YouTube (2017-present)

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YouTube It's YouTube but in the name only Type of site: Video hosting service Language: Multilingual Created by: Chad Hurley Steve Chen Jawed Karim Owner: Google (2006-present) Date of launch: February 14, 2005 Status: Active

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 2013 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 Susan Wojcicki became the chairwoman of YouTube in 2014. However, ever since YouTube changed its logo in 2017, it started going downhill very quickly, and as of 2021, it officially became bad when they updated the dislike button.

Why This Website and Its Business EXTREMELY Deserve a 👎 Now

Warning: As this page is intended to criticize the website itself, please don't show any forms of hypocrisy on any bad YouTubers, as it may violate ShoutWiki's terms of use. Anyone who does so will be dealt with.

1. Since Susan Wojcicki died on August 9, 2024, most YouTubers are now happy that she died, including Bonita The Gamer Girl, who made a deleted post saying she is happy Susan died. THIS IS HEARTLESS! And some people in the comments love her death too. And this is very disrespectful in so many ways. Heck, even some people also try to force Neal Mohan (Susan’s successor and current CEO) to get fired. Just because he isn't perfect doesn’t mean he should be disrespected.
2. While YouTube does still have plenty of well-received channels such as Cinemassacre, PewDiePie, including modern channels and others, the other part of the community is filled with a rotten userbase with the staff barely enforcing YouTube's guidelines and ignoring tickets. This leads to a lot of questionable 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.
3. The only way to grow on YouTube nowadays, is to promote your content. However, you have to pick a group that is 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 is also going to care about your content unless you 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 to 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 into 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 0% chance to get popular
4. 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 his channel even though they already did it. Along with uninspired services such as YouTube Gaming, YouTube Premium, YouTube TV, and YouTube Music with which 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.
5. Account terminations are the worst thing you may experience on YouTube, if you end up terminated randomly without getting any strikes. You will lose all of your videos and you cannot 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.
6. The community on Youtube can be bad, but also worse than other communities in other sites, especially in the comment section. And because of the amount of comments from these groups that are made every day and how ugly and worse it has becoming, media outlets like to use these comments to represent the entire YouTube community, though they do have a point about the amount of toxicity that goes on.
7. The adpocalypse. (Which most YouTubers are struggling with while shovelware and fetishes are just chilling because the bots cannot decide on what's monetized or not)
8. 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 had an article of its own back when this article was on Miraheze.
9. The site nowadays 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 just recently, even if you reload the page, these ads will just 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.
     • And to add a lot more salt to the wound, there is a chance of getting the horrible and annoying message "we'll get back to this video after this announcement!", this counts as spam, and if you try to close the video and enter the same video multiple times, the annoying message will reappear.
     • Sometimes there is a chance of having 3, 4 and 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.
   • You would have to buy the Premium version to keep these ads off, which just shows that the site is willing to affect its overall quality just to slam its consumers to the paywall.
   • 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 now 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, during the mid-2023 YouTube implemented the anti AdBlocker and intentionally increased it by 5 seconds artificially in all videos for those who use AdBlocker in Firefox, 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 causethe
   • The "Skip Ad" design has now decreased, well, how did it change "Skip Ad" to just "Skip", and it's also kind of transparent, this shows that YouTube cares more the money
10. Sometimes, if your issue on YouTube regards anything but YT Premium, the support will not respond immediately.
11. Similar to how the Play Store 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 an audiobook app called 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. Another common scam with these ads is for video games, with downloads for “mobile” versions of games like Grand Theft Auto V and even the as yet released sixth title being present, even though running games like GTA V would be impossible on a phone.
    • There are even ads that have YouTubers in them, for example an and showing MrBeast 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.
12. They've also allied with the SPLC (Southern Poverty Law Center) to block conservative videos, which could be considered violating the freedom of speech, even though conservatism internationally has done some very controversial things over the past few years (We’re talking to you, Brexit.)
13. Recently, the executives at YouTube stopped hiring white and Asian males for technical positions because it wants to "improve diversity" in the workplace, despite the fact that Chad Hurley is white, Jawed Karim is half Asian, half white, and Steve Chen is Asian, and they are the founders of YouTube, which is very hypocritical for both the executives and YouTube itself.
14. This system is more strict with non-celebrity YouTubers than with 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) will be donated to the victims of the tragic Las Vegas shooting. However, YouTube began demonetizing the video 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.
    • This is also very hypocritical for YouTube to demonetize a video centering around a shooting when YouTube themselves had a shooting at their headquarters back in 2018, and it was confirmed that the perpetrator, Nasim Najafi Aghdam, caused the shooting because she hated YouTube all because they kept demonetizing her videos and filtering her channels. Yes really.
15. 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 any better than YouTube themselves, while other inappropriate YouTubers haven't received any penalties.
    • 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.
16. No security from spambots whatsoever. Comment bots, spambots that send troll comments on videos such as those who make bad hate and bad disrespect 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, Logan (Not Logan Paul, the spambot) ask them if they wanna 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 random generated names (for bots with MrBeast PFP which sometimes have a verified checkmark) that copy & pasted actual users' comments and/or send links to porn sites in various languages, yet the YT moderation bots sometime deletes actual users' comments (shadowbanning) without notice or because of posting any links (only for commenters, not creators, see below at pointer #40).
17. 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 than YouTube claiming that you got terminated by the most two usual ways: Violating the community Guidelines and Spamming, even though you didn't. This shows how YouTube broken is.
18. YouTube is very buggy and many bugs are still common and have existed for a long time, it seems that Google is following quantity over quality
19. 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.
20. 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. 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 aka 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 . Eventually Minor got sued for $7.6M, and also resulted in a criticism towards Google/YouTube for its awful, yet poor copyright systems.
    • Not to mention 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.
21. A majority of their policies are plain stupid, unfair and unintelligent such as spam, misleading content, improper content making the platform look like made preschoolers..
22. It blocks creators' access to Patreon unless videos are demonetized.
23. The notification bell is very flawed since most of the time it doesn't notify viewers about recently uploaded videos. This caused many creators to lose views, thanks to this issue.
24. 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.
25. 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 of 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.
26. 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 LazyTown actor, Stefan Karl's passing, in the form of homage, like they did with David Bowie, 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 was 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, even surpassing Baby by Justin Bieber. They even had the audacity to joke about how they broke the record on Twitter, but it was met with criticism due to them not taking Rewind seriously and acting like they didn't care.
    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 off 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.
27. 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.
28. They treat some weapon-related or hunting channels harshly. They once demonetized several of ZombieGoBoom's (now ZGB Studios) videos simply because they are "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.
29. 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.
30. 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.
31. YouTube channels have been suspended for using emotes on live streams they pay YouTube $5 for.
32. 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 the video buffers more 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. The Restricted Mode change is very broken as people try to turn it off when it got enabled by itself, then it will still be enabled, upsetting YouTube users who don't want Restricted Mode on.
33. They have disabled comments on all music 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 scroll down to the comments.
34. 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.
35. This site has an age restriction, an unnecessary feature that blocks users that 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 third-party apps and sites (such as NewPipe, Invidious, Listen On Repeat, NSFWYouTube, proxies, downloaders, etc.) and forces them to only watch it on YouTube.
    • 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 if credit card method is used instead. However, this requirement is because of a 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 video, which, ironically, was set to Made for Kids simultaneously.
36. 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.
37. Speaking of which, the mobile web version of the site's History page has a terrible interface. The clear watch history and pause watch history options 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.
38. If you don't interact with the app/website for a certain amount of time, it will pause itself and ask you if you want to continue watching. This is particularly annoying if you intend to listen to a playlist or a long music video for hours.
39. 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.
    • 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 the 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.
40. 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.
    1. 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.
41. After getting into a $170,000,000 lawsuit with the FTC, YouTube decides it should show compliance with Children Online Private Protection Act (COPPA) despite being a +13 website, enacting the COPPA Policy in January 2020 that many consider a censorship attempt.
42. On June 7th, 2022, they took down The Act Man's latest video on them defending 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 for no reason, harassing The Act Man's mother, pedophilia, doxxing, sending false copyright strikes, ban evading abuse and even violating YouTube's guidelines for no reason. 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 doxx them". Not to mention, this affected The Act Man so badly that he decided to stop posting on YouTube.
    • 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.
43. Speaking of the ban, they didn't ban Peluchin Entertainment for animal abuse until two years later yet did ban 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 banned yet; Ssoyoung, fake animal "rescuer" channels, etc.
44. 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.
45. On 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.
46. The playback on certain videos are disabled on embeds on other websites, even if the video owner didn't set it!
47. 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 pointer 12, 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.
48. YouTube has now blurred all of the thumbnails to age-restricted videos for some users or basically when you are on incognito mode.
49. 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.
50. In some recent updates, Some comments now can get 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 Hindi, Bengali and Marathi don't even get translated even in English.
51. 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.
52. 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 on almost every ad popup 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 you die just to see others subscribe to premium or see ads.
54. 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 that want to see older videos of any channel.
    • Thankfully, in the Invidious instance, there is the oldest option that can be accessible.
55. Since the 2020s, YouTube has started recommending old videos. You can also get them even if you've watched the videos before.
56. YouTube Shorts isn't any better than TikTok and it feels more like a rip-off and a 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 long less than a minute, while on TikTok you get videos that are uploaded 1-2 months ago and you can upload 5-minutes 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 short over and over again.
    • 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.
57. 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.
58. The mobile version is considered to be worse than the website due to the limitations and having way too many glitches. For example, a recent glitch has been discovered that when you try to use your other accounts, you get an error where it says to retry. When you retry or restart your phone, nothing happens. Another bug which was mentioned above is how it always loads videos at 360p and using the other options always doesn't seem to do anything at all (and what's worse is that ever since the mobile version exists, YouTube still didn't fix the glitch).
59. When it comes to updates, the mobile app also has a tendency to shove a message telling users to update it while completely blocking access to the app. If a user has an outdated device, the app will instead permanently block them from access with a message telling them to switch to the browser version of YouTube because the "app is outdated and there are no versions available for your device", which is the app basically punishing anyone who can't afford to buy a new device or install an update, for no apparent reason, which is unfair towards them.
    • To add insult to injury, the outdated versions are shown to be clearly functioning properly when the app's data is cleared, only for the "Switch to YouTube.com" message to reappear and block all access to the app, proving YouTube's incredibly stupid management of the app.
60. 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.
61. Worst of all, YouTube Kids is a horrible mess of crappy "made for kids" channels, like EnchantedMob and Toy Freaks, that started the platform's downfall. It always recommends gory videos to children that tend to milk trends. And what's worse is that YouTube don't care about that at all, at least until COPPA came in 2019, though as of 2023, they’re back into the art of ignorance.
62. Since 2020 when VPNs and cryptocurrencies became popular, a lot of hackers started to exist on the platform. They change your channel and replace all your videos with scam lives. And you get terminated on the next day.
63. 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 adblockers, which violates the ePrivacy Directive.
64. 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 atrocious quality control and algorithm changes; even harder-to-impossible for legitimate ones
65. Starting in December 2023 there is change that Google accounts inactive for 2 or more years will be deleted; although this isn't YouTube's fault, it still means that the accounts of deceased YouTubers could possibly be terminated in the near future, 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.
66. Gaming channels could no longer be monetized prior to the late 2010's due to copyright concerns, which meant that Gaming YouTubers could only make money through networks, and many of them (primarily Machinima) were exploitative
67. Starting closely to the end of 2023, Youtube is blocking almost every Invidious instances, this shows how greedy, corrupt and abysmal is the company
68. Since 2024, there was an error in the video that force you to log in to confirm you're not a bot but also means that "This helps protects our community" that is not only on Youtube, but also frontend instances like Individios, Piped and others. It seems that this error was like in other websites that block content and forcing you to sign up like Tumblr, Twitter
69. Thanks to many reasons above, the site killed it's good reputation and there's no slightly chance of reform it or coming back to its roots

Qualities That Would Deserve A 👍

1. The site used to be good before its controversy in 2017. It is still fun to use, as you can still make all kinds of videos, however, you unfortunately still have limits.
2. It has a very unique interesting concept and was somewhat revolutionary for the time.
3. It's easy to feel sorry for YouTube after the website's headquarters fell victim to an infamous shooting incident back in 2018, though thankfully, no one else was killed, except for the shooter.
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 since then, "broadcast yourself."
6. YouTube Premium has lots of good web series, even though it can be considered an unoriginal service to some.
7. While the number of ads they have can be considered excessive, they do not attempt to combat adblockers, unlike Twitch, so that's an easy solution to the problem.
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. They have terminated some problematic YouTube users like Alex Jones (a notorious conspiracy theorist), Nick Fuentes (an infamous white supremacist), Varg Vikernes (a musician with racist views), Stefan Molyneux, Richard Spencer, Peluchin Entertainment, and more.
11. 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.
12. YouTube TV is a solid alternative to cable TV, with 100 local stations and popular cable channels for half the price of cable.
13. They will remove blatant copyright infringement (such as stolen videos) if the creator files a complaint.
14. Without YouTube, many memes and other internet technologies wouldn't have been a thing, such as Trololo, the nickname of a former Russian singer's song Я Очерь 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 privated due to YT's new policy at the time, and got sold as an NFT, known for harming environments and for filled with lots of scams, therefore being unlisted, though it's already been reuploaded way before it's 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.

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 archaically and 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.
• In around late 2017, YouTube received a lot of scrunity due to their twisted filter system, the annoying polices, and the removal of the disklike button. The backlash and controversies became so bad that it lead to a mass shooting at their headquarters in 2018. We're not joking either.
• This is currently the second longest page on this wiki.

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