Recently, we were made aware of a small spate of seemingly random YouTube channel shutdowns. YouTube executed these without much warning and the channels were all upwards of 10k subscribers.

The shutdowns were contested and thankfully for the creators, each of their channels were reinstated.

All is well.

The End.

Well ... not for us.

The Life of a Content Creator

Although our channel never reached into the tens of thousands or even hundreds for that matter, we are still well acquainted with the time investment that is necessary to "get the views". While not the same type of sweat-inducing labor that we do on the homestead, its still definitely a lot of work. This probably is one reason why we published so few videos. Not that we didn't have the content or subject matter, time was a factor.

If YouTube is your bread and butter, it can be very stressful. I'm sure many content creators go to sleep and wake-up thinking about the next video and what thumbnail and title to use to entice viewers to click and watch. There is the dopamine rush that comes with users engaging the like and subscribe buttons. In addition, there's the emotional rollercoaster that can be induced merely from reading viewers comments. Good and bad. It can be exhausting as you can imagine.

How would you feel if you invested all of that time, energy, and effort into carefully crafting and growing your channel, only to wake up one day with a notice from YouTube stating that you've violated some nebulous policy that they may or may not name? All that work ... gone?

Poof?

Just like that?

Really?

Censorship and Slavery to the Algorithm

The past several years speak for themselves when it comes to censorship on this platform. What was fine to say on Tuesday, will get you in trouble on Thursday. No memo is sent out beforehand to warn you. You just kind of learn as you go, either from others, or from being penalized yourself.

YouTube gives you the proverbial whack on the rear-end to teach you a lesson. Afterwards, you start tip-toeing around the algo. You say things like 'the pokey-poke', 'the jab', etc. You hesitate on whether or not to edit out a certain section of that recently produced video, for fear that Daddy YouTube will give you a time-out.

You repeatedly implore your viewers to 'please watch until the end', or 'let the commercials play through', or 'hit that like button'. Because, apparently, the algorithm likes these things and will smile upon you when these actions take place. You're thus rewarded with more visibility leading to potentially more clicks and maybe more moolah!

Its exhausting just thinking about it. What kind of mental and emotional gulag are we confining ourselves to? Is it really worth it friends?

AI Dumping Ground

Adding to the muck already mentioned, there is the ever growing reality that YouTube is becoming an AI cesspool overrun with made-up whimiscal fairy tales touting themselves as real.

A friend sent us links sharing a couple of videos. After doing a little bit of investigation it was discovered that these were fakes! Made-up! Not real! These types of channels are growing by the day, dare we say, by the hour and some of them have thousands of subscribers! What's the point of being an actual human? Of putting in the work to create something genuine only to have something fake one-up you?

And just to be clear, we are not "AI Phobes". When used responsibly AI can be helpful in generating valuable content. There have been many tangible benefits to it but quite honestly, it's getting out of hand on YouTube. No one can argue that there is a growing preponderance of AI tomfoolery (a.k.a. digital gobbledygook) running amok there, and trying to distinguish the true from the false is getting more and more difficult. (Please don't be put off by the highly technical terminology 😊)

The Good Things

In an effort to not make this a full on anti-YouTube rant ... let's be fair and mention some of the good things about it.

1. It's free.
2. If you're good at it and you don't mind jumping through the hoops, you can make a career out of it.
3. Its a great way to get information in front of a lot of people.

There.

No really. We'll be the first to admit that we've learned a lot from YouTube and we're grateful for those creators that have persevered and produced valuable content. In fact, we highlight some channels that have been helpful to us on our Resources page. We tip our hats to these creators while at the same time acknowledging that we are choosing a different path for ourselves. We will still share what we hope is helpful and valuable content, but without incurring YT burnout.

Freedom! And Our Plans for the Future.

We love the freedom of country-living! Absolutely love it! That being the case, there is no need for us to shackle ourselves to a platform that at any given moment could erase us.

No Thanks.

We've decided, with prayer, to cease our YouTube activity and just focus on blogging. We may still produce videos here and there but if we do, they will be hosted on our website. We're not seeking large audiences. We never want to be reliant on YouTube for our income. And we want to have the freedom to say and post as we please. We could frankly care less about 'The Algorithm'. Freedom is nice :-)

That's all for now friends! If you have any questions or comments, please leave them below. God Bless and Happy Homesteading!