Decline of Youtube - blocked vids, fake reviews, shadow bans, clickbait, hidden dislikes etc

Gone were the days of people simply broadcasting themselves. YouTube is an absolute mess.

Nothing ticks me off more than witnessing "shadow bans," as it's clear it's done to block something but without having to deal with pesky things like proving you violated an actual rule.

As a long term viewer/consumer, the most frustrating thing for me is the clickbait. It's constant and out of control. People have become so obsessed with making money off their channel that every second video is called "I can't believe this happened" with a picture of someone with their hands over their head etc etc. Channels I used to respect don't realise they have lowered their integrity and caused me to drift away. I can't be the only one.

The best thing creators can do is abandon this crap platform.

I really, really miss the late 2000s/early 2010s era of YouTube.

The algorithm has completely wrecked the search feature, it's near impossible to find the video you want even when you use the exact words in the title.

Youtube are gradually moving away from providing a platform, and becoming a publisher for the benefit of the advertisers. Been going that way since Adpocalypse in 2017/18. Individual creators are being phased out while media corporations and mainstream TV channels are exempt from most of the copyright and speech rules.

YouTube is too big for human management so they use the "Guilty until you prove your innocence" algorithm approach

YouTube is their own worst enemy, I swear

YouTube has been in decline for five years or more. I know so many channels that have been banned or shadow banned.

I’m glad you made a video about this, Rob. YouTube has been a f**king joke for a while now. Don’t get me started on those “reaction” channels either. Best of luck with the book and game though, bro ☮️

I really miss the old YouTube. It used to be a real organic expression of the people. Now it's been corporatized. Everything innovative and popular ends up being absorbed and bastardized by the system, always.

Rob, a very dear friend of mine passed away last month. He worked with me as a bartender at a beer bar before I went to law school. We both talked about movies all the time, all the stuff we love. He and I ate up Kubrick ideas together, but you were never mentioned. After he died i remembered he had given me a bunch of thumb drives years ago; the first 2 were are his favorite Grateful Dead live recordings, and I was slowly but surely making my way through them. Slowly, mainly. So i decided to go through all 4 thumb drives and the 4th drive was just titled "Rob Ager" when i plugged it in. It had a bunch of your videos, mostly ripped from YouTube but a few he'd purchased. Ive watched you for years, emailed with you even (I had a theory about "Going to the Sun/Son Road" as a connection between 2001 and The Shining), and it makes total sense that Glenn would have been watching you this whole time. He was that kinda guy. Just wanted to let you know that my friend really loved your work, and that posthumously made me feel a bit better. The part about going through the drives happened this morning so this video is well timed, and needed. Thanks again for all your work.

Click bait is the worst part of YouTube. Algorithms that discover channels like yours are another major issue. I don’t see any fix only worsening

I think YouTube's decline really started after the introduction of large-scale mainstream media platforming. It just stopped being YouTube

Totally agree with all the central points you are making here. The YT algorithm used to be so good that it presented recommendations that were interesting and unexpected but perfectly inkeeping with what you enjoyed watching. Recommendations that provided an almost endless stream of fascinating content. But then about 5, 6, 7 years ago they trashed it and have made it increasingly difficult to avoid clickbait crap ever since. They also got rid of the down vote purely because corporate content was getting massively ratioed and so it became an embarrassment. Tbh I am sick of the way the internet has been stolen from us with shadowbanning and algoirthmic suppression. It is one of the most worrying trends and that's saying something.

Couldn't agree more Rob. It's gone to complete muck. Been a fan of yours for years

My favorite corporate scumspeak from YouTube is the "We'll TRY not to show this ad anymore". They'll try. How big of them.

Here is a list of features YouTube has remove in the past 15 years -The five star rating system -DMing/ messaging other content creators -annotations in videos -adding friends -videos responses/reply videos -visible video tags -the button above the video that would drop down the content creators current videos so the viewer didn't need to leave the page( it was an amazing feature) -Subscription page was the default home feature of the site when the user was logged in. -custom background channel pages -count of public videos on the content creators videos and page -category of what the video was displayed (this was a recent change) -showing the last time a user was logged in -subscription search bar -the change in code so searching for a specifics videos are hard/broken and the relates video aren't even related or similar(algorithm BS) ] -the dislike counter being public -videos used to showcase like/dislike ratio before you watched the video -used to be able to see what videos your favorite youtubers liked/watched/commented on I'm probably missing more but damn they got ride of a lot

One of the biggest issues these days is the almost nonstop ads on YouTube - I mean it’s almost frustrating especially the ads you can’t skip