Google is getting real stupid these days. I don’t mind that they keep changing the goal posts and make it impossible for me to get my URL.

My frustration is they keep changing the rules making it difficult for me, while doing absolutely nothing to stop the squatters. Previously it was 10,000 views, now it’s 100 subscribers. The latter is so much harder to come by when I’m not dedicating 100% effort on YouTube. I rather spend my time coding, supporting and updating the manual thank you.

It is so easy to get to 100 subscribers by nefarious means - be it paying somebody, or creating 100 accounts to do this myself. Even something as silly as ’subscribe to my channel, and I’d subscribe to yours’ will work. I’m sure there is already a healthy black econony providing this 100 subscribers service. Why should I involve myself in that false economy?

How can Alphabet, the owner of the wildly dominant search engine, not realise these rules are stupid - makes it harder for me to earn my custom URL, in the meantime doing absolutely nothing  to prevent other people from squatting on it?

Do they seriously think they can use AI algorithms to detect fraud? While here’s an idea - why not use an AI algorithm to stop YouTube squatters instead?! This 100 threshold is only slowing the advance, it’s not going to work. It will be 100 now, it will be 1000 in the future.

At least give me an option to reserve my custom URL for f**k sake! The odds of me getting a consistent URL throughout is getting bleaker and bleaker by the day.