Worst Things About YouTube

The Top Ten
1 Advertisements

Even with an ad blocker, some ads still show up. I recently had an experience where they actually prevented me from watching some videos because, according to them, ad blockers are against their policy.

When creators can't swear in the first 15 seconds of a video but advertisers can literally advertise thirst traps, scams, and political propaganda, it is just disturbing. For scale, I've literally gotten an anime ad that had a cat girl tied up and chained to a corner of a wall with a hand holding a feather. YouTube also allows 15-second unskippable ads to appear in double ads and allows some ads to not have the stop seeing this ad button. This is especially annoying when the ad in question is both constantly shoved down your throat and violating the ToS.

Advertisers are pretty much several social classes higher up in the YouTube hierarchy than moderators at this point.

2 The COPPA Update

I hate YouTube Kids because it is childish. However, you must be 13 or older to have a channel. Therefore, you will get terminated if you create a channel while too young.

Literally any movie clip from a PG-rated movie or show gets affected by this as well. The fact that YouTube Kids is anything but kid-friendly, and YouTube is actively trying to make the main site family-friendly, is both ironic and disturbing.

Guys, YouTube Kids exists. So, why do they need to censor when we have age verification?

3 Copyright Strikes

This is incredibly annoying, especially when your video is blocked or partially blocked right after it uploads! (Meant to put this for Copyright.)

Just about anyone can claim any video or strike any channel they want. One time, one of TheFatRat's videos got falsely claimed by some random individual. For some time, the claimer got all the revenue before YouTube miraculously took off the claim, but the claimer had already gotten the money. The fact that the claim was even accepted is just sad.

Recently, Nikocado Avocado has been going around copyright striking many channels for fair use content (presumably) revolving around him. One of the victims, who was a meme creator, got straight-up terminated as well. It's honestly scary that you can have your entire YouTube career destroyed in an instant by anyone with the nerve to abuse the copyright system. I don't know how YouTube is getting away with false copyright neglect, since I doubt it's legal to let people abuse copyright freely and gain from it.

4 Removal of the Dislike Count

Hey, at least nobody gets bullied by dislikes anymore, eh? (sarcasm)

There's a reason we have dislikes. They can be used to judge whether a video is worth watching or not, so removing them makes it impossible to gauge a video's quality at a glance. Even Jawed Karim, one of the original creators of YouTube, opposed this decision. This is why I hate censorship. Even if you say something hateful, at least you have the freedom of speech protecting you. But now, in 2021, apparently only speech that "benefits" (insert bad group here, like SJWs) is allowed, and it's terrifying as heck.

5 Copyright
6 Demonetization
7 Clickbait

When you see the thumbnail but something is not shown in it. Money-hungry people try to steal clips and add them to their videos.

Don't forget the clickbait video titles! That's just a waste of time. You see a certain title of a video, you click on it, and the whole video is not related to the title.

I want to punch whoever uses clickbait in the face.

8 The Comedy is Gone
9 YouTubers Becoming Bad People

Normally, I'd just say the old talent is departing and new talent is stepping in, but that's not the case here. The old talent is departing, but I'm not seeing any new talent.

So many of the big-name channels that we all loved, like Smosh, have just fallen from grace and turned into garbage. There are almost no good channels anymore.

PewDiePie doesn't deserve subs. He is racist.

10 Susan Wojcicki

Spoiler alert: she got fired, and she never came back, ever. #GoodRiddance #SusanWojcicki

The Contenders
11 Reliance on Shock Value
12 Swearing

One of the main reasons I had to install a bad word filter was so I wouldn't have to deal with foul-mouthed comments, community posts, and video titles and descriptions. Now, if only there was a way the filter could work on videos and thumbnails.

Swearing is the worst. When people swear too much, it drives me nuts.

13 Buffering
14 9-12 Year Olds Having Accounts

I'm probably getting a lot of hate, but I think anyone below the age of 12 shouldn't have a social media account, unless parental controls are included.

Not actually bad, but some of them don't respect opinions, which ruins the comment sections quickly.

Let me tell you about things you can get now and things you have to wait for. This is one of those things you have to wait for. Just use it anonymously.

15 Bad YouTubers

That's who we all have now, and we're getting more of them. Even the best ones are turning into bad YouTubers.

16 Videos that Contain No Inappropriate Content Get Age Restricted
17 YouTube Kids Cartoons

There are videos of living bugs and worms inside people's stomachs (along with a disturbing thumbnail) and blood (not just a tiny amount of blood as in when you scrape yourself, but full-on blood) in these videos. Whoever thought this was "kid-friendly" must have had a pretty messed up childhood.

This one is just horrible. Many people have made videos about this problem. And what does YouTube do? Shadow-bans them.

18 Plagiarism

This has plagiarism because top channels in different languages copy English channels by translating.

19 Stupid Challenges

Challenges, in general, are stupid and pointless. I ain't afraid to say that these are some of the worst things that spawned from us humans.

They had so many, like the Tide Pod challenge, Ice Bucket challenge, etc.

20 The Channels Aren't Good Anymore

Smosh is a good example of a good channel gone bad.

21 Videos Getting Blocked Worldwide

Imagine having a video get blocked in more countries than there are on Earth.

22 Google Buying YouTube in 2006

YouTube is dead. Letting Google buy it was a mistake.

23 Misleading Thumbnails

Thumbnails can trick you. You expect to see the thumbnail, but in the whole video, it's ahh.

I had one once that showed a car running over a watermelon, and it wasn't in the video. I was disappointed.

24 YouTube Heroes
25 Abbreviation of the Subscriber Counts
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