"Very dramatic shift" - Linus Tech Tips opens up about the channel's declining viewership
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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.
wrote last edited by [email protected]though i get the other things you mean, LTT's sponsor sections have roughly stayed the same length over the years: two minutes every half-hour
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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.
wrote last edited by [email protected]that's not my impression. they definitely don't really get technical beyond the pop culture depth, but just last week they reviewed budget chromebook options, continued the US$1400 PC battle series, did something on the Switch 2's proprietary port against aftermarket accessories, and finished a switch-to-iphone challenge
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Folks here are missing the point blaming LTT for the drop. This has been a sudden drop, too sudden to be fatigue or audience tastes changing.
Also I can see the same on my own channel. About 2 weeks ago views suddenly dropped to a third of the usual views. And even high performing videos have had trouble getting views since. Even videos with a high impression percentage are getting lower than average views.
The same wsd also reported by Second Wind (old Zero Punctuation) and their experience is the same: way too sudden drop to be anything else except YouTube adjusting their algorithm.
If a change in the algorithm hurts, it may be a sign that the algorithm had been helping previously. No one questions the algorithm when viewership grows, but it’s largely to blame for the good and the bad.
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Probably doesn't help that a bunch of the decent channels were bought by private equity and are now churning out boring, safe and uninteresting content.
https://youtu.be/hJ-rRXWhElI (a yt link, lol).
A brief summary from https://www.dailydot.com/news/youtube-channel-private-equity/
Some channels like Donut Media, Veritasium, and Task and Purpose have been acquired publicly. Others, such as Dude Perfect and Coco Melon, have been acquired more privately, with no public disclosure.
Plenty others. A key giveaway is when a channel diverges their risk. When the front man who is the reason you have watched the channel suddenly has co-hosts and large segments from other channels in their regular content.
I have definitely unsubscribed from some big channels that I used to watch routinely, and simply often don't click on videos from channels I haven't yet unsubscribed from. It's just not interesting stuff. It's filler crap. thankfully it seems like there are enough smaller channels to fill that space, including some of the people originally from those other ones (like speed and donut)
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Isn't MKBHD a bit of a brat? Doesn't he spend most of his time doing flashy low substance "reviews" just so he keeps getting invited to Apples gigs?
His reviews are mostly just b-role anyway, there are actual reviewers out there.
I haven't watched anything of his in a bit of time now, basically since that speeding incident, but at the time I did watch a few videos to see if I definitely wanted to unsubscribe. which I did. I just didn't feel that the reviews were honest or appropriate, and the focus on vehicles was really starting to get annoying.
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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.
Been paying for Nebula for years, but their app has a long way to go.
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I used to watch LTT all the time. I stopped watching some years back after he installed a six figure Wi-Fi system on his "estate." I had enjoyed watching a relatable everyman review computer hardware, and more often than not break things. I didn't sign up to watch a millionaire dick around with exotic tech in his McMansion.
I just wired my house for Ethernet for a a few thousand dollars of electrician time. It’s multiple times faster than any WiFi can be. Why would anyone drop $100k on wifi??
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This honestly doesn't surprise me, because English proficiency in France is below that of Spain, Russia and even Italy, which says a lot.
That's because the french media industry is very strong, and virtually everything is dubbed.
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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.
Yes, it's definitely a more mainstream entertainment channel than pure info
aimed more at gamers than tech people I think
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Probably doesn't help that a bunch of the decent channels were bought by private equity and are now churning out boring, safe and uninteresting content.
https://youtu.be/hJ-rRXWhElI (a yt link, lol).
A brief summary from https://www.dailydot.com/news/youtube-channel-private-equity/
Some channels like Donut Media, Veritasium, and Task and Purpose have been acquired publicly. Others, such as Dude Perfect and Coco Melon, have been acquired more privately, with no public disclosure.
Plenty others. A key giveaway is when a channel diverges their risk. When the front man who is the reason you have watched the channel suddenly has co-hosts and large segments from other channels in their regular content.
Oh, so that is why Veritasium went to shit. That's such a shame. It was a great channel that I was excited about when a new video would drop. Then low quality videos started coming out and I don't watch them anymore. Haven't unsubscribe yet though, maybe I should get around to that.
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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 stopped watching LTT videos when they just became long-form ads. Or when everyone five minutes was a sponsored segment.
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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?
Anyone here youtube creators? Are you seeing the same thing, a general downturn in viewership?
I have a channel with over 20k subs, nearly all evergreen content. Haven't uploaded a video in many years, so it's slowly getting fewer views. Fun fact, the pandemic saw the highest view counts, and I also didn't add content back then.
Every enhancement YouTube brings is specifically to improve monetization, and since I disable ads on my channel and don't have any sponsored content, I'm not getting any benefits. I also refuse to do shorts, so I'm losing a ton of exposure there, too.
If an active channel isn't doing well, they should call it quits, TBH. They'll either have to compromise the quality of their content "for the algorithm", or their content isn't actually useful outside of a single view.
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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?
Everyone here is speculating about their content, but the simple answer is YouTube just changed how they count the view number. The change basically happened overnight, so it's not some slow attrition of views. They said in the WAN Show that while the view count halved, the number of likes hasn't changed (the view/like ratio doubled), and the revenue they earned hasn't changed (CPM doubled). All of this points that the same number of humans are watching, but what counts as a view in the "views" number just changed.
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Oh, so that is why Veritasium went to shit. That's such a shame. It was a great channel that I was excited about when a new video would drop. Then low quality videos started coming out and I don't watch them anymore. Haven't unsubscribe yet though, maybe I should get around to that.
What is it you don't like about Veritasium lately?
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I prefer to read books. Thanks. By the way, the fact that you need adblocker an sponsorblock to enjoy a few videos speaks volumes.
But with those two things I have a good time
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YouTube is hostile to viewers unless you pay them £20 a month.
It’s like 15 ads per 2 mins screen time with 2 being unstoppable and 1 being 3 minutes long.
Slightly exaggerated but not far from the truth. It’s horrible. And they slow everything down too, the main video fake buffers whereas when you’re in premium it doesn’t.I didn’t mind paying a fiver but had to do it via the moon to get it cheap but now they have stopped that.
wrote last edited by [email protected]On broadcast TV, a 30 minute timeslot had only 23 minutes of actual content and 7 minutes of ads.
That's what we're heading back to. 20% of the watch time is ads.
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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]isnt well know he had incident with a former employer over something like last year? the sub/fans are all just shilling/meming for him. isnt his shtick all just reaction videos on various tech items.
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Oh the rossman video.
I hate how obsessed on dumb shit he gets. The man is legitimately doing great work usually, and then he takes something minor that an otherwise ally says or does and blows it out of proportion.
This man would have made a great tankie. Unfortunately he made a whole 20 minute video on why AOC is stupid for saying unskilled labor doesn't exist and then explaining exactly the points she was making.
I legitimately love this mans work and I wanna support him, but man is he petty.
when streamers get super-political, they are no better than the right winger influencers.
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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.
wrote last edited by [email protected]youtube seems to be pushing alot more AI garbage than normal lately as well. they just made a contract with Israel to allow them to flood the site with pro-zionist propaganda.
youtube is also part of the problem, as many videos is made using googles AI video generator.
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isnt well know he had incident with a former employer over something like last year? the sub/fans are all just shilling/meming for him. isnt his shtick all just reaction videos on various tech items.
isnt well know he had incident with a former employer over something like last year?
It's so well known that you can't even name what it is?
