"Very dramatic shift" - Linus Tech Tips opens up about the channel's declining viewership
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A lot of Youtube channels are reporting declining viewership lately.
EX1: https://youtube.com/watch?v=cpVnx4_yqTo
EX2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yF0tmhEtVJEFun times. Looks like a lot of channels are seeing a decline not just Linus. Hes just the latest to talk about it.
Then I saw this article as well and thought I would share.
Anyone here youtube creators? Are you seeing the same thing, a general downturn in viewership?
Some pretty serious things going on in the world today that need our support and therefore attention. I consume less entertainment as a byproduct.
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You mean the prototype that was planned to just be given to them but was sold for a charity auction then LTT offered an apology and tried to monetarily compensate billet labs?
This wasn't sold maliciously nor for profit. Billet labs was upset since it was ip but initially said LTT could retain the product and LTT didn't understand that billet labs didn't want them to sell it.
Next one? There are YouTubers that hire known pedos for kids shows or make content pissing off locals or desecrating dead people but you have a problem with someone doing ad reads for a product that he might not actually enjoy? Are you Steve?
wrote last edited by [email protected]It wasn't planned to just be given to them. It was always a prototype sent to them for sponsoring purposes. Then they dunked on it without seeing its intended purpose and auctioned it. And until this thing blew up they never refunded it despite email chains. If it was a misunderstanding it was an egregious misunderstanding. Though they also enormously misunderstood a mouse in another tech review and never took off the cover while complaining of trash tracking (because they didn't take off the cover at the bottom!), that being just one of the more ridiculous errors two years ago. This all exploded around the same time as the employee's sexual harassment allegations so you might've missed it. Just watch Gamers Nexus's video on this for the receipts: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGW3TPytTjc it's not an hour long! C'mon, spend your time there instead of heated back-and-forth. Or this 30-minute video from a commentary channel I haven't watched yet but the channel has a good rep: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCvvmvIjNWM
That said, this was all two years ago. Not sure what stirred things up in January.
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A lot of Youtube channels are reporting declining viewership lately.
EX1: https://youtube.com/watch?v=cpVnx4_yqTo
EX2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yF0tmhEtVJEFun times. Looks like a lot of channels are seeing a decline not just Linus. Hes just the latest to talk about it.
Then I saw this article as well and thought I would share.
Anyone here youtube creators? Are you seeing the same thing, a general downturn in viewership?
Viewer bot farms is a thing. Is that a declining business now? And the results starting to show now?
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My theory is that we have a limited number of hours a day to view content. We also have a growing number of channels and content in general. Algorithms include new content we kight enjoy, and for every new channel we get hooked on, one of the older ones drops off.
Tv shows rarely (ever?) Last forever. Why should channels?
We do, but in the last decade youtube has doubled its yearly user count to something like 2.5 billion. That's a lot of more people-hours to spend as well.
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A lot of Youtube channels are reporting declining viewership lately.
EX1: https://youtube.com/watch?v=cpVnx4_yqTo
EX2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yF0tmhEtVJEFun times. Looks like a lot of channels are seeing a decline not just Linus. Hes just the latest to talk about it.
Then I saw this article as well and thought I would share.
Anyone here youtube creators? Are you seeing the same thing, a general downturn in viewership?
I've noticed this in many of the channels I subscribe to, 5 years ago they had something like 1m views on some videos regularly and now only 300k (or similar decline), all of them. Some of them even made videos about it. My guess, and theirs, is YouTube changed the algorithm and also the introduction of shorts.
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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.
This I believe.
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I've noticed this in many of the channels I subscribe to, 5 years ago they had something like 1m views on some videos regularly and now only 300k (or similar decline), all of them. Some of them even made videos about it. My guess, and theirs, is YouTube changed the algorithm and also the introduction of shorts.
wrote last edited by [email protected]LLMs are doing things like summarizing videos and then using the summaries to answer queries that before would have been a search result with monetization.
Google's executives are unconcerned about the declinibg incentives to create YouTube videos having been sold on the lie that the future of the internet lies in Ai generated content. In other words robots will make the internet.
Robots which hallucinate constantly.
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They're wrong, my channel has under 4% viewers in the up to 18 year segment, this effect is way bigger than if I lost then completely. Also my channel features no swearing or inappropriate content so, it should not affect it at all if this was the case.
Tierzoos theory is because formats that were good for the past years (8-10 min videos) are less popular now with the advent of shorts. And people are watching yt on their TVs now.
Demographics are also changing. Wish there were more actual data. Other than the very end result which is views down over many channels all at once.
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I'm watching less 'tube in general because youtube is obnoxious as fuck. They devote so many resources to getting you to watch ads, it actually causes the whole experience to suffer even with an adblock.
I dunno I’ve still yet to see ads. Between Smart Tube Next on my TV, Firefox with uBlock origin on my computer, and AdGuard + Vinegar on my phone, nothing gets through, even with their latest efforts.
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Yeah, they are. So why do you think they set all of that up for you to freely stream torrents? What is in it for them? Data harvesting? Malware? What?
Free streaming sites aren't building empires by ripping off useful idiots. They simply make less money.
So why do you think they set all of that up for you to freely stream torrents? What is in it for them?
This is part of your conditioning to be skeptical of whenever you see a better deal. Rather than admitting that you've been taken for a ride, you get angry at everyone else who has higher standards.
Keep wasting your money on things you could be getting for free while not thinking you're a tool. It's the consumerist way.
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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.
there is, maybe, a market for more specialized, niche platforms...but it's a huge maybe.
nebula seems to be doing very well, but again: highly specialized content, and a closed/curated platform.
other than serving video content, it has little in common with yt...hence the big "maybe"!
and there's been a few similar attempts in recent years, which i don't think really went anywhere either...
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Free streaming sites aren't building empires by ripping off useful idiots. They simply make less money.
So why do you think they set all of that up for you to freely stream torrents? What is in it for them?
This is part of your conditioning to be skeptical of whenever you see a better deal. Rather than admitting that you've been taken for a ride, you get angry at everyone else who has higher standards.
Keep wasting your money on things you could be getting for free while not thinking you're a tool. It's the consumerist way.
wrote last edited by [email protected]Really? I have a bridge to sell you. Talk about a tool...
And you are talking to me like I watch videos all the time. I have better things to do, like making websites to lure people in like you.
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I glanced at odysee and noped out the second the front page I was looking at was full of trump racist propaganda
Yes, until we bring the light of civilization, it will be the wild west and the natives are trying to kill us.
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Yeah, it's easy to bark at influencer we don't like.
I think his org has consistently done its best and I still tune in across the channels. I know that I couldn't do better with matched resources, without experience and a lot more considerations.
Listening to everyone hate on a whole media group puzzles me a bit.
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Tierzoos theory is because formats that were good for the past years (8-10 min videos) are less popular now with the advent of shorts. And people are watching yt on their TVs now.
Demographics are also changing. Wish there were more actual data. Other than the very end result which is views down over many channels all at once.
That also wouldn't have a drastic immediate effect. On the long term this is likely to eat some views of long form content.
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My theory is that we have a limited number of hours a day to view content. We also have a growing number of channels and content in general. Algorithms include new content we kight enjoy, and for every new channel we get hooked on, one of the older ones drops off.
Tv shows rarely (ever?) Last forever. Why should channels?
No this is a contraction of the commons
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I dunno I’ve still yet to see ads. Between Smart Tube Next on my TV, Firefox with uBlock origin on my computer, and AdGuard + Vinegar on my phone, nothing gets through, even with their latest efforts.
wrote last edited by [email protected]Heh, praise uBlock. If it didn't work as well as it does, I'd drop youtube in an instant. Invidious used to be awesome, but it's so hit-or-miss now that I seldom try it. Youtube isn't bad without ads, but ads + wading through clickbait bullshit just isn't worth it.
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A lot of Youtube channels are reporting declining viewership lately.
EX1: https://youtube.com/watch?v=cpVnx4_yqTo
EX2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yF0tmhEtVJEFun times. Looks like a lot of channels are seeing a decline not just Linus. Hes just the latest to talk about it.
Then I saw this article as well and thought I would share.
Anyone here youtube creators? Are you seeing the same thing, a general downturn in viewership?
wrote last edited by [email protected]So many possible reason.
Linus has a history of scummy behavior which turns people off.
Everything gets boring eventually. Especially things that are supposed to be funny.
Google ads are extra obnoxious making the entire platform more annoying to use and most of us will never pay for youtube. Those ads are not even selling products I would be interested in. Investment scams, car accident claim ads, AI voiced robot panda. It just annoying noise.
Nothing lasts forever.
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I came here to see if it was the early signs of the demise of YouTube. I secretly want all these content producers to move to a privacy-respecting platform, especially those who produce tech or privacy related content.
Now, for why I don't watch videos anymore, the medium isn't as easily consumed by me. I prefer text. At home, it's noisy and I get interrupted every 90 seconds. I lose interest quickly and fast forwarding isn't as easy as scanning text for a topic shift. My mind wanders on some topics, internally exploring that topic deeper. With text, i can just stop reading. With video, i need to realize that I'm processing a thought and hit pause, then rewind a bit. I get interrupted a lot. On the bus, I need to remember headphones and I hate when people shoulder surf. That's harder to do with text. Give me a plain text RSS feed that I can read anytime.
i mean; this has always been my take but people don't understand that we're all different and insist video medium is best medium.
and now blogs are dying because of ai.
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Get the ublock origin lite and on for safari, had worked an absolute treat for stopping YouTube ads on my iPad.
wrote last edited by [email protected]Another tip; Orion, the browser developed by Kagi can install proper Firefox extensions. You can have the real full uBlock Origin extension in the browser.
Edit: I believe it can handle Chromium extensions as well but who cares about those?
