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Old YouTube is back!

As I have been trawling through around 20TB of raw video footage while creating the 20 year retrospective videos for my YouTube channel I came to an interesting but not surprising realisation.

Modern YouTube sucks; a lot.

Who remembers the YouTube of old?

There was no "algorithm" to feed you an endless supply of AI-created dross in an attempt to keep you on the platform and watching ads until the battery on your phone finally dies.

YouTube of old was designed first and foremost as a viewer experience. The needs and wants of viewers were the primary focus back then.

Today however, that focus has shifted completely.

In 2026, viewers aren't the focus, they're simply the product.

The goal is not to ensure that viewers have the best possible experience while using the platform, the goal is to simply get as many eyeballs on as many ads as possible and, failing that, to piss viewers off so much by way of excessive advertising, that they plonk down a huge monthly stipend to go "premium".

Either way, as a viewer, you're stuffed and YouTube is not the glorious experience it once was.

However, if you do long for those 1-5 star reviews, zero ads and the glory that can only be experienced when videos are displayed in 480p then salvation is at hand.

Welcome to KamTape

If this looks vaguely familiar that's because this website is a very nice copy of YouTube as it used to be 20 years ago.

Fortunately it has avoided the use of the Adobe Flash player for displaying videos but never the less, the video player is very close to an accurate copy of that early technology.

And, to quote from one of my favourite scifi movies... "It's full of stars".

No, I'm not talking about famous actors, I'm talking about those one to five-star ratings for videos that were so good, back in the day. Even better, you can choose to ignore all videos that have earned below a specified number of stars so the dross will be eliminated automatically.

Instead of a cynically crafted algorithm, you get "categories" that allow you to browse things that might interest you, at your leisure.

Best of all, unlike modern YouTube, there's no such thing as "shorts", "podcasts" or "series" -- just good old-fashioned long-form video, albeit limited to a maximum of 10 minutes, just like the old days.

Even the comments have that lovely indented structure to them and that long admired "thumbs down" feature.

Yes, KamTape is a blast from the past and I only hope it doesn't become a victim of its own success.

And in other non-YouTube news, one of the key founders of Odysee, a YouTube alternative, has left the building. This has cast some doubt over the future of the platform so there's still no clear challenger to YouTube's dominance... yet.

However, as they say in redneck circles... "hold my beer".

Carpe Diem folks!

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