It's been a while since I've been uploading content to YouTube, and things have steadily been growing worse and worse looking at it from the outside.
It's obvious that YouTube is starting to become a somewhat broken system that both YouTubers and viewers just seem to hate.
Recently, there have been startling increases in copyright strikes on growing channels like I Hate Everything and Chibi Reviews. These channels are entirely innocent and in the right, but unfortunately, due to YouTube's automated copyright claim system, these channels have faced copyright claims from companies who are only making false claims and strikes purely to profit off stolen monetization from the videos, or just to make their lives a living hell.
This isn't just a problem with copyright claims, however. Literally anyone can report a video for abuse of YouTube's content creation rules and have the video taken down, the channel's abilities limited, or even have the channel taken down completely. Again, this is all automated, and nothing really helps to deal with the situation.
Changes have been promised, and just hours ago, Chibi Reviews has released a video detailing a written response to the false claims. Watch it here: https://youtu.be/bAu4e6OsTOU
But these changes were much needed months ago, when the problems started! All of this could've been avoided if the system were made better, or have these claims reviewed by someone, or maybe a legal team dedicated to handling these things.
But are these changes too late? Is the broken system enough to push creators towards a new website?
It's known that things tend to die fairly quickly on the internet. Remember #YOLO? The thing that went on for years, then suddenly just died? What about Kim Kardashian? Facebook? Myspace? These things used to be the biggest things circulating the web, but have suddenly been left, tossed aside and forgotten.
Internet memes and celebrities like #YOLO and Kim Kardashian have seen fame and glory like no other. But soon, people just started growing sick of it, and wanted something new. Sites like Facebook and MySpace were the pinnacle of middle school social media hubs. But once modern news and internet memes had started to circulate through Twitter and Instagram, being the most popular kid at school through posting about your life became less important than keeping up with current trends in Instagram and Twitter.
Now keep in mind, memes tend to last a few weeks, maybe months before meeting their sudden cutoff due to a new hot topic. But social media hubs take a little longer to gain popularity due to the immense design and catering towards users that current sites have to take into account to gain popularity. This is why you have so many sites that all basically do the same thing, with a slight difference, or does it's job much better. To give a little insight into this, and how YouTube has changed over time, here's a brief history of the social media platforms.
MySpace was the biggest thing in the early 2000's, but was eventually replaced by the newer site called Facebook. Twitter is created late 2006, designed to be kind of like a news reel for internet trends and topics, though people create accounts to also become some sort of Internet celebrity. YouTube has also started to become popular, and Google acquires it under their name.
By now, MySpace is totally dead. Beginning in 2010, Apple and Google have revolutionized smartphones to the point where social media is affected.Instagram becomes a new site where concepts from Facebook and Twitter have been merged to become this picture sharing hub. Snapchat and Vine follow suit, but have been more inclined towards plain picture-sharing and short video sharing.
2012 YouTube is in the middle of a revolution. Since the initial release of Minecraft, a steady increase of gaming channels have been created, and other channels as well. Animations and animator channels no longer popular.
Tumblr has also become a well-known site starting somewhere around 2013, a site aimed towards people who share a common interest, and group together to form communities. Facebook is now starting to have a serious decline in traffic, and is slowly starting to meet it's demise.
2013 YouTube's year-long revolution gas ended with a rather surprising outcome: YouTube superstars are now a thing, and a gaming channel rush has been created because of this new YouTube star dream.
Minecraft is a huge topic circulating YouTube, and multiple channels have been created solely for the purpose of uploading Minecraft gaming content.
Regarding other topics, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook all gain massive traffic on news related to One Direction, the new British boy band.(eww) Middle schoolers talk about this all the time on Facebook, and prolong Facebook's life a little longer. Snapchat and Vine are now recognized as social media platforms, and used to share pictures and videos of that party last night or that funny thing caught on video.
2014 YouTube has now recognized a critical flaw: channel inflation. Now, channels are so similar to each other that you can't possibly seem to grow a channel large enough to become what is now known as PewDiePie. Minecraft starts to see decline in traffic by the end of 2014. Social media hubs continue on creating new trends, mostly surrounding disasters or controversies, sometimes new internet memes.
2015 YouTube has identified a fatal flaw: the copyright claim and report system. Since the channel inflation, Google implemented an automated copyright and report system to deal with issues surrounding copyrighted content and issues against content creation rules. People have now found out it's possible to abuse this system to take down channels and steal monetization from channels for profit. These issues continue to this day. Also, FNaF.
Social media hubs remain stable to this day, however Facebook is now regarded 'dead' to some users, replaced by more defined hubs like Twitter and Instagram.
So as you can see from that rather lengthy bit of information, we see that YouTube's 2013 revolution has created problems for itself. MySpace and Facebook were both completely dead to some people due to other sites doing their job much better. This is a huge deal towards YouTube, because Twitch, a new live-streaming service that had rapidly grown in popularity in 2014, could mean the potential decrease in traffic for YouTube. Because of this competitor, and the fact YouTube's service towards creators is completely broken, YouTube is in jeopardy or being easily replaced.
Now, other channels have been made too. Review channels, reaction channels, musicians and other creators alike all now have a place in YouTube due to the creator boom. Because Minecraft has become less of a thing, gaming channels have slowed gaming channel growth and allowed other YouTubers to grow in size.
However, it's a power struggle.
YouTubers are now fighting for popularity, doing whatever they can to increase their traffic. Click bait videos are common, prank channels fake their pranks, and sometimes go to extremes that can violate the content creation rules, and sometimes abuse of the copyright and report systems can cause channels to be taken down or have their abilities limited.
CEO Susan Wojcicky has given a speech saying that they are going to try to resolve this issue. Finally we're getting the help we need! But is it too late?
Google has already been experimenting with different ideas for their other services. Google wave was supposed to be a a hub for people to communicate ideas and things like that, but ended up being scrapped for the much better(in a sense) Google+. Inbox is a new approach to Gmail that they launched mid-2015, and Google Messenger is a new SMS app they made earlier this year, however can be seen inferior to the more functional Hangouts app. It shouldn't be a surprise if Google tries to create a new video-sharing platform to replace YouTube.
But maybe that won't be seen for a while. Maybe this is the era of the internet where things finally start to settle. YouTube is such a big part of Google, it couldn't possibly be given the axe. Of course, changes will come once in a while, but maybe YouTube will live on as a permanent part of internet life. It's a scary thought that something horribly wrong could happen to YouTube at any moment, but eventually fate will decide.
That's all for this post, again, I'm sorry for the extended hiatus. If you've been watching my YouTube channel, you'll know that I have gone dark because of my main computer frying. I should be back online in a few days, since I get my new computer's parts soon. I also am not a huge fan of working on a mobile phone, so that also explains why I haven't been making posts, but this topic came up and I felt like I really needed to get this out there.
That social media history bit was rather interesting to be honest. I might make a full report on it later.
Big shoutout to I Hate Everything, Chibi Reviews and GradeAUnderA for helping to bring this copyright controversy to light. They've all suffered false claims and the BS that they bring. Support them by spreading #MakeYoutubeGreatAgain!
What do you think about this YouTube meta issue? Be sure to share this post with anyone you know who creates YouTube videos regularly, or YouTube staff themselves!
That's all for now. Thanks for reading!
--GameKiller
