"Very dramatic shift" - Linus Tech Tips opens up about the channel's declining viewership

[ilovethebomb@sh.itjust.works]

I don't have an hour to spend watching someone talk into a camera, can I get a TLDR?

[dataprolet@discuss.tchncs.de]

Maybe post actually interesting content instead of pumping out a bunch of variations of the same video about building yet another PC on a dozen of channels. After the whole drama about video quality we got a few more citations but the overall video quality got worse. And then 1/3 videos are paid as if Linus weren't a multi millionaire. Realize it LTT sucks.

[mesamunefire@piefed.social]

I guess the point is channels are seeing a dropping viewership across the board. Or at least two different creators of VERY different videos have had the same experience so far. And the reddit thread behind this has more people (assuming they are telling the truth) confirming the drop.

[busyconstruction13@lemmy.world]

Tldr Linus brushed off another tech YouTuber at an event and that tech YouTuber does a podcast with this guy to make drama about nothing.

[plm00@lemmy.ml]

"I'm having a very difficult time wrapping my head around that it is possible that there has been no change whatsoever to how our videos are being served."

Honestly I think that's it. Technology has changed. My interests have shifted. They're not relevant to me.

I would argue their quality of content has dropped a fair bit, their click bait makes it impossible to know what the videos are actually about, or their space is too saturated, but those are only small pieces to the larger picture. I don't watch because I don't want to anymore.

[mushuchupacabra@lemmy.world]

That's a weird way of describing Linus being shown to be a narcissistic thundercunt, in exquisite detail, with receipts.

[busyconstruction13@lemmy.world]

Like doing what? All I see is the most bias video about nothing for an hour long. He is this bias and that's the worst stuff he can find? I've taken dumps that were more offensive. Compared to any other person in the news and this is milk toast bland.

[jtskulk@lemmy.world]

It's insane he ever had a healthy viewership in the first place.

[orclev@lemmy.world]

It seems like YouTube is doing something where they don't consider views to be actual "views" anymore. I saw one creator reporting that you only get credit as a view if you also leave a comment on the video because I guess Google thinks this will somehow hamper bots? Sounds like a bunch of bullshit no matter how you look at it. Personally I think Google is just trying to avoid paying creators so they're only crediting them for a fraction of the views they get, but you just know they're charging those advertisers for every single view whether they're paying the creators or not.

[shortwavesurfer@lemmy.zip]

What would make me really happy is if viewership across YouTube entirely was down because people were getting fed up with YouTube and shifting to alternatives.

[mushuchupacabra@lemmy.world]

It's a detailed account of Linus being awful, his heavy usage of DARVO whenever called out for shit behavior.

I won't summarize, as Louis has receipts for all of it.

I suspect that Linus and Mr. Beast have an identical capacity for empathy.

[sharkattak@kbin.melroy.org]

Maybe YT has started to be more aggressive towards viewbots like Twitch? Or has changed something in the algorithm (again) and fucked up (again).

[quarterswede@lemmy.world]

I have to go to my subscribed channels just to see what they’ve posted now. YT definitely changed up their algorithm and it’s useless for me now. It doesn’t present anything I’m interested in.

[quarterswede@lemmy.world]

What a moronic move. I almost never post comments but I watch plenty of content.

[beejjorgensen@lemmy.sdf.org]

Way back in the day I was making $500 a month with AdSense ads on my sites. And then one month I started making $250 a month. I hadn't changed anything. It's a risky thing to rely on.

[goretantath@lemmy.world]

Remember, so long as you stay subscribed to a channel but don't interact with it in any way(click a vid, comment, dislike it or comments in the comment section) it hurts the channel. Thats why i resubbed to every channel i unsubbed from, that way i can actually hinder them instead of help them. This has been proven from Jesse Cox being told so by youtube staff during meetings he's had, you literally have to start a fresh channel free from the dead subs to get the algorithm to pick you back up.

[goretantath@lemmy.world]

Its because theres too many "dead subscriptions". The algorithm punishes channels that have subs that dont interact with saud channel.

[naitro@lemmy.world]

This is now the second time in a short period of time that I stumble across someone who didn't know the subscriptions page existed. Or at least that is how I interpreted what you said.

I always thought it was obvious that the main feed is for discovering new stuff based on watch history and the ol trusty content can be found in the sub box. It is always fascinating to see how differently people use software I use daily while thinking it is how everyone does it

[orclev@lemmy.world]

The problem is that there aren't any really viable alternatives. YouTube has three major advantages and all three are necessary. First and most critically it has a viable business model (that is it has a way to earn money to pay creators). It's a shitty business model, but it is viable which already puts it ahead of most services that are coasting on VC funds and hoping they'll trip over a business model before they go bankrupt. Second it has the infrastructure and capital to actually serve content. Running a video streaming service is the single largest bandwidth consumer you could possibly come up with and that means considerable network infrastructure costs, to say nothing of the storage demands. Third it has network effect going for it. Nobody is going to watch videos on your platform if there's only a couple dozen of them total. The sheer size and scope of YouTube means no matter what you're looking for you can find something to watch. It's a one stop shop for AV content.

Every single competitor to YouTube has failed on one of those points, usually the first one, rarely the second. The last service I saw come close to hitting all three was Vimeo, but it flamed out not even a decade after it launched. Twitch.tv is struggling to make their accounting work and isn't even a direct competitor because they're pushing hard for live streams as opposed to pre-recorded videos. Alternatives like PeerTube have no business model and will never attract creators or a mainstream audience. Paid hosting platforms like Floatplane are replacements for traditional video streaming services like Amazon Video or Netflix not really platforms where just anybody can set up a channel and start posting videos.

To paraphrase a famous saying, YouTube is the worst public video streaming service except for every other one. Until someone comes along and figures out how to make enough money to reliably pay creators and has enough capital to actually serve that content reliably and in high quality YouTube isn't going anywhere.

[orclev@lemmy.world]

Same, but it depends on the goal. If the goal is to have an excuse not to pay creators while still cashing paychecks from advertisers it seems like a pretty smart move. A dick move certainly, but seems to be working exactly as intended.