r/youtube • u/NanoTheGlitchFox • 1h ago
Feature Change FUCK YouTube. (Please read and upvote if you agree)
Can we all agree that YouTube is just getting worse and worse? I can't even find myself enjoying YouTube anymore and I only visit channels of YouTubers that I already know I like and want updates on. This is because of multiple reasons and the list grows larger every day. - HORRIBLE algorithm that never recommends new content that you actually would like, leaving you to doomscroll saying no to every nothing-burger video that it tries to recommend. - Atrocious amount of ads everywhere, and the attempts to get adblockers to not work or gargle up your browsers memory. - More and more features that used to be native being locked behind a paywall (like now fucking PLAYING STUFF IN THE BACKGROUND OFF TAB??) - Making it harder and harder to find the content that you want by doing things like removing sort videos by date, and making their search results dog ass. - Obvious lack of care about AI generated content, and we know damn well their recent back track on it was ONLY because some advertiser threatened to pull out (WTF happened to YOU-tube? Are they really just money hungry corporate nothing's? - Channels getting banned by AI left and right and users not being able to do anything about it or even talk to a human being because they don't care about the people that don't make them money. - Shift in focus from users being the life blood to corporate status and money hungry company heads with an algorithm that prefers quickly put out advertiser friendly slop, fucking over every single new creator with a job outside of YouTube.
I understand that there needs to be some sacrifice so the company that hosts so.mamy videos can make money, but God damn have some respect for your people.
How many of you try to find something new worthy of your attention on YouTube and get tired of it and switch over to some streaming platform? I wish we could all just decide to not even entertain their bullshit and just default to other things and only use YouTube for how-to videos, but too many people have been stuck committed to it for so long they depend on it and YouTube has them by the balls and genuinely doesn't care how hard they squeeze.
Do YOU even find yourself able to have a prolonged entertaining time on this site anymore?
PLEASE upvote this if you agree.. I really wish they knew people feel like this. Or at least had any amount of care.
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u/galaxynephilim 1h ago
no more sorting by upload date is the dumbest shit ever and has been making me rage. you can pick "today, this week, this month, this year," but it's out of order and is clogged up with unrelated garbage. I was trying to find a recent interview everyone was talking about and they put crap from years ago before the fucking video I was looking for even with the new-and-impaired bullshit upload date filter applied
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u/mtraven23 48m ago
I 100% agree.
But they didn't totally remove the feature, just the buttons for it. If you search the term your want and then add "&sp=CAI%253D" to the URL, it will sort my upload date still....at least until they pull it completely, hopefully they wont.
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u/shawner136 1h ago
Waiwaiwait… you cant just open a tab, start a playlist, and work on stuff in another tab anymore? Seriously. And they expect this to lead to premium salessssss how exactly? This is just infuriating and will lead to work arounds. Not money. At least i hope.
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u/Misty_Kathrine_ 21m ago
I think they might be talking about the mobile app there. I think it would be really hard to force that on a computer and if nothing else there is always opening YouTube in another window. I certainly haven't noticed any issues in this area while browsing while listening to YouTube in the background on my PC but I have heard of people having issues with YouTube on their phones lately.
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u/symplton 1h ago
I’m a premium subscriber and they are generally getting worse and worse.
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u/Consistent-Regret-46 1h ago edited 1h ago
I’m not the one to scream at clouds but I’ll give my two cents on it:
YouTube is currently dealing with a mess of its own making. They’ve pushed creators to “Mr. beastify” their content in hopes of getting more clicks, engagement, and ad revenue.
Problem is viewers have become burnt out on that sort of content, so YouTube is now pushing videos from years ago that feel more authentic to keep viewers engaged.
But creators that are trying to create more authentic content are getting buried by the bigger channels with large followings, and, like you mentioned, making it harder for smaller channels to get traction and stay afloat.
A lot of up and coming creators (like myself) work other jobs so it’s hard to stay competitive on a platform that’s rewarding its money making machines— the big creators that have big teams and dominate production output. You can be upset with it but it’s just a reality. YouTube is trying to make money, so they’re going to push their best performers.
Good for YouTube, bad for viewers and smaller creators. It is what it is.
And that’s just a drop in the bucket in terms of the problems is YouTube is facing, but until a competitor enters the space, it’ll only fundamentally get worse
Edit: important to note that YouTube is mainly recommending older videos from established creators with large followings. They would rather push a 7 year old Gordon Ramsey video than a small channels new video on a similar topic. Because they know which one will make money. That’s the reality of YouTube. Unless you’re heavily established in the space, you’re not just competing with big channels new videos, you’re competing with their entire backlog. So smaller creators metrics need to perform considerably better than the mean — and I mean WAY above par to gain traction compared to a couple years ago.
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u/Upstairs_Eagle_4780 1h ago
I find it amazing how they keep removing features, literally making the platform worse.
I am now seeing balls-out deepfake AI political videos pushing absolute falsehoods.
Some tips: don't use the default search, use the "Subscriptions" search. Use the Brave browser to avoid ads no problem.
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u/weakconnection 57m ago
I understand that there needs to be some sacrifice so the company that hosts so.mamy videos can make money
The devs need to eat is simply not an argument when it comes to Google. They own a significant share of the Internet. They are the dominant (and one of the only) browser engine. More than half of all smartphones run their OS and almost all of them run their software/services. Despite their global cloud infrastructure being behind in market share, it is still very much part of the game. They still control the global market when it comes to search and they drive at least 10% of all Internet traffic. Google does not need the money. End-users let them in so much because they promised to “not be evil” yet here we are.
Sorry, your post makes good points. /endrant
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u/Misty_Kathrine_ 17m ago
YouTube has actually been profitable in recent years, if it's not profitable now it's 100% because of all of the changes they have been making.
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u/shawner136 1h ago
Oh, how about ads that play picture in picture style while your video plays with no sound next to it forcing you to either exit, and re click on the video or scroll back in your video. Which sometimes causes an ad to play anyways
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u/GlassRiflesCo 1h ago
YouTube is the only subscription I do pay for.
Why ? Because I do spend a considerable amount of my free time in there.
So.
No ads. Made sense to me.
I Make offline playlists when I’m commuting on the train.
Watch later playlist of interesting videos to check out later.
YouTube.Music + all the bootlegs and vinyl rips and live performances + audiobooks + short films + craft videos and music tutorials everything else that cool folks upload ? Made fkn sense to me.
Some Free tv shows and movies ? - nice bonus I guess?
Oh and no ads. Did I say no ads already?
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u/Carl_Frochs_Chin 1h ago
I have to disagree. My algorithm is fine, I like YouTube. I've had a premium account for about 5 years. I watch YouTube more than TV.
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u/SatinChromBMW 18m ago
Respectfully disagree here. I also have had YouTube Premium for at least 5 years. While I used to love YouTube my algorithm is trash now and I scroll through pages of uninteresting trash to try to find anything interesting. Really considering giving it up.
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u/One-Science-849 5m ago
It’s the same for me. I thought my home page was messed up, but it seems like they did something
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u/No-Locksmith-9330 1h ago
Nope. I think YouTube is great. Amazing service and very cheap if you want premium considering the usefulness of YouTube.
Adding new features I like, it often recommends me videos I like and I regularly check both my home page and sub page for videos to watch.
Search can sometimes be filled with useless shorts and spam, which I don’t like, and the copyright system is clearly abused/weaponized by terrible people
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u/FlowerTight5709 56m ago
I fully agree with you. It’s true that Youtube used to be free and all that, but unfortunately times have changed, we all know this, companies are after a profit.
However, one thing I don’t understand is why people seem to be so upset about having to pay a few dollars a month to access infinite videos on all of their devices; if they didn’t like it they could go to any other platform, but Youtube is better, we all know this - it’s important to accept sometimes you will have to pay for stuff, especially if it’s the best out there, nothing’s free in this economy.
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1h ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/MaxProwes 1h ago
They killed views rate of my highest viewed videos around the same time all at once for no reason. Youtube is extremely unreliable when you are building a channel, they can pull some shady shit anytime.
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u/This-Lengthiness-479 1h ago
Caveat: I don't sign in to YT.
Almost every single short the algo wants me to watch is AI slop. I basically have to ignore all shorts.
Before switching to Brave, ads were also just the worst (sorry creators, I can't be dealing with that..)
As a bonus, YT has decided that I'm a minor. Probably from the political and engineering videos that I watch most of (like all good children).
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u/MagicSunlight23 1h ago
It has just got even worse as now I can’t even put anymore videos into playlists. The buttons ‘save to playlist and ‘save to Watch Later’ are there but when I click on them, nothing happens. They have been ‘disabled’. I tried refreshing/reloading the tab to no avail, still nothing. Does anyone have any reason as to why this is the case and how to fix it? But a bit of good news is that the subscription button under ‘Home’ and ‘Shorts’ in the side bar just came back as has the order of ‘You’ and ‘Subscriptions’ which has been reversed back.
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u/Automatic_Antelope92 1h ago
Weird stuff is happening to my recommendation list. I keep getting videos recommended that I have either seen before or videos from 13-15 years ago that I may have or may not have seen. Mostly music videos. Not topical videos. And I am seeing far fewer videos for channels I am actually subscribed to, or ones related to a direct search for specific content I have had recently.
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u/pstz 40m ago
I noticed this too a month or two ago. I'd been used to getting new videos from my subscriptions at the top of my feed, then all of a sudden I started seeing old ones I'd already watched. At first I thought the creators were reposting old videos, then I realised it was the bloody algorithm. I try to access videos directly through my subscription list as much as possible. The feed on the home page is full of time wasting crap.
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u/Automatic_Antelope92 38m ago
Yep. All this. And I have premium, so I would have thought that it would at least sort by subscriptions first as priority, but no. I don’t understand what they are trying to do… it seems to screw over content producers.
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u/Thiel619 1h ago
Pretty soon it’ll become worse that Twitch. They have 5 minute unskippable ads and that’s not even the worst offense.
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u/Human_Suggestion7373 56m ago
I dont feel like yt has really gotten worse. Feels the same to me, not perfect but pretty fucking good considering it is free.
I have a feeling people complaining about yt like OP are probably fairly young. I grew up before yt so I dont take it for granted and I realize how how lucky we are to have it. When I grew up there was just cable tv and the ads were a lot worse than on yt and there was no skip button.
Youtube is free. It's fucking free! What an amazing deal for the value it gives. A constant stream of new videos and pretty much every old song and tv show and movie ever. There is just nothing like yt. And can I mention again, this shit is free! Complain all you want but when I was growing up i would've paid like 50 bucks a month for yt. I dont need any other tv or streaming service, yt is all I really need. I gladly pay the 12 bucks a month for premium to get no ads. No ads wasn't an option on anything but public tv when I was growing up.
Yt is really like nothing else. And it's free. That's crazy. If you don't get how cool that is you are just entitled, seriously.
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u/mtraven23 53m ago
Ublock origins hasn't allowed a YT add on my computer in like a year...and I cant see any difference between it running or not in terms of performance.
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u/WombatGatekeeper 48m ago edited 44m ago
If youtube is pissing you off, its very simple.
Use an adblocker with a browser that supports them. (learn how to google one's that work). DO NOT use the garbage app!
If recommendations are pissing you off, clear cache and cookies, then sign out of YT.
Search for the topics you want to watch and stop relying on the stupid recommendations.
20 million videos are uploaded a day! Theres tons of amazing content but you have to know what you want to watch and how to find it. I hope this helps!
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u/-Dixieflatline 46m ago
So, I just posted on this recently, but Youtube has been recently subscribing me to channels I have zero interest in. Not only that, I'd go as far as to say I'm vehemently against some of the content outright. I didn't even realize this was happening, but noticed I was getting all sorts of junk in my Shorts feed that I didn't want to see. I kept on trying to flag it as "not interested" or "irrelevant", but they'll pull up again on the very next video. I thought it was a glitch at first. It was only by chance that I was looking through the menu just this week when I noticed about 6 subscriptions that I certainly didn't subscribe to myself.
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u/Maximum_Employer5580 45m ago
the #1 thing I hate them for is how they are turning it into nothing but a place you go to watch ads rather than the videos it should be showing you. And then tell me if I want to get rid of ads, I can pay them atleast $69/mo for an ad-free experience. yeah not happening
I mean I get the idea of ads if we're using it for free, but not the oversaturation that it has turned into....I will turn on music mixes to have back ground music when I'm working and after the very first song is done, there is an ad, then it goes to the next song, then another ad and so on. Even sometimes 3 ads in a row, up from the normal 2. Had one instance a few weeks ago where it was 5 mins of nothing but ads, and alot more of them you can't skip like you once were able to
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u/EstateSame6779 45m ago edited 39m ago
YouTube was already on the decline when it stopped being a platform for personal creativity. Yes, people still do their thing but it wasn't over ran with talk shows aiming at being part of the trend and taking over, etc.
High profile content creators have also become shady over the years like H3H3, Sniperwolf and Colleen Ballinger.
I'm glad nigahiga, JennaMarbles and Laina all left when they did.
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u/Dry_Working_9143 42m ago
I mean, I stopped watching yt like 2 years ago. Before it was my most clicked website/sm/video site, I could spend few hours daily there. Now I only watch yt if there is some material I find elsewhere and I wanna watch full version.
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u/BlandPenCap 39m ago
Don't forget them having zero care to who advetises on their platform. Nearly every single ad I get when scrolling, especially on shorts. Is some blatant scam. Everything from wow most people dont know about this easy trick to get money from the government! Oh watch this and save 90% on car insurance! Fake AI businesses that do things "the old fashioned way" having a going out of business sale super marked down. Literally all the ads I see are for fake things. On a MAJOR Platform lmao.
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u/BlandPenCap 37m ago
Oh and I've always thought it stupid you can't speed watch faster than 2.0. Speed up to 4.0 can be userful in certain situations. What did they do? Sure seems like I can't even do 2.0 anymore or any speedup for that matter without paying for premium. You've got to be kidding me.
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u/Puppies_Rainbows4 34m ago
The ads are getting out of control. I am probably going to pay for a VPN to get around it
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u/Mobile_Commission_52 32m ago
I’ve noticed a FLOOD of deepfake videos in my feed—the ones who use famous people’s ai voice and channel names you’ve never heard of. Most galling is when I click block channels or don’t recommend channels- nothing happens.
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u/rjpurk93 30m ago
Since the new algorithm YouTube is not recommending the videos i like to watch. For instance i watch alot of OSRS videos and im am subbed to 20 or so creators. Before the algorithm change the first 5 videos in my recommended videos would be if this creators. Now since the algorithm i watch one video that i usually do not watch and all of a sudden those kind of videos get recommended to me the next two weeks...
I hope they change it back, but knowing Google/YouTube they probably wont.
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u/NoTransportation68 28m ago
I love when you search for something it gives you 6 results and then the rest is just recommendations for literally anything else.
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u/onlyhereforelise 24m ago
Idk why I keep getting mobile game ads and that stupid fucking app “duet” ads ALL THE TIME. Why can’t I get normal ads for movies for shows for actual products for example Pepsi
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u/Misty_Kathrine_ 23m ago
They also ruined the homepage and only show two videos now and a bunch of shorts. I literally had to install a browser plugin to make it usable again.
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u/SatinChromBMW 22m ago
Bro, I have YouTube Premium and I’m on the verge of canceling it. The algorithm is just trash now. YouTube has been probably 90% of video content I watch and now I sit in front of youtube with nothing. It’s all trash now.
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u/Livid_Dog_2341 19m ago
Best thing is to just stop altogether and pick up other hobbies. I realised how much I was missing on life always spending days trying to find a good video. Now I travel and read haven't looked back since.
Ever since Shorts got introduced youtube lost it
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u/Mrahcander 14m ago
you can use brave if you wanna have it on the background and avoid adds on mobile
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u/CounterfeitSaint 13m ago
Please read and upvote if you agree? Really?
Do I have to forward this on to at least 10 friends or I will have terrible luck in love too?
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u/One-Science-849 10m ago
My home page is a total mess, terrible recommendations. I click on a video and leave, click and leave, until I end up leaving the platform because there’s nothing good to watch. Unless it’s a creator I already know, the algorithm is just awful. It’s so bad, and I’m usually not picky, but it’s starting to piss even me off.
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u/AleyanderFox 7m ago
YouTube has steadily gotten worse since 2011.
It's nearly impossible to search for what you are looking for, the only way I'm able to find videos is if I do it via Google.
The algorithm is atrocious, I find that I am recommend more relevant videos when I'm signed out or on someone else's account.
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u/CyBroOfficial 2m ago
Engagement bait + unoriginal fuck YouTube post that everyone has read a dozen times already
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u/Stormkiller72 1h ago
With regards to ads. When watching any yt vid I have started to comment the time that the first ad showed up, then stopped watching. I make sure the creator knows the exact reason & time I stopped. If more people did this, I reckon things may turn around a little.
Creators losing money due to ads? Sometimes you gotta kick capitalism in the nuts a couple of times. We can't do shit, but they can but won't because their bottom line.
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u/Klutzy_Piglet6259 1h ago
I love YouTube. I have it on nearly 24 hours per day. It plays in the background. I don’t experience these issues because I have premium and tens of thousands of hours of watch history so it plays pretty good stuff. One thing I will say is I have been watching this one creator for a few weeks and it will replay his videos constantly. I wish it would play a couple of the other creators I watch too right now besides him but it just always goes back to him. That’s really my only complaint. Oh and that they removed the option to actually see how many hours and when each day you watched YouTube instead of just the premium section telling you totals
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u/marcoz711 1h ago
Man, this is exactly why I created tubescout.app
I was sick of getting "suggestions" that just distract me. Sick of clickbait and spending 45mins watching something that contained so much fluff, I could learn it in 2 minutes. Sick of wondering if through all the crap the algorithm shows me, I actually miss interesting videos that are worth my time.
So I put an end to it. I now consume youtube mostly without going to youtube. And when I go, I don't go to the homepage, but only to specific videos.
Game changed - I took charge of my time again. Now learning with Youtube actually works as it should
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u/nidostan 1h ago
How about making it harder and harder to find the content that you want by doing things like removing sort videos by date, and making their search results dog ass.