Most Annoying Things About YouTube
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Copyright Paranoia
I get why YouTube's copyright system exists in the first place, but it's often abused by people who want to silence their critics, which is a major problem. To add insult to injury, if you try to dispute a claim, their bot system can automatically reject it.
Copyright strikes are even worse, and three of them can nuke a channel out of existence. Also, if you try to appeal a strike, you essentially have to dox yourself by revealing personal information and hope it doesn't go to a civil court case. It sucks the fun out of creating content, period.
YouTube is working with already rich corporations to isolate certain material and censor the internet. It all seems innocent now, but this is setting up a population for brainwashing and social manipulation. Soon, entire websites will be banned and controlled, and the only people who gain are, again, the already rich.
These petty copyright issues shouldn't be a problem. I shouldn't have to dispute a claim because of 20 seconds of someone's song. It's not even the whole thing. Unless it's a 1-to-1 copy of something in its entirety, YouTube should butt out. To hell with the lobbyists looking to improve sales stats at the cost of freedom.
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Ads Before Videos
How is this not first? YouTube ads are by far the most annoying thing, if not the only annoying thing, about YouTube! Can you really blame me for wanting to throw my computer or phone out the window when I see two little kids advertising Honey Nut Cheerios?
If I were allowed to skip the ad, or if it were an ad I liked, that would be okay. But YouTube's insistence on torturing me with that elementary school commercial is too much. I refuse to watch it. I just won't watch the video I wanted to see. That ad will not be given the satisfaction of having me watch it beginning to end.
Is it really that hard to make it skippable? It's not. I can wait five seconds, but I'm not watching a little kids' advertisement beginning to end.
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This Video is Not Available in Your Country
YES! My friend uploaded a Backyardigans video, and it's not available in the US, but she didn't get a copyright strike. Also, this channel called Treehouse Direct is a verified channel, but almost all the videos of The Backyardigans episodes, along with the official Backyardigans channel, are blocked except for a few: Surf's Up (Season 1), Race Around the World (Season 1), High Tea/The Tea Party (Season 1), and one of the International Super Spy episodes, either part 1 or 2 (Season 2). Those are the only unblocked videos for the official Backyardigans YouTube channel, but all the episodes on Treehouse Direct are blocked.
I agree! This is very annoying! People just want to watch videos or listen to music, that kind of thing. But this irritating thing completely stops them from having the freedom of access. It's ridiculous!
For instance, I wanted to download MP3 audio files of the newest Def Leppard album to my iTunes, yet I only got the first two tracks. YouTube somehow wouldn't let me access the rest of the album. Why? Is the music too explicit? Is my country not eligible to watch or listen to certain content? I just wanted to listen to their music. Everyone else can, why can't I? And thanks to this "This video is not available in your country" malarkey, I don't know what the rest of the album sounds like because of this bullcrap. Bravo, YouTube, bravo! You've really messed up.
Send me back to 2005-style YouTube when this garbage didn't exist and you could watch whatever you wanted whenever you wanted without having to worry about being blocked off. That would be nice.
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Ads That Display In the Middle of a Video
This annoys the hell out of me! In the beginning or end, sure I won't mind as long as it's skippable, but it's annoying as heck being in the middle of a video! I wish we had those ads from Japan. They are creative and fun.
The one thing I hate most about this is when something good is about to start, like they're about to start playing the game, and just when they say, "Let's get right into the video!" a stupid French perfume ad comes on that I can't understand! Seriously, people need to cut down on the ads! I mean, if it's a 40-minute-long video (which I would never watch), then I can understand, but if it's just 12 minutes long, you don't need 5 ads!
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Unskippable Ads
I had this dream last night that I clicked on a video and there were five ads before the video! I was like, OMG, so annoying! I hope it doesn't come true. If it did, I would be mad.
Just reload the page, skip 5 seconds by pressing the keyboard arrows, switch to a different browser, or use ad blockers. There are many ways to bypass YouTube's greedy practices.
You can't skip a 15-second ad, but you can skip a 5-second ad even though the ad already finished before you skip it.
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Google Buying It
YouTube is dead. It died as soon as Google bought it.
YouTube was once a giant forest where everyone had their place, sharing the fruits of the trees and having fun with each other. After the corporates discovered this elysium, they cut down the trees, deprived the people of their property, and built estates/manors for the powerful landlords (like Smosh, RWJ, ShaneDawson), who then enslaved the natives and made every effort to profit off the already-poor natives. That is a perfect metaphor for what happened to YouTube.
R.I.P. old YouTube!
Google sent YouTube's trajectory down a black hole when they bought it, throwing the small YouTubers first into the event horizon and letting the big channels stay on the asteroid (YouTube) that was slowly drifting toward its ultimate doom.
As Google kept making unnecessary changes to the site, the asteroid picked up speed, getting ever closer to the event horizon and ultimately the central singularity. While this happened, the asteroid was being torn to pieces as rogue meteors (copyright abuse) smashed against it, causing some users to be knocked off into the black hole (terminated accounts and channels) while the big channels held their ground.
By 2013 A.D., the asteroid reached the event horizon as the linking between the civilization of Google+ and the inhabitants of the YouTube asteroid was created in an attempt to pull it away from the hole's grasp. But it was not successful. The inhabitants rebelled with hate comments and Bob spam, which only made the asteroid fall faster into the black hole.
It unfortunately seems YouTube will fall into the central singularity anyway.
My own metaphor for what happened to YouTube. (Inspired by the one two comments below me.)
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Buffering
With all the advanced technology we've created, why couldn't we make it so YouTube videos don't have a second loading bar that makes the video buffer and pause if the red bar goes past it? Why can't the video start and already be fully loaded? It's even more frustrating when the video buffers for 20 seconds and then says, "Loading Error, Tap to retry." It's super annoying.
The worst part is when you right-click and report a problem. Then YouTube asks you what the problem was. GUESS WHAT, GENIUSES, WHAT ELSE? What else might go wrong with YouTube except for the video not playing?
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Age Restriction
The kind of people that report these videos are angry parents with 3 kids who aren't allowed to watch Nick, Cartoon Network, Disney, Disney Channel, or anything but baby shows and can't get on the computer unless it's for school.
I really don't care. I mean, like, what? Just curse words/inappropriate sentences? Who cares? I am under 18 and I still watch AGE-RESTRICTED videos. But not the censored content, though. Only the ones with bad words.
I love how YouTube will unnecessarily censor an innocent video where a content creator accidentally says "heck" because that's inappropriate for kids. Yet they never age-restricted any of Cardi B or any other modern rapper's music videos, which contain full pornography.
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Comments are Disabled for This Video
It's annoying, but sometimes it's not the creators that do it. On about half of my old videos (that I don't have the password to the channel I uploaded them on to take them down or at least set them to private), comments have been disabled. I have never uploaded a video where I've disabled comments myself.
Probably because of the infamous update in late February 2019 where people could get demonetized for the comments.
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Clickbait
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YouTube Premium
This is just annoying. YouTube keeps asking if you want Premium a gazillion times, and you have to say no a million times.
Also, when I changed my VPN location to the USA, I remember all my offline videos were unable to be played because I needed YouTube Premium. Like seriously, stop it, YouTube. Don't we get enough of two unskippable 10-second ads?
It is annoying. I don't want YouTube Premium, and they keep giving me ads about it.
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Videos that are in a Different Language
The auto dub feature when I want to hear videos in thrircoriginal languages:
English monotonous robot voice saying random words at terrible timings.
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The COPPA Update
YouTube Kids is one of the most pointless apps in the entire universe! What was the point? How am I supposed to comment on MLP videos?! If kids want entertainment, let them watch their shows on TV, not THIS! YouTube was made for 13+ age, not for kids! Did you know that some videos not made for kids are on YouTube Kids?! If Salad Fingers (one of the best shows ever, in my opinion) was ever on YouTube Kids because it is animated, I will personally go to court and sue COPPA! This is not okay if you really think about it!
I will always still love YouTube, but the system is broken!
They marked a bunch of inappropriate parodies as kids' content.
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30 Second Ads with No Skip
Imagine this times 2. I had to suffer through that 5 times!
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Errors
It is VERY annoying when you are trying to watch a video, only to see "An error occurred. Please try again later." in the middle of the video. Or when you go to your channel page and about 1% of the time you get an error very similar to the video player ("An error occurred. Please try again"). Or how about when you try to upload a video only for it to sit at 0% for five seconds and then say that an error has occurred while "sending data over the network"? That makes me want to bang my head on the keyboard!
I HATE THIS! I try to watch The Shadow Reader's videos to listen to his scary stories sometimes, and this error comes up. Ugh. And when I watch The Backyardigans on a VPN, I HATE IT!
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Censorship
YouTube is not censoring the extremely suggestive cartoon thumbnails.
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Constant Layout Changes
They feel the need to constantly make the layout look "modern," but they just keep making the layout worse. Growing up during the "Golden Era" of YouTube (2008-2012) meant the layout was nice and creative with tons of customization. Now, they've gotten rid of all that, and the layout is dull and an eyesore.
I wish they made you change back to the old layout...
Oh wait, they did, but I never knew, and in March of 2018, they removed it!
I feel like they're getting worse every time. Please decide on one layout, for the love of Trump.
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Videos You Don't Like Are Recommended for You
Dude, I just created a fresh YouTube account and, you guessed it, I saw several neo-Nazi related videos in my feed.
The algorithm is crazy.
Yeah, I get this a lot. Every time I go on YouTube, I see a bunch of videos that are irrelevant to what I like to watch getting recommended to me. Then I have to constantly press "not interested" to get rid of them. So annoying.
In my recommendations, one time I saw a Monster High Anaconda Music Video, and I was like, lol, it's in my recommendations.
Update: Today, when I was browsing YouTube, I saw Barney videos in my recommendations, and I was like, omg, really?
Another Update: I saw Puppy Dog Pals videos in my recommendations, and I was like, oh great, this PAW Patrol ripoff is in my recommendations.
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Dotted Circle Appears While Playing a Video
That's when it buffers. You can also play the snake game with it!
That stupid dotted circle drives me insane!
This is really annoying when it happens during a video. It drives me nuts.
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History Box
I hate it with burning passion. There is no need for it to exist.
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Misleading Thumbnails
There is this YouTuber called Papa Jake and one video of his was titled "LIQUID NITROGEN vs MY ARM." And guess what? He never put his arm in liquid nitrogen. He just put some random objects in it and ended the video with, "If this video gets (I forget how many) thousand likes, I will put my hand in liquid nitrogen."
I guess I shouldn't be surprised because Papa Jake is one of those toy channels, which are known for their deceptive practices.
So incredibly annoying, and they fool me all the time. I remember I was trying to look for something about Miley Cyrus's opinion on her VMA performance, and one video said that Miley talks about it in an interview. I went to watch, and Miley didn't ever talk. It was just photos of her and someone else talking about what Miley said. Very misleading. I wanted to hear it from Miley, not some random person.
Other times I will try to look for something and the title will be misleading. Example (I'm just making this one up) "Gordon Ramsay gives instructions on how to make his signature dish" but what you actually get is some random person giving instructions on how to make Gordon Ramsay's signature dish.
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Slow Loading
Ugh, I hate it! It drives me insane.
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The Comment Section
It's not just specific things that are annoying about YouTube. The YouTube comment section as a whole is a cesspool of idiocy.
I do not go to the comment section that much. Annoying, stupid, or offensive comments are predictable. I steer clear of it.
The comment section is littered with like beggars, sub beggars, toxic idiots, and dumb people in general.
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The Dislike Button
I'd rather rate the video with stars instead of liking or disliking.
Yes, like on a cute video people dislike. They don't have a heart.
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Porn Spam
Why not just block and report them?
Also, what are you even watching for these types of videos to be recommended to you in the first place? You don't just accidentally get porn on your algorithm.
Porn spam is appearing in history even when the videos were never watched.
YouTube doesn't answer to this anywhere that I've found. Someone needs to sue them for that abuse.
Ick! Porn.
This topic, including sex, puberty, and seeing a picture by accident of a naked ladyboy (no offense to those people), ruined my childhood. Bring back the young days.
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Sponsored Videos
Especially when a video sponsors Samsung.
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Banned Because of Copyrights
I feel really bad for Smosh. They didn't deserve to get a video with 24 million views taken off of YouTube! Oh yeah, by the way, Smosh is the best.
This is probably the worst thing. Just delete whatever is infringing copyright! Don't ban them!
There would have to be so much banning, as AI-generated stuff uses copyrighted characters.