My removal was swift but expected. It was December 2021, and I have been working on a new show for my YouTube channel. I had talked about the idea a couple of times on live streams while I was playing games. I wanted to do a show that reviewed lewd content and exploitation films. There were many YouTubers that had review channels discussing of pop culture comic books movies etc. they were even YouTubers who had cult movie reviews, but not to the extreme that I wanted. I was going after that hard R instead of that PG-13. I got the idea after playing some riskier, lewd games that were on the Nintendo online store. Furthermore, I noticed that my videos gain more traction when talking and making fun of the sexual theme games. Not only that, but I figured if that worked well on video games, surely it would translate better to certain films. My first video essay was going to be about a Hentai film. For those who may not know, Hentai is animated Porno’s from Japan that often have a very risky scenario or an even ridiculous one. I thought it would be perfect to make fun of, especially since I love the genre. I remember being young and being exposed to a lot of extreme sexual and violent anime when I was in my preteens. I thought they were gnarly, radical, gross and sometimes even funny. To be clear I never intended to show anything pornographic, I actually heavily censored myself for the first episode, blurring out nudity or cleverly hiding any explicit content. The foul language was also censored, but I did tell a story while using crude humor. Originally I was marked at 20 minutes in length of the show, but I trimmed it down to about 18 minutes. I was sure that my editing technique would at least give some laughs and make it entertaining enough for the viewer to watch. That was the goal, entertainment. I had warnings before from YouTube but after I submitted lewd reviews, and it was gaining some traction, my video was immediately removed. I got an email from YouTube’s team saying I violated their rules and put pornographic images on their site. Since this was a warning and not a strike, I appealed the video to try to get it back on YouTube. Worst case, I thought they’ll probably just delete that video and I would just have to edit some more. Shortly after appealing, I received another email saying that my entire channel has been removed due to violations. I had worked on my channel for two years, it was still young.

It also had a lot of videos that did not violate anything, such as vlog and behind the scenes video of my artwork. This also included some of my personal videos, they were on replaceable. Two years of working on that channel, and it was all gone. I was a bit devastated and very Angry. What was ironic was that even on the first episode I had discussed the issue of censorship from big tech such as YouTube and here I am getting censored and removed. Prior to me getting kicked off the platform, I was looking for alternatives to the video platform. I needed somewhere where I could host my videos without The hassle of censorship, bogus copyright claims and the fear of removal.

That's when I found a video platform called Odysee. Odysee.com is different because it was powered by blockchain technology. Instead of a centralized server, it used several computers to store images and video. Basically, you are minting your video. This prevented anyone from removing the contents. Unlike YouTube, they were zero corporate sponsors, which means there were zero ads on any of the videos you watched. In a lot of ways, he reminded me of a very young YouTube. I was there submitting videos in the early 2000s when YouTube was young, and you had so much freedom to express yourself. It was about you, The viewer, the content creator, The inspiring filmmaker. It was you on the tube. That’s what made it so revolutionary because everyone had a voice. It feels like since 2020 there has been a great shift in the direction of where YouTube was going. Since removing the count of dislike and the more corporate censorship, YouTube has become less about you. You, the viewer. You, the content creator. You, the inspiring filmmaker. It's no longer about you. It's about them and what they are selling you.

I'm jumping ship and so are others. If you feel the same way I do about YouTube's new rules, I recommend checking out Odysee site. Chances are your favorite content creator is already there.

I was banned by YouTube, Now what do I do