I Love But Hate You YouTube

Ah YouTube, a joyous place where we can watch whatever we want; albeit its toxic comment threads that I no longer participate in. Lately, I’ve noticed that the website is becoming greedier and stricter by the minute.

It all started with the changes made on the site over the past several years. First, it was adding more advertisements to play before the video itself. It seemed harmless until it was before every single video, then there were those fifteen-second ones you couldn’t skip, ads that interrupted the video midway, and then the showing of two ads before the video plays.

Ads are extremely intrusive enough as they are, like those pop-up ones in the middle of a news article or say you’re scrolling and it goes in between paragraphs forcing you to look at it just to scroll to the next piece. I must be the only person who complains on the Internet about this. I get it, this is how content creators make money, and if I want to monetize this blog one day, there will have to be ads present. But with that being said, ads became so annoying for me that I installed an ad-blocker on my browser. Unfortunately, some websites don’t like this and won’t let me read their stuff until I disable it.

Then last year I discovered that YouTube started branding certain videos for kids. For example, if I wanted to watch a clip from an old Disney film like Bambi, YouTube would no longer allow people to comment on how much nostalgia the movie brings, nor could they do things like add it to a playlist or even give it a thumbs-up to my knowledge. Sometimes, what I like to do on YouTube via the app, is search for something else to watch next while the video plays at the bottom of the screen. Now, YouTube has disabled this for my Bambi clip because, in their eyes, it’s for kids.

Bull, so now YouTube apparently now thinks I’m a three-year-old girl whenever I watch Disney sing-alongs or Looney Tunes clips and won’t let me do anything but watch it. Adults like this stuff too you know, do they fail to realize that? I’m talking not just adults with families who watch this stuff to spend time with their kids cause they like it, but I’m also talking about childless adults with demanding jobs who enjoy cartoons to unwind in their free time. Remember, you don’t need to have children of your own to relive these things.

I did some research and this effect took place when the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) sued YouTube for $170 million for violating children’s privacy. They were illegally harvesting their personal information to target them with ads. Well, I may not be a child anymore but I’m tired of being targeted with your bloody ads so can adults opt for the same protection too, please?

Anyway, this change I’m not really happy about, it was fun to read comments on Disney clips from adult viewers who would mention how many memories return to them or they would talk about things present in the movie only they could understand: for example you watch Pinocchio as an adult and you realize that that coachman is basically committing human trafficking by taking all those boys to Pleasure Island. Children won’t understand what that means but we adults do. Now, no one can comment nor can I make a playlist full of my favorite Disney clips anymore

I get it, comment threads are toxic, like I said, and should a minor post in them, they could be targeted, no matter what they say, but still it would be nice if I could minimize the video and still watch it, or save it to a playlist!

Then, recently, YouTube has been going after music bots that are installed in Discord servers that people have been using to listen to music from YouTube while in chat rooms. I only joined Discord a few months ago and made some friends there, as well as invited existing ones to my own server where I chat with friends and post links to my blog for friends to follow who aren’t doing so here on WordPress.

The first to go was Groovy, a popular music bot that YouTube sent a “cease and desist” letter to the bot’s manager, then weeks later, another bot bit the dust. As someone who was new to Discord and knew that it was popular for things like using bots to listen to music with your friends, voice/video chat, or even watch movies together, I kept asking why, why is this happening? Why has YouTube become so strict about this? Why not just let people have fun on Discord?

Well, YouTube has got a lot stricter with copyright infringement, remember when you make an account they tell you that they take it “VERY” seriously, even though many people have uploaded gameplay of things and might get a message that says it matches third-party content, but that doesn’t always mean that their video will be taken down and a strike will appear on their account.

Now some YouTubers I follow have left the site due to this, remember Bart Baker? Anyway, now YouTube doesn’t like it when you listen to music from them from other websites, especially since they just launched their music app which is like their own Spotify. Yes, here I go again with my Vulcan brain trying to find the rationale behind this. But, it’s probably due to the fact that these bots pull most music from YouTube without the latter’s permission, once YouTube took notice of this, boom, came the shutdowns.

It’s possible that they may collaborate with Discord to make an approved bot in the future, but it’ll most certainly contain more fucking ads. Well, it’s one thing to have them play between songs on a playlist, but I won’t be happy if the ads have better sound quality than the songs, can’t be skipped, play in the middle of a song, or there will be more than one.

So, that’s why I think they’re greedy but I still go there to discover new bands/artists to listen to, clips, etc. but I still hate them for being selfish bastards not letting me do what I want to my heart’s content and confiscating things we love from other sites that have been around forever.

Does anyone else feel the same way about YouTube? I heard creators weren’t happy when the kid’s thing was put into place.

👽Emily