Hey guys, here’s another out of the norm post about YouTube – but since I’m mainly known as a Mac YouTuber it still feels fitting to write this on here. You guys know me as Greg Hrutkay (a.k.a. Hrutkay Mods) and I’ve been on YouTube since October, 4 2010.
When I originally joined YouTube with my original account (Before Hrutkay Mods) in late 2007, it was a “Creators Wild West” where anything would go, and it really did. No moderation, little control, blatant copyright infringement, a true no holds barred wild west for all to access and view. By the time I started my Hrutkay Mods channel in 2010 and posting in late 2011, RWJ was #1 with his Equals 3 series. By then, YouTube actually had employees who cared about not getting sued and had already purged much copyrighted material from the site. The “Wild West” was over.
My videos started out innocently, showing the customization skills I had building Xbox 360s… Fun right? Well a lot of people thought so in late December 2011.. and by spring of 2012 I was already YouTube Partner eligible because of it.
I didn’t upload again until mid-2016 when I started my Mac Pro Series, documenting and sharing acquired skills by upgrading my own 2006 Mac Pro. This series is what started growing my subscriber base, it got me noticed in many websites, groups, forums; and by the time the El Capitan 2018-001 security update came out, my work became increasingly cited on Low End Mac. Shortly thereafter I was asked to become a moderator, then LEM staff member, and eventually an administrator of our Facebook group.
The last 15 years on YouTube has been a wild roller coaster ride to say the least. We all witnessed a lot of change, I know I sure did. In Late 2011 my second video I released (which blew up in views), released on the same day as a little known modder kid named dosdude1 released his very first video. Yes our very own Collin Mistr started the same day I started going viral (in late 2011 standards)!
.
First time I saw issues
By 2017 I hit 1000 subs with my PowerPC Series. This series ended up influencing a number of future YouTubers (one has over 200K subs now I’m not naming names) and made me A LOT of friends in the process. Well 2017 was the first time YouTube moderation reared its ugly head with my channel. My videos kept getting demonized for copyright infringement or for just random “not family friendly content”.
The copyrights were understandable I was using Apple videos in my PPC Series and they were getting flagged because of the music in them. Simple fix, cut the music out and presto, no more issues for that. BUT the “not family friendly content”… what was causing that? To be honest with you to this day I still have no clue but I re-edited the videos and removed anything that thought triggered it and it worked. Funny thing is one video I had to remove the word “crap” in it… THAT was the only edit and it’s still monetized today.
.
What happened to my channel recently
So YouTube moderation has already been mysterious and unexplainable in the past: they just wouldn’t give you an explanation and just left you guessing what you did wrong. But after 2017 all seemed fine and dandy again until shortly after my channel’s 15th anniversary when Google Gemini decided to come play with peoples channels.
I believe I was among the first to be hit in a rash-wave of takedowns, when multiple channels had their Windows 10/11 unsupported install videos taken down, and even a channel was suspended (and later reinstated) during this time. The frustrating part is how it appeared to look like one of my best performing video of all time less than 3 days after its release. Instead of capitalizing on the recent momentum of my channel, I ended up with a warning that expires Jan 16, 2026 that supposedly wouldn’t affect my channel (keep this in mind for later).
After 15 years with no warnings or strikes, making original content, I was shocked and quite angry. I found out in an email that I violated their “Harmful and Dangerous Policy” This is the policy that tries to prevent people’s deaths from unsafe video content. It’s also the policy they dump you into when they have no policy to cite. The explanation which you can ONLY see in the email is “Content that describes how to get unauthorized or free access to audio or audiovisual content, software, subscription services, or games that usually require payment isn’t allowed on YouTube.”
.
Where my head is at
Nowhere in the video did I show how to get ANYTHING for free other than security updates for Windows 10 until 2032. I appealed the decision thinking this is a mistake it’ll be fixed. My 23 minute video was reviewed by a “human” and my appeal was denied IN 5 MINUTES! I reached out to YouTube Help and start talking with a chat bot who transferred me over to a “human” who eventually replied, after 20 minutes of searching, with the generic response that was in my appeal email. Thinking I was actually talking to a real person I asked for the supervisor.
The “supervisor” has the same typing patterns as the “human” I was just talking to. After another 20 minute’s on hold while they did more research they replied back with THE SAME GENERIC RESPONSE! They wouldn’t tell me what I did wrong and said there was was nothing they could do it was all final. So I responded with this video. I also forgot to mention before I contacted YouTube Help I did research and found a number of videos covering the same topic and some literally were trying to show you how to get it for free, and I cited the videos as examples… It didn’t help my case and the cited videos are still up.
.
In the same week
So after the response video I continued on as usual with my uploads but I noticed my view counts were a lot lower than they had been in the previous months. I however did not think much of it. Then roughly a week later Rich from CyberCPU Tech started posting about his moderation issues and video take downs. I chimed in saying I was having the same issue and more started chiming in… I started fighting for Rich’s channel right around the time his second video came down. About time TeamYouTube on Twitter finally got back to me WITH THE SAME RESPONSE word for word from my appeal email!
The next few days were a whirlwind, Mark wrote this article on here in support of our fight. Multiple news outlets covered our story. My bigger YouTube friends came to our aid. Even bigger YouTubers came out of the wood work outraged at how we were being treated and at about this time Rich and I realized something… We kept getting the same response on every support outlet from YouTube word for word. We weren’t talking to humans at all, we were talking to Google’s AI.
.
The AI part of this?
The next day the news broke that Google was “not replacing” jobs at YouTube with AI but offering buyouts to anyone that “wanted to leave”. Surely, I should put my full faith in this platform, right? So we felt vindicated knowing we uncovered the AI secret before the news did. We admitted defeat and retired… Until we didn’t. The next day Rich came back hot and heavy. I hammered the AI bots on twitter and WE WERE GOING TO WIN. Well… We did… Well at least Rich and a few other channels did because of all the news coverage YouTube took notice and reversed all the AI damage done to their channels and restored their videos. Which left me… Fighting alone.
Not even a few days later lots of channels started getting banned with no warning with all the same reasoning: of being linked to a random banned Japanese channel. One channel to note was a channel I had been watching for years… Enderman. He had lost his channel for this reason and it started becoming apparent this was no accident. Google Gemini (which supposedly moderates YouTube now) had gone rogue. Well to shorten this story up some I fought for Enderman, I was one of the players that helped get his channel restored.
Since all of this happened Google denies then admits then denies again that AI is controlling YouTube now. There’s various unverified news sources saying they admit and don’t admit and no clear answer if they really do claim that YouTube is AI moderated and controlled now. But it’s quite obvious it is 100% AI controlled and the real people behind the scenes have lost control of it.
.
What this has to do with my channel
So how does this play back to me? Well remember that warning I got on my channel? What they don’t tell you that if you get a violation YouTube stops promoting your videos. They don’t even show up in Google anymore. Your channel’s crappy AI integration disappears so the AI can’t even promote or summarize your videos. Everything just DIES. Remember when I said my view counts seemed lower? This is why.
My channel has become a rotting carcass of its former self. My subscribers aren’t even getting notified of my new videos all views are flat lining on every video. A fresh video release on average got at least 1 view every 30 seconds for the first few hours to first few days at least. My latest video as of writing this has gotten about 1 view every 10 minutes! I think?… I’m not great at math but as of typing this in the first 12 hours I have gotten 134 views which is over 500+ less than my median average last month in the first 12 hours.
YouTube AI has essentially killed my channel with 1 little warning mark on my channel. I’ve been here 15 years, showed slow but steady growth every year. The moment I started doubling my subscriber averages in a month and actually really growing they yank the rug out from under me. Mind you this isn’t my only video doing poorly ALMOST ALL the videos since the video warning was issued have been hit. All my videos from before the warning that had steady growth have also flat lined. I fear I might not survive to the warning removal date and even if I do, there’s no guarantee my views will bounce back.
.
How I think AI will affect the future as we know it
So what are my thoughts on the future of AI in our world especially on YouTube? My thoughts are very bleak. With Google handing over the keys to a still experimental barely tested AI we’re all going to suffer. You know they made a movie series that started in 1984 talking about how AI took over and enslaved the world? In fact the second movie in that series is in my top 5 favorite movies of all time and happens to be in the background of most my videos. You might of heard of the series it’s called Terminator. I’m not saying Gemini or ChatGPT will nuke the world like Skynet did in the movies, but Gemini already has nuked a lot of YouTube channels.. so yeah there’s some parallels here.
Artificial intelligence is just that ARTIFICIAL. AI can’t think like a person, there’s no organic thoughts that randomly materializes in their “brain”. AI is only as smart as the data that is fed to it and a lot is not fact checked information from the internet. Remember Microsoft’s Tay the tweetbot from 2016? Yeah people fed it garbage and it became a racist. Microsoft had to kill it REALLY FAST. We’re not learning from our mistakes and even though we’re a long way from AI taking over and nuking us like in the movies… We have been turning science fiction from TV shows and movies into science fact for years now. They’re cloning extinct species similar to Jurassic Park, we talk on wireless communicators like from Star Trek, we even use tablets like from 2001 a Space Odyssey. We need to be careful with what we do with AI.
That all being said we use AI every day, I use it to generate images to help me design for my channel specifically, and a lot of my channel music is now AI generated. AI is NOT a bad thing but you’ve got to know where to draw the line for the use of it before the line blurs.
https://youtube.com/@hrutkaymods
