# YouTube's War on Everyone

Watch [on YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0lX4kkN48E) or below:

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## Description

PayPal: [https://paypal.me/Guard13007](https://paypal.me/Guard13007)  
Blog: [https://blog.tangentfox.com/](https://blog.tangentfox.com/)  
My Patreon (probably doesn't work): [https://www.patreon.com/guard13007](https://www.patreon.com/guard13007)

Links are kept outside of my YouTube descriptions after [YouTube threatened me over linking to the New York Times](../YouTube-threat.md):  
1. I thought I wasn't going to do any research for this video, but the [YouTube Adpocalypse](https://youtube.fandom.com/wiki/YouTube_Adpocalypse) article on Fandom is actually a decent overview. However, it *mostly* neglects to mention how "advertiser friendly" also includes not mentioning real-world problems or historical tragedies, like genocides and the rampant racism in the USA.
2. [Best practices for child and familiy content](https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/10774223) from the YouTube Help Center.
3. A brief explanation of Elsagate: [The YouTube Trend that Ended 4 Lives](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRZPJrIa9U8) by [Mariner Jaros](https://www.youtube.com/@MarinerJaros). (A much longer explanation: [YouTube's Darkest Kids Content](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ZQBNowxpVA) by [Turkey Tom](https://www.youtube.com/@TurkeyTom), including the fact that Elsagate is still ongoing.) There are more videos on this, and I watched a few to choose what to share here.. and there is so much that I don't feel comfortable sharing. It's worse than just what I've linked to.
4. After finishing the script, I discovered that a different channel (*Eli the Computer Guy*) was deleted for talking about the TCP/IP stack, because generated captions inserted the N word in place of TCP/IP, and a "manual review" looked at the incorrect captions to confirm that the N word was said. This is exactly the kind of thing I am referring to. YouTube doesn't follow its own standards, and when a person "reviews" a decision, they aren't actually reviewing the issue.
5. An example of modern YouTube censorship: [Iraq War 2003 Explained - Why Bush and Blair Attacked Iraq](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ns5mNDct-bI) by [The Intel Report](https://www.youtube.com/@TheIntelReport). (It's also a very thorough video that includes how the USA ignored all evidence against WMDs, invented evidence, and then decided to invade Iraq, but first setting up contracts for oil companies to access Iraq's oil fields.)
6. An article entirely about YouTube censorship: [What You Can't Say on YouTube](https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/03/youtube-content-moderation-rules/673322/) by Helen Lewis on *The Atlantic*.
7. [Resist Authoritarianism by Refusing to Obey in Advance](https://lithub.com/resist-authoritarianism-by-refusing-to-obey-in-advance/) by Timothy Snyder on *Literary Hub*.
8. Elsagate videos were some of the most popular videos on YouTube at the time, but still went unmoderated. Source: [Adults dressed as superheroes is YouTube's new, strange, and massively popular genre](https://www.theverge.com/2017/2/20/14489052/youtube-kids-videos-superheroes-disney-characters-fart-jokes) by Ben Popper on *The Verge*.
9. Teaching how to watch videos on YouTube ad-free is against their Terms of Service: [Why Our Video Got Taken Down](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apdZ7xmytiQ) by [Linus Tech Tips](https://www.youtube.com/@LinusTechTips). (*TweakTown* editor Jak Connor essentially copied the most important info from that video [in text-form](https://www.tweaktown.com/news/100401/linus-tech-tips-responds-to-youtube-controversy-following-anti-google-video-takedown/index.html) if you're rather read it than watch it.)
10. To find LTT's original ad-free YouTube video, [search YouTube for "ltt de-google"](https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=ltt+de-google), or watch it on [The Internet Archive](https://archive.org/details/Linus-Tech-Tips-de-google-your-life-part-2-ad-free-you-tube-2160p-vp9) or [PreserveTube](https://preservetube.com). (Note: PreserveTube doesn't allow linking to search results, and their search doesn't work well. "de-google" will bring up the correct video, but a lot of other related videos as well.)
11. A list of alternative ways to access many online services: [alternative-front-ends](https://github.com/mendel5/alternative-front-ends).
12. My shared notes may be useful, though not currently directly related to this video: https://share.note.sx/gdon3y36 (I should probably add notes about how to find deleted YouTube videos and help make sure archives exist for important information.)
13. YouTube showing ads to Premium users isn't an isolated issue, though creators are mostly blamed for it. [Can you still see ads if you have YouTube Premium? Here's what Google has to say](https://www.androidauthority.com/remove-youtube-premium-ads-3384953/) by Adamya Sharma on *Android Authority*.
14. While the beginning of this reads as slightly misleading to me by focusing on the wrong influences, it is a very good look at some of the bad shit YouTube has done over the years: [A global look at YouTube and its censorship policies](https://www.telecoms.com/digital-ecosystem/a-global-look-at-youtube-and-its-censorship-policies) by an anonymous guest author on *telecoms.com*.

I've had to take down videos and had my income stolen by companies on multiple occasions due to false copyright claims. I'm a nobody, so it doesn't get attention. This is just YouTube operating as intended. It matters that they make money, not that there is a community.

While not mentioned in this video, a problem with policing of harm, especially harm of children, is that the ones catching people are manipulative and cause more harm in the process. They promote false ideas about how such harm is done, and attract perpetrators to their actions. [that time To Catch a Predator kinda killed a guy.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1EevQMOGKxk) by [Skip Intro](https://www.youtube.com/@SkipIntroYT) includes good information on this.

Another topic I wish I could cover more effectively is the trend of blaming individuals for systemic problems and not addressing root causes. A good example of this is blaming parents for not monitoring what their kids are watching in response to Elsagate. Yes, obviously, parents should be more careful about what their children watch, but blaming the parents as individuals instead of blaming YouTube for making a system that encourages this is a bad idea. Another example is when we blame individual cops instead of recognizing that the justice system is designed to make cops into aggressive thugs who murder minorities. (The problem is never a cop, the problem is *all* cops.)

Individualism is heavily promoted in the USA, and is deeply harmful. Collective action is how humanity works. We help each other. By focusing on individual choices and actions, we ignore the greatest strength of humanity - collaboration.

Also, YouTube's comments system stopped working a few days ago on mobile. Isn't that nice?

## Script

Sections in quotes were removed from the script / never completed before recording.

Making this rant was a little more slapdash than I intended, and yet I also took far longer than I intended.
- You can date when this script was completed and recorded by the random extra details I included at the end, lol.

---

Originally, I wrote this big disclaimer about how this isn't well-researched or historically accurate, but then I kept adding bits of research to it. This is still mostly based on my experiences with YouTube for close to its entire existence of 2 decades, and expressing my perspective and frustration with problems on the platform, but it is backed by actual evidence.

> So, first and foremost, do not use the contents of this video as a historically accurate representation of events, I'm writing this mostly from memory and based on my experiences being on YouTube for close to its entire existence of 2 decades. I'm expressing frustration at the problems here, not laying out a fully-researched argument. In general, I prefer to back up claims I make with specific information, but right now, I'm venting.

Advertisers started it. YouTube was fairly hands-off and very unprofitable. The last thing they needed as a business was to have a large moderation team. As a result, videos of death, gore, hate-speech, violence, et cetera were present in their own isolated corners, mostly. Ads would run alongside these awful things. To some degree, this always happens. There will always be a small number of people doing awful things and sharing them. The problem was that some prominent creators also produced hate-speech, like PewDiePie, who was the most subscribed channel at the time.

> Advertisers also don't want to advertise next to progressive speech (especially about topics like diversity, police brutality, torture in prisons, and the ongoing genocides around the word). They also don't like anything to do with sex or gender, and quite frankly, history. History is full of examples of governments and businesses doing awful things, and they'd rather you don't think about that.

Ironically, this might've not been nearly so bad if Pepsi didn't release an ad trying to brush police brutality and racism under the rug. The timing couldn't have been worse for YouTube.

YouTube developed an image problem, and "family friendly" is the magic phrase that makes companies pretend everything is fine. Or, in YouTube's case, it's "Community Guidelines". You'll notice I'm highlighting a particular quote, this is from *Best practices for child and family content* in the YouTube Help Center. The reason I'm highlighting it is because it plainly states that a "High-quality content principle" for family content is to have interaction with real-world issues. Specifically, they say to include life lessons, strong characters, encouragement of building social-emotional skills, problem solving, and independent thinking, and to make it a complete narrative with a clear lesson.

Despite that very clear instruction, many real-world issues children regularly have to face are unlikely to be approved by YouTube's algorithm, and YouTube isn't very good at having people intervene to counteract unintended effects of their algorithm. For a simple example, many children have gay parents, but discussing homosexuality is suppressed. Likewise, bullying is prominent, most children will be confronted with drills and security procedures around school shootings, and suicide is becoming more common.. but in a misguided attempt to address those problems, talking about them is nearly forbidden.

You don't solve a problem by refusing to talk about it.

> (One could also argue quite successfully that these effects *are* intended.) Children are not magically separate from the rest of the world. Preventing them from knowing about topics only increases the likelihood that adults will not know about those topics (which is sometimes the point)
>
> I'm highlighting this because a video that talks about real-world issues that children have to face, like sexism, racism, having only one parent raising them, or no parents, or gay parents, are unlikely to be approved by YouTube's algorithm. Children are not allowed to be taught about things that people find uncomfortable. Ironically, the effect of this is that adults don't know important things because education is primarily aimed at children, and the education system often creates a hatred of the concept of education in children. When they become adults, they're less likely to seek further education, especially if they don't even know the topics that were kept hidden from them.
>
> Of course, to be family friendly, you can't talk about real-world problems or educate on important topics that are taboo. YouTube wants to be for children.
>
> teach children about puberty, talk about real-world problems like the military industrial complex, or the prison industrial complex, or the sugar industry. Huh, weird that these things all have industry in their names.

These policies also "leak" out of content produced for children. Even the page I took that quote from shows an example of this. Many families don't have children, but family content *is* content for children. There is no distinction made between families and children, so distressing topics are to be avoided as much as possible.

In YouTube's attempts to pivot towards child-facing content, a demon was unleashed. YouTube mostly relies on creators to mark videos as inappropriate, made for children, or the secret third option of not making either of those distinctions. These options are relatively new, and most people are not going to go back to older videos to update their metadata, so YouTube automatically decides on when to mark videos inappropriate or for children. The thing is, really inappropriate content with lots of colors, quick cuts, high-pitched voice-acting, and recognizable cartoon and children's characters *really* looks like content made for children to an algorithm. Now, regardless of how much the algorithm drove this or how much the production of heinous content drove this, the result is the same: Children were harmed, more advertisers pulled out of YouTube, *everyone* was harmed, and YouTube decided to make it harder to be a creator.

> Video game footage is also misattributed as for children extremely often, like adults don't play games or something.
>
> (The problem with ordering things this way and blaming parents first is that parents will not universally change their behavior in this respect. Blaming individuals doesn't work. Accounting for individual failures does work.)  
> To me, there are three main problems here. The first is parents not supervising what their children are exposed to. The second is an obvious failure in moderation. YouTube has a way to mark videos as inappropriate, but that mostly relies on trusting whoever is uploading the video. YouTube also has a way to mark videos as made for children. That again relies on the creator. The third is a more insidious problem, YouTube automatically marks videos as made for children.
>
> Harmful videos were created targeting children
>
> It's important to mention that some of these videos were the MOST WATCHED VIDEOS, which means YouTube wasn't even moderating the easy pickings..

Initially, YouTube changed its policies to require 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 watch hours per year for monetization, but didn't remove anyone from monetization who already had it. My channel had peaked with Kerbal Space Program videos a few years prior, but I was still making some money. In 2019, they went back on this and stripped many channels of monetization. On a personal level, I had about $100 ready to be deposited in my bank account when YouTube opted to keep all of it instead. I don't know how not paying me money I was owed isn't theft, but large companies rarely let the law stop them. (interruption) Did you know the majority of theft is by large companies from their employees? Wage theft is almost never prosecuted despite being the largest type of theft by far.

Anyhow, I could barely afford food at the time, and to me, this represents the first shift in YouTube's war from trying to appease advertisers to targeting creators. Small channels like mine don't make much money to begin with, and YouTube normally keeps around 50%. They didn't *need* to take everything from me, but they did anyhow. The story is the same for a lot of people.

> This, along with increasingly strict content policies, is where I'd say the war shifted from advertisers to creators. It was no longer just trying to appease advertises.
>
> I made very little money off of YouTube, but it kept me fed during some of the roughest times of my life, and allowed me to buy the computer I'm using to make this video now. The monetization program used to

Since then, my life generally improved, and I even paid for YouTube Premium (while they still won't pay me what I'm owed). At the same time, I noticed that videos covering important topics were being deleted, and creators were increasingly having to self-censor just to afford to live when producing anything of importance. I remember specifically a racing channel got completely fucked over because the name of a corner on a race track sounds similar to a slur, automatic captions decided the presenter was using that slur, and then a separate algorithm analyzed the generated captions and decided the channel was in violation of community guidelines. In other words, an automated system told itself a bad thing was happening, and attacked a channel because of it. I don't remember the names involved, but it stood out in my mind as a particularly good example of how even videos that go nowhere near any topics YouTube considers taboo can still cause significant headache. It's also an example of how AI being given control of a system causes harm. I know AI only started making headlines a few years ago, but its influence has been growing silently on company servers for a decade.

> To be clear, I am speaking of morality when I say I am owed. Legally, *of course* YouTube writes the contract in a way that allows them to take away what I earned.

This censorship most commonly affects history channels and news outlets that aren't large companies with exceptions carved out by YouTube for them. Reporting on facts that are uncomfortable is treated as encouraging negativity and harm. If you produce a long and thoughtful video about someone dying by their own hand, and used a specific word to name that action, rather than the clunky phrasing I am using, you will be censored. If you talk about the second leader of the USSR or the leader of Germany during World War II, by name, or you mention the name of his political party or the state ideology at that time, you will be censored. Now imagine what listening to that sentence was like for someone who has no idea what I'm referring to. Erasing important details of history is now essentially required. There's even a particular date that can't be mentioned. There was an attack involving planes and buildings, that we're constantly told to never forget, but now you can't name that event. Even the automatic captioning system censors words frequently, making anyone who relies on them unable to fully engage with videos.

> Self-censorship in response to forced censorship is bad. I chose to self-censor in the production of this video to highlight absurdity. I am not sure if this is the right choice.

This is a bit of a tangent, but it's my video and you're forced to watch it. Authoritarianism thrives on you giving up your power willingly. By censoring the names of Stalin, Hitler, Nazis, the Third Reich, 9/11, Sadam Hussein, I am ceding my rights to YouTube, and signaling that it's perfectly okay to never mention suicide. Do not censor yourself just because they say it's wrong to discuss the Palestinian genocide, or talk about COVID-19's continued harm that is being ignored. This isn't an overblown comparison, this is how authoritarian regimes hold onto power. It's not only governments that take away your power, it's companies under them and in support of them. I'm linking to a good article about this in the description. (edit: cut off halfway through the word)

Wait! Not the description. See, a while back, YouTube decided to threaten me for linking to the New York Times. Now I put all links and references in a separate webpage, as well as the script, when I make these videos.

I said this already, but I want to reiterate it because it's really important. Problems are solved by talking about them. Whenever a company or government seeks to avoid talking about difficult issues, that is to hide the problem and pretend it doesn't exist.

The next thing YouTube attacked was ad-blockers. To be fair, that's supposed to be what keeps the site running, though I'd argue that the majority of YouTube's existence being unprofitable highlights that ad revenue was never required. The problem from my perspective is threefold.

1. Very few people use ad blockers, despite how beneficial they are, and how they most often are capable of blocking anti-ad-block messages.
2. They also started increasing the price of YouTube Premium, which drives people away, some of which will turn to ad-blockers.
3. They started displaying anti-ad-block messages and ads to paying users. I stopped paying for Premium because I kept getting anti-ad-block ads and even the regular ads that Premium was supposed to block.

Oh, and they increased the number of ads being run, which encourages more people to use ad-block. Ironically, the most common ad I see these days is for ad-blockers. You would think that if ad-block was actually hurting YouTube, they wouldn't allow advertisers to advertise ad-block, right? Like, that just seems stupid. Then again, Elsagate videos were some of the most watched videos on the entire site, and YouTube somehow didn't manage to moderate them. If they aren't checking the most popular videos, what *are* they checking?

Have you ever heard of the Striesand Effect? When you try to censor something in public, the public responds by sharing it more. For example, there's a variety of ways to watch YouTube without opening its official apps or going to the website. My favorite is Grayjay, though it unfortunately still has a lot of problems. Ironically, YouTube claims that teaching someone how to watch YouTube without ads is "harmful or dangerous content", so if I tell you how to purchase YouTube Premium, I'd be violating YouTube's terms of service. I also can't tell you how to install and use NewPipe, Invidious, or any of several other options for bypassing YouTube's ads.

An interesting example of how community guidelines are often a double-standard is that a video by Linus Tech Tips about watching YouTube ad-free got taken down, but there are plenty versions of it still on YouTube. For some reason, it violates terms of service when Linus does it, but not when someone else does.

> See, YouTube wants to be able to track your usage of the website as well as serve you ads, so even if you're a paying customer, they fight aggressively against anything that bypasses this.
>
> Ironically, mentioning this may tickle the bear and get this video taken down, as what happened with Linus Tech Tips. YouTube claims that teaching someone how to watch YouTube without ads is "harmful or dangerous content".

And finally, YouTube's war against people. This is what inspired me to make this video. Suddenly, without warning, YouTube keeps presenting me with a page asking me to sign in with the thin excuse of this being an anti-bot mechanism. This happens across multiple devices, whether or not I use a VPN, and has been happening to more people than just me.

YouTube's increasingly aggressive approach to chasing profit has started directly attacking individual people for not having the right device or browser or IP address to allow watching YouTube.

Ironically, this is probably a good thing for me. See, I have a history of behavioral addictions, one of which is watching far too much YouTube. YouTube is now pushing me to leave the platform more and more, which is good for my mental health. It also reminds me not to trust a company or platform, and I've been steadily working towards making more things I care about accessible without a single company being able to control it.

This is a very time-consuming process, where I make a lot of mistakes, but it's worth it, and it makes me happy to do things I care about regardless of what's popular.

Up till now, I've been very close to losing my home. The danger is still only kept at bay by a few months of savings, but it seems a lot less likely now than it did a few months ago. Thank you to everyone who helped out. I guess maybe I should beg for sharing the video instead this time? Eh, you do you.

I wrote this script about three weeks ago, right around the time a critical mistake cost me almost all of my data. I've been kind of really depressed and overwhelmed by that, and other things that happened in my personal life recently. I have some bits of script that hit the editing room floor, and other details I'd like to mention related to this, but posting *something* is better than posting nothing - so this video is "done". I have some notes for more to say about this, and hopefully I can say more in the future, but I am fake video essayist, and don't have the ability to follow through at this time.

But one small thing did change since then, and I feel it belongs here too. The most recent negative change I've seen is ignoring every indication of language a user wants to access videos in, and selecting Spanish instead. See, when you load a video, the YouTube server receives your IP address, which is associated with a geographical location where there is often a most common language spoken. That's actually a very bad way to select language for a variety of reasons, but most websites use it. Your browser also reports what language it is configured to use, what alternate languages it has been configured to accept as secondary preferences, and even what language your OS is using (sometimes - it can depend on if it's different from the browser's language settings). This is the most reliable way of determining what language to present to a user when content is available in multiple languages, but there's even a third layer in YouTube's own settings, which allows you to configure language.

Over the past few days, whenever I open a video, if it has a Spanish translation generated, that is selected, even though I have mostly only watched English videos, all of my devices and settings are configured to use English, and when I use a VPN, I am usually connected through an IP address located in a place that predominantly uses English. Again, that last one shouldn't matter, but tech companies don't care about minorities, so they will happily use the most common language based on an assumed location. And yet, despite every indication saying I speak English, YouTube keeps using Spanish.

This feature is actually really good in concept. Allowing more people a higher chance of understanding each other despite language barriers is a good goal. There are definitely a lot of problems with machine translation, but having a poor automated system is better than having nothing in this case. But why oh why does it decide to trigger where it shouldn't activate? I've got no answer for this, I'm mostly just confused - and a little annoyed.

Anyhow, thanks for watching. Holy crap this script got almost to 4,000 words before I stopped. I swear I'm not a video essayist.
