YouTube (2017-present)

YouTube
"Broadcast Yourself"? Never an applicable phrase.
Status: Active Founded: February 14, 2005 Industry: Online video platform Founder(s): Chad Hurley Steve Chen Jawed Karim Parent: Google (2006-present)

YouTube is an American video-sharing website headquartered in San Bruno, California. The website was founded by three former PayPal employees, Jawed Karim, Chad Hurley, and Steve Chen back in 2005. It is the world's largest video-sharing website as of nowadays. As of October 2020, YouTube is the second-most popular website in the world, behind Google, according to Alexa Internet, as of May 2019, more than 500 hours of video content are uploaded to YouTube every minute. On November 13, 2006, Google acquired YouTube for $1.65 billion; YouTube now operates as one of Google's subsidiaries. While YouTube is arguably one of the most successful and well-known websites of all time, it has also become what can best be described as the ultimate mixed bag from the years 2014 to 2016, ever since the introduction of one of the faultiest copyright systems on the website in 2010 (after their lawsuit with Viacom), and when the late Susan Wojcicki became the chairwoman of YouTube in 2014. Even though many think it has gone downhill since 2017, in reality, problems existed prior.

Why This Website and Its Business Deserve a 👎 Now

NOTE: This article covers the problems from 2017 to the present day, but it'll also cover problems from 2005-2016 as YouTube wasn't exactly a thousand wonders at the time.

1. Following the death of Susan Wojcicki on August 9, 2024, at the age of 56, due to a two-year battle with non-small-cell lung cancer, some YouTubers, including Bonita The Gamer Girl, expressed satisfaction with her death, though Bonita's post was later deleted but only to dodge hate and backlash. In the comments, a number of users also expressed similar sentiments. Additionally, Neal Mohan, the current CEO, has faced online criticism and cyberbullying from several users.
2. Account terminations are the worst thing the user may experience on YouTube. If you end up terminated randomly without getting any strikes or violations, you will lose all of your videos and you can not archive them with Google Takeout, making you lose a lot of time for nothing, unless you downloaded them earlier and put them on a storage drive. To make matters worse, they will deny your appeal or keep your channel suspended if you try to appeal, especially when they terminate you by mistake.
3. While YouTube does still have plenty of well-received channels such as Cinemassacre (Angry Video Game Nerd), Beluga, KreekCraft, cxkios, IDKRants, Dog Man Fan, Idiotic Ash, and PewDiePie, including modern channels and others, the other part of the community is filled with rotten users with the staff barely enforcing YouTube's guidelines and ignoring tickets. This leads to a lot of questionable videos (e.g. PSAs with inappropriate content, especially the anti-drug ones, Gacha Heat, Callout/Exposal videos, Opinion change videos, Racist Mario, and grounded/punishment day videos), YouTubers who upload videos just for profit usually with clickbait titles, trolls, political wings, scummy users, and a lot more, with barely any action being taken against them due to the severe lack of quality control. Some videos contain uncensored nudity (mainly of genitalia) and bodily waste (the greatest example is the “Kids change diapers” video, the creator is hypocritical because even though they censor the babies’ genitalia, the feces in the diapers remain uncensored so viewers can see it), they are not flagged and stay on the site to this day. This is hypocritical because YouTube does not allow nudity regardless of the context behind it.
4. The only way to grow on YouTube nowadays is to promote your content. However, you have to pick a group that's capable of checking out your content, and because of how toxic the community on YouTube is, this is a cautionary step to take. Not everyone will care about your content unless you use clickbait or have a video experience that not everyone has.
   • Speaking of which, the algorithm makes it impossible for smaller average creators to grow organically and maintain monetization.
   • This has caused many small YouTubers to sacrifice their reputation for subscribers by making clickbait and misleading videos, some completely strayed away from their signature content by shifting to pop culture videos, and some quit the site after a while due to the channel's failure, and some had to buy verified accounts with ~100K subscribers.
   • It's even worse if your videos are partially blocked (getting them blocked in most countries) because there is a 0% chance of getting popular.
5. Numerous features added to YouTube by Google are almost always heavily disliked. Most notably the now-removed Google+ integration was panned for being broken, often asking the user to set up her/his channel even though they already did it. Along with uninspired services such as YouTube Gaming, YouTube Premium, YouTube TV, and YouTube Music, YouTube tried to compete with Twitch, Netflix, cable TV, and Spotify with little success. Some of them also don't make sense name-wise, as the whole point of the phrase "YouTube" is that you can broadcast what you want (or so).
   • As of today, depending on the language the user uses, videos in foreign languages are now automatically translated with Google Translate, a completely pointless feature that is unreliable (as it often improperly translates video titles) and overall useless since browsers already have a feature to translate pages in foreign languages. This results in nothing helpful but confusion for users, and it cannot be disabled. Extensions to revert this to normal have yet to be created as of 2021.
6. YouTube is very buggy, it's as if Google ignores critics and focuses on the amount of money:
   • On certain computers, although rare, some videos display corrupted.
   • Recently, the likes marker sometimes breaks, if you enter any video, the likes count will be the same, just closing and entering in from YouTube solves it.
   • As of December 21, 2023, when you try to go on subscriptions, home, notifications, or shorts tab, the errors will pop up like: "Something went wrong" "An error occurred" or "Error Loading. Tap To Retry (Apple)". It is frustrating and furious for people to see these, but thankfully they disappeared for good.
   • Sensitivity problems on the mobile version.
   • When you use the app for a long time, it will start to constantly lag. And to add more insult to injury, if you use the app long enough on old Android devices and leave it for about a minute, it will send a message at the beginning of the app telling you to update, which means clearing app data, including preferences and caches, or reinstalling it again. Not helping is that there aren't any changes.
   • Sometimes videos will refuse to load.
   • Sometimes videos don't generate sound for some reason when you enter any video.
   • In Shorts, if you go to "Comments", then "Replies", there is a blank space, making you think the "Responses" counter is displaying wrong.
   • It is not known if this is a bug, but the "Translate (language)" button does not appear in the Comments on certain videos.
   • Pausing a Shorts video is slightly more delayed than a normal video (maybe not a bug, but a coding oversight).
   • There are cases where the background will be black, but the color of the characters remains black, forcing you to look closer (depending on your vision’s genetics you may be able to differentiate very similar colors).
   • In the mobile version, switching accounts displays an error message (although ignorable), even if there is no instability in your accounts.
   • In the TV version, there are times when YouTube only displays a gray color, refusing to start the intro.
7. On November 10, 2021, YouTube announced the removal of public dislike counts and made the dislike counter private to only the creator of the video to "protect creators", which came into full effect on all users on November 29 of the same year. In addition, the public dislike count on the YouTube API was removed on December 13. This update was so bad, that it got a separate article of its own on the Wretched YouTube Videos Wiki.
   • Even worse is that almost all videos uploaded to YouTube after October 2021 have zero dislikes because of this update.
8. The site is filled to the brim with persistent and incredibly bothersome ads that play very frequently every time you start a video. They even play in the middle and even at the end. Talk about shameless revenue farming.
   • In addition, YouTube started having 15-second ads that people couldn't skip, and now there are 2 advertisements played at once. And they pop up before almost every monetized video.
     • To add insult to injury, they play these ads on YouTube Music. And recently, even if you reload the page, these ads will keep popping up. This also ruins people's enjoyment of music, especially those who wish to play in linear order without interruption with these irritating ads blacking them.
     • Ads sometimes appear in the middle of the song you're listening to, something that not even radio or music channels would do.
     • If the normal video was marked as “YouTube Kids”, it will display the message that the video will display after the ads, this is stressful for kids.
     • Sometimes, there is a chance of having more than just 2 advertisements playing before a video starts, which would result in having either 3, 4, or even 5 ads. Even if the ad count does not appear, and even if it does, it shows in the wrong count, for example: "Ad for "x" in 2" and for some reason, another ad appears.
   • To enjoy YouTube without ads, one must subscribe to "YouTube Premium," which indicates that the company prioritizes its paywall over customer satisfaction.
   • Starting November 18, 2020, regardless of whether creators are in the YouTube Partner Program or not, ads will still be running on their content. This is considered an exploit towards small creators as they do not get a cut of the revenue. It is even worse for those who don't bother monetizing their videos just to keep the ads away, as their purpose is completely defeated.
   • When you make your account for the first time, you have to choose if you want to get Personalized or Generic Ads. If you choose the former, you'll get inappropriate ads based on trends. If you choose the latter, you'll get normal ads for things like Etoro, Grammarly, Opera, etc. However, starting in 2022, no matter if you have chosen Generic Ads, you'll still get horrible Ads.
   • As that wasn't enough, YouTube implemented the anti-AdBlocker and intentionally increased it by 5 seconds artificially in all videos for those who use AdBlocker in Firefox (see WTWAIBDA👎N #10.8.6), which counts as persecution, to make it worse, this site is also doing it in EUROPE, since on this continent, persecution is a crime and is completely illegal, this caused Europeans to sue YouTube for persecuting.
   • Very recently, the "Skip Ad" design has now decreased, well, how did it change "Skip Ad" to just "Skip", it's also kind of transparent, this shows that YouTube is "Mr. Krabs 2.0".
   • Worse still, YouTube has just announced that it is testing the display of 5 to 10 advertisements in a row, without the possibility of skipping them before watching a video. This new change became even worse once YouTube started to crack down on ad blockers, which violates the ePrivacy Directive.
   • However, because of the excessive amount of ads appearing on this site, the new ad system had to be criticized immensely for seven simple reasons:
     1. They removed yellow markers on the progress bar that would tell you where the ads are in a video, which can be dangerous for people with severe fear, as ads can give unintentional jumpscares (yes, the ads can give you jumpscares depending on the sound and visuals). Sound familiar?
     2. They removed the countdown to an ad (i.e. "Ad in 3") on the TV/console version, making it harder for people to know and YouTube uses the excuse that it makes more money.
     3. They are removing instances of the word "Ad". They have been using "Sponsored" (even though there are low quality and lying advertisements), "Skip", and "Video plays soon" instead of "Ad", "Skip ad" and "Video will play after ad" respectively, it seems like YouTube is trying to make people think this isn't an ad when it is.
     4. They redesigned the skip ads countdown in the TV/console version. They use a yellow ring for the countdown, and again it's very confusing and difficult.
     5. YouTube is favoring short, unskippable ads over long, skippable ads. They are also favoring two or more consecutive ads.
        • Now there are a lot more unskippable ads than skippable ads, and this is making YouTube lose its charm, well this perfectly shows that Google is concerned about money and profit and wants to compete with useless things, and the results are abysmal, even the founders of this site still hate the practice that YouTube is doing.
   • As of June 6, 2024, all AdBlockers no longer block YouTube ads in all browsers, and to add salt to the wound, none of the ads are skippable regardless of the length. This means, that even videogame ads that take 1, 2, or even 3-minute ads cannot be skipped at all and it gets worse when there are always two unskippable ads in a row, potentially losing its charm for good. {{{label}}}
   • Thankfully, you can refresh the page about once or twice if you have an ad blocker installed and it'll speed up or completely skip the ads.
9. Sometimes, if your issue on YouTube regards anything but YT Premium, the support will not respond immediately.
10. Similar to how the Play Store (also part of Google) has no quality control and contains shovelware games and even undercover malware, there is also very little quality control on this site when it comes to advertising due to YouTube pandering towards money-makers. Almost anyone can be an advertiser.
    • As of 2020, with the increase in adverts, there have been instances of inappropriate ads appearing, especially those for mobile games.
    • One infamous example is ads for "Brain Riddle" apps that showcase girls having their clothes taken off, which have been shown on kids' videos, which directly violates COPPA.
    • There have been instances of ads that contain uncensored swear words like "Fuck", "Shit", etc. in them (e.g., an ad for WeHear showcases a sample from an independently-produced book called "Back and Better" that uses the words very frequently in the sample), which leads to a confusing and hypocritical matter: YouTubers can't say those words because they get demonetized, but the ads can?
    • There are also ads for scam websites, with fake cheating sites, scam websites, and scummy dating websites being the most common. Ads for fake Robux generators for Roblox are also common, especially on videos relating to current Roblox. The scams are worse now since YouTube removed dislikes because most scam videos have more dislikes than likes, but because of YouTube's update, all scam videos look like they have no dislikes anymore unless you use the "Bring Back Dislikes API".
    • There are even ads that have Jimmy Donaldson (MrBeast) in them, claiming that he's "giving out free money" to anyone who clicks on the ad. Jimmy himself has acknowledged that and has confirmed that, in case people did not know, they're not real.
11. Recently, YouTube stopped hiring white and Asian males for technical positions because it wants to "improve diversity" in the workplace, which is just racist and hypocritical. After all, Chad Hurley is white, Jawed Karim is half Asian, and half white, and Steve Chen is Asian, and they are the founders of YouTube.
12. This system is more strict with non-celebrity YouTubers than mainstream media-related channels. For example, the YouTuber Casey Neistat (known online as CaseyNeistat) uploaded a video in which he stated that the ad revenue (along with the benefits of a GoFundMe campaign he made) would be donated to the victims of the tragic Las Vegas shooting. However, said the video was demonetized because, according to them, their policies say that they cannot run ads on videos about tragedies. Meanwhile, TV channels (like Jimmy Kimmel's show, for example), which talked about the same tragedy, had ads in their videos, even if they didn't state what was going to be done about the ad revenue.
13. In recent years, YouTube has introduced services that seem uninspired, seemingly to capitalize on existing offerings.
    • YouTube Music is their take on music streaming services, similar to Spotify, Apple Music, etc.
    • YouTube TV serves as their response to traditional cable or live internet television.
14. They cannot take any criticism at all, despite their orchestrated damage on the site. It censors and demonetizes many YouTubers who dare to criticize it, like LeafyIsHere (currently Leafy Calvin), China Uncensored, The Act Man and SuperMarioLogan (mostly because of Jeffy), even though Logan isn't much better than YouTube themselves, while other inappropriate YouTubers haven't received any penalties like BudsForBuddies, Bella The Wolf and Landis Animations (the copyycat version of Avery Animations and the creator of the infamous web series Nolan and Stella).
    • Sometimes, YouTube's censorship is ineffective with certain channels/videos that need to be taken down, like Lolokaust.
    • Despite repeatedly censoring many Youtubers, in one notable example of hypocrisy, YouTube gave itself a Free Speech Award.
    • Censorship is also done very poorly, if a certain part of audio needs to be removed, it will abruptly be cut off and returned later which can become confusing. The blurred-out parts of the video can also be confusing for people who never watched the video before it was censored.
    • Basically, they are usually alert to profane videos, but not sexual videos.
15. The comments are terrible nowadays because we constantly deal with like beggars and like beggar bootlickers.
16. No security from spambots whatsoever. Comment bots, spambots that send troll comments on videos such as those who make disrespectful and hateful comments on Jacksepticeye's deceased father or other bots that spam "<insert Youtuber name>'s content is trash, mine is better", are rampant as a result. Some of them send inappropriate comments to users asking if they wanna date them, even though YouTube is not a dating website whatsoever (Though it was for a little while when It Was first released). Others, most notably Tom/Todd, and Logan (Not Logan Paul, the spambot) ask them if they want to be their friends, and if they reply with anything, it has been rumored that they can even hack their accounts. There are also recent spambots still ongoing that mostly appear on any video that has "unlocking X (e.g. iPhone/Windows/Android phones) without Password/Passcode tutorial, which they spammed the comments section without getting them deleted, and later (which appears on nearly all videos, new or old), various dating bots with NSFW profile pictures (with some of them having MrBeast/other legit YouTubers' profile picture) and usernames such as T[A]P Me!!! To Have [S]EX with Me (for dating bots) or randomly generated names (for bots with MrBeast PFP which sometimes have a verified checkmark) that copied & pasted actual users' comments and/or sent links to porn sites in various languages, yet the YT moderation bots sometimes delete actual users' comments (shadowbanning) without notice or because of posting any links (only for commenters, not creators, see below at WTWAIBDA👎N #41).
    • Speaking of bots, they are also ones that write things like gibberish, "use PromoSM your channel will grow up", sending links to websites that don't even exist. They also tend to falsely copyright strike and get you terminated with YouTube claiming that you got terminated in the most two usual ways: Violating the Community Guidelines and Spamming, even though you didn't. This shows how YouTube broken is.
17. Ironically, with YouTube encouraging users to subscribe to black creators, it was also flagging them for inappropriate content, despite none being found of it. YouTuber and rapper KSI was a victim of this, as YouTube would strike/age-restrict his videos (on his second channel) back in 2021, yet they usually leave positive comments on his music or videos.
18. Its copyright and Content ID system is a horrific mess and media-based channels' worst enemy, even before 2017. This can be considered one of the worst copyright systems ever made:
    1. One YouTuber named SmellyOctopus once got his voice copyright claimed thanks to the broken algorithm.
    2. Another example of this is that in 2017 an artist on YouTube named TheFatRat got his song "The Calling" copyright claimed by an unknown company named Ramjets, despite the song owned by TheFatRat himself (this issue was later resolved in 2019, but that's 2 years late.)
    3. You can get your video copyright claimed and struck even if you credit the original creator.
    4. Also during March 2022, thanks to this broken system, around 10 anonymous users (which turned out to be only 1 person involved, named Nicholas Minor a.k.a Lord Nazo) created a fraud Gmail account and filed false copyright strikes to any YouTubers who uploaded Destiny 2 content, this did not only affect the former content, but even Bungie themselves, and eventually Minor got sued for $7.6M, and also resulted in a criticism towards Google/YouTube for its awful, yet poor copyright systems).
    5. The Copyright Match tool is very flawed, as it poorly detects videos. Most of the time, YouTube will take down the videos even though they were made before it.
    6. In August 2022, one YouTuber named MK8 Master filed two false copyright strikes against Viz just for making Pokemon Z-Move videos and also just for Viz to get more views than him. This is not only a false claim, it is also illegal since MK8 Master doesn't even own Pokemon or the Z-Move videos whatsoever.
    7. Not only that, YouTube even accepts false copyright claims. Due to their moderation team being mostly bots. Divine Roblox made Cxkios get a strike because of those bots.
    8. Even worse, you cannot download blocked videos and you have to watch them in Somaliland, North Cyprus, and Kosovo, which is just an idiotic move and impossible to watch (unless you have a VPN).
    • In addition the "uploads" section on the spambot's home tab leads to the same name and profile picture, albeit on an entirely different channel. Aside from that, the entirely different channel either mostly uploads "how to get X fast on YouTube", which violates YouTube's terms of service, or Fortnite video games footage.
    1. The copyright match tool now has been completely useless since 2021, as it no longer detects any videos. Meanwhile, it works for some people, but most of the time it doesn't.
19. A majority of their policies are plain stupid, unfair, and unintelligent such as spam, misleading content, and improper content making the platform look like preschoolers.
20. It blocks creators' access to Patreon unless videos are demonetized.
21. The premiere feature is flawed, as the video will be stuck in 360p quality during most of the premiere and then the quality will be better afterward. Causing viewers to leave the premiere.
22. Some of the most requested features were the ability to play videos in the background on mobile and an official way to save and download videos. Well, those features were added behind a paywall.
    • Charging to play YouTube videos outside the mobile application is completely unnecessary.
    • Also, those requested features are auto-disabled for videos and shorts that are age-restricted or made for kids, partially defeating the point of paying for these features.
23. Their YouTube Rewind, an official mega-collab video that serves as a recap of the year, has a lot of problems that have been made worse and worse over the years:
    1. Their way of choosing the guests makes no sense. Most of the time, they are the same people regardless of how popular they were during the year, missing a lot of important content creators during the said year, like PewDiePie in both 2017 and 2018, the latter being even more nonsensical since it was the year of Meme Review and the T-Series vs. PewDiePie trend.
    2. Speaking of guests, they have been including more and more celebrities, which isn't inherently bad but feels out of place in a video about YouTube.
    3. The problems in the guests' choosing also affect the trends' choosing. As an example, in the 2018 Rewind, they didn't refer to the passings (in the form of homage like they did with David Bowie) of both Stephen Hillenburg (creator of SpongeBob SquarePants) and Stefan Karl (the actor of Robbie Rotten in LazyTown), the aforementioned T-Series vs. PewDiePie, the KSI vs. Logan Paul fight, etc.... yet they put Fortnite dances (when they already made a Fortnite reference at the start and in the middle), the Royal Wedding (was broadcasted on YouTube, but other than that it has nothing to do with it) and Baby Shark.
    4. In 2018, they used the Premiere feature. However, it premiered two hours before the upload, and the chat was restricted to the collaborators, which made the Premiere chat isolated from the rest of the audience, which made it pointless to premiere it.
    5. It's obvious that they try to appeal to the mainstream audience more than to the YouTube audience.
    6. In fact, the 2018 Rewind became the most disliked YouTube video of all time in a mere two weeks, surpassing Baby by Justin Bieber. They even dared to joke about how they broke the record on Twitter, but it met with criticism due to them not taking Rewind seriously and acting like they didn't care.
       • Heck, This 2018 Rewind got so bad that even then-YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki said "Even at home, my kids told me it (YouTube Rewind 2018: Everyone Controls Rewind) was cringey." She promised a better Rewind for 2019 and revealed several priorities for YouTube for the year
    7. In 2019, their most recent YouTube Rewind was just a top 10 of "things they liked" while they also got things they didn't like, contradicting what they're saying.
       • As PewDiePie pointed out, this makes the video essentially a Top 10 WatchMojo-style video.
       • While this style was used in the first Rewind, it was acceptable since it was a start to the series, and YouTube would eventually make an iconic change two years later. But in this Rewind, they just decided to go back to where they started from, which is even more inferior compared to the 2010 Rewind.
24. They censored YouTubers who have opposite views from them. The result of this is them facing a lawsuit by PragerU (though PragerU isn't any better themselves).
25. They treat some weapon-related or hunting channels harshly. They once demonetized several of ZombieGoBoom's (now ZGB Studios) videos simply because they were "not family-friendly". They also moved InRangeTV to PornHub. (Thankfully, he is back on YouTube.) They are also demonetizing Tigerfield (a Youtuber who uploads videos showcasing weapons from various video games) because he was reusing content, even though his videos themselves are recorded and edited exclusively by him, which is the reason why he hasn't been uploading that often lately, as said on his Blaser R93 video.
26. The search results nowadays are restrictive and limited. When you search for something related to politics, the results would put non-criticism videos as relevant while putting the rest below.
27. As YouTube made their allowable content policies stricter, they are also removing videos uploaded before the changes when such content was allowed. Thankfully, YouTube usually does not apply strikes to such removals.
28. YouTube channels have been suspended for using emotes on live streams they pay YouTube $5 for.
29. While that can be reliable, YouTube can have issues loading videos at high quality on lower specs. Some parts are the website are also broken, for example:
    1. It loads way slower, and video plays more stuttery on Firefox than on Chromium browsers (Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, etc.), needless to say, because it encourages Google products and puts third parties down, much like Microsoft trying to push their customers to use their first-party products rather than sticking to third-party. It's also the case for devices using older or dual-core processors, as it uses more CPU cycles than most video streaming sites. As a result, people with older or dual-core processors have to watch in 720p/480p in Chrome or download the videos through unofficial means and play them in a media player. Otherwise, they can't watch videos at all.
    2. As for 2023, the videos play even more stutterer in low-end computers no matter what browser you're using, the quality of the video is set (even at 144p) and how powerful is your internet. This issue mostly applies when watching videos related to popular or well-known gaming YouTubers and if the video subtitles are on, the stutteriness gets worse.
30. They have disabled comments on all Music-topic videos, giving only a lazy excuse that they couldn't deal with spambots. This can be seen if you go to a music track and click The comments.
31. The dislike button on comments does nothing. This did not use to be the case, which worked like how Reddit upvotes/downvotes work, but around 2013 (which was also the same year that Google+ was integrated into the YouTube comments section) or so, the ability to see dislikes on a comment was removed.
32. This site has an age restriction, an unnecessary feature that blocks users who aren't logged in from accessing restricted videos, and forces them to be 18 or older with an account. As of September 22, 2020, YouTube no longer allows users to watch age-restricted videos embedded on a majority of third-party apps and sites (such as NewPipe, Invidious, Listen On Repeat, NSFWYouTube, proxies, downloaders, etc.) and forces them to only watch them on YouTube without an explanation. This is presumably due to the videos either being demonitized and YouTube believing that everything on their site nowadays is "not advertiser-friendly", the site not considering them advertiser-friendly or YouTube treating the videos as if they were not shown on their site, despite the videos having the YT logo in the bottom left-corner, indicating that users were watching them on YouTube when these videos were still available on third-party apps and websites.
    • Since YouTube began cracking down third-party apps because "that prevents the creator for being rewarded for viewership" in 2024, it has been rumored that they began cracking down age-restricted videos on third-party sources for the same reason, even though they still demonitize videos that violate their policies.
    • Although some videos have offensive-enough content for them to be age-restricted and make sense (e.g. videos about Kurt Cobain of Nirvana's tragic life or anything involving the Tourettes Guy) in regards to this policy, the site also inexplicably blocked some music videos (e.g. "Jeremy" by Pearl Jam and "Cum on Feel the Noize" by Quiet Riot).
      • Whenever you try to download an age-restricted video on Y2mate, all it does is say "Updating Software".
      • Two sites called SSYouTube and ToMP3, as well as Freemake Video Downloader, used to let guests download age-restricted YouTube videos for free until 2024, when they succumbed to the same fate as other video downloaders. Nowadays, an error will occur if the pasted link is for an age-restricted video.
      • In recent years, YouTube has begun age-restricting videos containing topics related to suicide and/or self-harm, including music videos like "Hold On" by Good Charlotte. There is an "I understand and wish to proceed" button below the text that reads "The following video may contain suicide or self-harm topics.". However, they remove the button after you click it while the rest of the warning screen remains, thus rendering the video unplayable for unregistered users.
    • Users who live in European countries such as the United Kingdom, now have to verify their age by showing YouTube a government-issued ID or credit card which led to privacy concerns. It takes three days just to verify your age unless a credit card method is used instead. However, this requirement is because of an EU law to protect children from obscene content.
    • In fact, the age restriction feature is completely broken, as it can't tell whether videos are M-rated or not. It even age restricted a SpongeBob SquarePants video uploaded by AreaEightyNine, which, ironically, was set to "Made for Kids" simultaneously.
33. The Brand Account compatibility is flawed, especially during the Google+ era. When you move your channel to an alternate Google account, known as a Brand Account, your watch, and search history will be wiped out, and your recommendations will reset. Not only does it waste your time, but it also erases years' worth of history that could be revisited if you want to watch old videos.
    • Sometimes, it causes errors when you try to return your channel to the original account.
34. The mobile web version of the site's History page has a terrible interface. The "Clear Watch History" and "Pause Watch History" are left out in the open, which might guarantee accidental pressing from the users, especially if they use a laggy processor, in contrast to the mobile app, where said buttons are located in the History Controls section.
35. If there's no interaction with the app or website after a set period, it will automatically pause and inquire whether you wish to continue watching. This feature can be quite bothersome, especially when planning to listen to a playlist or a lengthy music video for an extended duration.
36. On the app, an automatic resolution is selected by default, and there is no way to set the highest resolution as the default. Therefore, if YouTube automatically sets a low resolution and you want to watch at a higher resolution, you must manually select it and it takes a while for it to change.
    • To add insult to injury, since the update, the video quality setting now prompts you to select auto, higher picture quality, data saver, or advanced. Higher picture quality is usually not the highest resolution. If you want the highest quality, you must click Advanced to manually select a resolution, which adds a click. While this may help users who have less technical knowledge and may not understand video resolution, it requires additional clicks compared to the older resolution selector UI, which only prompts you to select the specific resolution or auto.
37. The auto-captions on videos are poorly generated, especially because they capitalize "apple" even if the context rules out the tech company. The captions get words wrong very often and words like "you" or "foreign" can appear even when a part of a video is fully silent. There are plenty of videos that shouldn't have auto-captions, like the videos without narration. They also censor words considered offensive and replace them with “[__]” or just not show them instantly, sometimes even censoring words that are not even bad such as "Moron" or words that sound similar to said offensive words. This choice of censorship ended up drawing heavy criticism from deaf communities and organizations.
    • Even worse, In July 2020, they changed the captions to not be capitalized, and sometimes the last word a person spoke in a sentence in a video would take a while to show up. Usually when another sentence is spoken.
    • On September 28, 2020, they removed the Community Captions feature, which impacted deaf communities and people with language barriers. Their excuse was that it was "barely used and had problems with spam/abuse", but the change has been critically panned by deaf users. It could be justified that the Community Captions had gotten very little use, though.
38. After getting into a $170,000,000 lawsuit with the FTC, YouTube decided it should show compliance with the Children Online Private Protection Act (COPPA) despite being a 13+ website, enacting the COPPA Policy in January 2020 that many consider a censorship attempt.
39. On June 7, 2022, they took down The Act Man's latest video on him talking about Quantum TV, all because of "nudity and sexual content" (despite that there is no evidence that nudity nor sexual content is found in that video, however, many believe that it was due to featuring a pic with Quantum TV sucking a poorly photoshopped cucumber). What's even worse about this is that they think Quantum TV is innocent when he is not because of many bad things he did such as homophobia, racism, harassing other OTV YouTubers, wishing death to others, harassing The Act Man's mother, pedophilia, doxing, sending false copyright strikes, ban evading and even violating YouTube's guidelines. The Act Man later got his entire channel demonetized for calling out YouTube on his Twitter, and their only excuse was that he was "trying to dox them". Not to mention, this affected The Act Man so badly that he decided to stop posting on YouTube. Thankfully, they at least decided to bring Act-Man's channel back after the major backlash.
    • Hell, they even decided to treat him like an outright criminal, as they even attempted to silence anyone who stood up to him by demonetizing their videos or even terminating their channels. Not only does this prove that YouTube sided with an open homophobe, but also treated Kelly (The Act Man) like a butt-monkey while Quantum is a safe Karma Houdini.
    • Ironically, they post LGBT-supporting tweets at the same time. Thankfully, the tweets are not good enough to conceal their homophobic antics. Even similar comments regarding the situation were spammed on Susan's recent tweets.
    • Speaking of the ban, they didn't ban Peluchin Entertainment for animal abuse until two years later, yet banned one of Markiplier's videos for featuring a staged road rage incident with costume cartoon people in which someone hurt.
      • Other animal abusers haven't been banned yet, such as People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, Ssoyoung, fake animal "rescuer" channels, etc.
40. In September 2021, they forced a YouTuber named TrendCrave to private over one thousand of his videos because he forgot to mark his videos as age-restricted. Only three videos are left, and his latest video is 10 months old.
41. The playback on certain videos is disabled on embeds on other websites, even if the video owner didn't set it!
42. In recent years, YouTube has created a very corrupt system of removing comments that have any sort of external links at all. While it can be fully acknowledged that some do abuse links, like making people go to pages where it's ridden with computer viruses or porn websites, but it's still no excuse to bring disproportionate retributions like that against them, otherwise, people won't share evidence to back up their claims. It's also a case of having a business culture that reeks of paranoia, as well as political correctness.
    • Despite this, as said above on WTWAIBDA👎N #15, spambots (such as dating bots/hacked verified channels) were able to bypass this system to post links and the comments didn't get deleted.
    • They also delete comments that have any sort of profanity or offensive words in them.
43. YouTube has now blurred all the thumbnails to age-restricted videos for unregistered users or basically when you are in incognito mode.
44. You now have to verify a CAPTCHA if you're in incognito on a browser. Thankfully, this is only on mobile and only applies to weak Internet connections.
45. In some recent updates, some comments now can be translated. And guess what? The translation is somehow even worse than on Google Translate (despite that it is translated by Google as well). For example, some words in languages like Indian don't even get translated into English.
46. YouTube always tends to shove ads into your face by force and at all costs, as they thought it was a really good idea to remove almost every ad popup with the "Not interested" button, which means that these ads would show forever and they wouldn't disappear! Speaking of the "not interested" button, it's very broken these days because when you try to hide an ad, it will always come back again. This is especially noticeable with the Facebook ones, which are everywhere.
    • There was someone who complained to YouTube that he was looking for a video that was helping him save his choked grandmother, but an ad appeared at the most important moment and said she almost died because of this. YouTube responded by recommending YouTube Premium, showing that they would rather see people die just to see others subscribe to premium or see ads.
    • To add more insult to injury, ads will soon be able to be shoved into your face whilst the video is paused. As of now, the feature is going through testing.
47. They recently updated the sort of options for channels by removing the oldest option, at least for the YouTube app on mobile, which makes it harder for those who want to see older videos of any channel.
    • Thankfully, in the Invidious instance, there is the oldest option that can be accessible.
    • Gets better, the oldest option is back in June 2023.
48. YouTube Shorts isn't any better than TikTok, and it feels more like a rip-off and generic cash-in, unlike the latter as mentioned above you get videos (which have a 1:1 or 9:16 aspect ratio) uploaded years ago (sometimes you can get these videos twice), and you can only upload videos that are less than a minute, while on TikTok you get videos that are uploaded 1-2 months ago and you can upload 10-minute long videos. You also always get YouTube Shorts popups every time you open the app in the mobile version which has been like this since it was released, and you can't disable it.
    • The feature has also turned into a spam fest, as random users could repost the same shot over and over again just to gain views and subscribers.
    • It also has clips of copyrighted shows (mostly from an adult show, such as Family Guy) with a game clip below (to fill in the 16:9 aspect ratio).
    • Even if you're not interested in shorts or have a personalized taste in them, you will still get new off-topic shorts no matter what.
    • When you upload a YouTube Short, none of your subscribers get notified about it if they have the notification bell on.
    • They even contain Elsagate too, and even worse, inappropriate content! There are even some videos that have stock sound effects, Chinese laughter, etc.
49. Speaking of TikTok, YouTube has started to pander to the former ever since 2020. Their shorts feature is a prime example, as they tend to talk about it more often on their Twitter account, as well as containing reposts from said platform. Other examples include the channel's home UI, the Streamy Awards, and the fact that they shout out TikTok users on their channels. YouTube Shorts has many problems with users reposting other people's shorts as well, and they get thousands of likes for it.
50. Unless you're popular, YouTube often won't respond or see your feedback and complaints so you'll end up often being ignored by them.
51. And worst of all, YouTube Kids is a horrible idea to mess with crappy "made for kids" channels (like EnchantedMob and Toy Freaks). It always recommends gory videos to children that tend to milk and kill trends. And what's worse is that YouTube doesn't care about it. Likely because of this, a lot of children's YouTube channels (like Ryan's World, which even got its theatrical film in 2024) are seemingly dedicated to exploiting children starring in the videos and their young fans. Most of these channels were acquired by PocketWatch, a company dedicated to turning young stars on YouTube into global franchises.
52. Since 2020 when VPNs and cryptocurrencies became popular, many hackers started to exist on the platform. They change your channel and replace all your videos with scam links. And you get terminated on the next day.
53. Searching with advanced parameters for videos, depending on the countless redundant duplicates uploaded by random users with view counts ranging between ones and millions and excusable (clickbaity) titles, under problematic or invalid Creative Commons licenses considering license laundering is unbearably scattered everywhere thanks to terrible quality control and algorithm changes; even harder-to-impossible for legitimate ones, including a few notable examples.
54. Google announced that it would delete Google accounts that have been inactive for two years starting in December 2023; although this isn't YouTube's fault, it still means that the accounts of deceased YouTubers could be deleted soon, disrespecting their legacy. A spokesperson for Google stated that accounts with videos will not be deleted, but the unclear language in the post means that it's uncertain whether that will be the case. This caused many YouTubers (especially GachaTubers To spread a bunch of rumors throughout 2023-2024! Some also made up rumors!). Not helping is that they were used at the community posts.
55. Gaming channels could not be monetized before the late 2010s due to copyright concerns, which meant that Gaming YouTubers could only make money through networks, and many of them (primarily Machinima) were exploitative.
56. When SSSniperWolf (Alia "Lia" Shelesh) doxed Jackfilms (John Douglass), They did nothing to prevent SSSniperWolf from all that happening after Jackfilms criticized her, What's makes matters worse, They ignored Jacksfilms' advice on this video "Sssniperwolf came to our home last night. It's time for YouTube to step in."
    • What makes matters worse is that YouTube did absolutely nothing about it because even though it was against their guidelines and was met with permanent termination, causing several users to voice their support for banning SSSniperWolf by spamming the comments "Ban SSSniperWolf" all the time in its community tabs. The same goes for Instagram and Twitter which also did nothing.
57. The Channels tab was removed on YouTube a few months ago, which is painstakingly hard especially if they are looking for someone's other channel(s). It now only appears on sorts. They also somehow allowed users to turn off the Home tab.
58. Even worse, YouTube even turns off comments on videos that are not made for kids, it's like where YouTube thinks some videos that are not made for kids are made for kids when it's not.
59. Some community members, including YouTubers like Bonita The Gamer Girl, AutumnTheBlossomGal2K8, RetroMiller1997, RioTheCherryBlossomSakuraBlazingFieryThunder2K1, AustinTheSuperiorVyonder, DanaThePakistaniQatar&IndianGail, SlimeKittenVideoEditor937, Cruz Ibarra Martinez, Jenna The Pinkalicious Idol, 🤖 Speedimus Prime Productions 🏁, Hoanganh Le, {EVE LᴏᴠᴇʀGɪʀʟ28} 2024 The Precious Rose, Pretty Girl Pretty Peach of the Island, Victor Shadowblade, JamisonTheNintendo&AnimationFan, Sora Haragashi, and 💜VarnerVibesGaming💜, frequently mistreat their community posts in ways that may differ from the intended purpose of the feature.
60. YouTube infamously didn't make the most iconic YouTube Play Buttons anymore but instead, They redesigned the play buttons due to how many creators are earning them now, To get the play button to buy $225
61. Most YouTubers are now doing stupid "YouTube Roleplaying", which is when they roleplay as a fictional/OC character, and it invades the comments and community posts the most. They also can roleplay themselves as a different gender, which is massively disgusting. They can also roleplay by saying "Kisses you" and making the user in question very uncomfortable. They can also start petty drama and play the victim card. They are also online families, which is very sick and twisted of them to support. This "good" idea is the main reason why the community posts are abused. Sometimes they roleplay in places not suitable.
    • They can get users in trouble and attack users over a Roleplaying mistake.
    • It can cause people to roleplay love letters and act lovey-dovey to underage people, which happened once and is pedophilias Even worse, some of the users defended him and said he isn't a Paedo. The user called Tom_The_Cat also called Bryan and Tom_The_Star closed his account to avoid hate, then launched multiple channels, and is a 30 to 40-year-old man who bashes on Gen Alpha, not knowing that the pre-2000s were not perfect and are overrated.
    • When they find someone sharing their opinion against roleplaying, they shame them by Making a community post on them or Bash opinions, calling them jerks.
62. On September 28, 2024, songs by several artists became unplayable on YouTube in the United States due to a legal dispute between YouTube and SESAC, affecting the availability of music from artists such as Adele, Alice in Chains, Boyz II Men, Fleetwood Mac, Nirvana, Green Day, Kendrick Lamar, and others, but Thankfully. It finally came back.

Qualities That Would Deserve a 👍

1. It was a great website before 2017.
2. At least they added the "Oldest first" video option in 2023, even though they didn't do it for search results and comments.
3. It has a very unique interesting concept and was somewhat revolutionary for the time.
4. They added the dark theme for free without having to use a browser extension, which was also highly requested. The dark theme is good for watching videos at night and also reduces epilepsy.
5. It is still a popular website with tons of informative resources such as tutorials, tech support, let's play, animation, vlogging, speed paint, and many other types of videos. Thus, the slogan of YouTube has since been, "Broadcast yourself".
6. YouTube Premium has lots of good web series (even though it can be considered an unoriginal service to some).
7. They recently began to combat ad blockers (because it constitutes a clear violation of the platform's Terms of Service), which, while bad on the surface, is very important, as it enables creators to make more money and thus make a sustainable income.
8. Although it could be considered a bad quality to some, YouTube can get addicting.
9. They have a live-streaming feature similar to Twitch, and it is a major competitor to the latter.
10. With translation being integrated from Google's takeover, it can translate auto-generated captions into more than 50 languages for viewers who cannot understand videos in foreign languages.
11. YouTube TV is a solid alternative to cable television, with 100 local stations and popular cable channels for half the price of cable.
12. They will remove blatant copyright infringement (such as stolen videos) if the creator files a complaint.
13. Thankfully, countries such as Albania, Mongolia, Macao, and Russia don't play or play very little ads.
14. Without YouTube, many memes and other internet technologies wouldn't have been a thing, such as Trololo (the nickname of the late Russian singer Eduard Khil's song Я Очень Рад, Ведь Я Наконец Возвращаюсь), the Crash Bandicoot "Woah!" meme created by OneyPlays, YouTube Poops, "Charlie Bit My Finger" (which unfortunately got marked as made for kids, unlisted, later private due to YT's new policy at the time, and got sold as an NFT (known for harming environment, being filled with lots of scams and being useless), therefore being unlisted, though it's already been reuploaded way before it got unlisted or NFT got popular compared to nowadays), Nyan Cat, and others. There also wouldn't have been great YouTubers making great videos, and many old videos are still watchable to this very day.
15. In late 2021, YouTube introduced the Channel Memberships system which works a lot better than Patreon as it will charge the user and the perks will be kept even if the user cancels early, and there is a way to gift a user a free month of membership. And it allows users to use Google Play credit, instead of a credit card.
16. Some channels have been deleted for good reasons, for example, InfoWars' and Nick Fuentes' channels were deleted because of Hate Speech. They also removed videos that promote misinformation about COVID-19 and hate speech.
17. On July 29, 2022, subscriber counts can no longer be hidden. Every channel's subscriber count is now public to everyone, which can help viewers not get scammed by a fake account that is used to scam people.
18. They did a tribute to Technoblade for his 9th anniversary. The video is here.
19. You can still download age-restricted videos using the 4K Video Downloader if you have a YouTube account; you can also still download videos with topics related to suicide and self-harm with downloaders such as Freemake Video Downloader.

Reception

TBA

Trivia

• Currently, there is little to no viable competitor to YouTube, although the most recent popular rivals: BitChute and Rumble have been seeing some success. However, the websites are designed very archaic aren't as intuitive, and are filled to the brim with political and conspiracy content. Just like Steam, YouTube is a virtual monopoly and the user base has to tolerate it until something else takes over and can properly rival it. There are still some minor competitors to YouTube like Vimeo, Dailymotion, Vlare, and Odysee (which also hosts almost the same content as YouTube) or PeerTube.
• YouTube has two selectable licenses (standard and CC-BY) for videos, while Vimeo has eight (standard, CC0, CC-BY, CC-BY-SA, CC-BY-ND, CC-BY-NC, CC-BY-NC-SA, and CC-BY-NC-ND).

See also

• Wretched YouTube Videos Wiki
• Amazing YouTubers Wiki
• Trashy Vyond Videos Wiki

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