Bummer

We all have one.

Maybe in a different shape, or size, or colour. But we all have one.

On New Year's Eve, I posted my final YouTube video of 2025. It was essentially the video of my year-end blog post, where I share my favourite photos of the past year.

I was a bit nervous about this video—my third one where I show my best photos—because three of the photos depicted women in various states of undress. YouTube doesn't like nudity of any form.

I get that and I don't get that. I understand that there may not be parental controls for a household YouTube account, and young people might see something that they shouldn't, and YouTube doesn't want to be held accountable.

That said, people have streaming services that show violence, nudity, and sex. It's up to those subscribers to regulate what their kids can and cannot see.

I believe that YouTube can prohibit porn if they want to. But all forms of nudity, whether subtle or artistic, or full-on, in a non-sexual context?

Prudes.

I wanted to show my best photos of the year, which included some nudity. None of it is sexual. All of it is artistic. But because YouTube is hung up over any nudity, I had to play by their rules, and if I wanted to share those three images, I had to make some changes.

So, I edited the photos to cover the naughty bits.

I covered nipples. I made sure that a crotch, which was already darkened in shadow, was even darker. And, I added shade over a bum.

When I uploaded the finished video to YouTube, I made the video unlisted for several days in order for the algorithm to analyse the video so that when made public, it would reach a wider audience. I also figured that if YouTube had any issues with the video, it would let me know before I made it public.

The day before the video was scheduled to become public, I created a thumbnail. As with my previous year-end-photo videos, I included two photos from the video: one of which was a model image.

I figure that audiences might be attracted to a beautiful woman in the thumbnail and want to watch the video.

For this thumbnail, I included a nude model who had thrown a piece of fabric in the air. She's faced away from the camera, so you see her from behind; including, of course, her behind.

In the video, I edited my original photo so that there's more shadow covering the crease between her cheeks. For the several days before the video went public, YouTube didn't say a peep.

When I created the thumbnail, however, I did it in a rush, the day before the video's release, and I added it to the video about 12 hours before its release, on New Year's Eve.

At 9am on Wednesday, my video became public, complete with the thumbnail. By the afternoon, about 24 hours after I had added the thumbnail to the video, I had 12 views of the video.

All seemed well, though I didn't expect any issues because the algorithm had analysed the video for days leading up to its release, and I hadn't noticed that the thumbnail included the uncensored photo of the model.

About 12 hours after the video's release, YouTube notified me that it had pulled my video, citing nudity as the reason. This surprised me because I had thought that, surely, the algorithm would have spotted the nudity at the beginning. By the time this notification had been sent, the video had received about 24 views.

Because I was celebrating New Year's Eve with friends and wasn't at home, I thought I would deal with the issue when I returned home. I didn't know how I was going to deal with it but I wasn't going to let the removal of the video interfere with my enjoyment of the party.

When I got home, I went to my channel, and I noticed that the video was still up and had more than 40 views. I clicked on the video and it ran as I expected.

But I noticed that my thumbnail was missing and had been replaced by a simple still frame from the video, showing me facing the camera. It was the temporary placeholder that I had used before I had added the thumbnail.

I was glad that the video hadn't been pulled but wondered why the thumbnail was missing. It was well after midnight and I was tired, so I promised myself that I would look into it in the morning.

Here's the thumbnail that I had attached to my video:

When I looked at it, in the morning, I immediately noticed that you could see Lucy's bum in the image and realized that I had used the original photo for the thumbnail, and not the edited one that was used in the video. That was the issue that YouTube had taken with my video: not the content.

I decided that I would just place another photo over Lucy in the thumbnail. I still wanted to have the appeal of a beautiful woman in the image (click bait?), so I went with what I thought would be a safe choice, and used the photo of Ira Balan, wrapped in fabric, with no naughty bits visible.

Here's the edited thumbnail (and yes, they're at a very low resolution because they need to be smaller than 500 KB):

I posted the new thumbnail and looked at it on my YouTube channel, but after a few moments, I didn't like the overall look of the new image. The background was much to bright and really detracted from the other image in the thumbnail, of a railway line.

I had chosen the photo of Lucy because I found it more striking for the thumbnail. I didn't want to risk another notification from YouTube if I used the edited photo of Lucy in the thumbnail—I have no strikes against my account and want to keep it that way.

We all have bums. Every one of us. I don't understand why it gets censored when it appears in a non-sexual way.

Someone is naked but faced away from us: big deal.

I wanted this image, so what I did was take the original thumbnail and paint Lucy's backside in black. Here's the updated thumbnail:

It's not the shot that I created for the original photo, nor is it the one that was edited for the video. But it shows a censored derrière in a way that YouTube can't complain.

At least, I hope it doesn't. It really shouldn't.

If they want to hide a woman's nipples or people's genitalia, okay. But a bum? Seriously?

Bummer.