YouTube Views Are Down Across the Board, Analysis Says (kotaku.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Kotaku: For months, YouTubers have complained that their view counts are down. New data from the third-party stat tracker SocialBlade confirms what YouTubers fear: viewership is lower across the board. SocialBlade crunched some numbers for Kotaku and determined that, since the first half of the year, YouTube views are now 5-7% lower. Between July and September, that decrease was 10%. It's pretty significant. Why YouTube views have gone down is unclear, but some good theories are floating around. SocialBlade Community Manager Danny Fratella pointed to two potential causes: view audits and altered video-promoting algorithms. During view audits, YouTubers don't actually lose views. YouTube is removing botted or invalid playbacks from the view count. This happens all at once in a sort of purge -- something YouTube has explained publicly. But now that YouTubers have tools like SocialBlade to more rigorously moderate their data, they may be noticing these purges more, Fratella suggested. He added that SocialBlade doesn't see view counts purged as often as subscriber counts -- the main complaint going around YouTube communities. Although YouTubers have widely complained that fans are now randomly unsubscribed from their channels, YouTube and SocialBlade both told me that they've noticed nothing out of the ordinary in subscription data. YouTube's video-promoting algorithm may also play a role in an apparent decreased viewership. What videos the platform draws more eyes to reflects their philosophy on what videos should go viral.

Comments

get ublock origin, breh

[Rujiel]

It'll solve your problems.

Re:Maybe, just maybe

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps people are starting to get tired of YouTube?

I don't want to sit though your 5 minute theme song to learn out to adjust a parking brake.

I want to watch the trailer for the newest movie, not see your, someone I don't know and don't care about's reaction to it.

I want to watch a clip from the Simpsons. Not watch it in Spanish, or watch you video pointed at your TV.

Youtube needs to fix their volumes. It's really annoying to have one video really quite then have the next video blast my ear drums off.

You're nuts

[rsilvergun]

there's shitloads of amazing commentary and criticism on youtube. Plus tons of great original animation. Go to the ExtraCreditz channel and watch the recent "Dan Recommends" series. Search for pony.mov and Brain Dump. Ever want to see anime picked apart by a film critic? Digibro. And Kim Justice's retrospectives on British computing are amazing.

This story caught me by surprise because I'm watching more youtube than regular TV these days.