Youtube General thread (formerly Youtube Censorship discussion thread)

[General Emílio Médici]

Does anyone have any idea how to disable the worthless and gaslighting feature of automated translations of video titles and descriptions? I really fucking hate it, I know whoever I am watching isn't speaking Portuguese or writing it and I do not appreciate Youtube assuming I need it. Even worse with non-english videos as it makes me unable to tell if a video is actually from the Lusophone side of the internet or something translated at a glance.

 

[Papa stink]

They finally did it. I'm getting unskippable, unblockable adds baked into the youtube player. None of my adblockers work.

 

[Cheesy Beavy]

Also y2mate are still being faggots it seems. You can only download 720p and below without downloading their retarded bloatware now.
For fuck's sake.

We need someone who is not a retard or a fucking shill to make something like y2mate so we can continue downloading youtube videos without paying a fucking dime. There's so few options for downloading age restricted videos now it's fucking annoying. Even stupider when said video is restricted for essentially no reason or because someone in the video said one word the youtube bots didn't like.

Here is what I do. For some reason it still doesn't work on all videos? sometimes for various reasons it says I can't download the video and there is some sort of issue, but works most of the time and also works on some other sites as well

 

[Hellwalker]

I posted about this in Software Endorsements but this place would've been a better place to do it. Anyways, if anyone else also fucking hates every single decision that Youtube makes to their UI, here's an extension that brings back old Youtube UI's.

https://vorapis.pages.dev/#/

And a userscript that is needed to choose UI's from 2008 to now along with other customization. (Keep in mind that 2008/2009 UI's are unfinished)

https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/485622-startube

Here is what my front page looks like. I'm using the late 2013 option from Startube. I'm also using custom CSS customization's from the V3 Discord server. (Got rid of my Name and PFP in top right corner for privacy sakes)

 

[Hepativore]

So, I think Tubular has been abandoned, as no new activity from the developers has gone on for the last few months and they are no longer responding on the Github page. I am using PipePipe for now which basically acts like the Tubular fork of NewPipe as it also has Sponsorblock.

Invidious still works even if they are down to one or two useable instances.

If there is one thing that is pissing me off is that YouTube has been marking more and more things as "age-restricted" when there is nothing in it that could be construed as justified as being in that category. This is becoming a huge problem for things like some of the medical research videos that I have been able to watch until now. Has any third-party streaming website or app yet figured a way to get around the new "age-restricted" measures imposed by YouTube like they used to? I know I could use a downloader, but space on my phone is limited.

 

[AnticitizenOne]

They finally did it. I'm getting unskippable, unblockable adds baked into the youtube player. None of my adblockers work.

From wich web browser are you navigating the web? Since i use Firefox with uBlock and still bypass ads

 

[urr13 account]

They finally did it. I'm getting unskippable, unblockable adds baked into the youtube player. None of my adblockers work.

Brave browser still seems to be blocking things fine, but sometimes youtube rolls things out in stages so maybe you were just unlucky enough to be one of the first to get their new add system.

 

[Papa stink]

From wich web browser are you navigating the web? Since i use Firefox with uBlock and still bypass ads

I'm using Brave. I stopped using uBlock because YouTube was breaking and it started working again when I disabled it on the site. However I'm clicking through tons of videos and I'm not getting ads now.

 

[Samhain]

The direct injection of unskippable ads into videos isn't new. YT has been trying it on random people for a couple months now. They're probably hesitant to go with a system like this because it would cause a huge meltdown with viewers and creators alike.

 

[Shoresy]

Those faggots at youtube removed the New For You filter on the home feed. Why the fuck did they do that.

 

[crowabunga]

They finally did it. I'm getting unskippable, unblockable adds baked into the youtube player. None of my adblockers work.

I'm experiencing the opposite, albeit just as disruptive, effect: instead of getting unblockable ads, I'm getting a complete video halt at exactly one minute of playtime. It stops when I disable adblocking. I'm running Ublock Origin on Firefox.

 

[Shoresy]

I don't really use YouTube on the PC anymore as I don't really use my PC at all. I use the currently maintained ReVanced app and I've had no ads whatsoever.

 

[Aquarius]

Has anyone noticed the following:

1. Playlists of YouTube content being deleted because the playlist’s name or description casts dispersion on the subject.
2. Some users are losing their abilities to adequately reply to people. A guy I know says that, if he wants to reply to someone and have them get a notification for it, he has to go into the comment chain rather than respond directly to the reply he received. Sort of like shadowbanning, but using the crippled reply function as a means to do it.

I know this is pretty subtle relative to the un-skippable ads, but it strikes me as ominous. It feels like a very deliberate attempt to keep people from spreading information, conversing with each other, or documenting things they find distasteful. Here are some examples of problem #1:

• Reddit user GlitteringHoneydew9 comments on r/YouTube about his favourites playlist being deleted.
• YouTuber mxliõn tells his community about his playlist being deleted.
• Substack user Matt Klein posts about “Deletion Death” and says YouTube deleted his 2,000+ video playlist.
• Kiwi Farms user PunkinMan reports a playlist they made as a kid being arbitrarily deleted.
• Reddit user JosteinKroksleiven says on r/YouTube that a playlist of funny videos he shares with friends was deleted.
• Xitter user lauavesi says his privated YouTube playlist with 2,500+ links was deleted because he titled it “fuck”.
• Kiwi Farms user gildersleeve reports losing a favourites playlist from 2006 and how this prompted them to start downloading content they like.
• YouTuber Tavon Evans reports his playlists being deleted for “know good reason” and tags it “make me famous” (Direct links only; no archive).
• Kiwi Farms user One Quick Post had a playlist deleted due to “child endangerment”.
• Reddit user Aggressive_Sand_835 says in r/YouTube that their “songs” playlist was removed.
• AvilnYTproblems says “YouTube deleted my PLAYLIST named Islam, A Reality Check. The have refused to restore it. They claimed it was Hate Speech” (No archive, direct links only).
• Reddit user TaylorHyuuga asks why their playlist was removed on r/YouTube.
• A user asks Google about the removal of “Larissa’s Playlist”.
• Reddit user WalkerSpectre reports their playlist being deleted.
• A user named McSpankiez360, while reading someone else’s support request on Google, says, “wow thats crazy because the morons at youtube deleted my playlist for ‘hate speech’ when it contained absolutely no hate speech at all. What a backwards and stupid company”.

Possible solutions:

• Kiwi Farms user Brabbit Narp says that you can archive playlist data using your Google account’s archival feature.

 

[Samhain]

A guy I know says that, if he wants to reply to someone and have them get a notification for it, he has to go into the comment chain rather than respond directly to the reply he received. Sort of like shadowbanning, but using the crippled reply function as a means to do it.

I've noticed this. If I reply via the notification, it's 50/50 whether the reply actually gets through. The annoying thing is, even if the reply doesn't go through, I'll still get notifications for other replies to the same comment as if my reply went through. Aggravating.

 

[Aquarius]

I'll still get notifications for other replies to the same comment as if my reply went through

That’s fucking weird. Although, just to be certain, do you know that they didn’t go through? I know filtered comments will often appear when one “sorts by new” but not if you scroll by top comments. This creates an annoying situation where, if someone was sorting-by-new, found your comment, and responded, you might not be able to get context for their comment / see what you said before unless you sort-by-new and if find your comment again. Which, depending on the size of the comment section, can be prohibitive.

I don’t wanna post the screenshots my buddy sent me, but what he showed me was an automatic removal of the “@“ function. As in, he’d hit reply, the comment would have an @ tag addressing the person he was replying to, but when he posted it was gone. The “@“ was still there, but there was no name and could not be made to retroactively @ them afterwards through comment editing.

He thought maybe this person had blocked him but then they would keep responding! Some would even remark on the missing @ tag, and joke about my friend’s inability to reply properly. Furthermore, like I said before, he could go back into the comment thread and, provided the thing he was responding to wasn’t also eaten by YouTube, reply normally. It was only when replying after immediately hitting the notification button would he experience this.

Shit’s fucked.

 

[Samhain]

That’s fucking weird. Although, just to be certain, do you know that they didn’t go through? I know filtered comments will often appear when one “sorts by new” but not if you scroll by top comments.

I know, I posted about this very issue with comment sorting on the previous page of this thread. And yes, I check, and notice that the comments aren't visible in either sorting method. They get insta-deleted.

I don’t wanna post the screenshots my buddy sent me, but what he showed me was an automatic removal of the “@“ function. As in, he’d hit reply, the comment would have an @ tag addressing the person he was replying to, but when he posted it was gone. The “@“ was still there, but there was no name and could not be made to retroactively @ them afterwards through comment editing.

I've been noticing this a lot in the past few weeks. I'm not sure if it only began happening in the past few weeks, or if this issue simply escalated substantially since then. It's really weird.

Shit’s fucked.

The whole platform is being destroyed by excessive censorship caused by the people running YT, and what I can only assume are bugs in their censorship algorithm. There often seems to be no rhyme or reason for why comments get hidden in the "top comments" view, or straight up auto-deleted. The search function has been garbage for years now, too. It's almost impossible to discover certain videos or small accounts, and YT shadowbans a bunch of search terms.

 

[Shoresy]

Those faggots at youtube removed the New For You filter on the home feed. Why the fuck did they do that.

Update: New To You is back now. And there's also a new filter I hadn't seen before called Posts, to filter to just community posts. I don't know what's going on with YouTube as of late. Stuff just disappears and comes back at random.

Yesterday:



Today:



Reason for two images is because usually it shows up at the end of the filters list until you refresh the feed, then it pops back to the front of the list. At least that's been my experience with ReVanced.

Also in terms of comments being fucked, I don't know if it's just a ReVanced issue or not, but tapping on a comment to reply to it doesn't seem to work anymore. Usually it would bring up the reply prompt with the person whose message you tapped on being tagged automatically but now that doesn't work. Might just be some ReVanced comment setting I've toggled as I did completely hide the entire comments section at one point.

 

[30+GameOvers]

y2mate is now back to gatekeeping their 720p downloads behind software. How do you make something as simple as a youtube downloading gay and convoluted?

 

[grump]

Does anybody knows further about autodeletion of comments in the platform? Sometimes i post comments that somehow disapeared/got deleted and i've read about others experiencing this as well

It's some sort of algorithm that looks for keywords and phrases, but it's very bad at understanding full comments. I've had spicy comments get auto-deleted, but I've also had completely innocuous comments get auto-deleted as well. Their censorship algo is very buggy.

You'll also get comments that don't get auto-deleted, but do get demoted and hidden in the "top comments" sorting view. How that works is a real mystery to me, honestly. I've had spicy comments be visible in this view, but again, some innocuous comments get hidden for some reason. The hidden comments in "top comments" sorting will be visible in "newest first" sorting. Seemingly no rhyme or reason to how and why certain comments get demoted.

I assume YouTube keeps a permanent record of how many comments you've had deleted either automatically or via your comments being reported by someone and then removed manually. I wouldn't be surprised if your account gets flagged once you reach a certain threshold. How that affects the censorship algo is anyone's guess.

Sometimes I'll get all my comments immediately deleted for like 10 comments in a row and then my 11th comment will somehow get posted and then it will be back to autodeletion again. Only for my ability to comment freely to come back for weeks at a time. Then back to everything getting autodeleted. All for no apparent reason.

 

[Solid Hyrax]

y2mate is now back to gatekeeping their 720p downloads behind software. How do you make something as simple as a youtube downloading gay and convoluted?

Why aren't you using yt-dlp?