at the viewer, she harnessed her charisma and faced the camera, while Nadim worked off-camera as her producer, videographer and editor. They started in Damascus, then set out to capture other regime-controlled areas. “We were promoting tourism when there was none in the country,” Zeina said.
Compared with other Syrian cities, Damascus emerged largely unscathed from the war. Streets are still full of life and there are many options for dining out, shopping and other activities. Being the capital, Damascus also enjoys more visitors and foreign missions. This has given YouTubers in the city more material and options for creating content, like reviewing restaurants and hotels or staging pranks with celebrities.
Almost a year into making and publishing their travel content, they were eligible to monetize. Nadim asked his brother, who lives in the U.S., for help setting up AdSense and connecting it to his bank account. Tying the channel to a U.S. account meant that Nadim’s brother had to pay taxes on the income, with the YouTube couple compensated after the tax cut. At the time, they didn’t think too much about this because they were unsure how far this work would progress as a career and they needed someone they could trust.
When Zeina was pregnant with their second child and it became increasingly difficult for her to star in their episodes, the couple had to either stop filming or develop a new series concept. For any YouTuber, a hiatus poses a risk of losing momentum and viewer engagement. “The algorithm has no mercy on any platform,” Nadim said, “and YouTube is the hardest platform. You shouldn’t leave more than a 10-day gap between videos. So that’s part of the pressure we face.” Their solution was for Nadim to go in front of the camera while his wife rested. Thus, their “How the Syrian People Are Getting By” series was born.
With 90% of Syrians living below the poverty line, the series follows Nadim’s experiences in various low-income service jobs, exploring the daily earnings of these occupations and what they can afford. He works as a taxi driver, busboy, grave digger, car cleaner, hawker, dishwasher and in other menial jobs. From body shop workers enduring grueling 10-hour shifts for a mere $1 a day to taxi drivers struggling to make ends meet, the series paints a vivid picture of hardship. Sometimes it brings surprises, like finding out that a shawarma sous-chef earns nearly four times as much as a government-employed college graduate.
In one episode, Nadim shadows Abo Ali, a peanut vendor originally from the southern city of Daraa. Abo Ali’s well-worn green sweater and smudged vest reflect his modest means. His workplace? His trusty bicycle, retrofitted with a wood stove for toasting peanuts. “It’s just a bicycle but it feeds me and my children,” Abo Ali says. As the day kicks off, he shares his craft with Nadim, teaching him how to promote the goods — “Fresh peanuts! Hot peanuts!” — and demonstrating how to fashion makeshift cones from old books. These cones, available in various sizes, cater to customers with different budgets, ranging from just 35 cents to $2. Nadim then sets off through the bustling streets of Damascus, tracing Abo Ali’s usual route. By the day’s end, with all the peanuts sold, Nadim tallies up his earnings, which come to $12 after covering the cost of supplies. With this modest sum, Abo Ali pays a $3 daily rent for his room in Damascus, provides for his wife and four children back in Daraa, and buys bus tickets to make occasional visits to see them.
With viewers in foreign countries in mind, Nadim converts the sums to U.S. dollars, to help them see the fragility of the Syrian pound. However, the videos have no English subtitles, something that Yehia Alaw, a Syrian tattoo artist living in Texas, would have liked to see so his American wife could understand the content. Alaw, who moved to the U.S. from Damascus in 2015, was captivated by Zeina and Nadim’s “How Syrians Are Getting By” show and travel vlogs. “They display a beautiful image of our country and what it has to offer while also noting the struggles people are going through,” Alaw told New Lines.
When Zeina returned from her maternity break, she participated in the series, demonstrating jobs done by Syrian women. “It was important to show how the Syrian woman is working and helping her husband out,” Zeina said, “because today, it’s not enough anymore for any Syrian family to depend on one income. Everyone needs to chip in.”
The couple’s channel has a rapidly growing subscriber base of more than half a million. Content tailored to expats has provided it with a distinct advantage that a channel like Wattar’s lacks: large viewership from countries where AdSense is available. Germany, hosting 850,000 Syrian refugees, serves as the primary source of views for the couple, followed by Saudi Arabia and Turkey. This influx of international viewers rendered their channel profitable enough for Nadim to quit practicing law and devote himself entirely to expanding their YouTube presence.
While they have managed to navigate and overcome many obstacles in Syria’s challenging YouTube landscape, there’s one thing that continues to frustrate them. “Unfortunately, the electricity in Syria really stands in the way of doing anything,” Nadim said. To keep things running, Nadim lugs around four 140-watt power banks that he carries everywhere he goes in case his laptop or camera batteries die. “I also [carry] the laptop sometimes because I want to edit, and there’s no power at home, so I find myself a restaurant where we sit for [Zeina] to have lunch, and I edit a bit,” Nadim said. “I can’t even think about uploading the video via the home internet. That would take four days.” Their home is far from the cell tower, they said, and they don’t get a consistent signal, so they rely on prepaid 4G credits to upload their content. Still, they often have to drive around with the laptop to catch a good signal. Uploading one of their videos, which average about 30 minutes in length, requires approximately five hours. Throughout Syria, internet access is limited and slow. Packages for 4G offer good performance but cost about $11 for 30 gigabytes and come with a 30-day limit, a luxury most Syrians cannot afford.
Because of the challenges content creators face in Syria, finding success on YouTube can be exhausting. As a result, many talented Syrian YouTubers relocate to Dubai, attracted by benefits such as tax-free income and a higher standard of living, where they can focus on their content without concerns about basic services like electricity and internet connection. Numerous Syrian YouTubers, particularly those who are younger and without family commitments, have made the move to Dubai after establishing themselves as serious creators in Syria. Among the most notable is Amr Maskoun, who was one of Forbes Middle East’s “30 Under 30” in 2023 and founded his own media agency after relocating to the United Arab Emirates.
The allure of a life in the UAE and the opportunities it could provide tempted the couple, who were granted “golden visas” in 2022. These visas allow various categories of noncitizens, such as those in certain highly skilled professions or with investments in the local economy, to obtain residency. They marked the occasion with a nine-minute video titled “The Best News in Our Channel’s History.” With these visas, they now have seamless travel access and direct banking capabilities in the country, but they had other considerations. They did not want their fans to say, “‘After we supported them and helped them, they left everything, stopped caring and settled abroad,’” Zeina said.
This notion upsets Wattar, who finds it a triggering double standard on the part of fans abroad who talk to him about nostalgia and advise him not to abandon the country. “Well, why did you leave?! Why deny me the opportunity?!” Wattar exclaimed.
With the newfound flexibility afforded by the golden visa, Nadim and Zeina plan to create travel content in the countries they visit while periodically returning to Syria to continue making content there. The couple said they were getting offers from travel agencies to sponsor family trips, covering all their expenses, in exchange for promoting their services. It wouldn’t be the first time their channel had received sponsorship from commercial services and products, although they do it sparingly.
Against the backdrop of unpaid views, doing promotions is one way to offset lost revenue, a strategy that NewDose, another prominent Syrian YouTube channel, embraces. NewDose is one of Syria’s largest social media brands, with over 2 million subscribers on YouTube. Its primary YouTube channel features lighthearted videos and pranks with celebrities. Upon inquiry, it disclosed the following rates for YouTube advertisements: $67 for a banner ad, $267 for a promo at the beginning of a video and $1,000-plus for a full sketch. When Zeina and Nadim were briefed on these rates, they expressed skepticism. “Such amounts are more plausible abroad, but not in Syria,” Nadim said.
A number of successful young Syrian YouTubers have already moved to Dubai. There, they either continued creating content on the platform or shifted to Instagram and TikTok, if they did not cut back their online presence, due in part to the unpredictable YouTube revenue. Rami Abdulhai, who moved to Dubai in 2021, explained, “Here [in Dubai,] you have so many things that you can do, and maybe you discover YouTube is not the best option.” Abdulhai, who has slowed down his YouTube activity since moving, added: “I was spending more than 14 hours a day just working, filming, writing, editing. My income increased. My views increased. My channel blew up [during] that time in Dubai. But I was just miserable.”
The son of two physicians in Aleppo, Abdulhai started his YouTube channel, called Rami Abdul, when he was in college in Aleppo studying architecture. Growing up, he dreamed of becoming an actor, a lawyer or a vet, but he was dissuaded. “It was the same when it came to YouTube,” he said, “but I had to prove my parents and everybody else wrong.” Abdulhai chuckled, admitting he was also motivated to become the cool kid and attract girls.
In its early days, the channel embraced experimentation across various genres — from parodies and music videos to vlogs, short films, profiles and tips. Abdulhai explained that creating YouTube content was the closest thing to acting he was able to do. When he launched his channel in 2012, terms like “influencer” or “content creator” were not yet established in his home country. “People not caring about content creation, not supporting, looking down on these things … Those things are much more of a hindrance, in my opinion, than having no electricity,” Abdulhai said.
In a video titled “Don’t Become a Syrian YouTuber,” he highlights the logistical difficulties influencers face, and adds one more factor: happiness. Abdulhai emphasizes the stress of trying to be energetic and cheerful when recording his videos, while being surrounded by war and tragedy. About two-thirds into the video, just as he is saying, “It was important for me to find a source of happiness,” the electricity shuts off and he pauses for a second. “I don’t know if you need further proof of the struggles of making a video [in Syria],” he says.
Standing at 6 feet and 1 inch, with an athletic physique, dark curly hair and a stubble beard, Abdulhai’s handsome features complement his creativity, humor and candidness, and have helped him gain over a million subscribers. He is sharp-minded and resourceful. When he was eligible to monetize, he refrained from asking his sister in Canada for help setting up AdSense to avoid the tax catch. Instead, he went to Dubai to establish a bank account and connect it to the Google service and then returned to Aleppo. When he realized his YouTube channel was bringing in almost five times more money than his job at an NGO, he decided to quit and relocate to Dubai. But the new location came with its own set of challenges. “The cost of living and the cost of hiring an editor and people to be in your movies and videos [in Syria] is a lot lower compared to Dubai,” Abdulhai noted. He gradually reduced his YouTube presence on his Rami Abdul channel after recognizing the greater financial opportunities available in Dubai. His good looks afforded him acting and modeling jobs, which demanded less of a time commitment than YouTube, and he was influenced by another factor that commonly affects Arabic-speaking YouTubers: lower CPM in Arab countries. (CPM stands for Cost Per Mille, a metric used to represent revenue earned from 1,000 views.) To reach viewers outside the Arab world, Abdulhai also has another channel, called Ramiroy, where he posts in English.
In the Arab world, advertisers often allocate lower budgets for marketing campaigns than in countries such as the U.S. Moreover, they tend to be less inclined to invest in social media advertising compared to traditional television, which affects Arab YouTubers’ revenue. These dynamics vary, depending on the economic status of each country. Nadim and Zeina observed this through their YouTube analytics, noting that views from Iraq yielded less profit compared to views from Saudi Arabia, which, in turn, were less rewarding than views from Germany.
In May 2024, President Joe Biden declared that sanctions against the Syrian government would continue for another year. While OFAC updated the sanctions’ general license to include some internet-based communication and services, it is unclear whether YouTube monetization is part of that. Google did not respond to queries on whether OFAC’s amendments will affect the tech company’s current guidelines and open a path for YouTubers to apply for special case-by-case reviews. Instead, Google referred to its policy, citing its commitment to comply with sanctions laws and said it had nothing to add at the moment. All that, along with YouTube’s lack of standardized flat rates and transparent revenue expectations, and Syria’s grim and unpromising future, can sound discouraging. Yet Abdulhai thinks there has never been a better time to start a YouTube channel. “But do it to have fun,” he said.
For Nadim and Zeina, there’s fun in creating memories and satisfaction in making something to “leave as a legacy for us and our kids,” Nadim said. “When Zeina and I grow old, we can open up YouTube to watch this. This is what makes me happy.”
As for Wattar, the fun led to respect and recognition from his community, along with a hard-to-get membership of the elite Aleppo Social Club, which he is very proud of securing. He pulled a laminated card out of his wallet and said, “This is joy, pure joy.”
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