If you go on Youtube, you wouldn’t have to look hard to find videos where content creators like myself are complaining about how YouTube is making life harder for them. Most of the complaints involve YouTube’s algorithm or YouTube’s copyright screening.

Although I think YouTube is a fantastic platform where creative people can share what they’ve got with the whole world, due to the way YouTube does things, I can also find it limiting.

There have been several things I’ve been wanting to do but felt I couldn’t with the way YouTube is running things right now.

In case you don’t know anything about the algorithm, it basically is a program that decides what videos it wants you the viewer to see. The “watch next” videos, the videos that show up on your home screen, the videos that show up on the side, the videos that show up first when you search for something, all of these videos are chosen by the algorithm.

No one knows 100% what the algorithm wants, but people have figured out a few things that can make videos get more views on YouTube.

I have so many movies I want to recommend, but I don’t have enough to say about them to make a 10 to 15 minute video. It seems that YouTube’s algorithm does not like videos that are only 2 to 3 minutes long. Unfortunately posting short videos can really prevent your channel from being seen.

I’ve also been wanting to talk about music, but that is a really hard thing to do for a small channel like mine on YouTube.

Creators on YouTube are allowed to use copyrighted material like movies, songs, etc. as long as they follow the guidelines of fair use as defined under section 107 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act.

The problem is since there are so many videos being uploaded to YouTube every second, there is no possible way for humans to check every video for copyright infringement. So a bot scans every video and if it notices copyrighted material, the video can get flagged whether the video is following the fair use guidelines or not.

The content creator then has to go through a lengthy process to try and get their video unflagged . Sometimes this process is not successful. Some of my videos are blocked in certain countries or unable to monetize due to being flagged, even though I made sure to follow the fair use guidelines. You can actually risk your channel getting deleted and it’s not like there is a customer services number you can call to speak to a representative and sort everything out. If you’re a small channel, you really have no choice but to play it safe.

I’m not sure why, but I’ve noticed that music will get flagged much easier compared to movie or tv show clips. This is why I will shy away from music as much as I can on YouTube.

With a website, I can create the content I want, and not worry about pleasing an algorithm or worrying about a bot understanding U.S. Copyright Law. So I will continue to post videos on Youtube as I have done in the past, but I will also have this website for all the content I don’t feel I can post on my regular YouTube channel.