YouTube is a paradox for me. I love parts of it and despise others, and the love side is genuinely strong, so I want to be fair before I complain. YouTube hosts videos for free, which is a massive gift to creators, educators, businesses, and hobbyists, and the infrastructure works on every device from phones to smart TVs with almost zero downtime. The content library is staggering: cooking channels, travel vlogs, educational deep dives, movie trailers, obscure hobbies, an endless buffet where something good always shows up. That is exactly why the broken parts grate so much, because a platform this good should not treat the people who build it this badly.
Think of YouTube like a brilliant city with a broken justice system. The city is dazzling, full of things you cannot get anywhere else, which is why everyone moves there. But the rules are enforced by an automated court that assumes you are guilty, hands your property to whoever accuses you, and offers no real appeal. You stay for the city and live in fear of the court, and that tension is the whole experience.
Why is YouTube’s copyright system the biggest problem?
Because it is automated, one-sided, and nearly impossible to fight. Content ID was built to stop infringement, a reasonable goal, but in practice it leans hard toward whoever files the claim. Innocent creators get taken down over false claims, lose income, and face a system that treats them as guilty until proven innocent, and channels get nuked without warning over bogus strikes. The burden of proof lands on the creator, backwards from how justice is supposed to work.
The scale makes it worse. YouTube has roughly 2.5 to 2.7 billion monthly logged-in users worldwide, so a small policy glitch affects millions, and these shortcomings are a global problem, not the grumbling of a few unhappy people. Creators who try to fight back hit a wall of automated responses and vanishing human support, and when your livelihood depends on a platform that answers complaints with a bot, the frustration builds fast. These are the people who keep the platform alive, and YouTube treats them as an afterthought, the same pattern that plagues Yelp’s review system.
What is wrong with the YouTube algorithm?
It decides what you watch, and it feels like a sci-fi plot where an impersonal AI runs your digital life. YouTube’s algorithm pushes sensational and extreme content, traps viewers in bubbles of similar material, and makes it harder to discover something new and worthwhile. For creators the problem is the blindness: a single algorithm tweak can tank a channel’s views overnight and wipe out ad revenue with no explanation, and the lack of transparency makes it worse, because creators cannot strategize against a system they cannot see. It is fighting blind.
The algorithm does help some channels get discovered, which is the trade-off that keeps people on the platform, but it also serves up mountains of AI-generated junk alongside legitimate content, so whether the exposure is worth the chaos is an open question. The system is tuned to hold attention, and holding attention and serving quality are not the same goal, which is why so much of what it surfaces is engineered to keep you watching, not to be worth watching.
How bad is the AI slop invasion?
Bad enough that it is the single biggest reason YouTube feels worse to use than it did two years ago. Search for almost anything now and you wade through robotic voiceovers laid over stock footage, fake “Top 10” lists cranked out by bots, and entire channels that exist solely to farm views with zero human creativity. Merriam-Webster named “slop” its 2025 Word of the Year for a reason: the stuff is everywhere.
The numbers are stark. A 2025 study by video platform Kapwing examined 15,000 of YouTube’s most popular channels and found 278 that produce nothing but AI-generated content, and those channels have racked up 63 billion views and an estimated $117 million in annual revenue. When researchers created a fresh account to test what new users see, roughly one in five recommended videos was AI-generated, and a third of those qualified as brainrot, content that teaches nothing, entertains less, but somehow keeps you watching. Real creators who spend weeks researching, filming, and editing cannot compete with channels pumping out hundreds of videos a day for pennies, and history channels, true crime creators, and educational producers have watched AI knockoffs bury their work in search results. One viral true crime series turned out to be entirely AI-generated, and even YouTube CEO Neal Mohan’s likeness got used in an AI deepfake phishing scam on the platform.
YouTube started fighting back in mid-2025 with updated monetization rules requiring content to be “significantly original and authentic,” and in January 2026 Mohan declared reducing AI slop and detecting deepfakes top priorities for the year, with the platform now penalizing low-effort AI videos with reduced reach and requiring disclosure labels on synthetic content. Whether any of this stems the tide is an open question, and this is the same rising tide of machine-made filler drowning genuine work across the whole internet.
Is YouTube’s moderation censorship?
Under the banner of “Community Guidelines,” YouTube controls what content survives, and some call it moderation while others call it censorship. The rules are vague, the enforcement is inconsistent, and the decision-making is opaque, so a joke that slides on one channel gets another creator penalized, and that kind of favoritism breeds distrust and resentment. Demonetization hangs over creators like a guillotine: say the wrong word or discuss the wrong topic and a video loses its revenue potential, which stifles creativity and pushes creators toward self-censorship.
The advertiser-friendliness underneath it works as its own quiet censorship, since a video that upsets advertisers loses income regardless of quality, so creators steer toward whatever keeps the ad money flowing. Despite all of it, many keep adapting and innovating, and their resilience says a lot about the pull of the platform, but it is resilience in spite of the system, not because of it.
Why is YouTube’s advertising so bad now?
Because advertising sits at the core of most “YouTube sucks” complaints, and as the platform has grown, ads have gone from minor nuisance to unwatchable nightmare. Early YouTube had skippable pre-roll ads and rare mid-roll interruptions; now viewers sit through multiple unskippable ads running 15, 30, or even 60 seconds each, crammed in before, during, and after videos, with some videos hitting you with two back-to-back unskippable ads before a single frame of content and mid-roll ads cutting in at the worst possible moments. The experience has gone from “I can live with this” to “I want to throw my remote at the screen.”
YouTube has also cracked down hard on ad blockers, beginning in late 2023 with detection, warning popups, playback delays, and restricted access, the message being watch the ads or pay up. Workarounds still exist: on Windows, uBlock Origin remains effective at stripping ads in most browsers, and for Fire TV users, SmartTube is a free, open-source app offering a completely ad-free interface with SponsorBlock integration and background playback built in, neither of which costs a dime. The paid escape is Premium at $13.99 a month or $139.99 a year, which many find steep because ad-free viewing comes bundled with YouTube Music and features many people do not want. YouTube did launch Premium Lite in 2025 at $7.99 a month, stripping ads from most long-form videos but dropping music streaming, offline downloads, and background play, and still leaving ads on Shorts and music. On top of it all, the revenue split feels disproportionately small for the creators who make the content worth watching, and arbitrary demonetization cuts off income for vague reasons with no clear explanation.
What are the alternatives, and what does this mean for writers?
Competition is a click away, but none of it matches YouTube’s reach, which is the trap. Vimeo is known for high-quality content and creator-friendly monetization, Dailymotion offers a less restrictive environment, Twitch delivers direct viewer interaction and a more intimate experience, and TikTok has become the default for short-form video and pulled younger audiences away. Each attracts different creators and viewers, yet most people still treat YouTube as the default, so creators stay despite the frustrations even as the growing discontent and shifting landscape could eventually change that.
For writers, YouTube is a genuine double-edged sword. It is a powerful promotional tool for book trailers, author interviews, behind-the-scenes content, and snippets of upcoming work, with reach that can put your writing in front of millions, though the platform is noisy and competitive and standing out takes real effort. It is an excellent learning platform for writing craft and publishing advice, if you can sift through mountains of videos for the reliable stuff. It offers a new medium in video essays and vlogs, though production demands different skills and serious time. It enables community building through comments and discussion, which takes time to manage and exposes you to trolls. And it offers monetization through ad revenue, sponsorships, and Premium sharing, though the income is unpredictable and the demonetization threat never goes away. The deeper lesson is the one I keep returning to: YouTube is one more rented platform, and depending entirely on it leaves your livelihood at the mercy of an algorithm and an automated court. Use it for reach, but own your real home, the same argument behind why the owned website still matters. YouTube joins TikTok and Twitter/X in that lesson. For the wider view, the social media hub covers it, and if you want a body of owned writing no platform can strike down, that is the work I do. Love the city. Do not trust the court with everything you own.
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I gave up on YouTube a long long time ago. If there are any videos that I want to post online, I do so on another video sharing platform such as Bitchute, Rumble, et al. If I ever need to view content on YouTube, I use tools such as yt-dlp(https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp), yt-local(https://git.sr.ht/~heckyel/yt-local), and YewTube(https://github.com/mps-youtube/yewtube). YouTube can go f**k itself.
Yes, youtube is not so good anymore. I was an addict for something like 15 years, but the toxicity and too many ads ruined it. I only post because it’s the biggest platform but I expect nothing back and I never go there for anything else.
I am sick and tired of YouTube trying to make me sign in so they can get my phone number and private details, when my broadband subscription comes round for renewal I will cancel my broadband, YouTube is getting greedy and dictatorial with all their, private video, age restriction, are you a bot, I’m getting to the point where I don’t need YouTube in my life.
We all need another platform or I can see the internet will crash at some point in the future, YouTube will then become insignificant and irrelevant, and if people start to stop renewing their broadband contracts which are far to expensive anyway there will be a lot more unemployment.
Agreed.
Modern youtube is basically a tabloid in streaming form.
And their copyright rules have infuriating double standards.
Youtube sucks. It is a censorship site. You can wirte comments without cursing nor using harsh language but if Youtube disagree with your opinion they block it or more likely shadow ban it. Youtube is a pile of trash that needs to be replaced.
Rumble still has some technical issues but it is much better than Youtube because it does not censor opinions.
YOUTUBE NEEDS TO BE REPLACED. Im sick of that garbage site.
“Content ID”
I received a copyright claim on the following video. The Indian Navy has its own world-class musical band and I was privileged enough to be treated to a concert on one of their flagship vessels. The naval band played “Thriller” offering a tribute to the King of Pop, Michael Jackson.
It was such a beautiful experience. But according to YouTube, the music played by a live band falls under copyright claims. This is what the copyright claim says in detail:
“The melody is the words and music of songwriters and composers. These rights are often managed by different rightsholders in each country, and are separate from the rights associated with the recording of the song.”
Indian Navy Playing “Thriller” By Michael Jackson (youtube.com)
I’m very angry with YouTube. How can a song tribute by a musical band fall under any kind of copyright claims? They used their own drums, saxophone, and other instruments to recreate the melody. Can’t Google’s algorithms tell the difference between an original composition, and its recreated version.
With this wrongful copyright claim, Google and YouTube have also shown extreme disrespect to my country’s Navy, and armed forces. All they were doing was give tribute to Michael Jackson, and that falls under fair use in every sense of the word. It’s not as if they were pirating “Thriller” and planning to sell the records later.
I wish Sundar Pichai reads my comment someday, and I want him to know how much he sucks.
I know, copyright claims from YouTube can be very annoying at best. I looked at the video you referenced. Very nice. What did YouTube tell you needs to be done regarding the claim?
I would have filed a complaint if I knew it was being answered by humans and not AI chatbots. Your article is so needed in this hour.
There’s no way you can talk directly to a human in the Google Support team unless you’re subscribed to “Google One.”