Submitted 2 weeks ago by mesamunefire@piefed.social to technology@lemmy.world
A lot of Youtube channels are reporting declining viewership lately.
EX: https://youtube.com/watch?v=cpVnx4_yqTo
Then I saw this article as well.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Yeah, though I think that you could avoid some of that with a good cross-video-hosting service search engine, as I don’t think that most people are engaging in the social media aspect of YouTube. YouTube doesn’t have a monopoly on indexing YouTube videos.
But the scale doesn’t hurt them, that’s for sure.
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…
Honestly, YouTube is the “least bad” of most commercial social media.
If people go to Twitter or Discord or whatever instead, that would suck.
That would be the dream! Not sure about actual data but yeah. I want it to be true lol.
Been paying for Nebula for years, but their app has a long way to go.
youtube is already replacing it with AI slop, and propaganda. they increased it.
If anyone wants to be part of the solution: !peertube@lemmy.world
My heavily biased take is I like peertube. And like the creators on it.
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.
Could back up that theory that it’s autoplay views being reduced and they are not worth much anyway
*the view/ like ratio doubled halved
The views halved, the lines stayed the same. So the ratio of likes to views is now higher.
How does that even work? If someone viewed the video then they viewed the video. Are they simply not counting people who basically clicked by accident or who only watched the first 30sec before deciding that they didn’t actually want to watch the video?
Even before this drop in views, the rule was you have to watch a video for at least 30 seconds before it counts as a view, as a way to combat clickbait where people instantly bounce from a video. Maybe they have changed this further?
wonder how google is considering what count as a view? you have to watch it a certain number of minutes? you must be exposed to ads for X amount of time?
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.
Doesn’t help he has actually gotten dumber over the years.
He very clearly has fallen out of touch and basically is just a personality at this point.
So your not even watching a tech enthusiast millionaire dick around with things.
Your just watching a rich white dude dick around with tech and his company.
I always hated his "oh no i hope i don’t drop this expensive thing that you peasants can hardly afford… Oh i dropped it’ schtick. People cheered him on like aome village idiot. At some point he said he feels like he’s pushing expensive unnecessary stuff to people who can hardly afford it and he wants to stop doing it. But he never did. He’s doing tech reviews and i assume a podcast, because everyone has a podcast, and his studio is ABSURD. I watched some other video where they needed something from the LTT studio and they even commented on how fucking big his operation is. He had rooms there he didn’t even know existed. I stick to the opinion that he’s just a slimy rick man, nothing else.
Would it be any better if he’s black?
Why racially profile if it doesnt matter?
sounds like he got Lazy and just let his, lower- level plebs manage the channels where he just comes in and “promote” product and leaves kind of person. i was subscribed to another channel that did that, they just wanted to “not be present” while channel is declining because its still doing well, now its not doing well(they had several issue arise that caused it.)
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??
As I recall, he installed a top of the line commercial grade system in his house and surrounding property for the lols.
Oh dude. The next drop. DIY it. It’s easier than you think. Even the cheap keystone punch tools will get the job done.
He will look for answers literally anywhere, except for within.
The tech scene is just not as interesting anymore, and the stuff he specifically covers is even less interesting. But the bigger issue is that everything LMG do is just corporate jank. It was fun when it was home garage jank, with 2 employees, but now it’s just miserable and frustrating. And thats not even taking any of the interpersonal issues, or legal drama from recent history
I never considered that the tech scene isn’t interesting anymore, but you’re right. Everything is boring incremental upgrades these days. Things are having the fun squeezed out of them for profits (in app purchases, proprietary lockin, cloud shit that dies or has permanent bugs, etc), lots of stuff just feels like it’s plateaued or is junk.
Don’t forget that most of us are getting priced out of the hobby in general. It’s not fun when you can’t afford to play around in your own hobby. You move on and find a new hobby.
Very true. The last decade and a half have just been switching between round and square corners with mild spec bumps. VR was supposed to be it I think, but it just isn’t useful enough.
And all the big “innovations” have been in venture capitalist bubbles like AI, NFTs, etc. or soured by the companies and people behind them. I hear SpaceX has been doing some cool stuff, but all I can see is Musk making a flying Cyber Truck for his ego on NASA’s dollar. One of the reactors at 3 Mile Island is coming back online, the first US nuclear power project in who knows how many years…in order to fuel Microsoft’s AI data centers.
Advancements in tech used to be about pushing the boundaries of what we’re capable of. Now, it’s all about pushing the boundaries of how much money the oligarchs can stuff into a single pocket.
Why is Yahtzee complaining about the same issue? He does games, not tech: youtu.be/cpVnx4_yqTo
Tbf games content is also saturated af.
He will look for answers literally anywhere, except for within.
The tech scene is just not as interesting anymore
He has literally publicly talked about this many times, he is very much aware of this fact and has stated that he’s always looking for things that he can try and make interesting.
and the stuff he specifically covers is even less interesting. But the bigger issue is that everything LMG do is just corporate jank. It was fun when it was home garage jank, with 2 employees, but now it’s just miserable and frustrating
On this part, I honestly don’t quite get it. It’s definitely a bit more corporate now, they are a 100 person company, but when it comes to the videos, I don’t really see what else you’d want them to do? Sure they have some sponsored videos every now and then that are just showcases of a specific product, but even then I typically find them relatively interesting. And they still have a lot of videos where they’re trying to build novel stuff and thinkering. Yeah, sure, it’s typically on a higher level than what the average Joe would be capable of doing in their backyard, but I still feel like there’s a place for it. Take one of the more recent videos, the one with the double-decker table. It’s extremely cool to me, they took a regular table and a sit-to-stand desk, put one on top of the other, and made effectively two desks in one, one for gaming and one for a hobby. It’s not something I’d build for myself, but it’s a really fun concept.
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. Not to mention his awful annoying vocal fry. He’s like the male Fran Drescher.
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.
That, and Emily was the best thing about the channel and she left so…
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.
Dude’s just scummy. I’ve no idea why people will defend him to the ends of the earth.
About Honey, they didn’t find out that Honey was scamming viewers until everyone else did.
What they found out earlier, at the same time as many other youtubers, was that Honey was “scamming” the youtubers themselves by replacing the youtubers reference codes.
At the time they thought the viewers still got discounts, so they didn’t announce anything about it since it would seem like they asked the viewers not to take the discounts so that LTT could make more money.
It’s actually worse than that.
He does know some stuff about technology and his team knows the stuff that he maybe doesn’t know.
But in the fight with GamersNexus they basically admitted that they don’t have time to properly fact check stuff because they would make less money if they released less videos.
That’s from way back when. They shut production for a week, reassessed how they make things, and came back with the promise to be more thorough and not release a video when it’s just not done that day. And they have “missed” some days since.
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.
Hes an emotionally stunted 13 year old, that thinks its funny to keep dropping/breaking things that most normal people could never afford to even touch, who is quick to criticize the wrongs of everyone else, but acts like a goddamn martyr as soon as you criticize him and his behavior.
his response to GamersNexus “being mean” by reporting facts backed up by receipts and evidence is only the tip of the iceberg.
I agree with most of your points, but vocal fry?!
That’s such an asinine thing to care about.
I just find his voice very irritating. I know not everyone feels that way.
I also don’t hear any, and neither does Fran Drescher have one? I mean my ears were ringing too much from all the fapping to notice it on The Nanny.
he rubbed me the wrong way when he created drama with employees like last year. people were being sexist towards a female employee how she wasnt in tech, and she should do anything on the "show.
I never watched that channel very much, but in the several videos I’ve seen (maybe 10-12 total?), he seemed to know exactly what he was talking about.
I’d be interested in hearing what specific complaints technical experts have with the channel.
its that Nasal voice right? like lois from family guy
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.
They are using automatic dubbing by default here in France! I was horrified the first time.
After some time it “learns” you don’t want it.
But what grinds my gears instead are auto-translated video titles.
Because I am watching maybe 70-80% english content I decided the lesser evil is to just set the language to english instead.
Annoying as fuck but managable.
I hate them for auto translating the video titles and descriptions with no way to turn them off, I even installed an extension to restore the original titles but YT broke it again intentionally or unintentionally with their unending tweaks.
It horrifies me as a German. They also get titles, descriptions and comments wrong all the time. It legitimately doesn’t work.
for Android (TV): smart tube next
For a browser (Firefox): ublock origin.
Have not seen an ad in years, and i have not paid a cent to youtube.
That must be devastating for the narcissist.
Google is making users/consumers not want to use/consume google things by making those things more difficult, more invasive, less user friendly to use/consume.
That’s it. That’s all.
If I just want to watch a clip that I could before but now I have to sign in because it thinks I’m a not, NO
If it wants me to watch ads for things I’ll never buy and actually forces me to, NO.
If it kills the front ends I prefer to use, or kills the ability to watch via proxy, for my privacy and/or security. NO.
If it feeds me Nazi shit without clicking a single link on a new install on a new browser with no profile on a new IP, fucking NO.
The most recent findings from Brodie Robertson were that the like to view ratio skyrocketed, something that LTT also has confirmed on their side in the newer stream, and what seems like similar behavior in DarkviperAU’s channel. It seems that the likes and the actual pay for the ads are basically the same, but the views are reduced. It’s as if views were the same but are being displayed lower than usual.
Not that most people here would care apparently, because the majority just wants to shit on Linus above actually having any worthwhile look into any of this stuff
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.
He generates far too much content without any depth, and it’s all infotainment.
Eh. I lost any interest I had with Linus after the whole Gamers’ Nexus thing, and I’m definitely staying away after hearing what Louis Rossman had to say about the guy.
Lol 90% of comments taking the opportunity to hate on LTT and missing the point of the post. Views are dropping for multiple channels.
Also the LTT hate is mostly “He’s so rich and out of touch”. LTT is the mass produced TV show for tech YouTube. It’s meant to be entertaining and easy to watch for the masses. I like watching most of their videos. Gamers Nexus has its place too but it’s a different kind of nerd whose a lil more cynical and obsessed with specs, a lot more niche and it shows in the views.
To each their own.
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.
youtu.be/hJ-rRXWhElI (a yt link, lol).
A brief summary from dailydot.com/…/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.
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 altogether
Let’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.
What I’ve noticed is YouTube recommending me more obscure videos, from very small creators.
I very much appreciate whatever they’re doing, regardless of how these bigger channels are being hit by it. Yesterday I got recommended a video by an elderly woman, showing a mug warmer she bought. It was very sweet, had less than 30 views and it was a lovely contrast to the flashy, over edited videos stretching a paragraph to 10+ minutes.
Not saying the big channels are bad, I just personally like the small time channels and appreciate that YouTube has been (at least with the algorithm it has set for me) giving these small channels a shot at getting an audience.
I’ve connected with a lot of people from smaller channels, joined communities etc. yet this is much more difficult with the larger ones (in some I’ve been to, over the years, the chatrooms they set up are so huge the moderation sometimes just gives up or doesn’t even exist in any practical way).
I’m sure declining viewers has nothing to do with the various controversies such as auctioning off prototypes, rushed reviews with misleading or false conclusions, mistreating staff etc. Channels like Gamers Nexus really laid into him.
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.
the channel has lost its charm. its just puking out videos, but there is no content. no real hardware tests. only drama and clickbait crap. he has lost the techsavvy part of the viewers on his tech channel with pushing garbage into everyones face.
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.
Problem with their channel specifically, is their hypocrisy, BS, lack of research and just misleading their viewer-base. People remember.
Because people wont stay 14 to 16 year olds for long
It’s interesting that no one seems to be mentioning the fact that new generation is using TikTok and older generation is watching media less and less. To me it looks like YouTube itself is cooked in the long term, and they brought it upon themselves. Restore the gotdamn dislikes so I can at least navigate the damn platform.
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.
Maybe at some point we can all stop watching and hence supporting YouTube, that’d be nice.
I wonder if it has to do with ad fatigue. Watching YouTube without a block is like going to an orgy with a bunch of ppl with STIs
It’s not about Linus specifically. Many other channels (with actual good content) have been experiencing the same. Creators are assuming it has to do with restricted mode, but I’m not sure it’s convincing, it probably has more to do with algorithmic changes youtube has made.
Google is now expecting users to watch ads that are sometimes a full 25% of the viewing time, or slowing access and requiring logins when adblock is being used.
And even if you wade through all that, watching Youtube tech and info videos has become a lot like looking at online recipes. The majority of what you find is fluff and filler for only small amounts of useful content.
I used to go to Youtube daily for research and entertainment. Now I avoid the site completely whenever possible.
It seems we’ve finally reached an enshittification tipping point. It’s about time.
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.
TooManyGames@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
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.
cardfire@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
Thanks for the analysis. I’ve got to say. We on Lemmy can be vicious.
TooManyGames@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Yeah, it’s easy to bark at influencer we don’t like.
JayGray91@piefed.social 2 weeks ago
In their video, Yahtzee said it could be related to Restricted Mode on youtube suddenly turns on by itself. Or at least that's their hypothesis, since they checked that if that mode is on, a lot of their videos vanished from their channel.
TooManyGames@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
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.
favoredponcho@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
I wonder what they’re going to prioritize now
CosmoNova@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
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 ala talking about videos with jusz a few thousand or few hundred views that make up roughly 10-15 percent 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 a guy with their phone in their garage workshop or a college student in their dorms.
There is a lot wrong with Youtube but I couldn‘t care less about huge channels being forced to slim down or try harder.
TooManyGames@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
AI slop most likely. Well, to be serious, I think the drop is due to them trying to fight AI slop and miserably failing.
Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
I hope anything but LTT, a shit clickbait channel that steals things to auction off
ronigami@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Nazi salutes and brotein supplements
scarabic@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
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.
TooManyGames@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
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.
Klear@quokk.au 2 weeks ago
DarkviperAU also mentioned it.
WhirlpoolBrewer@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I’ll echo that I have felt an algorithm change. I watch a lot of leather crafting videos and a lot of Adam Savage videos. In the past week I’ve been getting Adam Savage working on leather videos and I’ve been thrilled to discover these. As someone who’s been watching both Adam Savage and leather crafting videos for months or maybe years, I should have already seen these, but somehow missed these until this past week. Now YouTube shows me video after video of Adam Savage working on leather, which I love.
Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 2 weeks ago
youtube is probably gearing the algorithim for other content that draws in more views or revenue.
TooManyGames@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Not impossible. The best revenue for Google would be if they could ai generate all the content themselves.