It appears that YouTube has it out for videos about Kodi, the streaming media player software. Earlier this week, I randomly received a notice from YouTube that they’ve just now determined my 5-year-old video about sideloading Kodi on a Fire TV is against their community guidelines and must be age-restricted for viewers that are under 18 years old. I assumed it was a mistake and appealed the decision, but the appeal was denied. Overnight, my 4-year-old video about a custom Kodi boot animation on a Fire TV was also age-restricted. Given that this second video shows nothing more than a Fire TV restarting and displaying an animated Kodi logo, it seems that YouTube is on the attack against videos that are even remotely related to Kodi.
Kodi has long suffered from an unmerited negative reputation. On its own, Kodi is nothing more than a free and open-source application to organize and play media. Unfortunately, its powerful add-on capabilities have attracted numerous piracy outlets to use it as the vessel for providing access to pirated content. Despite the Kodi team’s own efforts to thwart its use for piracy, many uninformed companies and individuals incorrectly consider anything related to Kodi to be about piracy.
Around a year ago, YouTube began demonetizing videos about Kodi, which prevents the video’s creators from making money through advertisements on the video. Now it seems like YouTube is taking it a step further to suppress videos about Kodi through age-restrictions which not only prevent the video from being demonetized, but also prevent the video from being viewed by anyone who is not logged into YouTube or is under 18 years of age.
It’s understandable that YouTube would demonetize and even age-restrict videos that explain how to pirate content. However, it seems like they’re unfairly clumping any video that mentions Kodi into a generic piracy bucket, whether or not the video is about piracy. My second video to be age-restricted isn’t even really about Kodi and has nothing to do with the application itself, nor does it even show the application. It is just a demonstration of what changing the boot animation of a Fire TV looks like. The video doesn’t even have any dialogue or captions. I just happened to use the Kodi logo as the new boot animation and used the word “Kodi” in the video’s title, which is the likely reason why it was flagged. Calling that video inappropriate for young viewers is absurd.
It’s unfair to the volunteers behind Kodi, who work hard to create such a great piece of software, for YouTube to blindly suppress their effort. It’s also unfair to content creators who have released videos about Kodi, that have nothing to do with piracy, to make their work difficult to watch and monetize.
@AFTVnews
AFTVnews
Google does one thing really well..change their minds. They’re consistently inconsistent.
Google does everything the public dont want it’s a consitanly ego trip…. all powerfull google… thing is there is competition now and it’s getting bigger…
Absolute disgrace to monniter the public sites like troypoint… they want it all to be Google and no one else . It’s a stab in the back through greed. Typical American..
they’re NOT american
the founders are from the former USSR
Gradually I began to hate them.
amazing how streaming and video platforms want you to watch most anything except want you want or need. Waste of time on a pile of junk
I did not get the message, it was fixed it seems.
It’s still listed as restricted in my YouTube dashboard. You likely didn’t get the message because you’re logged in with an over 18 account.
Mine was flagged as well.
I have a dozen or so firestick videos that were restricted last week. Some had kodi keywords. Some didn’t.
In an idea world, this wouldnt be happening, but in an idea world the reality of Kodi would be very different. 80% or more of the videos about Kodi are also about piracy, and 95% of people who use Kodi have at least one pirated video in their collection.
If you go back to the origins of Kodi, the forums use to be rampant with talk of piracy, after a few years it became slightly less acceptable. It was something that was perfectly fine as long as you didnt talk about it directly, there was still pirate plugins on the forums. It has only been a some what recent change that the team behind Kodi have taken a hard line on discussing piracy.
I know that I will likely catch a lot of flack for this comment, and a fair amount of people will probably say I am wrong, but I have been an active user since almost the start when you had to mod original xboxs. So Google/YouTube taking such a hard stand on Kodi probably shouldnt be happening, it is a bad look, but it is also very understandable. It does not matter what the team behind Kodi does, they will always be associated with piracy.
“I know that I will likely catch a lot of flack for this comment,”
as well you should
Google can go F off
You can get around the Age Restriction by goin to the YouTube icon under your video add-ons, click the button with the 3 lines and select Setting. The first tab allows you to change the Age Gate option and Search restrictions (default is Moderate).
YouTube better start age restricting videos depicting Ford, Chevy, and Dodge vehicles; I’ve seen all three brand of cars used in movies by criminals to help commit heinous crimes! /s
Spare me the conversation about piracy being linked to Kodi. Anyone who has browsed the developer forums as of late knows they want nothing to do with discussions of piracy and to >now< age restrict videos leaves me puzzled. Kodi is easily one of the best applications for managing a legal home media library, so why arbitrarily restrict all Kodi videos when there are many legitimate uses for it? It is one thing to restrict videos that clearly demonstrate how to load add-ons that enable piracy, but why lump in all videos? This is simply punishing a brand because it (sadly) happens to be used heavily in the piracy world, despite their wishes it not be.
Perhaps you should start cross publishing to “Rumble”. Their platform is committed to free speech and is now one of the most rapidly growing alternatives to ScrewTube.