"Very dramatic shift" - Linus Tech Tips opens up about the channel's declining viewership
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I wonder if it has something to do with how they count users with ad blockers.
wrote last edited by [email protected]thats probably it, the influencers always remind people adblocking or not subscribing hurts thier channel. plus if your adblocking you arnt exposed to multiple ads in a single video.
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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.
Ugh yeah and they had to interview the owner of Noah’s Arcade and he did an awful rap
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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??
Oh dude. The next drop. DIY it. It's easier than you think. Even the cheap keystone punch tools will get the job done.
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LTT has done bad things and never apologized. For example he copied a gamersnexus script and never acknowledged it.
And stole an item to auction off! I can’t believe people here defend their ass
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I wonder if it has something to do with how they count users with ad blockers.
It could even be something "innocent" about how ad-blockers have started to interact with the site as YouTube ramps up their anti-adblock measures and the ad-blockers have to change how they work. Like maybe the ad-blockers have started blocking the JavaScript callback that logs the views.
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I wonder what they’re going to prioritize now
I hope anything but LTT, a shit clickbait channel that steals things to auction off
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I've been getting recommendations for videos with 2 to 10 views. Noticed it about three months ago.
Same. I kinda like it.
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Maybe at some point we can all stop watching and hence supporting YouTube, that'd be nice.
Users stop watching on Youtube to go watch on Tiktok. I can't see that as a win.
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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.
They're tech entertainers, and Linus is the clown jester.
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I stopped watching LTT years ago. His channel is crap. He's a tech personality who seems to barely understand technology, so most of his videos are just over the top bullshit and stunts. Not to mention his awful annoying vocal fry. He's like the male Fran Drescher.
Plus, Linus has been a complete asshole to GamersNexus, one of the best channels for investigative journalism in tech. As far as I'm concerned, Linus is your typical business entity, and lacking ethics.
Oh Linus is a giant child.
He once got pissed off, because they got called out by an actual scientist. They were creating videos promoting fake products. Then they played victim and pushed it instead of, ya know, taking the high road.
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His complete lack of self awareness and ability to own up and apologise when they've dropped the ball put me off the channel entirely. For example they found out one of their main sponsors Honey were scamming their viewers and essentially stealing from people, they just kept it quiet rather than owning it.
That, and Emily was the best thing about the channel and she left so..
wrote last edited by [email protected]For example they found out one of their main sponsors Honey were scamming their viewers and essentially stealing from people, they just kept it quiet rather than owning it.
That's one of the things I was referring to. GamersNexus did an expose on the Honey thing and filed a class action suit over it because they were essentially stealing money from creators. Linus was complicit and aware and said nothing.
Let's also not forget the time Linus literally received a prototype cooler from Billet Labs for testing, was supposed to return it after review, and he not only reviewed it poorly (and used it for the wrong hardware), but then basically stole it and auctioned it off, later referring to this as "a small mistake." Supposedly he only offered to pay for the prototype after this was also exposed by GN.
Billet Labs' statement on the issue:
You, the PC community, are amazing. We'd like to thank you for your support, it means more than you can imagine.
Steve at Gamers Nexus has publicly shown his integrity, at the huge risk of backlash, and we have nothing but respect for him for how he's handled himself, both publicly and when speaking directly to us.
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Regarding LTT, we are simply going to state the relevant facts:
On 10th August, we were told by LTT via email that the block had been sold at auction. There was no apology.
We replied on 10th August within 30 minutes, telling LTT that this wasn't okay, and that this was a £XXXX prototype, and we asked if they planned to reimburse us at all.
We received no reply and no offer of payment until 2 hours after the Gamers Nexus video went live on 14th August, at which point Linus himself emailed us directly.
The exact monetary value of the prototype was offered as reimbursement. We have not received, nor have we asked for any other form of compensation.
Dude's just scummy. I've no idea why people will defend him to the ends of the earth.
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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.
*the view/ like ratio
doubledhalved -
Users stop watching on Youtube to go watch on Tiktok. I can't see that as a win.
Perhaps the lesser of the two evils, considering Google's dominance. But yes, far from ideal.
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Facebook is the best and worst thing to have happened to VR. The Quest is an affordable headset that basically killed all competition and innovation in VR for years. Still holding out hope that the next Valve headset will come out eventually and shake up the scene again.
Theres leaks about some 'Steam Frame' happening.
Might be close. -
I regularly watch hour+ videos, and there's quite a few 10+ hour videos I've enjoyed. Just gotta find the right people.
10 hour long videos!? What the hell. What can be that interesting for 10 hours from YouTube? Is it actual full written tv shows or documentary tv series?
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youtube is probably gearing the algorithim for other content than influencers that draws in more views or revenue.
Not impossible. The best revenue for Google would be if they could ai generate all the content themselves.
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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.
True, but a platform where your income is dependent on an ever changing algorithm is not something a business can handle. Changes like that will drive away major channels and make them start to look for alternatives.
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10 hour long videos!? What the hell. What can be that interesting for 10 hours from YouTube? Is it actual full written tv shows or documentary tv series?
Super deep dive into games and their lore mostly, although the super long ones tend to be named like, 'a quick retrospective of game'
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*the view/ like ratio
doubledhalvedwrote last edited by [email protected]The views halved, the likes stayed the same. So the ratio of likes to views is now higher.
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Super deep dive into games and their lore mostly, although the super long ones tend to be named like, 'a quick retrospective of game'
I guess I'm not that into that so wouldn't find something to interest me on youtube. I probably don't bother watching 99% of my feed, and just use YouTube when I need to reference something these days.
Like finding out a location from a video game or looking up a recipe to cook. I don't find myself liking majority of the "big YouTube as a job" type channels, and videos I tend to view when searching has been more "this is my only upload because it seemed interesting" type videos.
