loading . . . I think YouTube harms users and creators Resources for PeerTube and video podcasts are at the bottom of the post.
It began while I was peeing.
Okay, maybe it didn't exactly begin while I was peeing, because, you know, timezones and all that, and not everyone in is in America, but for me, it began while I was peeing.
I was looking at some previous text messages from the night before, asking me such things as did you see this amazing retro video on YouTube about how the Coffee lady got absolutely destroyed on Twitter? and? Hey bro, can you check out my YouTube channel? To which I promptly replied, got a podcast instead?
Even though it was about two in the morning, they replied, nope! I just have YouTube because with podcasts, there's no audience. YouTube has an audience built in, and it has a comments section.
Resigned, I clicked on the video, having forgotten that I signed out of YouTube on my browsers to do some troubleshooting.
At first, the requirement dialog didn't register. I had to sign into YouTube in order to watch this video. I wouldn't know this at the time, but this was a similar incident to the YouTube recommended videos not being available while logged out, either. I didn't get that bug, but the dialog was persistent.
In order to watch the video, I had to login.
I asked my friend, "did you age restrict the video?"
"No," they replied, "why?"
"I can't watch the video unless I sign in."
"So sign in," they replied, as if I didn't know how to use the internet.
I signed into watch the video.
That got me thinking, has YouTube finally, finally, slid down the Enshittification ramp? I believe it has.
YouTube used to be slower at sliding down the Enshittification pipeline. For those not as online as I am, Enshittification was coined by a writer to obfuscate the words, decay, and, deteriorate. Just kidding, it's supposed to be a distilled word that breaks down a series of processes that happen to all venture backed platforms/things that go something like this, paraphrased, of course. I'm sure someone will write 9,000 words on how I don't understand internet slang, which, they'd be right. After all, in high school, it took me a month to discover that the phrase, "OMG," meant, oh my god. I didn't Google it at the time. Don't ask me why. Anyway, explaining the Enshittification process.
First, a venture backed service gets investors and shareholders. This usually happens to tech companies because investors, unless proven otherwise, are categorically awful at determining actually useful innovations. Plus, they're just bored and want to throw money at promises in tech because their lives have no meaning. At least, that's my conspiracy theory anyway, but go with it.
While this new venture backed thing has capital, basically, a glorified loan, they are super duper good to their users. This love won't last long, trust me. The service will use it's loan to build features that lure people in. It's a trap, but the trap has a bunch of carrots around it to disguise it as a tech platform that likes you.
The service then abuses their users to make money for their business customers. Soon after, the business customers get the same abuse to claw money for the investors, and then, they just trudge along until they go offline, or, in internet speak, fucking die LOL.
For a really easy example of Enshittification, dating apps have become unusable, Google purposefully makes their products worse, Facebook is worse day by day, every social media platform rots, eventually, and a whole bunch more examples from Amazon preventing people from downloading E-Books to Microsoft making setting up a new computer almost impossible, to just finally, prices go up because extracting money is good for investors and nobody else.
YouTube was the slowest at sliding down this pipeline. I can't quite figure out why, to be Frank, but now, things have changed. YouTube is actively harming it's users and it's creators.
## YouTube is actively a pain to use.
YouTube has become very cumbersome to use. I don't just mean annoying. I mean it feels actively hostile to free users if you don't have a premium subscription, which, well, I'll never have because fuck Google, but the things that make YouTube actively hostile to use now are as follows.
1 YouTube actively strangling their third party API access so other front ends don't work. This also makes it harder for people to turn YouTube channels into podcast feeds.
2 Literal product ads flood search results instead of YouTube videos when searching on the official mobile apps.
3 Ads that eclipse or otherwise prevent me from watching the video. For example, I clicked on a video, intending to watch it. The ad itself was a three hour video designed to look, and sound like, a YouTube video. If I didn't know the patterns of YouTube by now to have an ad before every video, I wouldn't be able to tell the video I was supposed to be watching from the ad that was also shot as if it were a YouTube video. Another example of this is ads popping up so frequently that I can't even make it five minutes past a video without multiple ads playing.
4 The app accessibility fluctuates so much between releases I consider the apps, on all platforms, to be forever broken.
As if the above wasn't enough, YouTube removed video replies so they could focus on their YouTube Algorithm, and there's a bunch more ways YouTube harms it's users and also its creators, you know, the people that make the service what it is.
## How YouTube harms creators.
I'm not a creator on YouTube. My podcast is my playground because I can control audio rather than video. Plus, I'm not interacting with content I can't determine the output of. I don't need sight to work with audio. With YouTube, I'll always be at a disadvantage. This is why I prefer podcasts to YouTube any day of the week, for example. In a podcast, hosts have to describe things for everybody. Universal audio description has to be provided or else nobody will understand what's happening.
Even 'if I'm not a creator on YouTube, I can sympathize with the shit they have to put up with. For example, here's just a short list.
1. Their algorithm punishes them if people don't watch their videos soon after they upload it.
2. YouTube sabotages creators income in a number of ways.
3. YouTube falsely strikes creators because their content ID monitoring process is careless and automated.
4. YouTube lets others exploit your videos for AI training and YouTube exploits their creators to train their AI.
5. YouTube replaced community captions with a worse solution that doesn't get updates
With all those things, and more things like YouTube removing social features because it didn't make them money and whole countries banning YouTube, I don't understand why creators don't want to publish video podcasts on a different host where the algorithm can't harm their content, as an example. Either way, people are watching your stuff on their phones anyway, so I don't know why you'd refuse an advantage of a more open video platform.
One constant rebuke to moving away from YouTube I hear repeatedly is, YouTube gives me money. Do they really give you money though?
From my understanding, YouTube takes almost 50% of your income from their ads and I suspect that will grow as well. As far as creator's income, I was under the impression that the bulk of creator's income comes from Patreon like websites and direct donations rather than any significant income from ads.
Since income comes from patronage and donations, this is why I don't at all feel guilty about consuming RSS feed content first. There are,, of course, other reasons why I prefer feed based content though!
## Why I prefer PeerTube or podcasts.
As the internet deteriorates, I've been moving towards content I can control, backup, share, and follow, easier. I don't want to fight with yet another platform just to wind down for the night. PeerTube and or Podcasts give me the freedom and flexibility no other platform provides because video and audio podcasts provide RSS feeds.
Things published with an RSS feed allow me, the user, to take content and creators no matter where I go. If an app becomes inaccessible to me and I can't take your content with me, you'll lose me as an audience. That might not be so bad, you think, because I'm disabled and disabled people aren't the majority, but consider this scenario.
If I can't take you and or your content with me, that's one less avenue for sharing. I share a lot of things I'm reading or listening to in my newsletters to my many subscribers. If I can't access your content anymore, I'll just go somewhere else and listen to someone else. This also means, though, that my thousands of followers won't know you exist either until someone else recommends you. If I can't access your content, how will I know how awesome your new video essay is?
With podcasts, both audio and video podcasts, portability is the key here. It always has been the key, and I'm happy to say it will remain the point, despite places like Spotify trying to kill the RSS feed.
Here's more evidence Spotify hates the RSS feed. Platforms don't like portability, as much as they try and lie to you and say they do. Portability gives you an exit, and an out, to just not put up with their nonsense anymore.
I always put the PeerTube RSS feed into my favorite podcast app of choice because my podcast app of choice was designed with accessibility in mind. I don't have to interface with the website or even an inaccessible platform. It puts me in control, and trust me, that will make it far easier to share than a closed platform.
Because of the blindness, even though PeerTube supports podcast apps and podcast feeds, I prefer audio only podcasts for a number of reasons.
I prefer audio only podcasts because, firstly, it's less power to consume. It's less intense on battery. It's faster to download. Audio description is a must otherwise I don't know what's happening or what people are referencing.
This is why I prefer audio Let's Play content rather than video Let's Play content, as just one example. Even though I love TV shows and movies with audio description, I'll always enjoy a good fiction podcast just a tad more because I can download the content and listen offline.
Plus, podcast audiobooks are cheaper than any audiobook subscription service, but moving on!
Podcasts give me the ability to listen to your content in a number of ways and you don't even have to do anything extra. You just publish your thing, and because I'm following you, I'll get that thing. I'll get that thing in my preferred app, something you don't even have to think about if you don't want to.
This is what baffles me about YouTube creators. I don't understand why the creators want to make it harder, not easier, for me to watch your thing. Don't you want to have an audience?
There's a constant argument that YouTube has more audiences than a more open standard such as RSS. PeerTube, or otherwise. Maybe in the short term, yes. That algorithm will give you a short boost but it will never sustain your audience in the end.
If you want to have the maximum, long term, reach, do something with RSS. PeerTube, or podcasts. You won't get a short term algorithm boost, but you'll have a more sustained audience that can take your content with them. I keep banging this drum because YouTube creators notice decreasing views even though their subscriber count is higher than before because the algorithm stopped showing them to their subscribers. With RSS, podcast or PeerTube, anybody will get your stuff if they follow your feed. It's that simple.
Just today, I moved all my podcast feeds to a new podcast app. The creators I follow never lost a subscriber. Contrast that with the current YouTube update that currently has me unable to tell what a videos title is with my screen reader. I don't know if and when it will ever get fixed, and because I don't know if and when it will ever get fixed, my creators have lost an audience because I can't watch YouTube videos in another app because of the API reductions mentioned earlier. I'm locked out. I can't share their new things either, because I can't access anything they've uploaded.
Meanwhile, I'm happily playing a podcast in the background. It's not interrupted by some random ad the platform decides to push. I can freely sink into the content and enjoy it and soak it up. I can't do that with YouTube, because YouTube is harmful to it's creators and it's users, and it's only a matter of time before the problem gets worse.
## Video podcast resources.
The below is not an exaustive list but it will get you started with hosts that let you publish video.
* This roundup showcases hosts with video capabilities.
* Zencastr has video podcasting
* Blueberry has video podcast hosting
* CoHost has video podcast hosting
## PeerTube resources.
All PeerTube channels work in podcast apps, so you just need to find a place to host your videos. The below is not an exaustive list.
* Main Join PeerTube directory
* Fedi Garden's PeerTube listings
https://sightlessscribbles.com/posts/20250414/
