First of all all, let me start by saying that I’m referring to YouTube as a company and not the community. The community has problems, of course, but that is a topic for another day.

Ok, so what are my problems with YouTube? Well, the problems with YouTube the company are many. Their communication is horrible, they apply policies inconstantly, they arbitrary change the interface despite major rejection of the changes, they let bugs persist for weeks at a time… and so on. I’m going to go over a few recent examples that have be foaming at the mouth right now.

1. If they reject someone from partnership program they provide no feedback. The best you will get from them is one of a few generic messages and they ignore any requests for further details.

2. YouTube will disable revenue sharing arbitrary and provide little to no information about why. In the past week I’ve had 4 videos get revenue sharing disabled. 3 of them I successfully re-enabled with almost the same copyright claim…. one of them YouTube initially rejected the claim and completely disabled the apply button for the video.

3. The “Content ID” system is very prone to false positives and abuse. My video called “Minecraft – How do you remove an Enchantment?” immediately tagged as being owned by “Maker Studios” (screenshot) and THEIR advertisements started playing on my video. That is why this video is currently marked as unlisted, as I don’t have any desire to provide them any free ad revenue on MY @#%@ VIDEO. Gah, this makes me so mad. It wouldn’t even be such a big deal normally. I’ve had videos flagged before… about 8 times actually. Each time I filed the dispute and things were fixed in a day or two. In this case I’ve been waiting for 3 weeks! Dammit YouTube, if you are going to be running an automated system that can disable videos, revenue share and make life a PITA, please at least respond to disputes in a timely manner.

4. YouTube does little to nothing to prevent bot-flagging or ratings of videos. I’ve seen it happen many times on controversial videos. Some arsehole will get it in their mind that the world would be a better place if people who they disagreed with were silenced and get a bunch of his buddies and/or script-kiddies together and without fail some underpaid YouTube employee will “review” the flagging of the video and it will get taken down. I saw this happen to a very well made video discussing the pros and cons of circumcision. No “bad” images. All language used was medical.

5. YouTube provides little to no support when it comes to a DMCA takedown notice. DMCA takedowns are frequently abused as a means to silence people. The only way to reverse a DMCA take-down is to completely reveal who you are and lose all of the protections of anonymity. This isn’t totally YouTube’s fault, of course… but it would be nice if YouTube would provide resources, and support in cases like this.

6. It’s become apparent to me over time that YouTube does not like game videos and the youtubers that create them. It’s not just one thing, but it’s a lot of little things. I suspect they would only be happy if everyone was part of one of the gamer networks.

7. YouTube has been making unneeded changes to the interface and design that result in fewer features and less community interaction. I think the most recent example here is how the channel looks, but more specifically how difficult it is now to leave a comment on someone’s channel. When my channel was smaller I used to get 2 or 3 comments on my channel a week. Since I switched my channel to the new format I’ve gotten all of 3 comments. How does this benefit anyone, YouTube?

Anyway… I’ve whined and bitched enough. What will this accomplish? Probably nothing, but at least I feel better now. Time to get back to making more videos.