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Is the Golden Age of YouTube Over? (theverge.com)
An anonymous reader quotes the Verge:
As YouTube battles misinformation catastrophes and discovers new ways people are abusing its system, the company is shifting toward more commercial, advertiser-friendly content at a speed its creator community hasn't seen before. The golden age of YouTube -- the YouTube of a million different creators all making enough money to support themselves by creating videos about doing what they love -- is over... By the end of 2016, when algorithm changes were creating headaches for some of the platform's biggest creators, people started announcing they had to take a break from the site they called home. YouTube wasn't what it was between 2011 and 2016... YouTube was exerting more control over what users saw and what videos would make money...
YouTube faced an escalating crisis of radicalization and sweeping conspiracy theories that had been ignored by executives for years. The company's first small efforts to address these serious issues -- promoting content from musicians, late-night shows, and recommending fewer independent creators -- would have huge secondary effects on the middle-tier creators who had once been the heart of the platform during its golden period. It pushed YouTube toward the exact same Hollywood content to which it had once been an alternative.... Even people outside of YouTube saw what was happening. "YouTube is inevitably heading towards being like television, but they never told their creators this," Jamie Cohen, a professor of new media at Molloy College, told USA Today in 2018....
Individual YouTube creators couldn't keep up with the pace YouTube's algorithm set. But traditional, mainstream outlets could: late-night shows began to dominate YouTube, along with music videos from major labels. The platform now looked the way it had when it started, but with the stamp of Hollywood approval.
It's a contrast from the earliest days of YouTube, the article argues. Rather than user-generated content, "it was something else that helped the site explode in popularity: piracy." But their pivot to user-generated content apparently slowed with what YouTube creators call the "adpocalypse" -- YouTube's aggressive demonetization of "problematic" videos. (A handful of creators had been making more than a million dollars a month, and some even quit their jobs to focus on making videos full-time.)
To be fair, by 2017 YouTube had a problem. Every minute users uploaded 27,000 minutes of new footage, making it difficult to pre-screen. But after adjusting their algorithm, "perceived, secretive changes instilled creators with a distrust of the platform."
The old YouTube "seemed to welcome the wonderfully weird, innovative, and earnest, instead of turning them away in favor of late-night show clips and music videos," writes the Verge. But the new YouTube is different, say two brothers who used CGI to re-create Mortal Kombat's most gruesome kills on their RackaRacka channel. They say the new YouTube now buries their videos for "excessive violence."
YouTube faced an escalating crisis of radicalization and sweeping conspiracy theories that had been ignored by executives for years. The company's first small efforts to address these serious issues -- promoting content from musicians, late-night shows, and recommending fewer independent creators -- would have huge secondary effects on the middle-tier creators who had once been the heart of the platform during its golden period. It pushed YouTube toward the exact same Hollywood content to which it had once been an alternative.... Even people outside of YouTube saw what was happening. "YouTube is inevitably heading towards being like television, but they never told their creators this," Jamie Cohen, a professor of new media at Molloy College, told USA Today in 2018....
Individual YouTube creators couldn't keep up with the pace YouTube's algorithm set. But traditional, mainstream outlets could: late-night shows began to dominate YouTube, along with music videos from major labels. The platform now looked the way it had when it started, but with the stamp of Hollywood approval.
It's a contrast from the earliest days of YouTube, the article argues. Rather than user-generated content, "it was something else that helped the site explode in popularity: piracy." But their pivot to user-generated content apparently slowed with what YouTube creators call the "adpocalypse" -- YouTube's aggressive demonetization of "problematic" videos. (A handful of creators had been making more than a million dollars a month, and some even quit their jobs to focus on making videos full-time.)
To be fair, by 2017 YouTube had a problem. Every minute users uploaded 27,000 minutes of new footage, making it difficult to pre-screen. But after adjusting their algorithm, "perceived, secretive changes instilled creators with a distrust of the platform."
The old YouTube "seemed to welcome the wonderfully weird, innovative, and earnest, instead of turning them away in favor of late-night show clips and music videos," writes the Verge. But the new YouTube is different, say two brothers who used CGI to re-create Mortal Kombat's most gruesome kills on their RackaRacka channel. They say the new YouTube now buries their videos for "excessive violence."
Next thing you know, they remove monetization from channels that didn't have acertain number of followers.
Next they demonetized channels when people complained about the content. A lot of Men's rights and MGTOW challis were hit because of women who didn't want their content on Youtube. Firearms channels were hit people people demanding that sort of thing not be shown on Youtube.
Figuring that what was good for the goose was good for the gander, the recently demonetized or disgruntled started complaining about the likely people complaining about their favorite channels. Chaos ensues.
Google has some real problems these days. At the same time they are administratively full blown Social Justice Warriors, they have sexual discrimination Lawsuits against them, and have revolting employees because they apparently aren't Socially and politically pure enough.
Protip: Social Justice Warriors are never placated, they just find something new to be outraged at.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
That wasn't even the problem. People have created great content and continued to do so well into the time when they could actually make money from it. What killed it was that people with high production values can't continue due to the risk of demonetization while those without (i.e. the "10 things that will blow your mind" bull and the assholes that get most of their money from the companies whose products they hawk anyway) can.
So what's left on Youtube is videos from large studios that have a relevant deal with YouTube, videos without production values whose makers don't give a shit that they get demonetized because they can crank out more and if only one of them makes money they're in the black and videos that are more advertisment than the crap YouTube cuts into them.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Ha. If you felt like checking, you might notice that I'm the submitter of that the story from two years ago with 920 comments. No worries; I know reading is hard. Like I told the other guy, I guess we've gone from RTFA to RTFS to RTFP now. I even commented in the post that shorter would've been better but I just don't know how to make it short any more, not when the ignorance is so deep and the nonsensical propaganda replies are so well-rehearsed.
It's been well over a year since I read that stuff but read it I did. (I didn't include *all* of the relevant links because I figured the post would probably be little-noticed. I didn't expect to get mistaken for a spam bot, though, I must admit.) The Wall Street Journal was all very open about this, the reporters all bragging about what they'd done. Youtube's crackdown happened immediately afterwards and was also very public and open about it. For those who were paying attention, it was and is common knowledge that this event was one of the major catalysts for Youtube's policy shifts. But you can go on and believe it's a conspiracy theory if you must. I did use a lot of words after all. All the conspiracy nuts like words, therefore, etc.