"Very dramatic shift" - Linus Tech Tips opens up about the channel's declining viewership
(www.sportskeeda.com)
from mesamunefire@piefed.social to technology@lemmy.world on 05 Sep 22:04
https://piefed.social/post/1233301
from mesamunefire@piefed.social to technology@lemmy.world on 05 Sep 22:04
https://piefed.social/post/1233301
A lot of Youtube channels are reporting declining viewership lately.
EX1: youtube.com/watch?v=cpVnx4_yqTo
EX2: 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?
threaded - newest
That must be devastating for the narcissist.
why narcissist?
www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Udn7WNOrvQ
.
I don’t have an hour to spend watching someone talk into a camera, can I get a TLDR?
.
That’s a weird way of describing Linus being shown to be a narcissistic thundercunt, in exquisite detail, with receipts.
.
I haven't seen the video yet either, but that's not bias, that's Louis Rossmann. He always speaks like that. He's not a random tech YouTuber. He's very provocative and holds a cult-like fanbase (though I haven't watched enough of his to have an opinion whether that's warranted; I personally don't like provocative rage content but that seems to be all the rage).
Also, there's extensive chaptering with a title for each.
I haven‘t watched this video either but Rossmann is an extremely pedantic guy who can be extremely biased when talking about things that rub him the wrong way personally. His take about sponsorblock was almost as baffling as Piratesoftware‘s take about SKG and that says something.
Tl;dr: please, no one watch Linus showing his whole ass.
Are you on his staff or something, or just a fanboy/flying monkey?
.
There are a ton of videos about his shittiness going back years from quite a few people, you could easily find them if you wanted to.
But I don’t get why you don’t just admit you don’t care about that history, it’s a lot less effort than whatever it is you’re trying to convince people of here.
.
Funny you should bring up touching people in that context, because sexual harassment is the reason LTT stopped producing videos for awhile.
https://www.theverge.com/2023/8/16/23834190/linus-tech-tips-gamersnexus-madison-reeves-controversy
Of course, that article also covers the Gamers Nexus investigation into LTT taking money to give biased reviews.
I would keep going, but we both know you aren't going to read or watch those videos, so this comment is more for the other people who might be curious about it. And honestly I think your behavior makes the arguments against LTT look better, for no other reason than assholes tend to be followed by smaller, less famous assholes.
.
ah, yes, the good old "we paid somebody to listen to our side of the story and they naturally found nothing wrong".
as I said, I didn't post that link to convince you, because you're not interested in considering it. the link is for everyone else. you can keep on believing whatever it is you want, but since you can't edit my comment you don't have any way to stop anyone else from considering the facts.
.
it's not independent if the guilty party pays for it. that's called a "conflict of interest".
.
hey, since you love "independent investigations", what's your take on Gamers Nexus catching LTT taking money for positive reviews of products? where the investigation for that, eh?
.
you would know if you had been paying attention to our conversation.
hey what about the time LTT auctioned off property that belonged to someone else without asking them, what's your take on that?
.
it figures you would be OK with that, since you were OK with the sexual harassment. what's a little theft when you've already dismissed unwanted sexual contact, amiright?
the reason I'm still talking with you is because I want to demonstrate to everyone one of the other controversies around LTT, that being the toxic fanbase that's as rabid as Elon's or Trump's. and you played along fantastically, dutifully playing the part of fanboy for everyone to see. so for that, I thank you.
but now that you've done your job and played your role, I don't have any further use for you, so ta-ta and farewell!
.
Not going to take a side here, but the fact you said “you were OK with the sexual harassment”, when the other commenter said nothing as such, does not show that you are arguing in good faith.
they dismissed the allegations because a group LTT paid to look into it said nothing happened. so yeah they absolutely said they were OK with sexual harassment. I'm not going to argue this with you, either, because I am not interested in whatever rationalization for sexual harassment you've prepared.
Wow, well now I know for sure you are not arguing in good faith. Have a nice day.
It wasn't planned to just be given to them. It was always a prototype sent to them for sponsoring purposes. Then they dunked on it without seeing its intended purpose and auctioned it. And until this thing blew up they never refunded it despite email chains. If it was a misunderstanding it was an egregious misunderstanding. Though they also enormously misunderstood a mouse in another tech review and never took off the cover while complaining of trash tracking (because they didn't take off the cover at the bottom!), that being just one of the more ridiculous errors two years ago. This all exploded around the same time as the employee's sexual harassment allegations so you might've missed it. Just watch Gamers Nexus's video on this for the receipts: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGW3TPytTjc it's not an hour long! C'mon, spend your time there instead of heated back-and-forth. Or this 30-minute video from a commentary channel I haven't watched yet but the channel has a good rep: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCvvmvIjNWM
That said, this was all two years ago. Not sure what stirred things up in January.
You’re having some sort of brainfart. The youtube link literally includes receipts of Linus, in his own words, being a cunt.
No high horse required. A presentation of the facts works, as is.
This was me casually dropping some shade on some dickhead, who i barely know or care about.
Would you like me to lean into spotlighting his history of being a narcissistic cunt? We both know that there is no shortage of dirt out there.
Just ask, and I’ll add more credible links as I find them.
Or if that doesn’t suit your fancy, consider shutting your yip yap.
It’s a detailed account of Linus being awful, his heavy usage of DARVO whenever called out for shit behavior.
I won’t summarize, as Louis has receipts for all of it.
I suspect that Linus and Mr. Beast have an identical capacity for empathy.
Me neither. And it's probably contributing to þe declining viewership.
I’ve wondered who had the attention span for hour long videos on youtube or even 10 minute long ones once the algorithm started prioritizing those over short form. Most youtubers just aren’t that good enough to be able to deliver something compelling for a long length of time, which was why short and to the point videos is what I miss about old YouTube.
I regularly watch hour+ videos, and there’s quite a few 10+ hour videos I’ve enjoyed. Just gotta find the right people.
10 hour long videos!? What the hell. What can be that interesting for 10 hours from YouTube? Is it actual full written tv shows or documentary tv series?
Super deep dive into games and their lore mostly, although the super long ones tend to be named like, ‘a quick retrospective of game’
I guess I’m not that into that so wouldn’t find something to interest me on youtube. I probably don’t bother watching 99% of my feed, and just use YouTube when I need to reference something these days.
Like finding out a location from a video game or looking up a recipe to cook. I don’t find myself liking majority of the “big YouTube as a job” type channels, and videos I tend to view when searching has been more “this is my only upload because it seemed interesting” type videos.
I watch a huge range, from 100 subs to 20m. I’ve spent years making a decent sub list to watch so I avoid most issues about trash content.
I cut my sub list down over the years to like 20.
I think I just don’t typically like YouTube type content for entertainment compared to the average viewer.
It’s use to me is more as a resource for when I need a video guide. So I’m more likely to get annoyed by videos that don’t get to the point and seem drawn out and seem like informercials likely due to the reason I’m searching increasing the chances of that type of content.
My blocklist is more valuable than the subscription feed for that reason.
Fair enough, I use mine as basically a replacement for any other streaming platform, so it’s more about entertainment than raw usefulness.
My sub list is ever growing, at about 150 now. I don’t watch a lot of what’s put out by them but that’s where I start when I want to watch something. The main YouTube feed is… Unreliable at best
ooh, look an Islander 😊
Oh the rossman video.
I hate how obsessed on dumb shit he gets. The man is legitimately doing great work usually, and then he takes something minor that an otherwise ally says or does and blows it out of proportion.
This man would have made a great tankie. Unfortunately he made a whole 20 minute video on why AOC is stupid for saying unskilled labor doesn’t exist and then explaining exactly the points she was making.
I legitimately love this mans work and I wanna support him, but man is he petty.
when streamers get super-political, they are no better than the right winger influencers.
Linus looking at his failing channel.
<img alt="" src="https://i.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/facebook/000/032/558/temp6.jpg">
…it’s the algorithm, and not putting every second video behind a member paywall.
The “member” videos and the new age verification was finally the push I needed to use youtube less. I don’t get why creators are pushing their shit like that and it’s EVERYONE it seems. Some are 1.99, some are 6+. It’s just insane youtube thinks it’s a viable market when everyone left cable because of the cost and now it’s 10x more the cost for like 10% of the shit to watch.
LTT does it because some people would prefer to watch the exclusive content on yt instead of on floatplane (their own platform)
As a floatplane subscriber, you’re really not missing much. I don’t even watch most of the exclusives.
But you know who won Scrapyard Wars before the normies 😀
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.
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 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.
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.
Commenting on YouTube videos is just shouting into the void
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.
m.youtube.com/watch?v=cpVnx4_yqTo
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.
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.
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.
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.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEJpZjg8GuA&t=18
Just use the subscriptions tab (yes, this video does talk about it).
i never login so, its nice to not see the same person/influencer(often ragebait, propaganda when you close and open youtube again.
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.
Then why are other channels noticing a viewer drop too?
youtu.be/cpVnx4_yqTo
i read that his producing company was worth 10+million at the time.
.
It’s insane he ever had a healthy viewership in the first place.
His videos have always seemed like long-form advertisements for various tech products
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.
Scrapyard wars and secret shopper are fun
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.
That would be the dream! Not sure about actual data but yeah. I want it to be true lol.
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.
I use Odysee and Peertube where possible but yeah they’re somewhat awkward, and the biggest thing I typically miss is the comments. As awful as most Youtube comments are, the critical mass is there, if you’re looking for a quick link to something in the video, the summary that the author should’ve included but didn’t, the correction where the author was wrong, or something else of actual value, chances are whatever it is you’re trying to find somewhere on the top heap of Youtube comments. As with most social media, the value is not in the service itself, it’s in the community. Steering that community towards somewhere where it will actually be appreciated is a herculean task when someone has to be the pioneers and live in that desert and put in the work to prepare it for the ones who will come after them.
As much as I do complain about Peertube, I do like how it’s like the old personal blog days. Just kinda quietly do your own thing. I’m actually thinking of starting a channel to teach Japanese. I’ll probably have a few lines of my diary and break down the vocabulary and grammar in English and French. It’s like shit nobody would give a crap about, but it’ll get me to keep up with my diary and maybe someone will find the info useful, which I think the earlier days of personal websites and blogs were like.
That sounds like a great idea. I think the independence of the old web is something we should aspire to, it’s a big part of what gave the internet its soul, and that’s what big tech has suffocated with ads and monetization and platform-control.
I glanced at odysee and noped out the second the front page I was looking at was full of trump racist propaganda
Yes, until we bring the light of civilization, it will be the wild west and the natives are trying to kill us.
Are you me?
PeerTube would be great if you didn't have to self-host. And yes, I mean that. Every instance I've found that allows user uploads charges the users for bandwidth (or charges a subscription fee). I've never found an instance yet that works like Dailymotion or YouTube. When we get a big instance (like mastodon.social or one of the big two Lemmy instances), that allows user uploads freely and seamlessly, we'll start seeing it grow.
Oh I didn’t know that was the case. I’ve only really started using it, but I think peertube.wtf hosts some for you. I just started a new account with fedimovie today — because I can’t seem to access wtf for some reason — and I think it said on their sign up page that they have 100gb for me to use.
So, when you say self-host, would I have to have an instance of Peertube myself, or can I have an account with an instance and host just the videos?
My experience is that basically, if you actually want to do anything meaningful with video, you need to host your own instance, because no one wants to be beholden to the bandwidth, especially if it gets any uptake. In which case, obviously, you're on your own for the costs. The only way I can see PeerTube working is if a few of the medium size YouTubers & Twitch streamers with decent monthly Patreon takes band together and fund it that way.
There are quite a few that allow uploads without charges or subs. But not if you start now, right now because costs have risen so much you cannot possibly cover them if someone comes in and uploads 20 or so high quality high bandwidth sucking videos because well, there isnt really the audience and the money is basically lost… and as said that is where we are. Doesn’t help they only really use h.264 and don’t get ad revenue. Creators have zero interest in making a video if they don’t get something back, either in plenty of views or some income which currently, to be brutal, they have zero chance of achieving on peertube compared to youtube
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 be awful.
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.
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. thats where the money is, other than getting it from the major television networks.
i think history buff channels were calling out there were clones of his channel in AI form.
Maybe YT has started to be more aggressive towards viewbots like Twitch? Or has changed something in the algorithm (again) and fucked up (again).
Remember, so long as you stay subscribed to a channel but don’t interact with it in any way(click a vid, comment, dislike it or comments in the comment section) it hurts the channel. Thats why i resubbed to every channel i unsubbed from, that way i can actually hinder them instead of help them. This has been proven from Jesse Cox being told so by youtube staff during meetings he’s had, you literally have to start a fresh channel free from the dead subs to get the algorithm to pick you back up.
Don’t care
Note that Sportskeeda is a user-generated source.
odysee
peertube
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.
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.
Then why 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?
Problem with their channel specifically, is their hypocrisy, BS, lack of research and just misleading their viewer-base. People remember.
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.
por que no los dos
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.
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.
Retro handhelds is mine. At least playing aroundvwith something technology adjacent. Its fun and until the tarrifs came in, very cheap.
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.
VR still is it. If you have €€€€
Take the bigscreen beyond 2.
A vr-headset starting at 1300 (incl. taxes/import).
Uhhh yeah.
Not happening for what little VR could offer me in my current situation (and I don’t watch porn).
Facebook is the best and worst thing to have happened to VR. The Quest is an affordable headset that basically killed all competition and innovation in VR for years. Still holding out hope that the next Valve headset will come out eventually and shake up the scene again.
Theres leaks about some ‘Steam Frame’ happening.
Might be close.
There have been leaks about the Deckard 2 for years now and people always say that Valve will announce it any day now. I’ll believe it when I see it at this point.
Trademark entries are a good indicator there is something nearer than further away.
Fingers crossed. I’ve been waiting a long time to get back into VR and replace my OG Vive.
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 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.
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.
The most recent findings from Brodie Robertson were that the vieas to likes 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 are the same or higher, 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
Edit: Some direct links to said videos for whoever is interested
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?
It’s not unsubstantiated; It’s a very visible sudden shift in the same date range across multiple channels. I would also note the pay staying the exact same is definitely out of the ordinary. 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.
Yahtzee is complaining about the same issue: youtu.be/cpVnx4_yqTo
Something has changed in the last few months
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.
Couldn’t have happened to a nicer asshole.
When he returns the cooler block he damaged and stole, I'll stop trying to turn people away from his content.
?
Check the vids from Gamers Nexus.
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?
But that’s how all drama works, the drama is popular, the later resolution is not seen by many.
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
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.
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(non-malicious)misinformation in thier industry.
YouTube only shows me like 12 channels. I miss variety.
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.
yes p47 tariffs plus his recent shenanigins with postal deliveries.
I think its because people don’t have money?
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
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
So people who couldn’t afford expensive cars didn’t watch Top Gear or Grand Tour?
There are people who do and people who watch. I think the people who do but can’t afford are the ones leaving. Now you’re left with people watching and the few that can afford to do.
Exactly!
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?
and youtubes gross obssesive push with AI/propaganda videos too.
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?
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.
It’s a business with over 100 employees, if it wasn’t huge where would the employees be? His dropping thing always existed, he just got rich in the meantime.
last i heard his company is worth 10+million, yea hes definitely just sitting back and not really advancing his channel/.
Would it be any better if he’s black?
Why racially profile if it doesnt matter?
Edit: I like how I am getting downvoted for asking why the mentioned skin color is of any importance.
If a dude or dudette is a rich asshole it doesnt matter if they are yellow, white, black or green. Asshole stays asshole.
His skin colour is maybe mentioned, because being white rich male is peak privileged, although also being a governor somewhere or having a seat in government would be even better
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.) no interest in change with the times.
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??
Oh dude. The next drop. DIY it. It’s easier than you think. Even the cheap keystone punch tools will get the job done.
I’ve done it. It’s not the wire crimping I paid for, it’s the crawling around under the house and in the attic to route the runs.
As I recall, he installed a top of the line commercial grade system in his house and surrounding property for the lols.
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.
Thanks for the analysis. I’ve got to say. We on Lemmy can be vicious.
Yeah, it’s easy to bark at influencer we don’t like.
I think his org has consistently done its best and I still tune in across the channels. I know that I couldn’t do better with matched resources, without experience and a lot more considerations.
Listening to everyone hate on a whole media group puzzles me a bit.
LTT has done bad things and never apologized. For example he copied a gamersnexus script and never acknowledged it.
And stole an item to auction off! I can’t believe people here defend their ass D:
Which turned out to be false, and Billet Labs confirmed it was always the agreement that they were not supposed to return it, they just changed their mind later when it was already too late.
The email chain was published by Billet Labs after LTT said there were no expectations of returning the prototype. It proved that Linus lied about it.
Billet Labs explicitly said in the email that “you could keep it”. They changed their mind later. So what’s the lie? The emails confirm Linus’s version.
“…
Regarding LTT, we are simply going to state the relevant facts:
On 10th August, we were told by LTT via email that the block had been sold at auction. There was no apology.
We replied on 10th August within 30 minutes, telling LTT that this wasn’t okay, and that this was a £XXXX prototype, and we asked if they planned to reimburse us at all.
We received no reply and no offer of payment until 2 hours after the Gamers Nexus video went live on 14th August, at which point Linus himself emailed us directly.
The exact monetary value of the prototype was offered as reimbursement. We have not received, nor have we asked for any other form of compensation.”
Time-stamped emails were provided as proof.
All correct, and not conflicting with what I said. For the avoidance of doubt here is the email where Billet Labs confirmed they told them they could keep it: imgur.com/a/mF2tz4J
Then they changed their mind, and your timeline follows.
The email says they could keep it for further testing, not sell it.
LTT claimed they offered to pay for it but the time stamps prove they didn’t get an offer to pay for it until after GN publicized the mistake.
No, the email says they said they could keep it, with no qualifiers, because they thought it would be for further testing, but didn’t tell anyone that’s their expectation.
Never acknowledged it? He immediately put a pinned comment attributing Gamers Nexus when notified of it, and GN thanked him for it, which any reasonable person would take as him being happy with the resolution.
It was a piece of info from GN’s video, not a script though.
gamersnexus.net/…/our-response-linus-sebastian
Yeah, that’s what I’m basing what I said on. You can see GN thanking Linus for quick action, and being understanding that an inexperienced writer could make such a mistake.
“quick action”
3 years later and only after Linus made vague legal threats to GN about Honey requiring GN to publicize LTT’s past bad behavior.
I’m literally quoting GN, who said “quick action” in the email you can see, what can I tell you. You can disagree that it was quick action, but you are not disagreeing with me, you are disagreeing with GN.
They took quick action 3 years after GN publicized LTT’s past bad behavior.
According to your source they replied and acknowledged the plagiarism 34 minutes after being notified by GN. I have no clue where you are getting 3 years.
“Plagiarism by Linus Tech Tips of GamersNexus content wherein we previously privately reached out without resolution”
They had privately contacted LTT in the past. LTT ignored it until GN made a public video years later.
Well, if that happened, no such emails are in the GN response.
The quote was from the linked article.
You: Quote Me: The quote is not backed by any proof You: The quote is from the article
Where else would it be from and how is that relevant?
So LTT apologized and gave GN credit only after GN made it public and that’s not proof?
gamersnexus.net/…/our-response-linus-sebastian#li…
Read the emails. Linus said he’d fix it. GN thanked him for quick action but 3 years later LTT still hadn’t done anything.
Yeah, it is proof that Linus acknowledged it. Of course it was too late and he didn’t do enough about it, but that was never in question.
All I see in the email is that Linus said he will speak with the writers to not forget citations again and put up a pinned comment, which he did, and GN thanked him for it. I don’t see GN requesting any other action in the email. That’s definitely not “hadn’t done anything”. It’s not enough, but again that was never in question.
The receipts show LTT plagerized, Linus promised to fix it but didn’t. Steve thanked him expecting that Linus would do what he promised but then Linus did nothing.
3 years later after GN publicized the unethical behavior, Linus then, and only then fixed it.
But he didn’t. He promised to but never did until 3 years later. That’s why Steve called him out.
Please give me some dates because I really can’t see where the 3 years are coming from. 3 years haven’t even passed yet from when the plagiarism happened
So he did acknowledge it. Which, may I remind you again, is all I’m saying, in response your comment that he didn’t acknowledge it. I’m not saying he fixed the issue, all I’m saying is that he said he will, which you seem to agree with, so I really don’t know what you are disagreeing with me about.
Your original comment is:
Which I disagree with, because in my opinion it should be:
I don’t know why you are saying he fixed it 3 years later when the WAN Clips segment still doesn’t even have a pinned comment. He did not fix it then, he did not fix it until now, and I bet it won’t be fixed 3 years later, which will pass next week.
"As of January 20, 2025, nearly 3 years later, there has been no public acknowledgement of the plagiarism, nor retraction of the content in the WAN Show upload with 2,000,000 views. The WAN Show upload and LMG Clips videos do not reference or cite GamersNexus either verbally or on screen at any point for the EVGA story. "
gamersnexus.net/…/our-response-linus-sebastian
Sounds correct, he only acknowledged it in private by responding to the email.
Man, this is exhausting. Thanks for trying to carry as far as you did. Some folks just really need LTT to be a bunch of villains, and will move the goal posts to get there.
Part of why I still have LTT shit a listen was because of how I’ve seen him conduct his company’s focus, and course corrections, and how they HAVEN’T sued people trying to attack them.
I wonder what they’re going to prioritize now
AI slop most likely. Well, to be serious, I think the drop is due to them trying to fight AI slop and miserably failing.
yes, ive seen an increase in AI slop + propaganda too, and yt also is allow ISRAEL to make pro-IDF propaganda to flood the site now. 45million$ contract from NETANYAHU.
AI slop trailers, AI bizarre animal injures, GOOGLE veo AI videos.
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 am talking about videos with just a few thousand or few hundred views that make up roughly 10-15 percent of my recommendations 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 someone with their phone in their garage workshop or a bunch of college students in their dorms. If anything it feels more like the old Youtube again.
There is a lot wrong with Youtube but I couldn‘t care less about huge channels being forced to slim down or try harder.
Noticed those as well.
Usually the side bar recommends the usual bunch or related content but then there is this totally random video of some small channel with 10 maybe <1000 views doing a let’s play or some random content which is completely unrelated to the content I watching at the moment.
In the case of LTT: Not everyone can absorb the cash flow for an ULTIMATE PETABYTE MULTI-NODE STORAGE SERVER BUILD.
I honestly enjoy those as uneducated as some videos are, those infrastructure videos are really enjoyable for the amount of jank.
I'm noticing a lot more ai generated videos myself. Or at least they look like it. Its kinda slop.
I’ve been getting recommendations for videos with 2 to 10 views. Noticed it about three months ago.
Same. I kinda like it.
mr beast has always been shady asf, thats why hes desperate as in the type of content he puts out, eventhough he has huge a base and his shitty food company. Like he wants to make a big deal out "paying the " wrestler that got knocked out by an aggressive MMA person. hes like a vulture.
I hope anything but LTT, a shit clickbait channel that steals things to auction off
Nazi salutes and brotein supplements
DarkviperAU also mentioned it.
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.
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.
It’s not about what your viewers are, it’s about what youtube now automatically hides by default. They show it in the video.
Yes, but even if they hid everything I have from teens and suspended teens, the drop would be way less. And that’s why I think they are wrong about the reason for the drop.
Tierzoos theory is because formats that were good for the past years (8-10 min videos) are less popular now with the advent of shorts. And people are watching yt on their TVs now.
Demographics are also changing. Wish there were more actual data. Other than the very end result which is views down over many channels all at once.
That also wouldn’t have a drastic immediate effect. On the long term this is likely to eat some views of long form content.
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.
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.
I mean you just described every website in the world, and their relationship with Google search engine traffic. Demonstrably, a business can deal with this. An algorithm can inject uncertainty into a business, but if one is entirely and exclusively dependent on one algorithm, is it really a business?
Very true. And it’s very worrying that so much of global online business is literally dependent of Googles good will.
youtube is probably gearing the algorithim for other content than influencers that draws in more views or revenue.
Not impossible. The best revenue for Google would be if they could ai generate all the content themselves.
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.
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.
That doesn’t explain a sudden drop.
How dare you use facts to challenge our beliefs!!
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.
i don’t watch him. He’s just a rich white dude flaunting his wealth. Fuck Linus (not Torvalds)
Also that video where he tried Mac OSX for the first time. All his complains in that video were that it didn’t work like Windows.
There is a difference between those willing to change something and those trying something out.
I use Apple devices at work and the sometimes ass-backwards way of hotkeys or UI decisions is really aggravating annoyance in regards to logically understanding the task needed to do something comparison to another OS like Windows.
E.g. deleting the app data of an app on iOS.
Why can’t I just reset a damn app? Why do I need to uninstall and download it again from the store??
Nah sure there are some annoyances with MacOs. But most things are just because it works differently. Different doesn’t automatically mean worse. I use all three OSs on a regular basis, they all have their pros and cons. But Windows has the most bs out of the three.
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 ?
They’ve spent the last several years playing into “The Algorithm”, to the point where most videos felt unnatural. Tight posting schedules affecting quality, 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.
Sadly he mentioned (as far as I remember) on the live show that they might return to a higher frequency schedule once the workflow settled more in.
Try peertube?
I literally never 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.
Watch veritasium videos, they are well researched and informative. I have sponsor block and ad block so I don’t get annoyed
I prefer to read books. Thanks. By the way, the fact that you need adblocker an sponsorblock to enjoy a few videos speaks volumes.
You also need to buy books, or borrow them from someone else who did. YouTube videos are free usually.
There’s nothing free in this world. You’re paying with your attention and at least metadata, independently on how many blockers you may use.
Yes exactly. They provide a service, you pay for it by watching ads and facilitating personalised advertising.
In comparison, some of the books I’ve bought have cost more per book than a month of YouTube premium, so the value isn’t THAT bad on YouTube.
Only if you don’t value your time.
But with those two things I have a good time
Veritasium is not super high on my trustworthiness list after the self-driving car ad incident
I disagree with you so you should stop posting your opinions altogether.
There’s a “block” button somewhere in Lemmy’s interface, under my profile. Just use it and go back swallowing crappy YT videos.
Lol they were quoting you bro. Maybe you should stop posting altogether
Thank you, Mr. Obvious. Now you can go back to YT as well.
There’s a “block” button somewhere in Lemmy’s interface, under my profile. Just use it and go back swallowing.
I feel the same way. I can read really fast and get to the juice of an article faster than it takes for the YouTube video to go through the introduction, sponsors, etc.
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.
Or you use adblock
I would but I primarily watch on my tv
.
I assume you’re using a “smart” TV.
Those things only exist to take power away from you. You should hook up a PC or laptop to your TV with a wireless keyboard and mouse so you’re not being herded by techbros.
Yeah fuck using a keyboard and mouse at 5 meters away. You really should roll a custom Linux box with a remote control setup and Plasma Bigscreen. Custom YouTube client too, for better visibility
Don’t listen to this person. He’s trying to make things unnecessarily complicated because he doesn’t know any better.
We don’t see people using keyboards for their TVs, instead we see them slowly type with on screen keyboards. A remote control is not going to alleviate this and will make setup significantly more complicated.
I’m going to block this user now, so I won’t get to see his reply. I’ve been on the internet long enough to recognize people like him for what they are and move on.
Lol you’re the one plugging a super inconvenient solution as if it should be the default, I just took it farther to ridicule yours. It’s great that you can’t stand criticism of your questionable ideas and have to block others. Means your ideas aren’t too be taken seriously.
Have you considered that the average TV user sits down after a hard day and doesn’t want to troubleshoot a wireless mouse, nor boot a computer separately from turning on the TV? The world out there is rough, your TV is supposed to be the one thing that just works and numbs it down for you so you can pretend things are fine.
I’m quite happy with my Apple TV and Plex
Instead of using those, you could be using a free streaming site. You’ll get more content and it’s easier to set up.
Just type in the URL, and search for what you want.
Here’s one of the best sites I’ve found: hydrahd.io I guarantee they have significantly more offerings than either apple tv or your plex.
Free streaming sites are awful. I prefer my way thank you.
And I don’t mind paying for things, just not getting ripped off.
I buy things on 4k that are special, then on iTunes for in between and then high seas everything else. I have a decent home server.
No they aren’t, lol. But whatever floats your boat.
I’ll be over here enjoying more things for a cheaper price and helping others do the same.
Free sites come and go. Usenet is eternal
It is so sad that isn’t true anymore. I know what usenet was, but today it is just a collection of paid companies. You can really tell because of all the honored take down requests.
Is there even a university or other public entity connected anymore?
Yeah, they are. So why do you think they set all of that up for you to freely stream torrents? What is in it for them? Data harvesting? Malware? What?
Free streaming sites aren’t building empires by ripping off useful idiots. They simply make less money.
This is part of your conditioning to be skeptical of whenever you see a better deal. Rather than admitting that you’ve been taken for a ride, you get angry at everyone else who has higher standards.
Keep wasting your money on things you could be getting for free while not thinking you’re a tool. It’s the consumerist way.
Really? I have a bridge to sell you. Talk about a tool…
And you are talking to me like I watch videos all the time. I have better things to do, like making websites to lure people in like you.
Okay buddy.
9 days on Lemmy and you are already being a jerk and using votes. Miss reddit do you?
Your insecurity is showing.
I have the same setup as you and just pay the Premium. One thing I would recommend is getting isponsorblocktv on your server. It skips the ad reads within the YouTube content and works on Apple TV. Every year or so I look for a tracker doing YouTube or a sonarr YouTube fork. The instinct to hoard data is strong. But none have worked consistently for me.
Ah good shout, I remember looking in to that a while back but never went ahead.
The hard thing about needing premium is I could likely easily not have it, but the scumbags limit downloads (cache) on YouTube kids to premium members, which comes in handy in a pickle for sure for my daughter.
no smart tv but through a tv box (not android). Don’t mind the ads when we watch on our projector, if I do I watch on wifes gaming pc also hooked up to projector
get SmartTube Next if it’s an android TV
Sadly not. Apple TV
ah. i have the same issue on my iphone. I just don’t watch youtube on my iphone because fuck ads.
Get the ublock origin lite and on for safari, had worked an absolute treat for stopping YouTube ads on my iPad.
aha thanks. I just installed it, and no ads!
Another tip; Orion, the browser developed by Kagi can install proper Firefox extensions. You can have the real full uBlock Origin extension in the browser.
Edit: I believe it can handle Chromium extensions as well but who cares about those?
And then there is the occasional 30 minute to an hour infomercial that comes on obvious stuff people watch to go to sleep! I wanted someone softly talking about outer spacey things, not you’re shitty product I give so much little of a fuck about that I didn’t even look at what was being advertised. I hate you so much I will not even remember your name to give you free advertising by birding about you online!
Useful idiot mentality. They’re charging you that money to maximize profit, not because it’s necessary to provide the service.
Your “fivers” are paying for their nicer campuses, executive bonuses, and lavish business trips/vacations. Analysts also use it as an excuse to charge more, since the data shows that people like you are “happy/proud” to get ripped off.
I wish proles were smarter and a bit more mean so they could better recognize how they’re being taken advantage of and how often they support their oppressors.
Too many of you go along with getting taken for a ride because you want to fit in and avoid conflict. Businessmen take advantage of that mentality every day.
Yes, large scale video hosting is notoriously free to provide.
YouTube the service absolutely has a cost to it. It’s been born by the owners at first and then people who watch ads. It got profitable when they started showing more ads. Premium is a way to get out of watching ads. You and I use adblockers and it’s fine but if a significant share of people did, the cost for paying users would have to keep increasing.
thus the continued war on ads…
It must be exhausting being this way.
Ignorance is bliss, I tell ya h’wat.
And God forbid you enable captions on the video or something - it’ll disable itself every time an ad plays.
How do I turn that feature on?
I keep turning off captions off, and every few days they are automatically turned back on.
“That’s the neat part: Fuck you >:(”
- Youtube
you can force a lot of options still when you upload a video OR provide a link. Plenty do that. For example in the tags add yt:cc=on will force on captions when you play a video
I have premium through a page that makes family groups and you pay a lot less. From time to time there is an issue with the group and you spend like two days without premium until it is fixed.
During those periods YT is unwatchable and I skip using it until the issue is fixed
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.
For anyone following the smart tube next tutorial on github you don’t need to do anything after installing the “kutt.it/…” Download. You do not need to transfer an APK from your phone or computer. Literally just download the downloader, and type the beta or stable package address and install, also make sure you have developer options enabled beforehand.
Also, probably a great time to turn updates to your OS off, as Google is taking away the ability to sideload (well, kinda). It’s a whole story. Highly doubt that SmartTube Next is gonna get a licence to allow signing of their app.
How do I do that on my android tv?
Settings > devices prefs > about > turn auto update off
They are using automatic dubbing by default here in France! I was horrified the first time.
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.
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.
Google has always made it extremely clear that they don’t believe it’s possible for the human brain to know more than one language, and that anyone who claims to know more than one is a liar and a witch and has no place in their platforms.
This honestly doesn’t surprise me, because English proficiency in France is below that of Spain, Russia and even Italy, which says a lot.
That’s because the french media industry is very strong, and virtually everything is dubbed.
It horrifies me as a German. They also get titles, descriptions and comments wrong all the time. It legitimately doesn’t work.
Yep agreed.
It’s downright disgusting to browse youtube without premium or an adblocker.
Sadly I need premium simply because I am watching on an Android TV and I am not trusting third party clients with my google account.
Too much stuff is associated with it (monetary)
On broadcast TV, a 30 minute timeslot had only 23 minutes of actual content and 7 minutes of ads.
That’s what we’re heading back to. 20% of the watch time is ads.
I only pay them because I watch a stupid amount of YouTube. Hours a day, many more hours when not working.
If those ads come back while I’m paying though, the flag flies.
Youtube has seen exactly the same slowdown as everything on the internet. Plenty of people have less time to spend watching videos and being more worried about money (lack of it) whilst also spending more time on other things.i cannot blame one single thing but I have noticed that the complaints about AI being literally everywhere are at the foreground when people moan to me!
Maybe try not threatening to sue former employees when they come forward about sexual harassment
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
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.
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.
May care to link to what you mean?
Can’t remember what you are talking about.
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.
i wonder whats his problem
I did too, until many of the accusations, like the Billet Labs thing, turned out to be false later.
That’s unfortunate (for Linus), but Louis Rossmann’s story about dealing with Linus directly pretty clearly shows him to be an unpleasant person that thinks of relationships as transactional. And it is objectively true that LMG is going for quantity over quality of videos.
As other people in this thread have stated though, it seems this problem isn’t actually about Linus or LMG, it’s a greater trend at YouTube.
That’s fair, but you also have to consider Louis is a friend of Gamer’s Nexus who had a lot of conflict with LTT, and so isn’t an objective party. That doesn’t mean what he is saying isn’t true, but I would much rather listen to the opinion of a third party.
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.
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.
The same proportion will be given but the total revenue overall should shrink with less viewers, so less for each creator.
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.
What I’m saying is if YouTube is sharing $10 million of revenue with channel owners in a month that has 1,000,000,000 total views across YouTube, that’s a penny per view.
Then, if the next month the reconfigure the view counts to exclude certain bots or views under a particular number, you might see the overall view count drop from 1,000,000,000 to 500,000,000, while still hitting the same overall revenue. At that point, it’s $0.02 per view, so a channel that sees their view count drop in half may still see the same revenue despite the drop in view count.
If it’s a methodology change across all of YouTube, a channel that stays equally popular as a percentage of all views will see the revenue stay the same, even if the view counts drop (because every other channel is seeing their view counts drop, too).
This would pretty much confirm that they’ve stopped counting viewers who use adblockers.
My guess they started accounting for bot visits. Perhaps a lot of videos before were visited by bots. Not just to bump views but could be for training AI.
Or they could be subtracting viewers with ad blockers? It would make sense that more techie channels would be hit the hardest.
I think you’ve hit it on the nose right here. Especially since this declining viewership problem has been hitting channels across all of YouTube and it has only been since they started their crusade against ad blockers.
It is part of that, but youtube is consumed more on tvs than other devices now worldwide. Now that means that the people who now watch YT are less likely to watch LTT because that is not their focus. I mean shorts are a huge part of YT yet most people seem to dislike them.
Where do you get this from?
I have seen multiple reports about it!
One quick search revealed this forbes report earlier this year
forbes.com/…/launched-20-years-ago-more-people-ar…
The overwhelming majority of Youtube visitors use the official app and even those who use a browser don’t have an adblock 88% of the time if my memory serves me right. So no, it’s not adblock.
Ok, is it possible if most people aren’t blocking ads, then maybe it is the ads themselves?
There are so many and they are getting longer. I wouldnt sit around to watch videos if they are interrupted every minute. The average rando probably goes back to TikTok, Facebook, or Instagram if they have to wait for something. If I used any of those services, I know I would jump ship.
That‘s an interesting hypothesis. I‘ve also mentioned a shift in the algorithm that favors smaller channels a little more in another comment.
If we take into account that a lot more people also browse Youtube shorts now and older channels have been struggling with it then we have a good mix of things that drive potential viewers away from many channels.
I agree, people forget how fake the internet 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.
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.
Most of the hate should be that he really doesn’t know what he is doing and should have a disclaimer as such.
That’s what the writers are for. It’s a produced show with a personality reading a teleprompter.
I came here to see if it was the early signs of the demise of YouTube. I secretly want all these content producers to move to a privacy-respecting platform, especially those who produce tech or privacy related content.
Now, for why I don’t watch videos anymore, the medium isn’t as easily consumed by me. I prefer text. At home, it’s noisy and I get interrupted every 90 seconds. I lose interest quickly and fast forwarding isn’t as easy as scanning text for a topic shift. My mind wanders on some topics, internally exploring that topic deeper. With text, i can just stop reading. With video, i need to realize that I’m processing a thought and hit pause, then rewind a bit. I get interrupted a lot. On the bus, I need to remember headphones and I hate when people shoulder surf. That’s harder to do with text. Give me a plain text RSS feed that I can read anytime.
i mean; this has always been my take but people don’t understand that we’re all different and insist video medium is best medium.
and now blogs are dying because of ai.
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?
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
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.
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.
I dunno I’ve still yet to see ads. Between Smart Tube Next on my TV, Firefox with uBlock origin on my computer, and AdGuard + Vinegar on my phone, nothing gets through, even with their latest efforts.
Heh, praise uBlock. If it didn’t work as well as it does, I’d drop youtube in an instant. Invidious used to be awesome, but it’s so hit-or-miss now that I seldom try it. Youtube isn’t bad without ads, but ads + wading through clickbait bullshit just isn’t worth it.
So you’re also contributing to the declining viewership that these channels are complaining about. They make no money off of your watch time so to them it is the same as no view at all.
The only reason adblock is even a thing is because all these adserving companies do NOTHING to police the ads that they show on their networks.
If you want to wring hands and cry, then do it about the advertisers total lack of regulation. Not about end users trying to protect themselves from porn, malware, obnoxious bullshit, out of control popups/popunders and 2 hour long pragerU videos that talk about how slavery was great for black people and that they shouldnt be so bitter about the horrors thrust upon their ancestors.
Okay, but what are you still even watching on YT? The only media I even occasionally consume is Well There’s Your Problem, the occasional FoundryVTT HowTo, and the odd clip I get sent from friends.
Yeah, NewPiped screens out all the shitty ads. But so much of the core content is some Mr Beast style slop, I’ve got little reason to look at my front page.
Good content won’t be recommended to you unfortunately.
No wonder I don’t use it anymore
Some pretty serious things going on in the world today that need our support and therefore attention. I consume less entertainment as a byproduct.
Viewer bot farms is a thing. Is that a declining business now? And the results starting to show now?
Maybe they pivoted to ai farming? Dunno.
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.
LLMs are doing things like summarizing videos and then using the summaries to answer queries that before would have been a search result with monetization.
Google’s executives are unconcerned about the declinibg incentives to create YouTube videos having been sold on the lie that the future of the internet lies in Ai generated content. In other words robots will make the internet.
Robots which hallucinate constantly.
Remember when search summaries were just extracts from the top result instead of LLM hallucinations? Pepperidge Farm remembers.
This hurts review channels and similar but it wouldn’t hurt other kinds of video (unless people want summaries of fun videos?)
Even fun videos get search traffic from random queries. A video about robots fighting each other will get traffic from people interested in “robots fighting”, “robots wars”, “robowars”, “armored core”, “Gundam series”
When there are ai summaries for informational or navigational queries there will be fewer clicks because Google will pirate listicle sources of “best robots fighting each other articles”. This means they are stealing from older lists and newer videos will not get mentioned in the ai summary.
This is because ai technology can’t judge the quality of a video.
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.
That’s what bugs me the most, it used to be everyone making awesome fun videos, but then Linus is now the host of EVERY video. It’s just not the same
Huh, I’ve been watching them since like 2016 or so and I seem to remember him hosting more frequently back in the day. Seems like now he does most of the main channel videos while everyone else handles Short Circuit and the like. My personal theory is that Linus is grooming Elijah to be his replacement. But we’ll see.
He definitely seems to host fever videos then he used to.
People just like to hate on him and apparently he’s done some bad things, but I don’t know about. Anyway this article isn’t really just about him, it’s apparently about all of YouTubers so what he’s done isn’t really relevant.
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.
Or google just twiddle our knobs and youtube is not a meritocracy ?
I mean, we don’t need to post hoc ergo propter hoc on occam’s razor here, we know google, we have their game plan.
This is a powerplay, youtube reigning in the talent and intervening in the algorithm, its “meritocratic puppetry”.
NO DOUBT, they are NOT shutting them down, but they have REMOVED a previously existing “unfair boost”.
It’s not just ltt. Pretty much everyone I watch that talks about their metrics is complaining about the drop in views. Some also a loss in income.
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.
what gpu fiasco are you referring to?
m.youtube.com/watch?v=FGW3TPytTjc&source_ve_path=…
Tl;Dw?
Clean your URL’s, please.
youtube.com/watch?v=FGW3TPytTjc
Oops
So did I, until it turned out the Gamers Nexus video was an unsubstantiated hit piece. For example it came out that the Billet Lab GPU cooler that they supposedly stole instead of turning back, was never supposed to be returned and Billet Labs confirmed the agreement was that it would not be returned.
JFC the lore goes too deep
I can’t talk about the others but LTT went form a tech channel to a luxury products channel. I’d blame some of their loss on that and the controversies.
that's not my impression. they definitely don't really get technical beyond the pop culture depth, but just last week they reviewed budget chromebook options, continued the US$1400 PC battle series, did something on the Switch 2's proprietary port against aftermarket accessories, and finished a switch-to-iphone challenge
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.
though i get the other things you mean, LTT's sponsor sections have roughly stayed the same length over the years: two minutes every half-hour
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.
Steve and GamersNexus is a gem.
They’ve figured out what viewers want: honesty and transparency.
LTT had multiple pretty bad scandals, didn’t they? I recently needed to find some technical information and other places had better information. LTT seems to be more of a pop culture tech channel? I don’t even really know how to describe what I mean. It’s like the reviews are more like fluff pieces I guess? They aren’t super duper technical. But I also don’t watch them much so maybe I missed something.
Top Gear
Yes, it’s definitely a more mainstream entertainment channel than pure info
aimed more at gamers than tech people I think
They’re tech entertainers, and Linus is the clown jester.
Yeah, the videos are entertainment. When looking for actual technical information, they release it in text form: www.lttlabs.com
Fuck Linus.
☝️
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
Good.
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.
This guy seems really fake, I have only watched a couple and it too much personality for what I want. I just want to hit the topics and move through quickly, MKBHD and the boss guy are solid.
Other than thatnIbhave only ever heard of these guys when they have been acting like dicks internally and externally.
Isn’t MKBHD a bit of a brat? Doesn’t he spend most of his time doing flashy low substance “reviews” just so he keeps getting invited to Apples gigs?
His reviews are mostly just b-role anyway, there are actual reviewers out there.
could you elaborate?
I haven’t watched anything of his in a bit of time now, basically since that speeding incident, but at the time I did watch a few videos to see if I definitely wanted to unsubscribe. which I did. I just didn’t feel that the reviews were honest or appropriate, and the focus on vehicles was really starting to get annoying.
MKBHD the one that drove over the limit on a school zone for a car review, his also very light when reviewing Tesla stuff.
over the limit as in doing 96 in a 35 (mph)
not sure which videos you checked. LTT is paced faster than MKBHD though mrwhosetheboss is definitely faster than both.
Maybe if he did videos that were interesting again…not like my wife hates our tech at home videos or whatever
People are jumping the gun on Linus here, but it’s real, the Second Wind crew do a great job and their recent videos, even the Fully Ramblomatic series are doing way worse.
I stopped watching Second Wind after Frost’s video.
Did they ever address it?
No, and considering the timeline, it’s not because of it.
I don’t think their recent drop is because of that video. Just personally curious, whether I should try to watch again as I did enjoy some of their output.
But if Nick leaves it unaddressed I guess I won’t.
It really does seem to be a platform change unrelated to content or audience sentiment, people on this platform just love an opportunity to hate on certain people. The amount of hatred on display here is gross, tbh.
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/
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.
I have definitely unsubscribed from some big channels that I used to watch routinely, and simply often don’t click on videos from channels I haven’t yet unsubscribed from. It’s just not interesting stuff. It’s filler crap. thankfully it seems like there are enough smaller channels to fill that space, including some of the people originally from those other ones (like speed and donut)
Oh, so that is why Veritasium went to shit. That’s such a shame. It was a great channel that I was excited about when a new video would drop. Then low quality videos started coming out and I don’t watch them anymore. Haven’t unsubscribe yet though, maybe I should get around to that.
What is it you don’t like about Veritasium lately?
I’m not the other person but my reason is I feel they’re faux-intellectual videos that mostly serve to confuse people and muddy issues. A bit of an embarrassment to science, cloaking their tomfoolery in faux-surprise and scripted wonder.
Can you give an example for me to better understand your claim?
It was a while ago that I noticed the decline in quality, they may have course corrected since then. But there was a point in time where videos had a very sudden and noticable drop in quality. I forget which video it was, but I wasn’t the only one that noticed it.
I’m not a regular viewer, so I can’t know if there was or wasn’t a drop of quality at an unspecified time. If there was, hope they got better.
Honestly The PFAS and Monsanto videos were quite good in my opinion.
Maybe I should give the channel another chance. There was a noticeable shift in quality on the channel, but maybe they course corrected since then.
Ugh yeah and they had to interview the owner of Noah’s Arcade and he did an awful rap
Linus Tech Tips is not one of them though. They did receive an offer for $100 million, but refused it to keep their independence.
But if less people are watching the other big channels because the content quality has slipped, then there is less people spending less time on the platform, so less non-subscribers that might be recommended an LTT video.
This might be another example of over reliance on AI to judge what’s good or not to show users: news.clownfishtv.com/…/reddit-asks-did-youtube-br…
I stopped watching LTT videos when they just became long-form ads. Or when everyone five minutes was a sponsored segment.
sponsorblock
LTT is probably the reason why I started using Sponsorblock 😂
I have a channel with over 20k subs, nearly all evergreen content. Haven’t uploaded a video in many years, so it’s slowly getting fewer views. Fun fact, the pandemic saw the highest view counts, and I also didn’t add content back then.
Every enhancement YouTube brings is specifically to improve monetization, and since I disable ads on my channel and don’t have any sponsored content, I’m not getting any benefits. I also refuse to do shorts, so I’m losing a ton of exposure there, too.
If an active channel isn’t doing well, they should call it quits, TBH. They’ll either have to compromise the quality of their content “for the algorithm”, or their content isn’t actually useful outside of a single view.
they are too addicted to lavish lifestyle they have, so greed. they would probably lower it before they call it quits. some might pivot politically to stay on the radar. i was following some poc influencers once, they never changed thier style and they were addicted having (small, but still significant revenue source) they start neglecting the company because it was stable, and this in turn neglects some of employees, when the female ones voiced thier concerns about the channel they were fired. they got pissier and pivoted right wing to stay alive.
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.
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? Or they change some kind of bot detection?
I wonder if it has something to do with how they count users with ad blockers.
thats probably it, the influencers always remind people adblocking or not subscribing hurts thier channel. plus if your adblocking you arnt exposed to multiple ads in a single video.
I wonder if adblock+ YouTube premium counts as a view. The issue is there’s no way to tell as Google make YouTube algorithms a black box.
barf
It could even be something “innocent” about how ad-blockers have started to interact with the site as YouTube ramps up their anti-adblock measures and the ad-blockers have to change how they work. Like maybe the ad-blockers have started blocking the JavaScript callback that logs the views.
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?
*the view/ like ratio
doubledhalvedThe views halved, the likes stayed the same. So the ratio of likes to views is now higher.
Yes, likes/views is higher but you originally said views/likes is higher.
Could back up that theory that it’s autoplay views being reduced and they are not worth much anyway
isnt well know he had incident with a former employer over something like last year? the sub/fans are all just shilling/meming for him. isnt his shtick all just reaction videos on various tech items.
It’s so well known that you can’t even name what it is?
I think the biggest channels I watch have under 4 million subscribers, and most of my channels have less than a million. I’ve never watched the big channels, so I don’t really care.
A while back, YT asked me about turning on my watch history, but I didn’t know it was off. I don’t know what that was about–I think they changed something–but my knee-jerk reaction is to NOT do what they want me to do, so I left it off. Now I just watch whatever is new from my subscriptions, and don’t have any suggestions cluttering my front page, which is a much better way to use YT, imo. So, thanks, YT.
i watched a ton of animal channels from not so big content creator, i feel like they were the most genuine. or other sci related channels.
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 and stunts. Not to mention his awful annoying vocal fry. He’s like the male Fran Drescher.
Plus, Linus has been a complete asshole to GamersNexus, one of the best channels for investigative journalism in tech. As far as I’m concerned, Linus is your typical business entity, and lacking ethics.
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. 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, and Emily was the best thing about the channel and she left so…
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.
Billet Labs’ statement on the issue:
Dude’s just scummy. I’ve no idea why people will defend him to the ends of the earth.
About the Billet Labs thing, they have shown, and Billet Labs verified it, that the original agreement was that LTT would keep the cooler.
It was only after the bad review they asked for it back, and at that point there was miss communication between the person Billet Labs talked to and the logistics department at LTT, so the cooler wasn’t set aside as it should.
Shown where? I’ve seen no evidence of that anywhere, and I was following that controversy when it happened.
Here is the post from Billet Labs themselves where they verify that they only asked for the cooler back after the video had been released: www.reddit.com/r/LinusTechTips/…/kcfmcnz/
Now, i’m not saying that LTT didn’t do Billet Lbs dirty in regards to this whole situation.
They did not test the cooler correctly, and Linus was less than resonable in regards to retesting and such (something he has adressed himself here: linustechtips.com/topic/…/16/#comment-16078641 ).
But people keep hanging up that they sold when they were supposed to send it back, when there was no such agreement beforehand.
Thanks for that. Not entirely as bad as originally indicated, but still pretty shady on LTT’s part
With everything I know of it, Linus was just rug-sweeping it before the exposé. Feels like Billet Labs got screwed but took the high road to prevent drama because LTT has a big community.
.
And the Honey thing turned out to be a dud, the accusations false, and the lawsuit went nowhere. So good on them not to jump on the lawsuit train I guess.
Your information is out of date.
That was massively overblown and turned out not to be entirely as claimed. I would really like it if people would attack him for things he actually did rather than making up accusations. it just makes you look like a bad actor.
LTT only knew that they were stealing associate links, Which is something that only affects content creators and was already being shared between various content creators. That aspect was not something that affected users. The information was made available on the channels that content creators use. There was no need to highlight it to the general public in a video as it didn’t make any difference to them.
The thing with Gamers Nexus was a completely different event where they were accused of changing the associate links so that users wouldn’t get good deals. That did affect users but that was a different scam and then GN deliberately went out of his way to conflate the two incidents.
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.
he rubbed me the wrong way when he created drama with employees like last year. fans/people were being sexist towards a female employee how she wasnt in tech, and she should do anything on the "show.
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.
its that Nasal voice right? like lois from family guy
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.
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 Linus 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.
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 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.
I just find his voice very irritating. I know not everyone feels that way.
I know you.
You are a asmr type of guy, aren’t you?
Had to look up what asmr was. No, I don’t think that’s me. I don’t think I’d dislike it, but I don’t seek out that sort of content.
Maybe at some point we can all stop watching and hence supporting YouTube, that’d be nice.
Users stop watching on Youtube to go watch on Tiktok. I can’t see that as a win.
Perhaps the lesser of the two evils, considering Google’s dominance. But yes, far from ideal.
Is it? Try to ask <18y.o. if they even ever open Youtube.
Google is not dominant in the video streaming context any more.
well google is enshittifying themselves with AI and propaganda push, so it will be soon.
and it’s not just google. basically every major social media platform is enshittifying.
i hope that lots of people will realize that the dead internet theory is actually becoming true due to AI bots and move away from the internet in general.
We need less internet, more regional human connections. It would be better if the novelty of the internet wears off and is just seen as yet another advertising machine that shouldn’t be taken too seriously.
Or if you use adblock and stream at 4k, google will lose money when you watch videos. Free content while fucking google over is a win win in my book.
It’s a big waste of energy to stream in 4K, so if I were you I’d simply not watch the video.
Nah, I still enjoy the content, and it wouldn’t make a grain of difference as far as global wasted energy goes.
If you really are concerned about wasted energy though, you shouldn’t be on your computer/phone browsing lemmy.
Because people wont stay 14 to 16 year olds for long
Personally I was only 14-16 for like 5 years at most
But then new 14 to 16 year olds are made
If you are unhappy because your views went from 2M to 1M the decline is in your mental health
It’s the capitalism brain that says: If you are not growing you are dying
I mean, the problem is not lack of growth, the problem is losing the stable sustainable base.
he’s a shill.
Has been for a very long time. I quit watching his video after I saw him post a thing that was going on and on about the superiority of the product in his left hand over the right, and how much faster it was and blah blah blah.
Both products were bandwidth limited by the PCI bus and there was no advantage to the expensive one he was hawking.
Those stupid thumbnails pushed me away
Damn straight. I’ve actively starting avoiding videos with “stupid” thumbnails or click-bait titles in the last few months.
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.
That’s was months ago though, and the drop is recent. Why would people leave months after the controversies happened?
It’s also suddenly happening to most large YouTubers at the same time, so doesn’t seem related to any of them in particular.
This is what happens when people only read the headline and don’t actually watch the video. It’s quite clearly affecting all content creators.
It’s not just him though it’s lots of channels reporting issues. So clearly no, it’s not as a result of the controversies, at least not exclusively.
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 only get these types of videos in shorts. In all the other stuff is like “we see you watched one video on this topic so here is 400 more”
What we, as users, desere is transparency in the algorithm and significant input into how it works for us. Do you like big channels, small channels? etc. The problem is when people opt-out of sponsored content, but also refuse to pay. Transparency in the cost of delivery of service and the income from advertising would help there too, except if the service provider is wanting obscene profits.
I’m mixed on this. If the algorithm is known, big channels would just game it. They still will figure it out now and game, but it might take a bit longer. Just like these days most of timef the top 20 results with Google are completely useless nowadays because it’s either AI slop or pure marketing.
This is where personalization comes in, if everybody can tune the algorithm to their liking with sufficient individuality, then algorithm gamers have a much more diffuse target. Also, if you’re getting targeted by abusers you don’t want to see, you can already filter that to some degree but it should be made even easier to “turn down the volume” on abusive groups. Abusive being in the opinion of the abused.
“if”
greed is the fundamental premise of capitalism, the primary psychological mechanism exploited to perpetuate its existence.
And with transparency greed loses some of its advantage, we should be eroding those advantages any way we can…
YouTube should have a way to filter out certain content.
Like sub 1000 subscriber Chanel’s, 1000-10,000 channels, >10,000 etc
Sometimes you just don’t want to watch the big time YouTubers.
Unfortunately, most of those so called “small channels” are actually bots using AI content farm.
He generates far too much content without any depth, and it’s all infotainment.
Yeah but they’ve been doing that for a long time. Other channels are meeting the market for in-depth tech content, and LTT is bigger than all of them.
And that’s what people watch. This didn’t change.
It’s not particularly about him, his channel, or his content. If his channel had been declining, that’s usually a downward trend. What happened instead is that LTT lost 50% of their viewers suddenly in the last month. Other YouTubers have also stated that in the last month, out of nowhere, their viewership dropped crazily, up to 60%. However, LTT analyzed that although they have half as many viewers, ‘like ratio’ skyrocketed and ad revenue stayed the same. Josh Strife Hayes made a video blaming YT’s new feature “restricted mode” for this, which, when active, blocks a lot of videos for seemingly no reason. Some others have also noted the problem and are investigating, but a lot of information points out to something youtube did as the cause of the issue.
Can’t prove anything, but I have always had trust issues with Youtube’s numbers. Youtube is a for profit company with horrible owners at the top, and would they distort the numbers for political or financial reasons? I think they would.
I think Youtube and Reddit inflate and deflate vote counts and view counts when something is important to the owners.
Granted that is what I think. Can’t prove it. But Google, Alphabet, Youtube, and the new entrants like Grumble, they are black box for profit companies. Can they pass an independent audit for their view and subscriber counts? We should not trust anything from these bad actors. Certainly don’t assume good faith. Audit them by five (more than one) independent and transparent auditing companies to prove their numbers are legit. Every six months. Every year. Forever. Until then I take all those view and subscriber numbers with a fistful of salt.
Linus from LTT was ostensibly really popular. I never watched it. Lets say their old numbers were legit. Is it possible some nephew of Youtube’s CEO is starting a competing channel and Youtube fudges the numbers to help push the nepo channel ahead? To me, yes, it is possible. I have very little trust for those black boxes. “Trust me bro” is all they got so far, and I have little reason to trust these entities.
So basically Google/Alphabet/Youtube reports a new number to Linus. Are the old and the new numbers legit? Can we ascertain it beyond the Youtube’s “trust me bro” nonsense? We need to start there, and don’t jump to conclusions about the viewership habits.
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.
The way restricted mode works is by effectively shadowbanning any content that isnt for kids
You wouldn’t notice it unless you go side by side on an account with restricted mode and look at the list of videos on a channel to directly compare what shows up on vs what is unavailable on the restricted account.
A creator like linus who exclusively makes content “for the algorithm” would know if it was just an update to the blackbox. He is also deliberately ignorant of politics and the world around him so it would be significantly LESS surprising if he didnt know about restricted mode or that it would affect his “non-political” content.
The political youtubers I’ve seen have made posts about entire playlists being unavailable on restricted accounts. Its actually a pretty big deal, honestly.
I dont know if anyone has noticed but…
Can we no longer watch youtube without being logged in? Every embedded video i see doesnt work. Every time i try to click on a video it tells me to sign in.
If i have an ad block running it basically blocks the website.
I really think its the auto plays and the untracked accounts.
Youtube would rather be able to track every user and make more profit per person than go big tent all audiences.
Can’t confirm this. YouTube runs like always von my setup (and wihout an account).
edit: except the Trending page of course.
It’s hit or miss for me with my VPN, but between using an Invidious instance, Freetube, DDG video search, and cycling VPN locations, I’m never, ever logged in to YT.
And yes, Google/YT wants to track everything. Third party doctrine means that governments will pay them for this data rather than run their own surveillance systems. Anything that you’ve watched that can be used against you will be if it suits someone else.
I haven’t been logged in for years, and I can still watch it. If they’re blocking, it’s an A/B test and not everywhere. I watch on Firefox w/ uBO (four different machines), NewPipe, and Grayjay.
Microsoft edge. Or Brave. Or chrome on android. Regular pihole.
Every video i click on basically. If i use a front end like newpipe or duckplayer it works but no other way to watch any videos without logging in.
True, but consider that Google, Alphabet, whatever, is fundamentally an information broker. All of their services and technologies are simply a means to that end. They have no incentive to go big tent if it means sacrificing their ability to harvest data on individuals and groups.
Some other analysis: jeffgeerling.com/…/youtube-views-are-down-dont-pa…
Nice actual data. Still concerning but I views seem to be down across the board. If you feel like it, you could share it with the rest of the community.
Because of short videos?
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 but now I avoid the site completely whenever possible. It seems we’ve finally reached an enshittification tipping point.
It’s about time.
I haven’t watched YouTube much since they broke the search. And that’s far from the only thing they broke, it’s just what stopped making the site very worthwhile to me. I’m sure I’m not the only one who’s significantly cut down or stopped using it.
Had a discussion with another creator buddy and they said it appeared that there was a load less scraping going on which inflated their viewer figures for months. I wonder if youtube is finally stopping their whole content being scraped perpetually?