YouTube is the most popular “TV channel” in the whole country; most of us just can’t get enough of hitting the big red play button, and I’m absolutely one of them. But among the documentaries, music videos, and viral creators, YouTube has been dropping off hard in recent years, and it’s becoming harder and harder to ignore these problems.
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Over-Commercialization
I get it. Every free service has to find a way to generate revenue to sustain itself and support ongoing improvements. YouTube generates revenue mainly through advertising, but the number of ads has reached overwhelming levels. Ads are no longer simple interruptions; they’ve become so prominent that they’re almost making the site unusable if you don’t pay for YouTube Premium.
Even when I thought it couldn’t get worse, YouTube has proved me wrong every single time. For instance, the very first card on YouTube is almost always an ad, and ads are also displayed among video cards when you scroll down the page. On mobile, ads are even worse because, despite some ads being portrait videos, they, for some reason, occupy the full screen while playing.
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Additionally, after an ad or two before a video, you’ll still see a small card of the same ad at the bottom of the video player. If you don’t see an ad at the start of a video, a static one may be displayed below. You may also encounter another ad occupying the rest of the display when you pause the video, as I did while writing this article.
Ads have become longer as well, and, to make matters worse, some are now unskippable and can last as long as 15 seconds on mobile (or up to a full minute on TV). Ads shown in content have become more frequent as well. And this is just scratching the surface of how over-commercialized YouTube currently is.
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The Algorithm Feels Broken
One of the reasons I was drawn to YouTube early on was its ability to surface content that I care about. Whether it was a niche documentary, a creator with only a few thousand subscribers, or a hidden gem on a topic I just discovered, YouTube’s recommendation system felt almost magical. It struck a near-perfect balance between familiarity and discovery. However, it now feels skewed and repetitive.
These days, the algorithm pushes similar content over and over, especially if you make the mistake of watching a single video about a given topic you aren’t normally interested in. For instance, if I watch just one video about horoscopes, a topic I don’t typically follow, YouTube’s algorithm will somehow recognize it as my new favorite and bombard me with similar content for the next several days.
It seems to forget about everything else and bases its recommendations on that one video. This doesn’t just apply to videos. I see the same thing on YouTube Shorts. I’ve also noticed a weird trend where the algorithm pushes content I’ve already watched or outdated content from years ago.
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It’s also become common to miss out on videos from creators I follow these days if I don’t manually search for them or dig through my subscriptions to find their latest uploads. Sure, there are ways to improve YouTube recommendations. However, I don’t like having to do this occasionally—it used to work automatically.
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Clickbait and Sensationalism Are Everywhere
A simple scroll through YouTube today doesn’t end without being bombarded with exaggerated thumbnails or dramatic titles that don’t accurately reflect the content of the video. Clickbait and sensationalism have taken over the platform, significantly impacting the quality of content.
Most videos on the platform now include either an overblown title or thumbnail, regardless of the topic. It feels like every video is trying to trick me into clicking. YouTube’s algorithm promotes content that receives the most clicks, even if it’s misleading or AI-generated, and thus, creators are under pressure to stand out in a crowded feed.
As a result, we get titles like “You Won’t Believe What Happened!” along with the common YouTube thumbnail facial expressions for nearly everything. And more often than not, the actual video doesn’t live up to the hype, or the content is unrelated.
It’s a trend that even some of the most reputable creators have adopted to stay relevant. This has created an environment where creativity often takes a backseat to attention-grabbing tactics. It’s all about who can create the most catchy title or thumbnail that can attract the most clicks. As a result, YouTube feels less like a platform for creativity and more like a race for attention.
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Hidden Dislike Counts
Arguably, the most controversial change YouTube has made in recent years is hiding the dislike count on videos. This shift felt like a step backward in terms of transparency because the dislike count was a strong indicator of whether the video delivers what it promises.
For instance, I’m a huge soccer fan, and I love to watch game highlights if I miss the live action. Since YouTube is my go-to place for such, I open the app to search for highlights an hour or so after a game. I expect the first search result to be the right content, but to my disappointment, I’ve found that it’s not always the actual game highlights after a minute or two—it could be gameplay footage of someone playing a soccer video game. I relied on dislike counts as quick indicators of a video’s credibility, but now I can’t.
YouTube said the move was meant to protect creators from harassment and reduce dislike attacks, which is a valid concern. However, in practice, it has made it hard to differentiate genuinely helpful content from misleading or low-quality videos.
Outdated tutorials, scams disguised as reviews, or clickbait content now get a free pass. The only way to judge video quality is by watching it or scanning the comments (if enabled), both of which are time-consuming.
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More Push for Shorts
Since TikTok’s rise, numerous sites have attempted to compete with it by offering short-form content, including YouTube. I’m not saying short-form content is bad. It can be great for fun and education by shrinking long-form content into bite-sized nuggets of knowledge.
However, YouTube’s constant push for Shorts is frustrating. Shorts have a dedicated tab, and are additionally featured in the Home tab and search results page. For searching, sometimes the top search results are filled with Shorts, or after one or two long-form videos, there’s a minimum of three or four rows.
YouTube offers the option to reduce the number of Shorts displayed, but this setting only lasts for a few days; after that, everything will return to normal. Additionally, YouTube only temporarily hides them from the home feed. They’ll still appear in related videos and search results.
3
Corporate Dominance
Another disappointing trend on YouTube has been the growing presence—and preference—of big corporations. YouTube once stood out as a treasure trove of authentic, creator-driven content, but today, it’s heavily dominated by corporate entities.
Many small creators struggle because YouTube increasingly prioritizes corporate channels over them in most niches. This not only drowns out independent voices but also reinforces a more sanitized, traditional media vibe that YouTube once disrupted. That has made the site no longer about authenticity but more about advertiser-friendly videos from big corporations.
The YouTube comment section used to be an extension of the video. Through the comment section, you could find more insights about the topic from other viewers, and it was a place where communities could form.
But in recent years, the comment section has steadily deteriorated despite YouTube’s efforts to filter out spam. The comment section is no longer a space for meaningful discussion. Instead, it’s filled with spam bots, scam links, and low-effort engagement bait.
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The comment section of a video on just about any topic is filled with irrelevant comments, self-promotion, recycled jokes that appear on every trending video, and some viewers fishing for likes. It’s becoming increasingly difficult to find genuine or critical feedback because it gets buried beneath performative comments like “Who’s watching this in 2025?”.
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More Bugs
YouTube is constantly improving the platform with new features and fixing existing bugs, but I can’t help but notice how the number of bugs and glitches seems to be steadily increasing. For example, 60FPS videos oddly default to 480p when played at 1.5x speed.
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I’ve also encountered a bug that prevents me from changing the video quality, as the option becomes grayed out on some occasions. More recently, I had an issue where I was automatically signed out of YouTube’s TV app, and when I tried to sign back in, I was unsuccessful for several days. Another annoying issue is that when I’ve disabled video previews from autoplaying on one platform, it doesn’t apply everywhere.
And these are just bugs I have personally experienced—there are many threads on Reddit’s r/YouTube subreddit about different bugs and glitches on the site.
YouTube remains unmatched in its content variety, but its user experience is steadily declining. While I still use the platform, it’s hard to ignore how much it has changed—and not always for the better. If it continues down this path, it risks losing the very community that made it thrive.
