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The problem is that YouTube isn't just a video hosting platform. We have many of those. The problem is that YouTube is a business platform that lets you makes money from your business, as long as your business is mainly comprised of publishing videos. No amount of open-source software quality can replicate thousands of dollars of ad money flowing into your pocket. It's like making a 3D-printable plan of an Indian restaurant, it can't ever become an actual Indian restaurant.

Small or hobby creators, who aren't making money anyway, could use small platforms - but then they forfeit their chance to ever become big and get that money - at best they could become big and not get that money.

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I am still a bit upset that I got banned without even a warning. I tried to adhere to policies and figured if anything was wrong, I'd get a warning at least, and then I'd know better what the limits are. Unfortunately there is little recourse and even less feedback.

Even more annoying is that it terminates your YouTube account entirely, so now I can't even login to use it. And I was a premium subscriber, too!

The best thing about YouTube is their agreements with rights holders to allow music and revenue sharing easily, which makes it very simple for creators and remixers etc to not get their stuff removed via DMCA.

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Then start loading ads.

Youtube's biggest threat ever died in the cradle because they foolishly thought users would volunteer money to them.

No one with capital and capability looks at youtube, looks at youtube's audience, and says "Yeah, 30-40% ad-blocking and 4.5% paying for premium, these are the people I want to build services for!".

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Those ad-blocked viewers are important, which is why YT doesn't actually crack down on them.

Those are the people who will happily go to an alternative product. And while that product might start as a pirate YouTube, the one that nabs 30% of YT's traffic can certainly make a pivot to legit. If you're a content creator whose audience is mostly in that group, you're likely to start posting content directly on the competitor's site.

I'm guessing OP had their account banned for using a tool like yt-dl too aggressively. Then again, doing that does give a warning.

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Youtube does crack down on them, all the time. Why do you think they are "important"? What are they contributing, and to whom? How does Google benefit?
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They half-ass crack down on them. Not even that, it's dime-assed crackdown at best. You get that little "experiencing issues?" note that the bottom of the screen (which goes away after a few seconds), and an occasional 3-5s delay before video starts.

I explained exactly why I think they are important in that entire paragraph. And the evidence I'm right is the fact that YouTube could trivially prevent ad-blockers tomorrow, but they don't. They've tried it and quickly rolled back the changes. Presumably they lost a lot more audience than expected.

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He was on premium, paid for ad blocker.
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