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

Comments

• fox2263@lemmy.world ⁨20⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago

  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.

  source

  • iopq@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago

    Or you use adblock

    source
• TooManyGames@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ 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.

  source

  • cardfire@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Thanks for the analysis. I’ve got to say. We on Lemmy can be vicious.

    source

    • TooManyGames@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago

      Yeah, it’s easy to bark at influencer we don’t like.

      source
  • favoredponcho@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago

    I wonder what they’re going to prioritize now

    source

    • TooManyGames@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ 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.

      source
• Engywuck@lemmy.zip ⁨28⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago

  I literally i watch a YouTube videos, as they are just a waste of time. For a given video on a given topic, the same amount of information can be obtained by a decently written blog or article that can be read in a 1/10 of the time it takes to watch q video filled by nonsense blabbering and sponsored segments for revenues. In some extreme cases, if the topic seems really, really , REALLay interesting, I may ask an LLM to summarize the video for me. People should stop linking YouTube videos altogether.

  source

  • iopq@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago

    Watch veritasium videos, they are well researched and informative. I have sponsor block and ad block so I don’t get annoyed

    source
• interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago

  Are people pretending that Youtube doesn’t tweedle the knobs and intervenes massively in the al mighty algorithm like it’s not just a audience mind puppet but some kind of transcendental meritocracy ?

  source
• tang999@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  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.

  source

  • Holytimes@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago

    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.

    source
• goatinspace@feddit.org ⁨52⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago

  Try peertube?

  source
• dinckelman@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  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

  source

  • lepinkainen@lemmy.world ⁨23⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago

    Why is Yahtzee complaining about the same issue? He does games, not tech: youtu.be/cpVnx4_yqTo

    source
  • cyberpunk007@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    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.

    source

    • sploosh@lemmy.world ⁨47⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago

      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.

      source
    • Holytimes@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago

      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.

      source
• REDACTED@infosec.pub ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  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.

  source

  • flightyhobler@lemmy.world ⁨35⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago

    That doesn’t explain a sudden drop.

    source

    • sunbeam60@lemmy.ml ⁨19⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago

      How dare you use facts to challenge our beliefs!!

      source
• floquant@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨57⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago

  They’ve spent the last several years playing into “The Algorithm”, to the point where most videos felt unnatural. Tight posting schedules, topic choices, sudden endings, etc.

  Not that I care, but I’m curious to see if they will switch to making content they actually care about, or double down and start doing proper brainrot.

  source
• TORFdot0@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  I think it’s a loss of talent and shuttering of shows across his company’s channels that are leading it. I can only watch so many “reporting verbatim the benchmark results of new tech product” or “I made my family a sleeper desk” or “dark horse home theater for my kid” videos. I’d much rather watch the highly produced “Mac Address” videos with Jonathan or retro gaming systems and setups videos with Anthony but they aren’t a part of LMG anymore.

  Riley is doing well on tech linked but he’s talented enough to get a real job and after that, what’s the last interesting thing that LMG has? WAN show clips?

  source
• hornedfiend@sopuli.xyz ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  I was never a fan of LTT, or his videos, but I did watch one video, his Pop os one and that immediately confirmed why.

  source
• shortwavesurfer@lemmy.zip ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  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.

  source

  • orclev@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    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.

    source

    • k0e3@lemmy.ca ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      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.

      source

      • -> View More Comments
    • tal@lemmy.today ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      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.

      source
  • brucethemoose@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

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

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

    source
  • mesamunefire@piefed.social ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    That would be the dream! Not sure about actual data but yeah. I want it to be true lol.

    source
• cyberpunk007@lemmy.ca ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  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

  source

  • ProfessorProteus@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    a bunch of ppl with STIs

    Hey man, don’t bash the WRX! It’s a cool car 😉

    But yeah, blocking ads is the only way to watch YT. I swore off twitch once uBO stopped working there.

    source
• mctoasterson@reddthat.com ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  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.

  source

  • lepinkainen@lemmy.world ⁨21⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago

    Then ahy is Yahtzee complaining about the same issue? He does games, not tech: youtu.be/cpVnx4_yqTo

    Has the Second Wind channels quality gone down too, AT THE EXACT SAME TIME as LTT?

    source
  • pycorax@sh.itjust.works ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    The clickbait titles and thumbnails destroyed most of the interest I had in their videos but at that time, it was clear that they were pivoting to a more typical less enthusiast-level audience. I still found some of their occasional videos somewhat interesting but the increasing hypocrisy and shit they’ve pulled made me stop watching all together.

    source
• deroyonz@lemmy.zip ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  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

  source

  • lepinkainen@lemmy.world ⁨22⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago

    Yahtzee is complaining about the same issue: youtu.be/cpVnx4_yqTo

    Something has changed in the last few months

    source
  • Cataphract@lemmy.ml ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    It’s an article about Linus and viewership decline, a lot of people on here (including myself) probably once watched and then moved on. Of course the view:like ratio would skyrocket if less common people are viewing and only his main core is keeping on (who are giving the likes). You would rather people talk about an unsubstantiated claim of viewership conspiracy instead?

    source

    • deroyonz@lemmy.zip ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      It’s not unsubstantiated; It’s a very visible sudden shift in the same date range across multiple channels. To answer your question, what I would rather is people learn to shut up when something is happening that they don’t care to look into any further, rather than act like the Reddit-like cesspool of confidently wrong people that just invent their own theories for things.

      source
• C1pher@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

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

  source
• MushuChupacabra@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  That must be devastating for the narcissist.

  source

  • sun_is_ra@sh.itjust.works ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    why narcissist?

    source

    • MushuChupacabra@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Udn7WNOrvQ

      source

      • -> View More Comments
• neon_nova@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  I don’t really watch new tech videos anymore because I’m not I. The market for new tech. Mostly because it’s way too expensive now and my old stuff works well enough.

  source
• _cryptagion@anarchist.nexus ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Couldn’t have happened to a nicer asshole.

  source
• whosepoopisonmybutt@sh.itjust.works ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  I was never a fan of Linus tech tips. He always seemed like a weird guy. I did watch that video where he totally fucked his Linux installation by being really dumb. The package manager warned him that he was about to destroy his system and made him type something like “Yes, I know what I’m doing”. He then reacted like, “why would Linux do this to me!? It’s so hard!”

  Either a paid shill or an absolute moron.

  source
• dataprolet@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Maybe post actually interesting content instead of pumping out a bunch of variations of the same video about building yet another PC on a dozen of channels. After the whole drama about video quality we got a few more citations but the overall video quality got worse. And then 1/3 videos are paid as if Linus weren’t a multi millionaire. Realize it LTT sucks.

  source

  • lepinkainen@lemmy.world ⁨18⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago

    Then why are other channels noticing a viewer drop too?

    youtu.be/cpVnx4_yqTo

    source
• JTskulk@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  It’s insane he ever had a healthy viewership in the first place.

  source

  • NauticalNoodle@lemmy.ml ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

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

    source

    • JTskulk@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      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.

      source
  • zipzoopaboop@lemmynsfw.com ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Scrapyard wars and secret shopper are fun

    source
• theunknownmuncher@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Don’t care

  source
• altphoto@lemmy.today ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  I think its because people don’t have money?

  source

  • green_link@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    What does that have to do with being able to watch videos on a free ad supported platform?

    Also this isn’t just something happening to LTT, this is happening across the board with many many channels speaking up about drop in views. YouTube did something and it’s hurting content creators both large and small

    source

    • Holytimes@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago

      If someone can’t afford to be part of the hobby then they arnt goanna watch videos on that hobby

      They’re going to move on. Find a new hobby that they can’t afford to participate in. Then find new creators that do content in that new hobby

      Tech has priced out most of the lower and lower middle class. We can’t play anymore so we need to find something new to do

      source

      • -> View More Comments
• Endymion_Mallorn@kbin.melroy.org ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  When he returns the cooler block he damaged and stole, I'll stop trying to turn people away from his content.

  source

  • cyberpunk007@lemmy.ca ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    ?

    source

    • Endymion_Mallorn@kbin.melroy.org ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Check the vids from Gamers Nexus.

      source
• dumbass@leminal.space ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Linus looking at his failing channel.

  Image

  source
• Aatube@kbin.melroy.org ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  odysee
  peertube

  source
• LetMeShowYouAThing@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  YouTube only shows me like 12 channels. I miss variety.

  source
• SharkAttak@kbin.melroy.org ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Maybe YT has started to be more aggressive towards viewbots like Twitch? Or has changed something in the algorithm (again) and fucked up (again).

  source
• Goretantath@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  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 ir comments in the comment section) it hurts the channel. Thats why i resubbed to every channel i unsubbed from, that eay 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 gave to start a fresh channel free from the dead subs to get the algorithm to pick you back up.

  source