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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.
When the ads are longer than the content, the value of watching videos there is negative.
What if it's just that watching random guy number 127693 play video games for hours is just boring after a while that people stop watching? Or random girl number 4528913 talking about her amazing life, or unboxing videos and all that useless garbage that makes up to 99% of the Internet in general?
Video of some good progressive thrash music
I'm seeing more and more ads on Youtube, and more and more, when I see an unskippable ad, I just close Youtube. It turns out that there's more than enough content out there to keep me entertained, and sitting through a 20 - 30 second ad isn't worth it.
Perhaps people are starting to get tired of YouTube?
I do feel sorry, though, for those poor souls who may - one day - have to figure out how to earn a living doing something other than recording videos of themselves. That's certainly nice work, if you can get it...
#DeleteChrome
I agree. I see it more and more and it pisses me off because both vlc and smplayer can play youtube videos simply by drag-n-drop from my browser. I can't do the same with facebook videos so I really notice when someone links to a facebook video instead of a youtube video, it much more of a hassle to view. I usually just skip it.
YouTube has lately started to crack down on certain content creators that were deemed "offensive" by certain other content creators. Without going into detail because I could really do without yet another "he said - she said" fight, and without even giving a shit whether that's a good thing or not: It was something that some people apparently wanted to see, and they're now going elsewhere to see it.
That's the beauty about the first amendment. Yes, you may speak your mind. No, you have no right to demand from me that I offer you a platform. But I, in turn, have no right to complain if you go and find another platform and take your audience with you.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
This but on a wider scale. Youtube has become a cesspool. Every topic has many hundreds of presenters with potentially thousands for more popular topics. Take video game reviews. On the day of the Super Mario Run release there were already several thousand videos online with playthroughs, thoughts, reviews, rants etc.
I myself have stopped watching many of my staple channels as searches just return the same kind of content and the first video is often good enough.
We've reached peak attention but the number of players keep increasing, diluting the market share.