web What irrates you about YouTube?

[Cash In 21,517]

Removing the dislike counter has to be one of the dumbest decisions they've made in recent years, but luckily you can restore that with browser extensions. YT has also gotten very obnoxious with ads. I understand that they do need to have them, but it's very frustrating when you get several unskippable ones.

[Sir Hugsalot 8,621]

I think search engine on YouTube is at this point completely obsolete. Maybe I do something wrong, but I feel like finding more "obscure" search results is almost impossible these days. Often I feel like search results are some random videos, not actual "search results".

[Fluttershutter 2,120]

10 hours ago, Trot Shuffle said:

I've been using uBlock Origin for a long time and haven't experienced any tomfoolery from YT. Ads get blocked and my experience isn't diminished. If I turn it off, then the ads come back, turn it on and all the ads are gone.

Thanks, I'll look into it. Do you pay for that?

[Trot Shuffle 3,599]

29 minutes ago, Fluttershutter said:

Thanks, I'll look into it. Do you pay for that?

Not a dime needed to spend, it's free and open source 

https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock

[ZiggWheelsManning 7,371]

On 2023-09-21 at 10:56 AM, Sir Hugsalot said:

I think search engine on YouTube is at this point completely obsolete. Maybe I do something wrong, but I feel like finding more "obscure" search results is almost impossible these days. Often I feel like search results are some random videos, not actual "search results".

I typed in some stuff in search results and got random videos as well  

[KPackratt 72]

The anti-adblock update and the occasional breakage it causes. I don't want to sit through a ton of ads and I'm not paying for YouTube Premium, given the amount of bad things YouTube has done made me uncomfortable with me giving them my money.

The COPPA update (though we already know about that and the issues it caused).

False channel terminations and strikes.

Videos getting taken down out of nowhere.

[Kyoshi Frost Wolf 40,298]

I've had plenty of issues with the often tone-deaf decisions that Youtube has made for a while now, but in the past year, I've realized just how utterly horrible one particular thing is: YouTube "Kids". This aspect of YouTube is honestly abhorrent. My niece is essentially glued to a phone half the time, which I wouldn't be entirely against if the content wasn't some of the most brain dead and exploitative trash on the internet. Whether it is the "shorts" that provide literally nothing of value or the "shows" like Cocomelon, which has horrific animation and oftentimes consists of the most bland, corporate sputum possible. Almost everything on YouTube Kids is designed for manipulation, for calculated retention not for learning, but for "engagement". The worst part? This trash is likely what makes the most money on the entire platform. It is sickening to me. There's amazing family shows like Blues Clues in the past or currently Bluey, but YouTube instead rewards the worst of the worst. It is no surprise that those videos oftentimes have tens of millions of views, because it is designed to capture the senses, not the mind. 

 

It frustrates me, as this rant probably indicates.

Edited March 15 by Kyoshi Frost Wolf

[Luna the Great of all the Russias 2,706]

Many things. One thing I will mention is how terrible the search functionality is:

• Difficulty finding the target video even if you search for the exact title.
• Purposefully including irrelevant search results of videos "for you", or "what other people watched", or videos you should "watch again", etc.
• Showing same videos multiple times within a single search result.
• Lack of precise filters in search results (e.g. searching by specific users, date range for when video was published, range for number of views, etc.)

[Treeglow Flicker 13,035]

These two things off the top of my head.

• Their persistence in trying to get past my adblocker wall. I really don't need to see 30 seconds of stock footage of people looking perpetually surprised at how much it costs to insure a walrus or whatever tat they're trying to sell. Or the perfect nuclear family on a perfect sunny morning also stuck in perpetual amazement at how much they love their Kellogg's Bugger Wheat cereal. Sellers of lies! Get out of my way! I'm trying to watch Cirno ride a Roomba!
• The shoehorned political, news and conspiracy crap that occasionally appears in the recommended list. Things like "Oh MAH GERD!!! NUKLEAR WAR IMMINENTZ!!!" I really don't care about what magical crystal bollock they gazed into to make their asinine predictions or the purchased journalism masquerading as news. Take your social napalm to another recommendation list! It's taking away valuable spots for Touhou and MLP recommendations! 

[Nightlight1313 141]

The little things :/

• RIP annotations. The new cards are nice but the fact you have such a small window you can place them in makes designing outros a nightmare. I get they were taken away probably for security concerns wrt being able to link to anything with them, but that could have been solved just as easily with like, a redirect warning page.
• You used to be able to set up polls on videos and suddenly you just stopped being able to? WHY
• "Add to watch later" button being hidden away behind the kebab menu. It's such a useful feature and the random meaningless extra step means I find myself using it way less than I used to.
• Not being able to pick what framerate I watch the videos in. You can only watch 60fps in 720p and above, so I know they can do it. High framerates trigger migraines for me so I can't watch anything over 480p even when my connection allows it.

[TheSupremeLeaderOfChaos 1,189]

Having been using Youtube for a long time, definitely the scourge of ads on there. Adblock is my best friend. I remember when they added one ad at the beginning. Then two. Then ads at the beginning and end. Now random 1-2 ads at multiple times throughout videos. Ugh lol

4 minutes ago, Nightlight1313 said:

• RIP annotations.

I miss annotations :((

[HereComesTom 2,232]

I hate what they're doing to small creators---there's a definite double-standard.  If a small creator gets dogpiled by bots or kids flagging videos, they'll ban that creator without a real human being doing any actual investigating.

People can lose their livelihoods at the drop of a hat with the system Youtube currently has in place; it's an unsafe environment for building your livelihood as long as youtube has this policy of no human intervention...

[FirePuppy 627]

"Made for Kids" setting on videos that are unsuitable for children, plus the disabling of comments because of this.

Copyright claims.

And most recently, the restriction of AI usage.

 

All these reasons left me with no choice but to terminate all my YouTube channels. Now, I only watch YouTube if I feel like it.

[Starlight Serenade 559]

So I was recently reminded that I had like 18 years on Youtube for my oldest channel (I started young around early 2006) and it's been through so many changes. It's been the one streaming platform that I have always gone on for the longest despite so many criticism. I agree with a majority of what people have written here.

There are too many ads all over every segment of videos on mobile that it made me go into podcasting apps over the past decade (thank goodness for ad blockers on desktop btw). Though one of my pet peeves are these sponsor segments with really terrible segways. The moment I see them, I skip through the video and down vote the video. These "creators" have gotten too greedy and sold themselves out. It's already enough that I see some of my favorite older creators "retire" but then comeback with a writing team/higher budget and production, but it's never the same again. I have seen that happen way too much in the past 5 years alone. I recall when I was given a year of Youtube Red/Premium for free years ago (it was a raffle prize), it said that I had around 27 HOURS of ad free videos at the end of the year. They are literally robbing time away from your lives with this ad nonsense. They don't care about your time.

Second, searches are getting darn near impossible to find the video you want. I get random video recommendations which is like playing heads or tails to see if they are good. Usually the music recommendations are decent, but other times I watch a clip of one of my favorite shows then get a random political video or "mature" type videos out of nowhere. What do those have to do with MLP and my other cartoon shows? If this is what they are showing adults, I wonder what the heck they are showing kids as there are many ways to bypass the weak and basic Youtube filters. I am starting to think that they purposely make videos hard to find so that you spend even MORE time on the platform and get distracted by the recommendations they put.

On that note, I really dislike it when I see the "made for kids" feature is on MLP videos or cartoons in general for that matter. It perpetuates the notion that only kids watch cartoons. Adults like to watch cartoons too, anybody can watch and enjoy! They disable the comment section which I usually like to check out since they took away the dislike button. The Dislike button that was taken away was very pivotal as it help users discern what videos were good or not. In the age of AI, I think it's very important to have that feature. Also, don't kids have the kids version of the Youtube app? What's the point of the made for kids feature if they are supposed to be on the kids app? Every video that is automatically set to "made for kids" literally links you to the kids app to download automatically yet a kid could watch "mature" type videos without issue. It's a flawed system, well in general if we are being honest.

Next, copyright strikes. These can remove media that is rare to find and ruin people's lives in other cases. There should be a better system in place now. They had YEARS to fix this, but they won't do it.

Youtube Shorts is also very annoying and time consuming. It feels like a distraction tool as they randomly open when you open YouTube and once you see one or two of them, several minutes have gone by and you have forgotten what you are doing at times. It's similar to TikTok as in how they keep you attached to the platform.

Another personal issue I have is playlists. I had playlists with 5K+ videos that don't even load past the first hundred videos anymore. They just crash especially on mobile. I had to delete some playlists which had so many incredible vids that I may never find again due to them being unlisted and the search bar being a mess now.

I had a few more things to list, but I am just making myself feel negative thinking about it. Youtube was born of great potential and many fantastic ideas, but it has going downhill nowadays. I have to use different extensions to get a good experience. 

 

Edited March 19 by StarlightSerenade

[BritishBrony2012 719]

Adverts,

Youtubers I can't stand,

Youtubers that let out Burps,

Some Videos,

Deleted/banned for some weird reason- if it copyrighr claim or think comment are threating, Remember my video got copyright claim for 5 mins, what?

Trolls/Negative comments

[ZiggWheelsManning 7,371]

7 minutes ago, BritishBrony2012 said:

Adverts,

Youtubers I can't stand,

Youtubers that let out Burps,

Some Videos,

Deleted/banned for some weird reason- if it copyrighr claim or think comment are threating, Remember my video got copyright claim for 5 mins, what?

Trolls/Negative comments

THIS ^^  

[Mothra 543]

I hate it when videos start with ambient mode on by default, it hurts my eyes everytime. I also wish I could at least see what the title of a deleted video in a playlist was so I can potentially find a re-upload

[North Star 4,540]

the youtube shorts. 

I have watched different dog breeds as robbers so many times now. I mean, it's a great concept, but c'mon. 

[jacibobsthebrony 114]

Most things nowadays honestly, but Youtube Kids disabling comments is one of the most annoying. How the hell is this for kids Youtube? 

 

[TechnoZ 863]

Removing Dislike Button
YouTube Premium

 

Who in the Right Dam mind is buying yt premium just to get rid of AD's?

[FirePuppy 627]

As of today, Hasbro is starting to take down MLP videos from YouTube, as seen here:

 

Which proves why Props Valroa is wrong, wrong, wrong! about YouTube being the best place for My Little Pony content, as of now.

[Sunny_Skyes 68]

Censorship, advertisements, Raid Shadow Legends, quite a lot. If I'm gonna be honest, I don't know why I still use it.

[Megas 27,068]

There's the forced ads now and blocking you from using the site if you use adblocker. I can bypass it on desktop by using uBlock, but on my phone it's outright unusable, every one or two minutes are interrupted by unskippable ads, some going longer than 30 seconds. We all know they're only doing this to get more people to use Youtube Premium. No I don't want another pointless subscription

Also How much Youtube loves to push blatant clickbait, often based on the videos you watch, either some fake outrage, bad takes or pushing some dumb narratice "oh you liked Breath of the Wild, well how about a video titled 'Breath of the Wild is actually an objectively terrible game and if you like it your dumb and don't know what a good game is'? "Oh you liked these Marvel clips from your favorite shows or movies? Well here's 'How WOKE are DESTROYING Marvel by having WOMEN'"

That garbage is the absolute worst and is just making the site miserable. I don't care about some dumbass crusade, I just want to watch cool and funny videos :/

Edited April 14 by Megas

[Rafa Stary 689]

Honestly the ads were never a problem for me, I see people here talking about ads each 2 or 3 minutes, 30 seconds unskippable ads etc, but that was just never a thing for me, I get 15 seconds unskippable ads at best and it's only once per video, there are rarely two or three ads in a video for me, and no I don't use adblock or a different version of the site, I just use the normal mobile app with no changes, I thought the 30 seconds ads and 2 / 3  minutes thing was just in the PC version but I also see mobile users talking about it, so…? I don't know, not sure if it's Youtube Brazil or something.

Now, things that are truly a problem for me…everything I could say was already been said by everyone else here

I believe people (me included) still uses Youtube because it's still very popular and because they are used to it, but it's definitely not nearly as good as it used to be

In 5 Years, the only good thing they made in my opinion was the community tab and that's it, everything else for me was shit (ex: messed search results) or useless (ex: shorts), I don't think things would be looking sooo bad if they were only adding bad or useless new options, but they literally removed good stuff from the site, and that's what it angers me the most

I didn't saw anyone mentioning this here yet, but in god's name, why the fuck did they remove the option to visit people's channels through live stream chats??

I could say much more, but I don't think it's necessary and it's just frustrating for me, they've made decisions over the last few years that I just can't believe, they're so apocalyptically stupid, there's no way they're not ruining the site on purpose

Youtube used to be awesome, a place for people to have fun and show their talents. Nowadays it's just a zombified corporate platform runned by a company that clearly doesn't care about its artists and forces them to follow the rules for a cheap success, it's no more a place for the artists.

They do this shit because they know they remain unrivaled, so they can do whatever they want and treat their content creators however they want, but one reign will eventually come to an end, when a similar, better site arrives and everyone migrates there, I won't hesitate to say bye bye to it.

[Rethajni 1,994]

I may hate 95% of YouTube xD

 

Screamers -  They are not funny, and is a way to piss off people and could lead to heart attacks to people who are unprepared, am not a religious person but am sure there is a horrible destiny for the person who came up with that idea...

Animal Cruelty videos/fake Animal rescue videos - words are not enough to express the hate I have for them, people who like to abuse or put them in dangerous situations pretending to rescue them it sickens me... I could go to detail what I seen or how I feel but Ill stop now.

Gore - Yes, there is gore in Youtube, you would have to dive deeper in deeper when short animations mold the reccomendations into real accidents and excecutions, no comments.

Mukbangs: I HATE Mukbangs, if you didn't know, is basically people with no manners making loud noises while eating, they eat in great amounts and do noises like pigs, they are eating like pigs and is disgusting to see the amount of food they are ingesting, with mouth open and chewing sounds, this cannot be healthy and with the amount of sugar, carbs am not surpriced these people will not live much longer, if fatty liver doesn't kill them, the diabetes and cholesterol will.If you are curious, look for Kate Yup or even Nikocado Avocado...  If I have that food I would share it with family and friends, but showing off everything they are gonna eat it just pisses me off (and dont get me started with korean mukbangs, in some videos they eat the animal alive...) 

ASMR: I don't see the point of them, I just hear whispers and rubbing stuff, it doesnt produces me anything, just almost silent noises, is annoying, if I want to hear something less loud I simply lower the volume on my PC

Ads : You may say "well Get Youtube Premium" "Add a Ad block" But the thing is that the ads are simply annoying, specially those of channels or topics you cant stant

Clickbait: Do I have to explain why I hate those? Is the cheapest form of scam, people click on videos based on the thumbnail and the title, they show you a title and a thumbnail that is controversial or interesting but offer you something completly different, I always report those videos

Religious Videos: I respect all religions as long as doesnt hurt others, but the problem with those is that if you open just one, you have tons and tons of them in your reccomended videos, and it happened to me several times, I just dont click on religious videos anymore because is like open the door inside a submarine, just opened and you get flooded...

Challenges: I never been fan of challenges, challenges is a nice way to say you are gonna do something dumb, Is just dumb videos about dumb people doing dumb stuff, and once you complete the challenge what is the reward? To prove others you are a fool who is hungry for visits??

Pranks: I appreciate a good joke, but there are some videos that they take pranks to another level to the point that is not prank anymore, is just hurt others or make a fool of yourself, is not funny, is just annoying

People who swear a lot: There are youtubers who swear a lot to make some comedy or is part of a character like Angry Video Game Nerd, swearing is part of the show, but when there are people who took the foul language not to spice up comedy but as part of your common language its stop being funny, people want to sound edgy or cool they sound more like ... "mentally challenged" people. You are not cool, you are not edgy, you are a "fool"

SJW: I really cant stand those people, while everyone is free to speech and manifest their own ideas the so called Social Justice Warriors are shoving their radical ideology to your face, "dont like them, dont watch them" you may say but the problem is that not just affects the whole plattform but the entire internet and I can write you an essay why SJW and the "woke" ideology is a danger to society but I would be off topic. Thing is, the videos of people who are ranting about how unfair society is, videos of people bothering employees doing their work or videos of people shaming others because they dont follow the idology is not just upsetting but is pathetic and hard to watch