After 10 years on YouTube, how we learned that AI has made us powerless, passive and inept, and have we killed our channel in the process?

On Monday 15th June we removed our entire back catalogue of videos from our YouTube channel. This was in response to discovering that our content was being copied and published on TikTok under a fake account. 

Has this killed our YouTube channel? What should we do next?

We have been publishing videos on YouTube for nearly 10 years and seen lots of changes in that time. We have only ever been a small channel with a handful of stand-out videos that have reached over 100k views. Generally we bumble around the lower echelons achieving 10-15k views on our weekly publications. If you are a regular viewer you will probably know this already. 

In the early days, we enjoyed the challenge of making videos. We never really understood it was the golden era when it was relatively easy to gain views, and attract subscribers. There was very little competition to be honest! So our rather simple and, what would now be regarded as boring videos did attract a small audience.

We have known for a long time that it is getting harder to attract an audience. The ceaseless beat of the drum from YouTube to exceed your last video is combined with the constant pressure to improve our gear, be more daring and constantly be original. We have tended to largely ignore this and do our ‘own thing’. After all we do not have a contract of employment with YouTube, so why should we comply?

Not only is it getting more difficult to attract an audience, it is also harder to gain their approval. The audience has zero tolerance of anything slightly repetitive and Cornwall is only so big! Also, the comments recently have been more critical, and definitely more abusive. The filter has changed and people literally say what they think, without even dressing it up. There is no sandwich in the sh*t sandwich, only the filling. We think they know when they are being hurtful - how could they not?

Going forward, the biggest challenge we are going to have to cope with is fakery. Our recent videos have been screen captured and uploaded to a fake account on TikTok, a platform that we have totally ignored. To our dismay, our complete persona was copied and, together with our videos, the account looks like it is ours. 

We were horrified and wanted to take immediate action so we hid all of our YouTube videos to stop the unscrupulous person from copying any more content. This was the most drastic action we could have taken and we made a video about it. Comments of support flooded in. Other creators reached out and explained that fakery is normal, especially as you grow. We were flabbergasted that this is considered normal. How can this be normal? Why are people so passive and accepting?

Why we have to be passive

All weekend we have been asking ourselves whether we are just too old for YouTube. We grew up in the era of trade unions, people power and protests. “One out? All out!” Can we live with the passive attitude where you have zero power to combat anything? I find being passive really hard, and I want to fight back but all I end up doing is complaining to an AI bot, going around in circles, and getting increasingly frustrated. 

It seems that AI is being used by a handful of rich American men to build a fortress around them and their fortunes, sacrificing 1,000s of jobs in the process and keeping all of the ordinary people at bay. They don’t even have to listen to us anymore because they have an army of AI bots doing that for them, sending us around in frustrating circles. Depressingly, this model is being copied across the world by other rich organisations. What a charmed life the CEOs must lead, sitting there watching the value of their stocks skyrocket with every ignored complaint and every job loss increasing their bottom line!

We can only conclude that the AI revolution has made us, as an ordinary person unheard and turned us into powerless, passive and inept beings, meekly accepting our fate. 

Have we killed our channel? 

After a few days of processing the vast amount of information and loads of comments telling us that we should not have turned off all our videos because we will confuse the algorithm - another AI bot! - we have tentatively started to return some to the public domain.

In the short term, the fake account on TikTok was starved of content and stopped uploading and publishing our videos. The tactic worked but as a long term strategy it is not practical. We will have to be passive about any fake accounts in the future.

As of today, 23rd June 2026, we do not know what is going to happen. We may have scared the pants off our human audience and they will not want to watch us. We may have damaged their trust beyond repair.

We have only a small amount of our back catalogue available so it is hard to tell at the moment but we may have to accept that we have no channel. Surely the AI bots will continue to scour the internet as they have learned to do and return to offering our videos as answers to questions? I would say ‘our fate is in their hands’ but I do not want to humanise this process. We are completely beholden to AI bots.