YouTube is breaking their own services and not providing any support to fix it.
Why? To save and make money. YouTube does not care about newcomers and little people. They care about their big players, whether it be advertisers or top YouTubers. Indie developers and new video producers are being locked out of using YouTube to the fullest extent, and this is by Google’s design.
The “Longer Than 15 Minute” Rule, and Account Verification
You might think limiting video uploads greater than 15 minutes to verified accounts is a logical, fair way to mitigate bots and save money. And it is– but not when the service is broken, on purpose, to essentially lock people out from uploading videos longer than 15 minutes. On top of this being broken, as we all know, Google and/or YouTube simply do not have customer support–at least, not for people like you and me. They have support for businesses and again, top YouTubers. Common people simply do not exist in the mind of YouTube, we only exist as products. Just look at this thread with over 800 replies since MARCH, one month ago.
I refuse to believe a company as large and intelligent as Google is unable to fix or unaware of the problem with their account verification service. This is on purpose to mitigate cost.
The YouTube Data API Request
YouTube’s Data API has many uses, one of which you can request metadata about YouTube videos and even search for videos based on keywords. When the Data API was first released, they allowed developers to use it at a very high frequency, with almost no limits. As of around 2 years ago, they lowered this Quota Limit from 10 million, to about 10,000. What does this mean? Well, in using my own project with uses the Data API, I ended up hitting the limit by myself. If I were to ever launch this project, it wouldn’t last more than a few minutes, making this Data API utterly useless unless I could get a quota increase.
This led me to make a quota increase request, in which you fill out a very length form. I did this, and the system glitched for me where after 1 month, they canceled my request even though everything was provided. I re-filled the form and submitted, and it has now been 9 months since I submitted that form. I could have had an entire stupid baby in this time. They keep coming back to me every 3 months, asking me some bullshit question, and I keep answering, and I always ask politely, “Is there an ETA on when this will be done? I’ve been waiting for 9 months now”, and they just go radio silent.
This has completely derailed one of my favorite projects. And I have a growing disdain for Google & YouTube because of this. What other recourse do I have besides whining about it on the internet? I can mail them an angry letter, maybe? But they’ll just ignore that too.
What can we do as indie devs and creators?
Nothing, we’ve already lost. YouTube, the media giant, does not give a fuck about you. You do not exist to them as anything but a supple cow with utters to milk. I wish there were competitors to YouTube, as I’m sure we would have already fled the platform, but Google and YouTube are just too effective at fucking us over.
