So here is EVERYTHING I think is wrong with YouTube.

What Youtube Was.

Back in the mid 2000s if you wanted to watch funny videos or an interesting series YouTube wasn’t my first port of call. It was Newgrounds. Newgrounds was the animation creation portal where day in day out you could watch something that would absolutely blow you away.

You may remember it fondly as that site that started the stick fighting flash film craze but honestly Newgrounds birthed some incredible amateur talent due to the community that surrounded it.

There were incredibly cool action sequences that predated the legendary Monty Oum and hilarious cartoons that would leave you genuinely laughing as opposed to just breathing through your nose slightly harder.

It was the foundation for a lot of creators to work on choreography, scaling, and how characters would interact with one another. Perspective, storytelling, and smoother animation. Animators, voice actors, editors, and artists came together to create something magical.

The boom in easily accessible animation software, tutorials, and the community itself really catered towards creating these exciting and well-executed shorts. The feedback system, ratings, comments, and awards an animation could earn would really help the creator learn what they were doing right or wrong. The community would dictate what you were doing right or wrong and that lead to a rather defined site culture. The Front page of Newgrounds guaranteed you were going to see something great.

While people weren’t exactly patient for the next instalment of their favourite animator’s work Newground’s audience was understanding of why it took so long for creators to work on their animations.

Quality takes time. With these creations, it was painstakingly obvious that they were a labour of love that required a massive investment of time to get the desired result. It might not be every day where you see something amazing but frequent enough to keep you coming back.

Well known animators such as Egoraptor or Happy Harry would set an impressive benchmark compared to most. They would not compromise on any element of their work which would cheapen their personal brand. Animators such as themselves really set the bar high and as a result, inspired many to follow their lead.

Why did Newgrounds stop being the go-to site for this kind of content for me? Well the site itself didn’t really change but the animators themselves jumped ship to Youtube for several reasons. So I went with them.

So why did content creators flock to YouTube?

YouTube’s massive audience was largely untapped for these animators. Newgrounds was a rather niche site ultimately and YouTube was rapidly gaining momentum. All because it was designed from the ground up for people to share videos and keep up to date with channels they enjoyed. You didn’t have to worry about flash updates or other issues. The way YouTube functioned with subscriptions and notifications meant animators easily keep their audience updated. YouTube just worked. YouTube had begun purging copyrighted videos and started to become a community for web series such as Chad Vader & Red vs Blue.

The identity of YouTube was moving away from a random assortment of clips to fully realised skits and self-made shows. Donald Glover, now known as an actor and rapper, actually began his career in through the sketch group Derrick Comedy back in 2006.

3. YouTubers could make money. Arguably the biggest reason for anyone to go to YouTube was that you could earn money for people watching your hard work. With animators finding their videos already ripped and uploaded to YouTube it made sense for them to maintain their own presence, at the very least to defend their brand. Soon these animators were making money for their hobby; their hobby soon became their full-time work.

4. YouTube was becoming known for the best amateur talent around. It was becoming a real competitor to any TV channel in existence. While there had been a resurgence in brilliant TV shows in the mid to late 2000s YouTube was where a lot of the younger crowd went first. Sure there were a handful of series that have been belatedly recognised as genius, but at the time I know I spent a lot more time in front of my computer than behind a TV.

So what happened?

Youtube stopped caring about these creators.

A platform like YouTube isn’t cheap to run and for that $1.65bn acquisition in 2006 eventually, the site was going to have to tow the Google line. Google couldn’t just wait to see if it would naturally grow how they hoped. It had to be proactive to make sure its own goals were met.

While YouTube was known for its chaotic assortment of uploads there were still clear winners in what the site preferred to show you. Longer and structured videos still could compete with whatever went viral that day. Talented YouTuber’s dominated the internet and there was a content renaissance of sorts that provided for whatever niche you may be into. But these weren’t exactly profitably compared to what YouTube could become.

When music videos, celebrities, and TV-channels began appearing on YouTube the company must have enjoyed that clout. So it left behind the amateur content creators and started looking towards the future. The response to this year's YouTube rewind really highlights how far things have changed. That the YouTube community itself is revolting against what Google wants. #TankTheRewind being a clear example here.

Emma Blackery did a wonderful breakdown of why she feels YouTube is so off the mark in 2017 and why the YouTube rewind was such a disaster.

It’s no secret that YouTube has been heavy-handed in changes it deems suitable. Some of them arguably are required to allow the site to function legally, but others are obviously geared towards steering creators towards making videos that are more advertiser or family friendly. But why does the YouTube of 2018 just seem so incapable of making decisions that its own community approve of?

I find it hard to believe that the YouTube of today could have developed such amazing talent or encouraged such fleshed out and well-developed series if it were to begin anew. There’s just too much wrong with it for talent to emerge without help from an outside audience.

If you look around you there’s always someone in your own generation trying to push the envelope and YouTube of yesteryear really did hold some of those innovators on its platform. I’ve no doubt that if Derrick Comedy were to release its “Spelling Bee” video today it would be demonetised immediately. There would be an uproar stating how controversial it is. Especially when you take into account that over a decade later when iDubbbz uses similar language in his videos everyone loses their minds. Really this isn’t anything new, yet it seems people forget that YouTube really used to have some really out there humour for its time.

Trends are certainly circular and one I would love to revisit are the days when YouTube was great. Almost a century after Surrealism was born we return to its likes with /r/DeepFriedMemes. Some will probably argue it’s the peak parody of badly made image macros and jokes and others will say they’re just memes but who cares? What it represents in my eyes is a community rallying behind a naturally developed standard of humour. Something that an audience has moulded while being a product of its community. YouTube of 2018, on the other hand, is so far removed from this as it is not a product of its own community’s guidance. It’s just what the company itself wants the platform to be. The problem is YouTube itself doesn’t really know what it wants to be.

So what did YouTube do to show that it didn’t really care about these original creators and its own community anymore?

Where Youtube Changed.

Now it’s hard for me to exactly date when or where these big changes occurred that damaged the community’s perception of the site and with a site as large as YouTube its own demographic is incredibly widespread. Yet I can still highlight certain moments where problems began to occur. Someone better versed than I could probably give you an exact reference or improve on these but I’ll talk about where I saw issues creeping in.

The Homepage Changes.

Each year YouTube has moved design choices away from showing you who you were following and to what they wanted you to see. By using waybackmachine.com you can see these changes for yourself but I’ll highlight the key turning points in this handy little Streamable I made below.

YouTube from 2005 to 2017. As you can see in later years existing TV networks and celebrities dominate the homepage. Machine learning recommendations or simply YouTube favourtism? Hard to tell. But there’s definitely less YouTubers shown that’s for sure.

As you can see there are several things going on here:

There is a clear decision to highlight bigger brands and names on the homepage itself. Before smaller YouTubers through the sheer merit of a well-performing video will easily land a spot on the homepage. In later years though TV shows and music artists take those spots. Trending and recommendations for you are less about the videos you previously watched but more towards what YouTube would like you to watch. Less “edgier” content is pushed towards you in favour of more advertiser-friendly content. Using DNN (Deep Neural Networks) to keep you on YouTube as long as possible. Though harder to tell without being logged in (which I can’t do as these are archived shots) there is obviously less focus on subscribed videos through UI design and more on getting you to discover new videos. The latest homepage has them tucked away out of sight.

There are also less obvious but arguably more important changes such as the big SEO update in 2010–2011 that gave more weight to video content. This brought with it an even larger outside audience to YouTube and changed the way certain dynamics on the site worked. It brought a lot more content created outside of the scope those within the YouTube creator community were used to. You can blame SEO best practice for a lot of this but YouTube was getting an incredible amount of videos uploaded to it now that drowned out what you may consider being a high standard.

It became much harder to browse YouTube to find something you would find relevant and enjoyable. YouTube’s old motto of “Broadcast Yourself” was gone. Anyone and everyone wanted to use the site and by sheer numbers alone not everything uploaded was going to be a masterpiece. I’m not saying “Videos used to be better!”. I’m saying there was so much more being uploaded it was impossible to sift through the dirt to find the gold and the UX didn’t help. Which is probably why YouTube wanted to use machine learning in the first place to show you what it thought you wanted to see. But at some point, it clearly changed from what it thought you wanted to see to what it wanted you to see for its own benefit.

Community guideline changes & flagging/DMCA strikes.

Somewhere around 2009 YouTube said enough is enough with trolls and spammers and really tried to tackle these with the comment system changes. Comments were thrown further down and lead less weight to search results. It really wanted to deal with the pointless flame wars and idiotic fighting that occurred on practically every video that got any amount of attention. But I honestly don’t think that’s something YouTube can ever effectively fight. /r/youtubecomments highlights this rather well. So instead it issued community guidelines, rules, and other pointless decrees that had no hard effect whatsoever.

YouTubers were constantly complaining of falsely flagged videos that they owned yet YouTube either ignored these pleas for help or just couldn’t keep up. This is an issue now and as you can see was an issue back in 2009.

YouTube also wanted to tackle copyrighted content and tried to steer people into adhering the law as music and film companies were rather tired of seeing stolen content on YouTube. Record labels have always been fond of stating that YouTube and similar sites were to blame for loss of sales for albums and singles.

Piracy is something that has always plagued video hosting sites since their inception. The flagging system to highlight stolen content was poorly implemented and badly monitored. While it was a legal requirement for YouTube to operate it instantly became a weapon for trolls on the site to wield. YouTuber’s were having to constantly battle with people falsely flagging their videos as copyrighted or stolen content. With YouTube taking a long time to deal with these issues or never dealing with them at all it became incredibly frustrating for smaller channels to deal with. With YouTube showing clear favouritism to larger and more popular channels it created a lot of ill-will towards the company itself. The later introduced DMCA take-down system had exactly the same issues as the old one to the point where it became common knowledge you could damage a channels well being by spamming them with take-down requests. Even businesses began using the DMCA system to attack those they didn’t agree with.

Despite what Pewdiepie said the DMCA system was seen as a way to lash out at him as at this point everyone knew how broken the reporting system was.

I’d be hard pressed to say that YouTube has ever been successful in building a community around the site itself. Skilled creators have always been able to band people around themselves but the site itself has never been able to provide these creators with the tools to manage their fans. The comment system itself has always been woefully inadequate for any serious discussion around a video or channel but YouTube has never really examined how they could improve or change it. They simply gave videos the option to disable comments, likes, or other ways to interact with videos. By doing so they tried to wash their hands of those problems altogether. The only thing that removing comments or dislikes has done is allow people to push videos filled with misinformation in front of an audience who may not suspect something is amiss. Even ISPs in the U.S take advantage of this to push their agendas as did the FCC when Ajit Pai posted his “take” on net neutrality. Nothing about these changes lead well to discussion and with no weight or metric behind who is commenting, I’m sure a lot of pertinent points are lost. There’s reasons why there are so many extensions to change or hide YouTube comments altogether.

Freebooting and Content theft.

So YouTube has always had issues with growing communities and providing channels with the tools to manage them. Unless YouTuber’s were smart and used off-site tools to manage their community such as their own websites, Twitter, etc it was incredibly difficult for smaller channels to keep things organised.

However in 2011–2012 an even bigger issue occurred for YouTube in general and that was channels were having their videos blatantly stolen and re-hosted on other social media sites. Facebook easily being the biggest cause of this problem. Yet as Facebook were a competitor of Google they really never tried to curb this issue. Groups such as the LadBible & Buzzfeed shamelessly ripped off videos and re-uploaded them to their own pages as opposed to linking to YouTube because of how Facebook’s own viral algorithm worked. Facebook videos would trend much easier than YouTube ones and these groups knew how to take advantage of that. Facebook would even purposely make Facebook videos appear more attractive on their platform and made YouTube URLs ugly. Hard working creators would never see any money or real benefit from these stolen videos as people rarely go steps beyond to find the source.

Facebook brags about how many views and hours people spend on their site yet the majority of the video content is simply stolen or re-purposed from elsewhere.

Videos that would have generated thousands of dollars for YouTubers if viewed on their own channels or gain them new subscribers ended up purely benefiting these Facebook pages and groups. In 2014 YouTube claim they paid out over $1bn to creators whereas Facebook has never had to pay anyone to create content. They knew they could rely on people to steal it for them and they wouldn’t have to do a thing.

YouTubers weren’t the only one who suffered this problem however as these Freebooters saw any and all interesting content as fair game. As Facebook never really took any steps to address these issues until 2017 where they have added a system in which you can claim those earnings as your own the damage has almost certainly already been done. I personally do not know if many people have had much success out of trying to claim their earnings but by letting this issue continue for over half a decade it allowed this behaviour to become acceptable to the wider online community.

People who simply consume this content were blissfully unaware of the theft and upset these sites caused. Whereas a site like Reddit, StumbleUpon, or Digg would link directly to this content Buzzfeed, Ladbible, Zoo, or these Facebook groups would simply lift it and use it for themselves. They would hide behind the fact they would sometimes link to the source and that it was promoting their content to another audience but it’s obvious that the sole benefit went to these groups and not the original creators.

Subscription and Notification issues.

I think one of the biggest contributions to the success of YouTube and the channels themselves was an incredibly simple feature. The ability to notify someone when a new video was released. YouTube itself was built on the premise of being able to easily share videos online. Don’t underestimate how useful a feature this was as back when the site was launched there was no real way to keep up to date with your favourite videos bar having to set up an RSS feed, browsing forums, or signing up to a mailing list. Fast-forward to a few years ago if you had the YouTube app you’d even get a handy push notification on your phone.

However recently YouTube decided to add a few layers of annoyance to that simple system. As opposed to a bright red notification in the top right of the Homepage your subscribed videos are now hidden away on a very small scrolling sidebar. Your homepage is now a random selection of recommended videos because you watched some video you were linked to or saw that one time last July. The homepage does not highlight what you’ve missed from your subscribers but again what YouTube thinks you want to see or what they would rather you see. Push notifications no longer go through unless you have opted for them to be turned on because YouTube took the utter piss with them so many people had disabled or uninstalled the app. They somehow didn’t understand that people wanted only be notified when their subscribed channels uploaded and not whatever other bullshit was happening on or with YouTube.

Someone commenting on my channel that they missed 8 months worth of notifications. I wish I could say this is the first comment I’ve gotten remarking on this.

Over the years there have also been issues where the notification system has failed completely to which YouTube has played ignorant. I myself over the years have noticed this myself when uploading to my channel and can only attest to how damaging it can be to smaller channels.

Algorithm Changes & Clickbait

Now I’ve hammered on about how YouTube has changed against showing you what you wanted to see and what you subscribed to enough. You get the point. A natural extension of this, however, is how YouTube decides on what is trending and what gets to the top of the homepage. To what makes it in front of its staggering 30 million visitors per day.

With such a wider core audience growing over the years as result there was a massive shift in the content itself. I think that these changes have to lead to a downward spiral with less quality content surfacing. It’s because of these changes that clickbait took over.

Because it’s well known you can make serious money on YouTube people began to take advantage of the trending algorithms to make their way to the top. Outrageous thumbnails, titles, and antics began to dominate YouTube culture. Thousands of channels soon began the same trend of shocking images in their previews and some even began to manufacture drama to increase awareness of their channel. It became less about well made and structured videos and more about those that provided shock-value or just straight up sexualised moments. Pranks and “social experiments” soared and YouTube content began to look a lot like WorldStarHipHop’s early days.

Kathryn Lowe describes rather well the clickbait issue and why people do it. Sensitive subjects and topics are being fabricated or exploited all in the pursuit of cash and clicks.

That’s not to say there wasn’t plenty of great videos being made anymore. Channels like Rocket Jump & Corridor Digital would showcase you the very best of amateur editing. Creating special effects that would rival any major film studio.

There was still very much an amazing amount of creators kicking around and while much of it lay outside my interests they’re no less entertaining and engaging for those who tuned in for them.

Clickbait began to dominate the trending and recommended sections and started to drown those real creators out. Fail/win/prank compilations taken from other channels rocketed to the top. Reaction channels, cute animal montages, or just funny clips stolen from cartoons. All making money for people simply editing these clips of stolen footage together.

I think one of the biggest reasons for this is the accessibility of YouTube and the internet in the early 2010s became so widespread.

Younger viewers could easily use their phone or personal devices to browse videos. While everyone can be susceptible to clickbait, myself included, I would make the assumption here that younger viewers are more susceptible than adults. That less internet savvy users are more likely to click on whatever is dangled in front of them. Using sheer clicks alone as by way to quantify a video’s success is by no way to measure quality. YouTube has obviously for a long time not considered many markers in its users to decide on what impact particular members of their audience should have on a video’s ranking.

Pewdiepie complains about these issues but he’s definitely part of the problem. However it’s not just him. Everyone who wants to get to the top of the ranking system has to do it.

Twitch itself is coming under-fire for seeming like a soft-core porn site. This mock-up has been used as a joke by many to poke fun of how Twitch turns a blind eye to certain users.

The recommended sections often look like something a 13-year-old version of myself would be very interested in. Attractive women that are easy to access through parental controls, suggestive situations or implied nudity, and extreme situations.

It’s a problem that Twitch at the moment seems to suffer within its own platform. All clicks aren’t equal. With Twitch some users take offence to the overtly sexual streams where others see it more towards what the community itself wants. The issue coming in where the platform itself shows outrageous favouritism towards certain streamers over others. That Twitch itself doesn’t want to clearly set boundaries for whatever reason.

This is definitely something that YouTube itself has been found guilty of doing. With Twitch I’m a lot more forgiving because YouTube should definitely have a lot more data to work with to segment its audience. I mean with all you have on me Google I would have thought you’d at least cater to what I’m into right? It just seems lazy at this point. It does to a degree with YouTube kids but I’ll touch on that later. Because holy shit does it get YouTube kids disturbingly wrong.

One trend I had actually forgotten about is “Reply Girls” craze in 2011 where women would make a video response to any and all popular videos while wearing titillating clothing. Hundreds of girls used thumbnails featuring their cleavage to talk for several minutes incredibly vaguely about another video in a bid to hook younger viewers (Presumably young men) into watching to make money through adsense. These videos were similar to reaction channels in that they just piggybacked off more popular or interesting content to drive clicks.

Sites like Reddit or other link aggregation communities work purely because of this filtering of all the weaker and clickbaity content online. While you can argue about what standards they may have there is at least a standard where the community is working from.

YouTube HQ does not seem to have discernible standards beyond whether or not it is advertiser-friendly. When horny teenagers command the ranking algorithm and people are creating articles on how to improve your experience for what should be part of the core site functionality you know something has gone terribly wrong. There is no doubt a lot of clout and weight behind YouTube being able to dictate what the most popular video seen in a day, week, or for the year is. That there is real power. But it is definitely at the cost of the user experience for everybody else on the site who is looking for something better for themselves. At the cost of their own content creators who worked so hard to get YouTube where they are today.

But is that just a sign of the times that people are wanting more easy to digest content? That longer videos are out of vogue and even though YouTube brought in the “10 minute video” standard that its audiences can no longer keep their attention on a single video for so long?

Why does YouTube now have so many short videos dominating the site?

Viners & The New Pace.

At the end of 2016 Twitter’s Vine platform announced it was going to shutdown. Twitter had always struggled to make their platform profitable and despite the 200 million people who used the service every month it still had to close it down. Preparing for the worst these Viners with massive followings had already begun jumping ship to YouTube prior to 2017. With it they brought their own particular style of editing. As well as their own blistering daily upload pace.

Viners had a very rough and ready upload approach that many YouTuber’s would be very hard pressed to keep up with. SungWon Cho aka ProZD is probably my favourite example of someone using the format well despite little to work with. But with a massive existing following when they jumped onto YouTube that gave them an instant boost to jump straight to the top of their relevant niche.

When you look at some of your larger YouTubers it’s obvious to why they need people to help with filming, editing, and other aspects of their channel. CGP Grey’s videos, for example, can take weeks to prepare as he tries to be as informative and correct as possible while making the subject matter accessible. His following and others expect a certain level of quality and detail. The little things a lot of people take for granted such as subtitles, editing tricks, or special effects take time. Bill Wurtz’s history of the world (and history of Japan video before that) is an amazing video that took a good part of a year to create. If it wasn’t for his following on Tumblr, Reddit, and elsewhere it’s something that could easily have been missed as Bill does not go in for the clickbait game.

Viners, on the other hand, have a following that doesn’t care about this finesse as they are more interested in the Viners themselves or their antics. Most of the more successful Viners had used the limited time format itself, or their cameras in inventive ways to build their audience. Many of them are simply Vloggers (not to discredit Vlogging but it’s a much easier format to create than a structured series). So uploading daily to jump into trending is not an issue and in fact gives them one hell of an edge. So do I think the Vine immigration killed YouTube?

No, not at all, but YouTube should have been aware of this massive audience joining their platform and taken steps to allow their own creators to still flourish. There are a lot of YouTuber’s like H3H3 who don’t welcome these newcomers to the site because of this. Even if this new audience should, in theory, be better for everyone it seems that some people feel it’s dividing the community.

Logan Paul’s antics aren’t surprising given the state YouTube was in before he joined. He has simply looked for the biggest clickbait possible for his audience to earn him cash.

But this explains the state that YouTube is in. It’s why people are looking for the most outrageous stunts to film. Logan Paul’s recent controversy is really not surprising when YouTube for years has been encouraging its community to upload the most shocking and unbelievable videos it can.

To lure people in with clickbait, extreme situations, or ridiculous stories. It literally pays them thousands of dollars to do so. Combine that with the wealth they make from selling merchandise, product placement, and other revenue models it’s almost like YouTube is demanding people do this to keep up. Who gives a damn about morality or decency when you can outrage the internet into making you rich?

It’s not surprising that people who would use an actual corpse as a prop would make it to the top when YouTube has fostered this culture of people competing with the most outlandish stunts to draw views that they are heavily rewarded for.

Sociopaths and psychopaths alike dominate most of the most popular accounts.

A YouTuber who was found guilty of Child Abuse. Thankfully several of the children have been removed from his custody.

Their content is far from harmless. Violence and suffering are what they dish out to get those clicks. All because we, the audience, like to see it. People are drawn to clickbait. To the extreme. To things, they cannot comprehend. That shock. That scare. That enrage or make you despair.

It’s why cringe compilations, fails, and pranks are so popular. Yet they’re just the tamer side of things. The deeper you go into YouTube the darker it gets. It might not have as much gore or death as Liveleak…but it certainly has just as much abuse.

The Adpocalypse & Censorship.

Now, some may say YouTube is already taking steps to curtail this shocking behaviour with what was dubbed as the Adpocalypse in 2017. If you use YouTube you may have already heard that the platform decided to heavy-handedly use a bot to demonetise videos that feature any content that isn’t advertiser-friendly. This system is certainly an attack on creators themselves whether they mean it to be or not as this system is reportedly incredibly bad at choosing what will be demonetised. With loose guidelines on what is or what is not acceptable YouTube has been using this system force people to create videos that will appeal to advertisers.

As a marketer myself, I feel it’s certainly down to the brands themselves to monitor where they are advertising. It should not be on these content creators to censor themselves to make advertisers happy just because they have touched upon subjects deemed controversial from a brand’s perspective.

But if I’ve already said YouTube is lacking in quality control why isn’t this the best way to tackle it? Hit the creators where it hurts and make them up their up their game to earn their revenue?

I feel it’s because YouTube fundamentally does not know the difference in content that provides value and content that is exploitative. That because there is a lack of a real alternative to YouTube for creators YouTube has simply been able to get away with their ignorance in what is best for their own platform.

#ElsaGate.

Now here we’re going to get into something rather fucked up. /r/Elsagate is where you can delve into it deeper but I’ll highlight the core issues. Content aimed purely at children that exposes them to sexual ideas and fetishes at a young age. Videos designed to earn money from young children that feature every fetish under the sun. I’m not saying that some kinks are better/worse than others but simply that children should simply not be exposed to such things at a young age. Seriously this is a “Think of the children!” moment and not that I’m trying to kinkshame anyone.

Rape, Scat, Kidnapping, Foot Fetishes and so much more. These videos slip through YouTube kids and some in /r/EslaGate believe child grooming groups are profiting from them.

I’ve been following along #ElsaGate for a while now. So I’ll give you my thoughts on it. It started as bizarre children’s skits using popular characters to make money. All from the massive child audience on YouTube. Since then it has developed into something much more perverse.

The combination of the shocking clickbait nature of YouTube and YouTube’s refusal to take a hands on approach to moderation and quality control has lead to these videos and animations slyly flying under the radar. These videos have hundreds of millions of views, as they slip by the child safety features they have most certainly done untold harm to children across the world. But what do I know? I found Alien terrifying as a child yet loved the Robocop scene where Murphy got shot to pieces.

Ethan & Moe Bradberry who started off making prank videos to take advantage of the clickbait nature of YouTube were some of the earliest ElsaGate perpetrators. In an interview with H3H3, they stated that the money earned from these videos would “Mess with your brain” if you knew just how lucrative they are. I’m genuinely surprised there are no major news outlets reporting on their antics because their videos go beyond “questionable”.

While not all these videos have sinister intent and some are purely there to earn advertising revenue, there’s also a lot of content out there that feature themes that are not suitable for minors. These videos go beyond shock humour and actively depict and encourage sexual acts between adults and minors, with other sexual acts that young children should not be exposed to. Videos that seem designed to groom and lure children towards paedophiles. Unsurprisingly in the comment section of these videos there are individuals lurking around, talking to the children who watch and comment on them.

I’m genuinely expecting in the next few years parents to step forward and talk about counselling or therapy their children had to go through as a result of these videos.

Some are going to say it’s bad parenting to just leave your children with a device connected to the internet, but I imagine it’s seen as similar to how children when I was growing up were left in front of the TV. Parenting aside though what stance has YouTube taken against these videos? Surprisingly little. Even though #ElsaGate went public months ago YouTube hasn’t made a clear statement on what it intends to do. However, with an additional 10k staff hired to review channels, this may be something that is about to be addressed.

Smaller Channels no longer able to monetise.

As of the 20th of February 2018 smaller channels will no longer be able to monetise their channels unless they reach certain criteria. While this could be a move to combat spam channels I feel the only people this hurts is the smaller creator crowd and those creating their first videos.

A notification lets me know that my channel is no longer eligible for monetisation at the top of my dashboard. Even though I exceed these requirements by 146,000 minutes of view time in the last year.

The new criteria require 1000 subscribers and 4000 watch minutes over the past 365 days.

While I exceed these requirements it warns me that I will no longer be eligible which makes me wary of how well this new change will be rolled out.

I do not monetise my channel as I’m still trying to grow it but one of the key features that will be locked away, will be the ability to link to external sites and use end cards to encourage people to subscribe or watch more of my videos. Something that I personally find very important to maintaining my audience. I imagine that newcomers will find it rather damaging to their own growth as this is one of the few ways to direct people from your videos to where you want them to go. With the description hidden away and less visible than before as YouTube want to keep the attention firmly on their own site.

This further decreases the usefulness of having a YouTube channel altogether.

So who’s steering YouTube?

As of 2014 the CEO of YouTube has been Susan Wojcicki. Touted as the woman to watch in marketing, Susan has a net worth of $300 million according to Forbes. She certainly has some impressive achievements behind her as Google’s first marketing manager back in 1999. Starting as their 16th employee, handling the $3.1 billion purchase of DoubleClick in 2007, and advocating the 2006 acquisition of YouTube in the first place.

There’s no doubt that Susan knows the digital landscape impressively well when it comes to monetising content. As a marketer, I’m utterly impressed by a lot of her foresight when it comes to strategic product development and partnerships. She was a key figure in the development of Adsense. While it may seem to a lot of marketers Susan made some obvious decisions for growth, it’s only with hindsight that a lot of these comments can be made.

But is Susan right for YouTube?

Susan Wojcicki’s first video has been met with a hefty amount of dislikes and vitriol in the comment section. People arguing that it uses celebrities and YouTube stars to try and integrate her into the community.

Her first video met a lot of backlash from the community and it’s not surprising with all these issues plaguing the platform. As someone who lead the development of Google Images & Google Books, she has definitely pioneered some impressive cornerstones of Google.

Yet did this video really take 3 years since her installation as CEO to make?

Does she fundamentally understand the platform from a community management perspective? Not just as someone that appreciates the reach and power that it has? Arguably not, as she states that she uses her videos as a way to interact with the community. Despite the fact YouTube does not lend itself well to this kind of discussion at all. Ironically, one of the featured characters asks “Am I getting paid for this?” which is something a lot of YouTubers are asking. The outdated references, memes, and over the top friendliness make it hard for me not to feel patronised.

I would say that it’s understandable that she would create videos to know what it is like to use the site as a content creator. This would give her greater insight into what it is exactly that people need to manage their channels and what tools they need to succeed. I think this could have worked better if she had edited the video herself or attempted to talk about a subject she was passionate about. Instead of this PR fluff that comes across as condescending, she could have opened herself up to genuine criticism that would let her know what YouTube’s own creators go through every time they upload a video.

To say the video went down badly is a fair understatement. With petitions with over 19,000 people wanting her removed it seems to have rubbed people the wrong way. Especially when she has been at the helm for almost 4 years and there has been a clear lack of transparency between the platform and its users since then.

Maybe people are understandably worried that someone with such a strong background in marketing, would focus on making things better for advertisers themselves. In 2016 YouTube brought in an “Ad-friendly policy” which many YouTubers find incredibly unfair. Especially as there appears to be one policy for YouTubers and another for larger networks or television personalities. By defending these corporate interests over their own creators it does appear to show large amounts of favouritism. With YouTube getting more restricted in the type of content creators can make it does smack of preparing the platform for advertiser suitable content only.

So what kind of platform does YouTube want to be?

Where YouTube goes from here.

YouTube has apparently stated that they want to compete with Netflix & Amazon Prime in the bid for keeping your attention. With YouTube Red now four years old they’re obviously not doing as well as they’d like when Netflix reports its biggest rival is sleep. Over 53% of US households use a streaming service. With 75% using Netflix and only 53% using YouTube.

Yet how the hell did Netflix absolutely hammer YouTube into the ground like that? When they had all the free content they could ask for and an audience of 1,300,000,000 visitors? While they may be fundamentally different services ultimately they are still battling for our attention. I feel that my earliest point in this lengthy rant covers it simply. Quality.

With Netflix, we know what we’re getting. Films & TV shows that come highly rated and Netflix showcases them well. Netflix has always strived to figure the best way to keep someone watching and it turns out it’s simply just give people what they like. Whereas YouTube wants to decide what you should watch.

It’s hard to just binge watch something on YouTube when you’re aware that you’re going to have to search around. Netflix doesn’t have this issue, as you’re probably looking for something recommended by friends or promoted by a studio. Searching around for something interesting on YouTube can genuinely feel like hard work. It’s chore. Finding something on Netflix is utterly effortless and that’s where YouTube is failing.

Netflix Originals are absolutely killing it with their own creations. Many stating that Bojack Horseman should be up for an Emmy nomination. Which I think it should be. It’s fucking incredible.

If YouTube had been more stringent over the years with what it decided to promote or how it segmented its audience and what you saw on the homepage maybe things could have been different. Maybe, YouTube could have built a steady audience that trusted it to have the best in whatever niche you’re into it.

If it had categories, ratings, and filtering that made sense, it could have probably let us believe that the system is actually fucking useful.

Netflix and Amazon Prime have been creating their own original series with great success. Netflix with House Of Cards, Bojack Horseman, Orange Is The New Black, Stranger Things, G.L.O.W, and Masters of None to name a few. There’s no reason that with greater forethought YouTube Red could have had something to rival these.

With data storage getting cheaper, connections getting faster, and start-ups disrupting every industry imaginable, YouTube better hope that a newcomer doesn’t come swipe these creators away. Because it really wouldn’t take much at this point to do that. Creating an online video solution similar to YouTube can’t be easy. But if they adhere by the points I’ve made here I’ve no doubt that they’d be a massive success. More realistically with Facebook, Amazon, and other large platforms who already have the infrastructure in place, it’s not unimaginable to think that they too could be looking at a solution to draw original creators away from YouTube.

Hell, even PornHub seems to have better content control and discovery for creators than YouTube does.

So treat your creators kindly YouTube because even though you seem to have forgotten what made you what you are today they won’t forget how you treated them when a better option becomes available to them.

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If you want to tweet at me about this you can do so @SobeyHarker and if you want to check out my completely unrelated YouTube channel which showcases how bad I am at video games it’s here. I definitely encourage you to either clap for this article or Tweet it at YouTube themselves.