Is that why Youtube has become unwatchable?

In a word, way less free. And more commercials.

All you pirates with your archives and torrents. You are Luke Skywalker here.

YouTube has so much questionable content on it that gets millions of views... Parents who've found ways to monetize their kids. Dangerous / unpleasant pranks being pulled on members the public. Conspiracy theories. Fake game shows where the winners being given money are actually friends of the host. Or where the host pretends contestants are doing something dangerous, but actually it's CGI, (misleading young viewers into thinking the dangerous stuff is real / fun). Morons making content that's attractive to kids who don't know better. Etc.

While there is some quality content on there, the amount of terrible content getting vast amount of views is pretty high.

I guess one question is whether TV is much better.. I would say on average it probably is less bad, although there have also been / are questionable unethical tv shows. But at least with TV shows there's more likely to be a few more layers of questioning / analysing / looking at the ethics, with responsible people involved.

In my circle, piracy is making a comeback. We're tired of having to hunt down streaming services, and be extorted for hundreds of euro a month, just to see ads for their own programs.

Streaming was fun for a while, but as always these greedy execs are ruining it.

I swear to God, I can't go three clicks on YouTube without seeing a recommended video like "BASED Trump OWNS woke moralist!"

Every time I see anything like that, I'm always clicking not interested, don't recommend channel, etc. But it doesn't help. I would think it's something to do with my searches, or someone in my household watching this sort of content behind my back, but if you look at the front page of YouTube before having searched anything (you can do this through third party services such as GrayJay; it was getting so bad that YouTube itself had to disable their front page when you're not logged in. Seriously, try opening YouTube in an incognito tab. I promise you they would not disable their front page without an extremely important reason to; front pages are prime space!) it's all the same kind of content. Youtube as it stands is worse than the most hyperbolic satirizations of Fox News. FAANG are the ones pushing the fascism. FAANG are the mouths of our owners.

Yet it still has the worst UI/UX for a TV