YouTube views are down (don't panic)(jeffgeerling.com)
jeffgeerling.com
YouTube views are down (don't panic)
https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2025/youtube-views-are-down-dont-panic
129 comments
My recommendations have always been awful, so I avoid them and just use my subscriber list instead.
But they did make a UI change in the android app that I didn't notice until very recently that I'm sure made me miss quite a few videos I would have wanted to watch. The list now has options, and doesn't default to showing videos from your subscribed channels in chronological order. Instead, it's some weirdo order that Google has decided is what you really want to watch, and that omits things. You have to tap on the "videos" tab to get the chronological list now.
It took too long for me to notice this, and it certainly meant I didn't watch videos I would otherwise have watched.
But they did make a UI change in the android app that I didn't notice until very recently that I'm sure made me miss quite a few videos I would have wanted to watch. The list now has options, and doesn't default to showing videos from your subscribed channels in chronological order. Instead, it's some weirdo order that Google has decided is what you really want to watch, and that omits things. You have to tap on the "videos" tab to get the chronological list now.
It took too long for me to notice this, and it certainly meant I didn't watch videos I would otherwise have watched.
It has been really frustrating to witness over the past decade.
All of the services with news feeds inevitably change from timelines sorted newest to oldest, to engagement algorithms full of random garbage.
All of the services with news feeds inevitably change from timelines sorted newest to oldest, to engagement algorithms full of random garbage.
LPT: you can add any youtube channel to an RSS reader and they'll find the "hidden" RSS feed
Now you get every video without even having to open youtube.com
Now you get every video without even having to open youtube.com
Recommendations got bad for me a year or two ago. Like, the only things on the algorithmic homescreen that I was interested in watching were already in my Watch Later list.
I'm also watching less of even the subscriptions due to the ads being so long I can make a cup of tea before they've finished, but worse they're also dispersed throughout the content and not just at the beginning.
A significant fraction of the ads are for one specific service I am not able to use anyway, so those advert buyers are wasting money to annoy me so hard and so often that I use YouTube less.
I'm also watching less of even the subscriptions due to the ads being so long I can make a cup of tea before they've finished, but worse they're also dispersed throughout the content and not just at the beginning.
A significant fraction of the ads are for one specific service I am not able to use anyway, so those advert buyers are wasting money to annoy me so hard and so often that I use YouTube less.
Similar here. I regularly check my subscriptions, and I too noticed that lately a lot of them was never shown as a recommendation. Like maybe 20% of the videos were recommended, at most.
Instead I get even more silly stuff. Like one youtuber I'm subscribed to had an old video about anodes in water heaters. Hadn't heard about that (I've been sheltered) so viewed it. For a week after I had like 10 water heater anode videos in my recommendation list. Also more clickbait stuff, which I strongly dislike.
Instead I get even more silly stuff. Like one youtuber I'm subscribed to had an old video about anodes in water heaters. Hadn't heard about that (I've been sheltered) so viewed it. For a week after I had like 10 water heater anode videos in my recommendation list. Also more clickbait stuff, which I strongly dislike.
I find that shorts are constantly repeating the same ones I’ve already seen.
The “subscription” tab is the best way though.
The “subscription” tab is the best way though.
I don't understand why I keep getting recommendations for videos I've already seen. Do other users like watching the same videos over and over? Why would I want to see videos I've seen before when there are plenty of unwatched videos from the same creators?
If you disable watch history YouTube will disable shorts (the exploration feed, not shorts from your subs) and the algorithmic homepage. The setting will affect all of your YouTube clients. It's a great way to keep away from the general slop.
You can only "pause" your watch history, as they call it, for some reason. And I keep having mine become unpaused constantly which I find interesting. I'm not sure if it's one of my clients doing it automatically or if Google just reenables the setting from time to time.
My watch history has been off for almost a decade now.
They may weasel you into activating it via some other route that states in the fine print that they need to activate your watch history to provide [random almost unrelated feature].
They may weasel you into activating it via some other route that states in the fine print that they need to activate your watch history to provide [random almost unrelated feature].
Huh interesting. I'm guessing it might be one of my clients then because I haven't actively enabled it again myself, fine print or not.
I wish the recommendation engine was modular - like you could somehow plugin your own algorithm. It’s always seemed poor to me.
It is awful. Recommendations either don’t surface your content at all or hyper-fixate in something you searched once.
I saw a couple of videos from a Chinese travel blogger and now I’m getting Chinese military parades, speeches by Fidel Castro and shorts with “tough guy moments” by Putin.
It’s not ideological, you can watch a bench press video next and then it’s all Joe Rogan and “feminist put in her place”.
It’s like it is programmed to give you the twisted monkey paw version of anything you wish for.
I saw a couple of videos from a Chinese travel blogger and now I’m getting Chinese military parades, speeches by Fidel Castro and shorts with “tough guy moments” by Putin.
It’s not ideological, you can watch a bench press video next and then it’s all Joe Rogan and “feminist put in her place”.
It’s like it is programmed to give you the twisted monkey paw version of anything you wish for.
You can remove videos from your history and they won't impact your recommendations anymore.
I know, but I think a corporation that controls my phone, email, searches, travel, purchases, photo gallery and a few other things could manage a more educated guess.
They could, but surprisingly they don't. The YouTube algorithm is remarkable in it's stubbornness to only use your watch history.
My 2 cents :
I use freetube app. It let you subscribe to channels and then show you these channel’s latest videos.
Extremely simple, no « recommendations » (I’m old enough to know what I want), and you cut back on Google ever going algorithm change.
I use freetube app. It let you subscribe to channels and then show you these channel’s latest videos.
Extremely simple, no « recommendations » (I’m old enough to know what I want), and you cut back on Google ever going algorithm change.
> I’m old enough to know what I want
That's not really the point of recommendations though. You don't know whether you want things you don't yet know about, and that's what recommendations solve for.
That's not really the point of recommendations though. You don't know whether you want things you don't yet know about, and that's what recommendations solve for.
Discovering new stuff happened way before Google and YouTube. I hear from something that looks interesting, note it down and sometimes later I may read or watch about it.
Why would you want an algorithm to feed what you should watch, like if you were soullessly ‘consuming’ video ? This is saddening.
Why would you want an algorithm to feed what you should watch, like if you were soullessly ‘consuming’ video ? This is saddening.
I can recommend pocket tube extension. You can create subscription groups and assign different channels to different groups. It doesn't require user to be signed in to work.
>It let you subscribe to channels and then show you these channel’s latest videos.
The subscriptions page also does this.
The subscriptions page also does this.
I use subscriptions but sometimes check recommendations. That's how you discover things.
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Anecdata, but YouTube recommendations for me are reasonable when it comes to content in English, and within non-obscure topics. The major drawback is how much it pushes popular videos that just aren't my thing.
As soon as I'm watching content in other languages, the recommendation engine has absolutely no clue what to suggest.
(I have most watch history and personalisation turned off.)
As soon as I'm watching content in other languages, the recommendation engine has absolutely no clue what to suggest.
(I have most watch history and personalisation turned off.)
YouTube ReVanced has a setting to default to the subscriptions tab instead of the home tab. I turned that on a while back, and I've been a lot happier with what I see when I open the app these days.
I'd switch to grayjay, but I like a lot of the other revanced features, like automatically skipping over "like and subscribe" reminders.
I'd switch to grayjay, but I like a lot of the other revanced features, like automatically skipping over "like and subscribe" reminders.
Not alone, so much GenAI content tailored to my preference, it covers exactly the topics I'm interested in, but it's clear that no human had a part in making it. It makes me watch less, just like you, and probably that's a good thing.
Make this your bookmark instead: https://www.youtube.com/feed/subscriptions
Disclaimer: this is an *hypothesis* I made, all this might be wrong:
* A social graph is built from various sources <-- this is where I wonder what the sources are, what is extracted?
* If I'm connected to Bob, I will see content related to his interests : It appears that the system tries to pick video channels related to me, but the video selection is skewed towards Bob's topics. It seems that Bob's topic embeddings are mapped to the text embeddings of video thumbnails (same for the video titles but with less weight). Since the context is small, sometimes it's off.
* If you refresh the page, it may return to your original recommendations, unless new data from external sources is fed into the algorithm. What's scare me: I wonder if the feed is in near real time. If this is the case, that's explain why my recommendation are as usual and sometimes completely off track for me but related to some people I know.
* It might buffer some topics : if you connect again with Bob but there are no new topics, it gives back the old topic related to Bob.
Once again, this is a pill of a lot of gueses.
---
I really wish to go back to the previous algorithm which one of the reason I subscribed to YT premium, now it's just a minefield.
* A social graph is built from various sources <-- this is where I wonder what the sources are, what is extracted?
* If I'm connected to Bob, I will see content related to his interests : It appears that the system tries to pick video channels related to me, but the video selection is skewed towards Bob's topics. It seems that Bob's topic embeddings are mapped to the text embeddings of video thumbnails (same for the video titles but with less weight). Since the context is small, sometimes it's off.
* If you refresh the page, it may return to your original recommendations, unless new data from external sources is fed into the algorithm. What's scare me: I wonder if the feed is in near real time. If this is the case, that's explain why my recommendation are as usual and sometimes completely off track for me but related to some people I know.
* It might buffer some topics : if you connect again with Bob but there are no new topics, it gives back the old topic related to Bob.
Once again, this is a pill of a lot of gueses.
---
I really wish to go back to the previous algorithm which one of the reason I subscribed to YT premium, now it's just a minefield.
YouTube keeps recommending some AI slop factory to me that has different niche accounts but is clearly made by the same creator (red border, same looking AI woman). They have dozens of views and I keep smashing the "Don't recommend" and they keep showing up.
Whatever YouTube did in the last two months needs to be rolled back.
Whatever YouTube did in the last two months needs to be rolled back.
I wonder if some of Youtube's behavior was responsible for inflating the number of views.
For example, after searching on my phone, some of the videos in the search results would play silently without me selecting the video. Then, the video would show up in my history.
I also wonder if they aren't counting short (under 10 seconds) views of longer videos?
For example, after searching on my phone, some of the videos in the search results would play silently without me selecting the video. Then, the video would show up in my history.
I also wonder if they aren't counting short (under 10 seconds) views of longer videos?
This happened all the time. Scrolling through videos would cause them to start playing inline in the feed view if your finger lingered a millisecond too long. So I have all these videos I’ve accidentally “watched” while trying to scroll past them.
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As a user, I noticed a drastic change around that time: Much more ads. It's come to a point wherr it's so annoying that standard doomscrolling has lost its appeal and I go do other things instead (like reading HN). Maybe others have a similar experience, which could explain things somewhat.
I pay for premium so I don't know about the ads, but yeah the recommendations have taken a nose dive recently (not sure exactly when).
EDIT: Since a lot of sibling comments are talking about the price of Youtube Premium. My $0.02, I was paying £16/month for Spotify Duo for me and my girlfriend. Dropped Spotify after 15 years of paying, for £18/month Youtube Premium family which includes Youtube Music in addition to ad free Youtube. Total win.
EDIT: Since a lot of sibling comments are talking about the price of Youtube Premium. My $0.02, I was paying £16/month for Spotify Duo for me and my girlfriend. Dropped Spotify after 15 years of paying, for £18/month Youtube Premium family which includes Youtube Music in addition to ad free Youtube. Total win.
Yeah same, when I realized you could migrate your playlists over to YouTube music that was the end of Spotify for me. The official migration tool was able to match all but two songs out of many thousands in my playlists.
I don't watch Youtube, but my young kid loves to watch screaming Minecraft morons pretend to scare themselves. I've been growing increasingly concerned by the ads he's incidentally seeing and was just yesterday looking at giving in and subscribing to a premium. There's a normal premium for $14 and a premium "lite" for $8. I'd have subscribed at $1/month, but those prices are absolutely insane.
Instead, I installed revanced on his tablet. For free.
To manage my child’s online viewing, I remove YouTube from all of his devices and instead use Pinchflat[1] to automatically download videos from a curated list of pre‑approved channels. We periodically explore YouTube together to discover new content aligned with his interests, which I then add to the list. Pinchflat retrieves new uploads within hours and automatically deletes them after a set period. The videos are stored locally and made available through Plex, Emby, or Jellyfin for remote access. This approach eliminates ads and algorithm‑driven recommendations while giving me full control over content, though it requires some setup, ongoing management, and storage capacity.
[1]https://github.com/kieraneglin/pinchflat
[1]https://github.com/kieraneglin/pinchflat
I don't have kids of my own, but I'm generally concerned about some of the advertising kids are exposed to these days (as seen through friends and family with kids). At the risk of viewing my own childhood with rose-tinted glasses, it seems much worse today. The main source of ads back then were TV and newspaper, and while neither were "perfect" at this, they both seemed to have much higher standards for what kinds of ads to allow than platforms do today.
Whenever I see my (9-year-old) nephew watching YouTube on their TV at home, I get a little horrified at some of the ads he's exposed to. But this has been normalized throughout his childhood, so it seems unremarkable to him, and his parents seem to be desensitized to it as well. I suppose some of this is bias on my part: I aggressively avoid exposing myself to advertising, using in-browser ad blocking, network-level ad-blocking, and OS-level DNS VPN-based ad-blocking on my phone. Whenever offered, I always pay for the service tier (like YouTube Premium) that removes ads. I get that this could get expensive real fast for a lot of people, and isn't feasible. (But I know a lot of people who don't even install browser ad-blockers, which is just baffling to me.)
But that's the big problem... people are being forced to choose between an uncomfortable level of financial expense, and paying for things with their attention, where that attention is being exploited with deeper and deeper psychological manipulation that has been fine-tuned over the span of decades. On the occasion I do see an ad (especially a video ad), my reaction to it is so viscerally negative that I mute audio and look away, even sometimes shutting it down entirely.
Whenever I see my (9-year-old) nephew watching YouTube on their TV at home, I get a little horrified at some of the ads he's exposed to. But this has been normalized throughout his childhood, so it seems unremarkable to him, and his parents seem to be desensitized to it as well. I suppose some of this is bias on my part: I aggressively avoid exposing myself to advertising, using in-browser ad blocking, network-level ad-blocking, and OS-level DNS VPN-based ad-blocking on my phone. Whenever offered, I always pay for the service tier (like YouTube Premium) that removes ads. I get that this could get expensive real fast for a lot of people, and isn't feasible. (But I know a lot of people who don't even install browser ad-blockers, which is just baffling to me.)
But that's the big problem... people are being forced to choose between an uncomfortable level of financial expense, and paying for things with their attention, where that attention is being exploited with deeper and deeper psychological manipulation that has been fine-tuned over the span of decades. On the occasion I do see an ad (especially a video ad), my reaction to it is so viscerally negative that I mute audio and look away, even sometimes shutting it down entirely.
What kinds of ads do you see that are horrifying?
Feels like I'm in the twilight zone here. A few minutes of my pay per month for my kid to not be bombarded with bullshit ads seems like a good deal to me.
why is it required that children have access to YouTube? I'm not that old and we went long stretches with no TV in our household because we didn't have the money for it. It was fine. I'm fine. I didn't turn out normal but it was for a lot of other reasons. Read a book, kid.
$14/mo is a lot just for brainrot so you can listen to your kid shout "skibidi Ohio sigma rizz" all the time
$14/mo is a lot just for brainrot so you can listen to your kid shout "skibidi Ohio sigma rizz" all the time
Extremely little in life is required but that's rarely related to what defines a good (or bad) deal worth taking.
On the other hand I had unlimited video games which boomers were certain was going to doom me, yet it was fine, and I'm fine. My kid's watch less YouTube than I played NHL 93 at their age tbh.
> $14/mo is a lot just for brainrot so you can listen to your kid shout "skibidi Ohio sigma rizz" all the time
They'll get that from school, most of them aren't watching a YouTube vid and inventing culture, they're just picking it up. Like every other generation
> $14/mo is a lot just for brainrot so you can listen to your kid shout "skibidi Ohio sigma rizz" all the time
They'll get that from school, most of them aren't watching a YouTube vid and inventing culture, they're just picking it up. Like every other generation
> There's a normal premium for $14 and a premium "lite" for $8. I'd have subscribed at $1/month, but those prices are absolutely insane
This just demonstrates how much money is in those ads and how much Youtube needs to charge to compensate for that. And advertisers wouldn't pay that much if it wasn't at least somewhat worth it, i.e., the psychological manupulation is worth at least that much w.r.t. their bottom line. The average person therefore "pays" with $14 worth of brainwashing.
You could obviously argue that $14 is just a ripoff and they don't make that much money off you. Sure you are not average and perhaps less influenced than others, but fun fact, a large majority of people believe that about themselves.
By the way, Youtube Premium still collects your data and uses it. Without that, it would need to be even more expensive.
This just demonstrates how much money is in those ads and how much Youtube needs to charge to compensate for that. And advertisers wouldn't pay that much if it wasn't at least somewhat worth it, i.e., the psychological manupulation is worth at least that much w.r.t. their bottom line. The average person therefore "pays" with $14 worth of brainwashing.
You could obviously argue that $14 is just a ripoff and they don't make that much money off you. Sure you are not average and perhaps less influenced than others, but fun fact, a large majority of people believe that about themselves.
By the way, Youtube Premium still collects your data and uses it. Without that, it would need to be even more expensive.
For me I feel $5/month would be pretty reasonable. But $14 is out of control. Some of my friends however are subscribed at that price and consider it money well spent.
It's money well spent for me. It's the only "streaming service" I use. I've also heard multiple creators say that they get more out of a Premium view than an ad supported one.
I watch lots of YouTube. $14 is fine. I have several other streaming video subscriptions I'd cancel before YouTube.
Netflix is $18. Hulu is $19. Paramount Plus is $13. YouTube is in line with its competitors.
Google's finally cracking down on the adblocker scene, so enjoy Revanced while it lasts.
I've avoided using an adblocker because, as much of a pittance as it is for content creators, I don't want to deprive them of that revenue, and I also don't want to deal with the faff of getting a working YouTube ad blocker setup.
But oh boy have the ads really slid far down the hill of enshittification in the past several months. They've gone from one ad break every ~15-20 minutes to one every ~7-10 minutes. With that, you also get an increased chance of a mid-sentence ad break (especially noticeable on older videos, where ad points have clearly been automatically retrofitted). In the past, you'd usually expect at least one of the ads to be skippable, and now, many of them seem to be fully unskippable.
To be fair, the sheer repetitiveness of the ads and their poor targeting isn't new, but it is a lot more aggravating to be shown the same completely useless ad that you saw 10 minutes ago.
(Not to mention the other enshittifications of recommendations getting even worse or the number of videos per row in search going down from 6 to 3.)
And the enshittification isn't tempting me to pay Google for a better experience; instead, it's tempting me to spend time (and perhaps coin) to other people to avoid the YouTube ads. Good job, Google.
But oh boy have the ads really slid far down the hill of enshittification in the past several months. They've gone from one ad break every ~15-20 minutes to one every ~7-10 minutes. With that, you also get an increased chance of a mid-sentence ad break (especially noticeable on older videos, where ad points have clearly been automatically retrofitted). In the past, you'd usually expect at least one of the ads to be skippable, and now, many of them seem to be fully unskippable.
To be fair, the sheer repetitiveness of the ads and their poor targeting isn't new, but it is a lot more aggravating to be shown the same completely useless ad that you saw 10 minutes ago.
(Not to mention the other enshittifications of recommendations getting even worse or the number of videos per row in search going down from 6 to 3.)
And the enshittification isn't tempting me to pay Google for a better experience; instead, it's tempting me to spend time (and perhaps coin) to other people to avoid the YouTube ads. Good job, Google.
> I've avoided using an adblocker because, as much of a pittance as it is for content creators, I don't want to deprive them of that revenue
Um what? How much they get is based on views and subscriptions, not on whether an ad was filtered or not. It also doesn't depend on whether you click skip or not.
Um what? How much they get is based on views and subscriptions, not on whether an ad was filtered or not. It also doesn't depend on whether you click skip or not.
Yup. It is now ad after ad. For me, it's long form ads too. So it would be a whole interview with some celebrity or CEO just randomly popping. Besides the Liberty Liberty nonsense, the shortest ones I am getting are whole movie trailers. It's crazy.
What I noticed recently is something similar but when you browse anonymous or without being connected to a Google account.
Isn't this just youtube cracking down on adblock?
They have a plethora of ways to make the app and website suck for non-paying users now, including and not limited to:
* faking an interruption when starting to play
* random errors mid-play
* no longer playing on hover on-web or in-app
I've just taken that as a good signal I should read more books instead, but I imagine it kills view-counts
They have a plethora of ways to make the app and website suck for non-paying users now, including and not limited to:
* faking an interruption when starting to play
* random errors mid-play
* no longer playing on hover on-web or in-app
I've just taken that as a good signal I should read more books instead, but I imagine it kills view-counts
That seems to be about it. Our Tizen TV doesn't block the ads and we don't get any issues with playback.
As soon as I'm on Safari or Brave with an adblocker, YouTube is teeth-grinding irritating. I checked my screen time and I'm down to about 15 minutes per week, whereas before I'd watch my subscriptions for about 2h per week. Can't say I miss it.
As soon as I'm on Safari or Brave with an adblocker, YouTube is teeth-grinding irritating. I checked my screen time and I'm down to about 15 minutes per week, whereas before I'd watch my subscriptions for about 2h per week. Can't say I miss it.
Most Youtube viewers watch on mobile or smart TVs, so adblockers aren't an issue there.
I'd assume most adblock users on web would disable it to continue watching. I doubt their crackdown on adblock users would affect view counts that much, but I'm just speaking from anecdotal evidence and a few Google searches
I'd assume most adblock users on web would disable it to continue watching. I doubt their crackdown on adblock users would affect view counts that much, but I'm just speaking from anecdotal evidence and a few Google searches
> I'd assume most adblock users on web would disable it to continue watching.
This is not a safe assumption. Personally, I've stopped using YouTube entirely for entertainment; the level of annoyance dealing with it vs the value I get out of it is just not worth it any more. I'm doing other things with my time now instead of watching YouTube. Some of that is watching video on other platforms, and some of that is spending time on other hobbies instead.
This is not a safe assumption. Personally, I've stopped using YouTube entirely for entertainment; the level of annoyance dealing with it vs the value I get out of it is just not worth it any more. I'm doing other things with my time now instead of watching YouTube. Some of that is watching video on other platforms, and some of that is spending time on other hobbies instead.
Yeah, UBO and Sponsor Block are still working for me but if they stop I’ll be gone. I haven’t browsed Reddit since I switched to iOS and lost access to RedReader.
I mostly watch on desktop. Their current anti-adblock strategy does get past what I am using - but I have a different clever workaround.
When the ad starts, just refresh the page. It will act as though it's already played the ads, even if it is an unskippable ad.
When the ad starts, just refresh the page. It will act as though it's already played the ads, even if it is an unskippable ad.
This reminds of something that has been bugging me on mobile.
I click a video by accident. It begins to play the ad before the video. I have to watch the add before I can go back to looking for what I wanted to watch. eugh
I click a video by accident. It begins to play the ad before the video. I have to watch the add before I can go back to looking for what I wanted to watch. eugh
> I'd assume most adblock users on web would disable it to continue watching.
Not sure if I'm typical (probably not!) but I never disable the ad blocker; if a video or site doesn't work with an ad blocker, I just move on.
Not sure if I'm typical (probably not!) but I never disable the ad blocker; if a video or site doesn't work with an ad blocker, I just move on.
> Most Youtube viewers watch on mobile or smart TVs, so adblockers aren't an issue there.
I continue to find it amazing just How Big the impact of "advertising" is in the brain of a median HN commenter vs. the attention paid (almost none) to it by citizens at large.
Like, that Liberty Mutual Duck is just weird to most folks, but to us it's somehow the greatest assault on our freedom imaginable?
I continue to find it amazing just How Big the impact of "advertising" is in the brain of a median HN commenter vs. the attention paid (almost none) to it by citizens at large.
Like, that Liberty Mutual Duck is just weird to most folks, but to us it's somehow the greatest assault on our freedom imaginable?
It's not an assault on freedom. But I think we'll learn over time that pervasive advertising does weird things to our brains. Consider that "advertising" is just a euphemism for "psychological manipulation to get you to want to buy something". I don't want to be psychologically manipulated! For any reason! It feels like a violation.
> But I think we'll learn over time that pervasive advertising does weird things to our brains
We nerds have been on our anti-internet-advertising kick for like 20 years now at least. I think the ship has sailed for that particular analysis.
We nerds have been on our anti-internet-advertising kick for like 20 years now at least. I think the ship has sailed for that particular analysis.
It’s because making the choice of not being served ads is increasingly a technical challenge/hobby undertaking. Nerds like challenges. Other people are unaware it’s even a choice they have.
You're right, but it's not because it's a challenge that we like, it's not like this is something enjoyable. Nerds do it through gritted teeth, it's annoying to bypass all of that. They just know it's a possibility and care about it enough to pursue it. Most people don't know and don't care.
Most people have lived with ads their whole lives, so the slow increase over decades barely registers. Many HN readers have spent the last 15–20 years avoiding them almost entirely with ad blockers, streaming, and piracy. Coming back to ad-saturated spaces feels jarring - like stepping out of a smoke-free world and into the 1960s, where everyone’s lighting up indoors.
It’s an emu, not a duck. I hate that I’m forced to waste my time to see that and that it occupies space in my brain.
I’m also annoyed because this is a bit of a rug pull by youtube. The videos I watch of some obscure mechanical repair on a motor uploaded 15 years ago aren’t being monetized and they do not cost youtube enough to justify the multiple ads at the start and another in the middle that I have to sit through now to see it.
Youtube is going through major enshitification and is destroying the experience of consuming the largest video library in the world.
I’m also annoyed because this is a bit of a rug pull by youtube. The videos I watch of some obscure mechanical repair on a motor uploaded 15 years ago aren’t being monetized and they do not cost youtube enough to justify the multiple ads at the start and another in the middle that I have to sit through now to see it.
Youtube is going through major enshitification and is destroying the experience of consuming the largest video library in the world.
duck?
It was a riff on the AFLAC duck from a few decades back, a similarly hated campaign that played everywhere and that we all survived just fine.
Maybe the humor was bad. But the point stands: advertising has been with us since the dawn of "media" and no one cares outside our oddball bubble. People sat through ads on their sitcoms in the 70's and they sit through the annoying insurance birds, and... who cares?
It's only here that people somehow believe that contra all evidence, somehow advertising on the internet is a unique affront to all that is holy. When... it's just ads!
Maybe the humor was bad. But the point stands: advertising has been with us since the dawn of "media" and no one cares outside our oddball bubble. People sat through ads on their sitcoms in the 70's and they sit through the annoying insurance birds, and... who cares?
It's only here that people somehow believe that contra all evidence, somehow advertising on the internet is a unique affront to all that is holy. When... it's just ads!
In the 70s the ads were a one-way broadcast. Now the ads watch you back.
Far beyond the time wasted, they're an invasion of privacy.
Far beyond the time wasted, they're an invasion of privacy.
Any time I have any of those issues, I entirely attribute to the website. I can't imagine the average user thinking otherwise.
If youtube is doing any of those things, instead of just saying "pay", they're dumb as dirt. Why would I want to pay for what is perceived as a junky, buggy site?
If youtube is doing any of those things, instead of just saying "pay", they're dumb as dirt. Why would I want to pay for what is perceived as a junky, buggy site?
Maybe YouTube consider it unlikely for an adblock user to ever buy premium, so they just try to drive such viewers away instead.
I'm an adblock user and I do pay for Premium, so there's at least one of us.
I do genuinely want to watch YouTube videos, but I don't want to have to deal with anti-adblock measures ruining the experience. So I pay. Which is reasonable, no? Either I pay with cash or by allowing myself to be manipulated into buying things I don't want or need. If those are the choices, I choose not to pay with my attention.
I do genuinely want to watch YouTube videos, but I don't want to have to deal with anti-adblock measures ruining the experience. So I pay. Which is reasonable, no? Either I pay with cash or by allowing myself to be manipulated into buying things I don't want or need. If those are the choices, I choose not to pay with my attention.
Yes, but that's the "dumb as dirt" part. You never, ever "drive users away". Ever. A person with no money now (a college student on a tight budget?) may in a few years have a healthy income. A single person may be struggling, then find a partner and collectively they have more income.
People's income levels change.
Training them that your product is utter and complete garbage, means those people won't ever become customers. Ever.
The truth of the matter is, that just like their search, every other aspect of Google's infra is in a state of decay. Youtube is slow and takes forever to start now. Google search is pathetic, takes forever to give results in some circumstances, and randomly locks people out with captchas.
The Google of today must be complete chaos internally, it's the only explanation I can see. If the problem is AI, you never give up a cash cow whilst you pivot. You don't let what you have fall to tatters, whilst you pursue some other goal.
Especially when Google has the scope and capability to maintain and yet also pursue other avenues.
I suspect, but could be entirely wrong here, that Google has pulled key people, drivers, movers, which are a rare breed -- out of key positions in all of their structure and focused them on something else.
But anyhow.
People's income levels change.
Training them that your product is utter and complete garbage, means those people won't ever become customers. Ever.
The truth of the matter is, that just like their search, every other aspect of Google's infra is in a state of decay. Youtube is slow and takes forever to start now. Google search is pathetic, takes forever to give results in some circumstances, and randomly locks people out with captchas.
The Google of today must be complete chaos internally, it's the only explanation I can see. If the problem is AI, you never give up a cash cow whilst you pivot. You don't let what you have fall to tatters, whilst you pursue some other goal.
Especially when Google has the scope and capability to maintain and yet also pursue other avenues.
I suspect, but could be entirely wrong here, that Google has pulled key people, drivers, movers, which are a rare breed -- out of key positions in all of their structure and focused them on something else.
But anyhow.
I had to look up what a "10/10" video means:
> On the creator dashboard it ranks views on your latest video against your last 10 videos. So when someone complains their video is 10/10, it's means that it's their worst performing recent video. 1/10 is what you aim for.
> On the creator dashboard it ranks views on your latest video against your last 10 videos. So when someone complains their video is 10/10, it's means that it's their worst performing recent video. 1/10 is what you aim for.
How odd, a 10/10 is usually the best rating. 10/10 of Jeff not to include this clarification.
thanks for pointing that out - I didn't know that nor really catch it when he had that in the post I assumed the opposite.
What counts as “a view” has pretty much never been particularly straight forward. The question is why YouTube can't just say, “Yes, in early August we made some changes to how views are counted.”
All the available evidence seems to suggest that this is an accounting change, rather than a change in viewer behavior.
All the available evidence seems to suggest that this is an accounting change, rather than a change in viewer behavior.
Despite what the words from officials are saying, this isn't exactly a year of transparency.
Though, Youtube has been like this well into the '10's, where some creators who had their entire channel shut down needed a twitter army just to provoke a response about what happened.
Though, Youtube has been like this well into the '10's, where some creators who had their entire channel shut down needed a twitter army just to provoke a response about what happened.
I've seen a number of people complain about the change, and my first guess is that it is a change in methodology rather than an organic change.
But if that's the case, why isn't YouTube coming out and saying it? Granted, it's not a great look to say "we've determined that our view counts are inflated because of $REASONS, so moving on from $DATE, we've applied a different methodology that will probably result in %xx loss in views." But the alternative of silence means that it's interpreted as "YouTube is screwing over the people they depend on for revenue because <fill in the blank>," which is at least as bad.
But if that's the case, why isn't YouTube coming out and saying it? Granted, it's not a great look to say "we've determined that our view counts are inflated because of $REASONS, so moving on from $DATE, we've applied a different methodology that will probably result in %xx loss in views." But the alternative of silence means that it's interpreted as "YouTube is screwing over the people they depend on for revenue because <fill in the blank>," which is at least as bad.
Yeah... something definitely changed, it'd be nice if they at least mentioned it, so it isn't just a mystery that we have to debug with no look at the backend, just the effects.
This is oddly enough around the time I canceled my 10+ year premium subscription and moved to freetube. I cannot support the anti privacy crusade of asking for users government identification and i spoke with my wallet. What are the chances that enough people cancelled premium that it caused youtube to increase the amount of advertisements served? What are the odds that just drove away a bunch more people?
I have noticed two changes this month:
A lot more recommendations for videos with <100 views
One long (>20s) unskippable ad followed by another with skip button but fewer intermittent videos throughout the rest of the video
For long videos they will now roll an ad if you skip forward significantly
So they are clearly doing two things:
Pumping ads up for popular videos
Randomly sampling new videos to put in the feed
It’s an interesting exploit + explore strategy and it seems like everyone hates it
A lot more recommendations for videos with <100 views
One long (>20s) unskippable ad followed by another with skip button but fewer intermittent videos throughout the rest of the video
For long videos they will now roll an ad if you skip forward significantly
So they are clearly doing two things:
Pumping ads up for popular videos
Randomly sampling new videos to put in the feed
It’s an interesting exploit + explore strategy and it seems like everyone hates it
One problem is that Restricted Mode has been turned on for some users, some videos are not shown to viewers when it's turned on, and videos that are labeled as restricted are done so automatically by a faulty AI system.
You can see if restricted mode is turned on for you. Once on youtube.com, click your profile photo, and in the menu the pops down, look and see if "Restricted Mode:" is set to "On" or, "Off". Some people have found that by default it's been put to "On", even though they have not set it.
If you're not logged in, Restricted Mode is calculated by a bizarre set of rules like your not-logged-in watching history that Google totally doesn't keep track off (ie: you watch a lot of Blues Clues, you're probably a child).
You can see if restricted mode is turned on for you. Once on youtube.com, click your profile photo, and in the menu the pops down, look and see if "Restricted Mode:" is set to "On" or, "Off". Some people have found that by default it's been put to "On", even though they have not set it.
If you're not logged in, Restricted Mode is calculated by a bizarre set of rules like your not-logged-in watching history that Google totally doesn't keep track off (ie: you watch a lot of Blues Clues, you're probably a child).
The pattern of:
- Some channels being affected more than others
- Likes remaining stable
- Revenue remaining stable
Could be explained by Youtube only counting non-adblocked views.
Perhaps an attempt to align Youtube's goals with creators' goals. If we don't get revenue then you don't either.
- Some channels being affected more than others
- Likes remaining stable
- Revenue remaining stable
Could be explained by Youtube only counting non-adblocked views.
Perhaps an attempt to align Youtube's goals with creators' goals. If we don't get revenue then you don't either.
Maybe because people got tired of their subscription list being randomly ordered instead of alphabetical (which has been a bug for a ridiculously long time), and have started looking elsewhere for content.
It's sorted by recency.
I see a similar thing happen with npm stats occasionally, where the downloads count for popular packages will cut in half. Although I think it's just unreliable infrastructure there - it's usually back to the expected level a day or two later.
More ads and a huge push towards shorts, which is really annoying
Also the suggestion algorithm is awful.
I can't believe that with all the data they have on me, they struggle so much at recommending me video. It would literally ignore any of my subscriptions releasing a new video if I haven't watched the topic for few days.
I can't believe that with all the data they have on me, they struggle so much at recommending me video. It would literally ignore any of my subscriptions releasing a new video if I haven't watched the topic for few days.
They don't want you to watch a video you like. They want you to watch a video that makes them money. They want you to get angry, horny, and/or addicted. They have virtually no interest in showing you a video you'd actually enjoy.
i only use YouTube and Google search from browser on both my Mac and iPhone. I have Userscript setup to hide various annoyances including shorts, community posts, AI Mode, trending searches, any YouTube video with less than 1000 views (AI slop typically), hiding the microphone button next to search field etc.
The real dystopia is he would need a job just for the health insurance if YT revenue falls to zero even though he has other sources of income.
Yeah, the entire reason we have kept such an archaic health insurance system is to keep people working for someone else.
Saved enough money to finally quit the job you hate? Think again.
Saved enough money to finally quit the job you hate? Think again.
Health insurance is still my biggest monthly expense (for a pretty terrible plan, all things considered, with no dental or vision) :(
I used to watch YT pretty frequently, though I've never bothered to sign in. This is via the Roku app, as opposed to via a browser.
Starting sometime within the past month or so, they changed the interface so that instead of having many rows of suggestions, now it only has a single row, making it more work for me to find something I want to watch. As a result I watch it much less now.
Prior to this change, I was considering paying for it to skip the ads. You could argue that since I've already given them lots of info about myself (I'm watching it over GFiber after all) I may as well just sign in, but this level of intentional enshittification really rubs me the wrong way.
Starting sometime within the past month or so, they changed the interface so that instead of having many rows of suggestions, now it only has a single row, making it more work for me to find something I want to watch. As a result I watch it much less now.
Prior to this change, I was considering paying for it to skip the ads. You could argue that since I've already given them lots of info about myself (I'm watching it over GFiber after all) I may as well just sign in, but this level of intentional enshittification really rubs me the wrong way.
It's at least partially in YouTube's interest to lower view counts:
• YT right now can't compete with direct creator sponsorships, which is a huge potential revenue source they want to tap.
• This also makes YT Premium less appealing since there are still ads, though these are "skippable" in a sense.
• YT right now can't compete with direct creator sponsorships, which is a huge potential revenue source they want to tap.
• This also makes YT Premium less appealing since there are still ads, though these are "skippable" in a sense.
YouTube Premium has recently added a skip button for sponsored segments. I'm not sure how it works exactly, but it works pretty well.
Would be pretty funny if it hooked back on SponsorBlock api.
They did? I saw they add a white dot on the timeline to help you skip it quickly. Thats been helpful.
When a sponsored segment comes in there will be a "Skip Ahead" button that pops up. Sometimes it doesn't seem to pop up until I personally try and skip ahead by tapping the -> key on my keyboard.
I have noticed a lot of channels I subscribe to don’t post nearly as often as they once had and I am not sure why. Some of them have quite a lot of subscribers and must do incredibly well, but they seem to have drifted away from regularly posting.
I had a channel (hit ~40k subs from ~15 videos), largely centered around hobby electronics, 3D printing, Raspberry Pi, etc.
I stopped publishing videos around 2020 because the economics just didn’t make sense. I didn’t want to release subpar videos and was always challenging myself to improve production quality. It was fun, until it wasn’t.
It took several days to shoot and edit a video. I’d publish it, it would do well, but YouTube paid such paltry revenue. I didn’t want to chase sponsorships because those don’t pay much either.
I decided to focus my creative efforts elsewhere. I know things are even worse for YouTube creators now, given the ad market collapse and higher competition in the attention economy.
I firmly believe that Google could reverse the trend if they spun up some pilot programs around assisting creators that match a certain algorithm to produce and scale video content—and pay them more so they can afford to take the time.
Tl;dr; money and competition. But mostly money.
Really sad to hear that the economics are so bad. I knew that they weren't great, but significantly worse than I imagined.
Linus tech tips mentioned the same thing is happening to his channel on a recent podcast. Maybe related, given they're both on the more technical side of the tech niche.
Monopoly in charge of the world's video content shows users what is most profitable instead of what they want to see. "Content creators" suffer as a result. Brain rot content is real, it's profitable, and it's only going to get "worse".
Does anyone remember the internet before pop-up blockers? Like, right before. It felt like the same thing to me. The internet was infested with pop-ups and becoming borderline unusable, and then comes along the pop-up blocker (and other things, but I'm simplifying here) and there was a "golden age" which is now giving way to a new wave of advertising-based atrophy. Not sure what happens next.
Does anyone remember the internet before pop-up blockers? Like, right before. It felt like the same thing to me. The internet was infested with pop-ups and becoming borderline unusable, and then comes along the pop-up blocker (and other things, but I'm simplifying here) and there was a "golden age" which is now giving way to a new wave of advertising-based atrophy. Not sure what happens next.
One idea for what happens next, that rhymes with pop-up blocker revolution, is Gates' "disintermediation of everything" via AI, where agents on our behalf will be able to "find me a video I like and don't show me the ads", "renew my electricity contract and don't let them soft-scam me with their tricky pricing structure", "buy groceries online and don't get tricked into buying candy from a promo", etc. Agents make become like popup blockers in that way. Subsequent to that, I reckon we may see some sites adopting TOS forbidding people to have AI agents visit on their behalf.
>and there was a "golden age"
That golden age was short lived because all our favorite websites were unprofitable and shutdown.
That golden age was short lived because all our favorite websites were unprofitable and shutdown.
> "That golden age was short lived because all our favorite websites were unprofitable and shutdown."
Painfully true.
Painfully true.
The analysis in this article shows that revenue and likes didn't actually go down, though. Just views. That's only bad for sponsors overall.
I do wonder how this applies for smaller channels, though. Larger creators may get better revshare to make up for whatever the heck is happening. The little guy always gets screwed.
I do wonder how this applies for smaller channels, though. Larger creators may get better revshare to make up for whatever the heck is happening. The little guy always gets screwed.
> Not sure what happens next.
You said it:
> it's only going to get "worse"
You said it:
> it's only going to get "worse"
Someone else is probably getting them. Maybe newer smaller channels. I think that is great. Even if it does hit some larger channels.
YouTube's recommendation algorithm has always been terrible; I only watch the channels I have subscribed to.
They don’t show any suggested videos on the logged out homepage anymore. Just a prompt to search. Anyone know why?
RedLetterMedia dropped a video about this:
Obligatory "YouTube is Broken" Video
https://youtu.be/q5-b7v6EIzc
Obligatory "YouTube is Broken" Video
https://youtu.be/q5-b7v6EIzc
YouTube feels more like the Home Shopping Network these days.
No idea here, but since we are speculating, couldn't AI search results be behind this too?
I mean, I haven't been clicking as much on video on search result pages because now they are either buried after AI summaries, or my search workflow starts off in a chat prompt somewhere where YT results are not even a thing most of the time.
I mean, I haven't been clicking as much on video on search result pages because now they are either buried after AI summaries, or my search workflow starts off in a chat prompt somewhere where YT results are not even a thing most of the time.
Youtube is a top 3 cited domain for many LLMs-based search and answer engines. So it should we one of the few domains that actually get significant clicks from ChatGPT, Perplexity & Co.
Looking at my own behavior, I have to agree though. For stuff for which I used to look for a video tutorial, I now ask ChatGPT.
Looking at my own behavior, I have to agree though. For stuff for which I used to look for a video tutorial, I now ask ChatGPT.
This was also discussed on the most recent WAN show where they revealed a bunch of stats about views, likes, money earned per watch, and a whole bunch of other statistical analysis.
This is mentioned and linked in the article.
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Can OnlyFans be far behind?
I am genuinely watching less YouTube because it's showing me less things I actually want to watch.