Despite the many trends on YouTube that talk about broken features such as the search algorithm, there is a monolithic problem that no user talks about their privacy. To any reader that does not know copyright strikes are a mini legal system on YouTube. If someone steals another’s work without altering it or changing, so that it falls under fair use, then the original owner can copyright strike the creator. The video is immediately removed, however it is not deleted but rather archived for YouTube to review over. After this, the creator has to go through Copyright School to only get access to their account, that has a copyright strike and the video is gone. With a copyright strike on a creator’s channel, it can limit them in multiple ways, such as forcing videos to only be so long, and denying the creation of any custom thumbnails. The next step, is to try to get the video reinstated or the strike removed, hopefully both.

To do this there are two options one of which is to wait 4-5 months for the strike to expire which is essentially voided for active YouTubers. The other option is to file a counter notification or a message to YouTube and claimant saying that the video falls under fair use which is quicker and more efficient than the first option. When the creator fills out an appeal, it takes them to a page where YouTube requires the creator to enter extremely personal info, such as their full legal name, street address and phone number. However, this info does not just stay with YouTube, it also gets sent to the person who filed the copyright strike. This system is so awful, and allows for many problems to occur such as blackmailing, and has happened to many content creators before. One such case was with a YouTuber named Pyrocynical, where a person didn’t like him so they filed out a fake copyright strike to not only gain temporary monetization over the video, but also to get extremely personal and valuable info.

This policy not only affects creator’s safety, but also their ambiguity, which was the very thing YouTube was originally based off of.  Other well known and talked about problems such as the search algorithm that is looking worse for wear, but it isn’t nearly as bad in comparison to this. Now, YouTube has given people leverage to blackmail other people. The way I see it, YouTube needs to fix this by doing something similar to Twitter’s policy of revealing private information. This requires some form of government identification to make sure everything checks out, and when the cause is over they delete it without sending it to anyone else.