A lot of Youtube channels are reporting declining viewership lately.
EX1: https://youtube.com/watch?v=cpVnx4_yqTo
EX2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yF0tmhEtVJE
Fun times. Looks like a lot of channels are seeing a decline not just Linus. Hes just the latest to talk about it.
Then I saw this article as well and thought I would share.
Anyone here youtube creators? Are you seeing the same thing, a general downturn in viewership?
So many possible reason.
Linus has a history of scummy behavior which turns people off.
Everything gets boring eventually. Especially things that are supposed to be funny.
Google ads are extra obnoxious making the entire platform more annoying to use and most of us will never pay for youtube. Those ads are not even selling products I would be interested in. Investment scams, car accident claim ads, AI voiced robot panda. It just annoying noise.
Nothing lasts forever.
He’s also put a lot of work into creating a team of hosts that are genuinely wonderful to watch. Riley, Jake, Sarah, James, and Elijah to name a few. Best thing he could do for his brand is step out of the limelight, focus on being “chief vision officer” and let his wonderful talent fully take over hosting.
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.
The problem is those channels are very similar. I get tired of hearing the same thing again and again. There is really no need for weekly news
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?
My theory is that we have a limited number of hours a day to view content. We also have a growing number of channels and content in general. Algorithms include new content we kight enjoy, and for every new channel we get hooked on, one of the older ones drops off.
Tv shows rarely (ever?) Last forever. Why should channels?
Wiith how often either someone I know or some random user is like, here watch this. And it’s anywhere from 15-60 minute video. How many hours day do you think I have. Just sum up what you’re trying to show me in a few sentences.
It’s like the 21st century version of useless work meetings.
This didn’t need to be a meeting.
This didn’t need to be a Youtube video.
This didn’t need to be a podcast.
It’s oversaturation.Same goes with podcasts. I’m sure we’re past peak podcasting too. Everyone and their dog has a podcast. 99% of them are private conversations that have no reason for existing as podcasts. People are recording a random conversation about nothing and calling it a podcast episode. Just stop.
I don’t even watch so many hours of TV shows. I have maybe two or three shows I’ll be watching at any given time. That’s like a few hours a week. The algorithmic content pushing has lost the plot. They expect us to be robotic content consuming machines 24 hours a day, seven days week. I have to eat and shit and earn a living so I can continue to sustain my physical existence so I can consume content. I suppose this is the natural end goal of adtech companies like Google. A tireless soulless machine that devours humanity.
Much of the content has become useless fluff. A good chunk of Youtube videos and podcasts are just friends bantering or cackling over inside jokes. Like why am I listening to this noise being blasted from my headphone to my ears. I’m over it.
We do, but in the last decade youtube has doubled its yearly user count to something like 2.5 billion. That’s a lot of more people-hours to spend as well.
No this is a contraction of the commons
The more interesting part for me, that they mentioned on the WAN show, is that while viewers dropped significantly, the revenue basically hasn’t changed. They’re more or less making the same amount of money from half the amount of reported viewers.
They’re more or less making the same amount of money from half the amount of reported viewers.
This would pretty much confirm that they’ve stopped counting viewers who use adblockers.
Isn’t that the formula? They take all of the revenue, set aside the percentage they’ve set for revenue share, and then divide that among all channels based on viewer counts. Dropping viewership for all channels proportionally means that the same amount of revenue will still be distributed to the channels in the previous ratios.
I’m not quite sure I understood what you were talking about, but they specifically showed their revenues from YouTube AdSense for the past year or so, and they showed exactly how much they gained from each video, and it shows basically a straight line, whilst the same graph for viewers shows a substantial decrease. I’m not sure if that was specifically for LTT or for all of their channels, but I’m assuming it was just for LTT. That has no relation to them then splitting their revenues to their different channels.
The same proportion will be given but the total revenue overall should shrink with less viewers, so less for each creator.
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.
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.
Couldn’t have happened to a nicer asshole.
Stopped watching this douche nozzle when they were having a big meet and greet to celebrate their new studio. And he looks at the camera guy and tells them inf front of all the fans they’re having a good time with… Overtime tonight guys, we gotta edit this footage and have it online today. Would have quit my job on the spot and as a viewer I quit my part in the bullshit right then and there.
May care to link to what you mean?
Can’t remember what you are talking about.I dunno, I realized a long time ago this is just a business for the people engaging in it.
Of course they’re making more money than they need and are partying as much as possible with it.
Oh and as if by magic, after I said something I received an email from a client bemoaning about the drop in youtube viewers. She reckons it is not only a drop in viewers but in viewing time as well. Mentioned bloody AI as well just because everybody is
Broadly maybe the viewers are just getting sick of all of the shilling for cheap shit that goes on with the ever increasing sponsor segments so many channels have these days. Arguments will be had about just how needed all of those marketing dollars are for the creator to keep doing their thing vs them getting used to a lot of money and wanting even more of it. But the end result is a worse viewing experience for the consumer. I know there are a lot of channels that make good content that I’ve stopped watching because they spend a quarter of the video shilling junk. Sure sponserblock would get rid of those sections, but it won’t send a message like unsubscribing and stopping watching them completely will.
Also maybe this is a larger Youtube usage hit due to their aggressive anti-adblock nonsense and uptick in ads and shitty UI design.
For Linus specifically, he has the above issues as well as having been very publicly outed as a slimy deuce. What his channels put out is not unique enough these days to justify dealing with the shilling and his companies bad behavior.
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…
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.
do you have the “important” tab at he top of subs now? it shows me videos i have already watched and I have no clue how it works or how youtube decides what is important but it’s unnecessary and annoying.
before, if I clicked on a new video it might show me a few videos after that which fit the same theme/category. Now if I watch one fucking video it completely floods my algorithm with the same shit back to back. I have different accounts on every device I watch something on (like in the kitchen when cooking, etc) and they’re so fucking drastically different in the feed it’s insane.
Its because theres too many “dead subscriptions”. The algorithm punishes channels that have subs that dont interact with saud channel.
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.
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
The subscribed view has shorts filling most of it, it became useless
I just use RSS to track my subscriptions instead
My subscribed has 1 row of shorts no matter how far I scroll, never adds more.
i never login so, its nice to not see the same person/influencer(often ragebait, propaganda when you close and open youtube again.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEJpZjg8GuA&t=18
Just use the subscriptions tab (yes, this video does talk about it).
I guess the point is channels are seeing a dropping viewership across the board. Or at least two different creators of VERY different videos have had the same experience so far. And the reddit thread behind this has more people (assuming they are telling the truth) confirming the drop.
It seems like YouTube is doing something where they don’t consider views to be actual “views” anymore. I saw one creator reporting that you only get credit as a view if you also leave a comment on the video because I guess Google thinks this will somehow hamper bots? Sounds like a bunch of bullshit no matter how you look at it. Personally I think Google is just trying to avoid paying creators so they’re only crediting them for a fraction of the views they get, but you just know they’re charging those advertisers for every single view whether they’re paying the creators or not.
You might be right.
What a moronic move. I almost never post comments but I watch plenty of content.
Commenting on YouTube videos is just shouting into the void
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.
This I believe.
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.
most influencers cant rely ads from yt anymore, so they switch to brand deals, promotions, thats where they get thier money from. and sometimes patreon.
youtube seems to be pushing alot more AI garbage than normal lately as well. they just made a contract with Israel to allow them to flood the site with pro-zionist propaganda.
youtube is also part of the problem, as many videos is made using googles AI video generator.
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 had never heard of him til all the shit started getting slung around.
temporarily paid more interest to him, when that drama hit last year, about him and the other employee. He looked like he just woke up from a long coma, and wasnt present his channel for some time at the time.
