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

Comments

• tang999@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ 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.

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  • scarabic@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    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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    • tang999@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      As I recall, he installed a top of the line commercial grade system in his house and surrounding property for the lols.

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    • TunaLobster@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      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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  • Holytimes@sh.itjust.works ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ 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.

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    • Tollana1234567@lemmy.today ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      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.)

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    • Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Would it be any better if he’s black?
      Why racially profile if it doesnt matter?

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    • slaneesh_is_right@lemmy.org ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      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.

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• TORFdot0@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ 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?

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• altphoto@lemmy.today ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I think its because people don’t have money?

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  • green_link@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ 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

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    • brsrklf@jlai.lu ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      It may not be what that person meant, but, I kinda agree it might be a factor. The free experience has done nothing but become more and more terrible on youtube. The ads have become truly insufferable, and the UI is actively working against you. TV app in particular is borderline unwatchable.

      I have always watched YouTube for free, and I am at a point where I am considering ditching the thing completely, because I am not paying another (quite expensive) subscription for it. I haven’t yet, but it has certainly slowed down how much I watch.

      It’s so bad it’s even questioning some uses I had for the platform. I used to watch a video while I eat, stuff like that. What’s the point if I barely make it out of the initial ad tunnel just before dessert? And when I pause for just a minute to get something, I am immediately hit with another ad break as I resume?

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    • Holytimes@sh.itjust.works ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ 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

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• neon_nova@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ 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.

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  • Tollana1234567@lemmy.today ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    yes p47 tariffs plus his recent shenanigins with postal deliveries.

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• LetMeShowYouAThing@sh.itjust.works ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

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

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• cyberpunk007@lemmy.ca ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ 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

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  • Tollana1234567@lemmy.today ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    the amount of ads yt pushes, if your not using adblockers people are just toturing themselves. Also i dont login so no subscription for them, because alot of the content creators eventually turn shitheel down the line anyways, or give misinformation in thier industry.

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  • ProfessorProteus@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ 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.

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• Endymion_Mallorn@kbin.melroy.org ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

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

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  • dev_null@lemmy.ml ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    The one Billet Labs confirmed they were never supposed to return and the whole thing was a misunderstanding (again, according to Billet Labs), that one?

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  • cyberpunk007@lemmy.ca ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    ?

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    • Endymion_Mallorn@kbin.melroy.org ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Check the vids from Gamers Nexus.

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• _cryptagion@anarchist.nexus ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Couldn’t have happened to a nicer asshole.

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• deroyonz@lemmy.zip ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ 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

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  • gusgalarnyk@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Ya, I can’t believe how negative people are towards LTT. That channel is the reason I de-googled when I did, dove into home assistant, even checked out Linux (and now use arch full time by the way). I’m not super interested in defending a company let alone a YouTube personality, but like Jesus Christ some most of the people commenting negatively about LTT need to chill the fuck out. They’re not that bad, they clearly pay people well, they’re open and honest about most shit. If your bullshit detector is going off with LTT I think it needs tuning because you’re probably hitting a lot of false negatives IMHO.

    I have no doubt being as wealthy as Linus is is changing him, I have no doubt that’s effecting the company, but there’s nothing I’m seeing as a regular watcher that is glaringly bad or evil and I recognize in myself I’m actively starting to default to “fuck off” for millionaires so like ┐⁠(⁠￣⁠ヘ⁠￣⁠)⁠┌. I don’t think the channel is getting grandfathered in on that clause either, they just seem to like people doing their best.

    I don’t like Linus’s time-theft stance as of late, the most recent multi monitors vid had a comedic discussion between him and an employee and I recognize his job in that role is to be the straight man and say time charging fraud is theft or whatever but it feels out of touch. That’s a negative thing I can point to I guess. Am I gonna consider Linus or LTTY evil or shit because he’s vocal about theft being theft even though I think corpos can fuck off because they’re getting more productivity then we’re getting paid - no, no I’m not.

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  • lepinkainen@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

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

    Something has changed in the last few months

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  • Cataphract@lemmy.ml ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ 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?

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    • deroyonz@lemmy.zip ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ 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.

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• dinckelman@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ 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

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  • Redex68@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    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.

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  • lepinkainen@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

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

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    • Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Tbf games content is also saturated af.

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  • cyberpunk007@lemmy.ca ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ 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.

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    • EldritchFeminity@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      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.

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    • sploosh@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ 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.

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    • Holytimes@sh.itjust.works ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ 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.

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• whosepoopisonmybutt@sh.itjust.works ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ 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.

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  • Tollana1234567@lemmy.today ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    can be both, yes and i also noticed wierd vibes from. cant understand the fans shilling for this pseudo-tech person that thinks hes jack of all trades.

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  • aeternum@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    por que no los dos

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• C1pher@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

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

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• mctoasterson@reddthat.com ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ 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.

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  • lepinkainen@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ 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?

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  • pycorax@sh.itjust.works ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ 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.

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• Aatube@kbin.melroy.org ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  odysee
  peertube

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• Aatube@kbin.melroy.org ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Note that Sportskeeda is a user-generated source.

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• theunknownmuncher@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Don’t care

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• Goretantath@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ 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.

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• SharkAttak@kbin.melroy.org ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ 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).

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• shortwavesurfer@lemmy.zip ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ 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.

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  • Tollana1234567@lemmy.today ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    youtube is already replacing it with AI slop, and propaganda. they increased it.

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  • scarabic@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Been paying for Nebula for years, but their app has a long way to go.

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  • mesamunefire@piefed.social ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    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.

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  • brucethemoose@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ 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.

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  • orclev@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ 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.

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    • 9bananas@feddit.org ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      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…

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    • tal@lemmy.today ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ 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.

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    • k0e3@lemmy.ca ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ 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.

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  • mesamunefire@piefed.social ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

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

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• JTskulk@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

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

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  • zipzoopaboop@lemmynsfw.com ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Scrapyard wars and secret shopper are fun

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  • NauticalNoodle@lemmy.ml ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

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

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    • JTskulk@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ 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.

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• dataprolet@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ 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.

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  • Tollana1234567@lemmy.today ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    i read that his producing company was worth 10+million at the time.

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  • lepinkainen@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Then why are other channels noticing a viewer drop too?

    youtu.be/cpVnx4_yqTo

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• HC4L@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I just don’t get suggested his content anymore. Then again I just found out every channel I’ve ever subscribed to is under a seperate category and usually not under the main YouTube page…

  Basically I’m blocking every channel I’ve subscribed to without ever realising…

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  • Tollana1234567@lemmy.today ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    i never login so, its nice to not see the same person/influencer(often ragebait, propaganda when you close and open youtube again.

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  • Gobbel2000@programming.dev ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEJpZjg8GuA&t=18

    Just use the subscriptions tab (yes, this video does talk about it).

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  • naitro@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    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

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    • lepinkainen@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      The subscribed view has shorts filling most of it, it became useless

      I just use RSS to track my subscriptions instead

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• MehBlah@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I had never heard of him til all the shit started getting slung around.

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• dumbass@leminal.space ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Linus looking at his failing channel.

  Image

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• MushuChupacabra@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  That must be devastating for the narcissist.

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