"Very dramatic shift" - Linus Tech Tips opens up about the channel's declining viewership
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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?
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How do I turn that feature on?
I keep turning off captions off, and every few days they are automatically turned back on.
you can force a lot of options still when you upload a video OR provide a link. Plenty do that. For example in the tags add yt:cc=on will force on captions when you play a video
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Yes, large scale video hosting is notoriously free to provide.
YouTube the service absolutely has a cost to it. It’s been born by the owners at first and then people who watch ads. It got profitable when they started showing more ads. Premium is a way to get out of watching ads. You and I use adblockers and it’s fine but if a significant share of people did, the cost for paying users would have to keep increasing.
thus the continued war on ads...
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I assume you're using a "smart" TV.
Those things only exist to take power away from you. You should hook up a PC or laptop to your TV with a wireless keyboard and mouse so you're not being herded by techbros.
no smart tv but through a tv box (not android). Don't mind the ads when we watch on our projector, if I do I watch on wifes gaming pc also hooked up to projector
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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?
Reasons I see:
a) the generation that grew up watching LTT is now at age where they don't watch as much YT as they did before
b) increasing amount of things happen which put viewers off
c) consumer technology peaked and is now "boring"
d) new generations don't have as much interest in technology altogetherLet's explain:
a + c) people watching LTT years ago were living in an exiting tech era where it boomed and you had mayor leaps in tech basically on a yearly basis. Moving from floppy disks to CD's to USB sticks. CRT to LCD displays. 16-bit to 32-bit color. Solitare and Minesweeper to Call of Duty 4 and Need for Speed. Symbian and Blackberry to Android and iOS. Tons of manufacturers, tons of competition, tons of new and exctiting stuff.
Let's observe the state today: iPhone looks the same for the past half decade. Android is basically just Google and Samsung. Storage is now all in cloud. New games are recycled and upscaled old games. Every new generation of hardware is same thing just 10% better/faster. New OS releases are just refinements without new features. Most changes are done just for the sake of change. Existing hardware can basically be enough for 5+ years. What is LTT realistically supposed to talk about that is interesting? There is simply no more interesting tech.
This ties in into d) - tech peaked, new generations "just use it as it is", there is no need to tinker with it, prebuilt PC's are more than fine for years to come. Since AI the IT job landscape seems to be in decline, both in demand and in pay. People do other stuff now that is more lucrative.
LTT is dependent on stuff happening so that they can make videos about it. But, stuff kinda just isn't happening. Or the stuff that happens is just not noteworthy news anymore.
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I‘ve noticed the algorithm drizzles a good portion of smaller creators on my front page in recent months and that part is growing. I am talking about videos with just a few thousand or few hundred views that make up roughly 10-15 percent of my recommendations or so.
I think Youtube is diversifying exposure so you don‘t see the same faces you‘ve seen the past 15 years as often and new channels get a chance to grow. I am guessing Youtube doesn‘t want to be too dependent on the same huge channels anymore either.
Of course that means huge creators are calling to the pitch forks and torches because they lose revenue but why should I care? Most of them are rich anyway and don‘t necessarily produce better videos than someone with their phone in their garage workshop or a bunch of college students in their dorms. If anything it feels more like the old Youtube again.
There is a lot wrong with Youtube but I couldn‘t care less about huge channels being forced to slim down or try harder.
I've been getting recommendations for videos with 2 to 10 views. Noticed it about three months ago.
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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 completely stopped watching him after the GPU fiasco. I always thought he might be super slimy, but I think I can reasonably say that he is.
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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.
Okay buddy.
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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.
So you’re also contributing to the declining viewership that these channels are complaining about. They make no money off of your watch time so to them it is the same as no view at all.
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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.
He's also put a lot of work into creating a team of hosts that are genuinely wonderful to watch. Riley, Jake, Sarah, James, and Elijah to name a few. Best thing he could do for his brand is step out of the limelight, focus on being "chief vision officer" and let his wonderful talent fully take over hosting.
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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.
LTT has done bad things and never apologized. For example he copied a gamersnexus script and never acknowledged 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?
I can't talk about the others but LTT went form a tech channel to a luxury products channel. I'd blame some of their loss on that and the controversies.
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He's also put a lot of work into creating a team of hosts that are genuinely wonderful to watch. Riley, Jake, Sarah, James, and Elijah to name a few. Best thing he could do for his brand is step out of the limelight, focus on being "chief vision officer" and let his wonderful talent fully take over hosting.
That’s what bugs me the most, it used to be everyone making awesome fun videos, but then Linus is now the host of EVERY video. It’s just not the same
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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?
Broadly maybe the viewers are just getting sick of all of the shilling for cheap shit that goes on with the ever increasing sponsor segments so many channels have these days. Arguments will be had about just how needed all of those marketing dollars are for the creator to keep doing their thing vs them getting used to a lot of money and wanting even more of it. But the end result is a worse viewing experience for the consumer. I know there are a lot of channels that make good content that I've stopped watching because they spend a quarter of the video shilling junk. Sure sponserblock would get rid of those sections, but it won't send a message like unsubscribing and stopping watching them completely will.
Also maybe this is a larger Youtube usage hit due to their aggressive anti-adblock nonsense and uptick in ads and shitty UI design.
For Linus specifically, he has the above issues as well as having been very publicly outed as a slimy deuce. What his channels put out is not unique enough these days to justify dealing with the shilling and his companies bad behavior.
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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?
Yeah, because Linus is kinda shit more and more. Hes wholly turned me off from his content over the years because of how he acts, what he says, etc. And you can 'trust me bro' on that.
I really like and appreciate people like Steve. I like what he's doing and how he's doing things. He hasn't become a greedy corpo and hes just a very intelligent and caring person who believes in standing up for what's right; Even if that means calling out a friend in the industry.
I feel like Linus is out of touch with reality. He's not at all down to earth anymore.
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That’s what bugs me the most, it used to be everyone making awesome fun videos, but then Linus is now the host of EVERY video. It’s just not the same
Huh, I've been watching them since like 2016 or so and I seem to remember him hosting more frequently back in the day. Seems like now he does most of the main channel videos while everyone else handles Short Circuit and the like. My personal theory is that Linus is grooming Elijah to be his replacement. But we'll see.
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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?
LTT had multiple pretty bad scandals, didn't they? I recently needed to find some technical information and other places had better information. LTT seems to be more of a pop culture tech channel? I don't even really know how to describe what I mean. It's like the reviews are more like fluff pieces I guess? They aren't super duper technical. But I also don't watch them much so maybe I missed something.
