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

[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.

[sxan@piefed.zip]

Me neither. And it's probably contributing to þe declining viewership.

[orclev@lemmy.world]

This is such a strange concept. Like fundamentally a subscription is just a mechanism to allow a viewer to easily keep track of new content on a channel. By viewing the channels contents you're engaging in 100% of the interaction you should be expected to have with a subscribed channel. If Google really wanted to address the problem of old subscriptions people are ignoring they should just prompt people to unsubscribe to channels that they haven't watched any videos from in a long time. Instead they're fucking with view counts because that saves them money. The whole thing is fishy, but Google has always treated being inscrutable and capricious as if those were virtues.

[aatube@kbin.melroy.org]

I haven't seen the video yet either, but that's not bias, that's Louis Rossmann. He always speaks like that. He's not a random tech YouTuber. He's very provocative and holds a cult-like fanbase (though I haven't watched enough of his to have an opinion whether that's warranted; I personally don't like provocative rage content but that seems to be all the rage).

Also, there's extensive chaptering with a title for each.

[theunknownmuncher@lemmy.world]

Don't care

[aatube@kbin.melroy.org]

Note that Sportskeeda is a user-generated source.

[k0e3@lemmy.ca]

I wanna like Peertube as an alternative, but I can't find any content I like there. And the app is so awkward to use.

[nauticalnoodle@lemmy.ml]

His videos have always seemed like long-form advertisements for various tech products

[jtskulk@lemmy.world]

I learned about him right before his whole PopOs thing. I couldn't believe that people would take computing advice from someone who also doesn't read what's on the screen in front of him. I expect this from my users I do tech support for, but not someone that bills himself as something as an expert.

[aatube@kbin.melroy.org]

odysee
peertube

[brucethemoose@lemmy.world]

Honestly, YouTube is the “least bad” of most commercial social media.

If people go to Twitter or Discord or whatever instead, that would be awful.

[mctoasterson@reddthat.com]

I dunno. Something about the content I think.

A few years back some of their content was fun and interesting. Now lately it's all either "here's a bunch of comparisons of hardware you can't even afford" or "Linus puts some ridiculous tech in his own personal house - thanks for subsidizing his home improvement projects by the way"

I will still watch an occasional video but there are other tech related channels that I enjoy a lot more.

[c1pher@lemmy.world]

Problem with their channel specifically, is their hypocrisy, BS, lack of research and just misleading their viewer-base. People remember.