Sorin’s YouTube channel is under threat from YT’s algorithms !

[Fraser]

For those who follow Sorin and his electronics repair channels on YouTube, you will be aware of the situation that has recently developed regarding his loss of income from those channels. YouTube has shadow banned Sorin’s main and backup channels, claiming that there are anomalies in his viewer traffic figures. It turns out that this problem is widespread across many technical and repair channels at the moment. Sadly Sorin has found YouTube to be disinterested in looking into the matter further and resolving it. As Sorin has stated, compared to some other content producers, he is small potatoes. Imagine if one of the really ‘big’ content creators like Lois Rossmann got the same shadow banning and treatment !

I was sad to see this turn of events as I do enjoy watching Sorin working on various electronics faults. I used to watch Alex on the NorthridgeFIX YT channel, but there are only so many times that I want to see a connector, MOSFET or capacitor being replaced !
I now prefer to get my electronics repair ‘hit’ from Sorin’s channels. He has a good understanding of how the electronics actually work and so can delve deeper into more complex repairs. I like that  Some of his repairs do negatively trigger the perfectionist in me but, as he says, he repairs kit for a decent cost.

Sorin has posted some interesting videos on the YouTube problem that appears to be becoming widespread, but worryingly also appears to ‘target’ learning channels ! Where will this end I wonder?

Links to Sorin’s videos on this matter………

https://youtu.be/JgP7mxj64ro?si=z8f0RCfImLTwa6Rq

https://youtu.be/h2hI7LEG0ak?si=Af7ltJO62J7hi6bF

https://youtu.be/0z8_e3auqyU?si=9XW5mimtZg2kp-op

[Fraser]

I have been asked many times if I will create a YouTube channel dedicated to the discussion of Thermal Imaging cameras, their design and repair. I was beginning to come around to that idea but it was going to take time and money so needed some thought. In light of Sorin’s recent experience I have now completely shelved that idea.

A friend of our family has a son who created a channel on some platform that provides hints and tips for playing the Fortune video game. Last year he earned £90K from that channel. I have absolutely  zero chance of earning anything like that sort of money from a specialist technical YouTube channel dedicated to thermal imaging. Girls go on YouTube Shorts, TikTok or, in extreme cases, Only Fans….wear skimpy kit, flash some booty and get 10 Million views in no time at all….. we live in a very messed up World 

Fraser

[Fraser]

The “Learn Electronics Repair” channel has also suffered the dreaded “Invalid a traffic” YouTube treatment and lost its income

https://youtu.be/w88SvGfB3tU?si=tn5rHqTOdrVTgIRh

[Fraser]

A list of known channels that are suffering the same “Invalid Traffic” glitch and have lost their income……. 174 at time of posting.

https://pnuk.com/it

Fraser

[NiHaoMike]

Those who have Youtube Premium should discontinue it and give directly to the creators instead. Cut out the dishonest middleman.

[DavidAlfa]

I hope Google get a serious beating in the antitrust case.
He's gone out of control!

[madires]

Sounds like YT's AI (Artficial Incompetence) went berserk. Wait until someone with YT contacts reports the 'invalid traffic' issue.

[tszaboo]

Sadly, channels come and go and the algo kills channels left and right. I have a suspicion it manipulated to show different type of content  seasonally and they just tweak it based on the content seasonally. My (not electronics related) channel died as well. How? You can have thousands of subscribers, yet you only get a hundred impressions. The people who subscribed, they are never shown the video thumbnail at all.

It's part of the manipulation of the masses scheme that google is running. General entertainment channels are less likely to have problems, but if you do anything remotely interesting, you are prone to this. And it's not a bug, they for sure do this intentionally.

He does repair, the "Right to repair bill" is a hot topic, google moves the needle, channel gets zero traction.

[madires]

YT makes money with the content others create. So it should be in YT's interest to fix such stupid things. As long as issues stay below the automation radar nobody at YT will notice and investigate.

[Veteran68]

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/invalid-traffic-affecting-electronics-channels-on-youtube

Those who have Youtube Premium should discontinue it and give directly to the creators instead. Cut out the dishonest middleman.

YT Premium actually pays the creators too, more than watching ads based on comments I've heard from creators. I think Dave even mentioned this.

I follow far too many creators and am already paying some channel memberships (Sorin's is one I've been paying for awhile) and Patreons as it is. I can't pay them all individually, so I do my part through YT Premium. Of course if all my favorite channels die, then I'll have to drop Premium and YT altogether. I'm hoping they rethink this thing. It's certainly getting a lot of negative attention right now.

[AVGresponding]

YT is gradually turning into a twitter X style dumpster fire. Bullshit like this reminds me to go check if any more of the channels I watch regularly have moved to Odysee yet.

[Fraser]

I hope Odysee is a success so that we gain competitive choice in the marketplace 

[YurkshireLad]

I hope Odysee is a success so that we gain competitive choice in the marketplace 

I'm trying to watch more content on Odysee, but there's not a huge amount of interest at the moment. The site can also be very slow to load and populate the initial page, I'm talking 5-10s. I'd rather use a site that lets me find creators and videos to watch, than force channels and videos down my throat.

[DavidAlfa]

Only 140 channels from thousands, and none are top ones, suggest they might have tried some trick to self-promoting.
Perhabs they suddenly got 10M visits from certain India click farm... you know.

[Fraser]

If you watch the videos you will see Sorin shows his viewing figures and there is no such massive increase in views. I chose to be charitable in my assessment of this situation.

[globoy]

It seems to me that relying on a service you get for free to make money is always going to be a risky business model.

The companies providing these services serve their shareholders and investors.  Users of the service, whether consumers who are fed advertisements, or producers who give these companies their value, are only going to be supported as necessary to serve the company's primary interests.

And the model that most of these companies, at least in the last few years, have followed is to lose money (living on investor funding) while building a user base.  During this time their terms are very appealing.  But at some point they have to make money (or die or be acquired) and then things get much less appealing for the users.  We've seen this over and over.

Maybe you can make great money for a while and hats off if you do.  But I don't think anyone should expect that to last.  Seems to me it comes from the very nature of the business model - very different model than one where you pay money for a contracted set of services.

[Fraser]

Globoy ,

An excellent analysis of the situation 

I have never wanted to be a content producer on YouTube, but I have been asked many times to create a Thermal Imaging channel to benefit those interested in the topic. Whilst that is a nice idea, it takes a lot of time and effort to create the content and if there is no financial benefit for me, that is a step too far in terms of using my time. I am all for sharing knowledge, as I do here, but I do so only when I have the spare time and answering questions can be done quite quickly in many cases. Videography and editing are a completely different ball game.

As an aside, I contacted several thermal imaging camera manufacturers and offered to produce high quality technical reviews of their products at no cost to them. All of them wanted to know the details of my YouTube channel and immediately lost interest when I said that I produce written reviews for the EEVBlog forum. In order to obtain demo units for review, I would need to create a YouTube channel

As has been said, it is not a good idea to totally rely upon a finance stream that is provided by a free platform that can end that finance source at any time, without any recourse for the content producer.

[globoy]

I've created a few youtube videos over the years and although they certainly aren't polished they were a lot of work and took a lot of time.  I did it mostly for self-promotion - with little, lol, to show for that probably.  Like you and lots of other people I have looked at people making a lot of money and wondered, "should I???".  But for me anyway, who would much rather be working on a project than spending hours and hours promoting it and myself, it never made sense.  I do the infrequent videos because I feel the world has moved away from the written word (which I much prefer because I can easily control the rate I take it in and how quickly I go through it) to video.  Young people especially.  But I'm kinda an old curmudgeon about the whole thing.

I think if you ever did any videos they should be simply because you're willing to spend the time to share your love of thermal imaging.  A passion project.  Perhaps the good thing for you is that I think your audience wouldn't be so put off by a non-super polished video.  They'd mostly be in it for the technical knowledge you'd be sharing.  I bet you'd get a lot of thumbs up.

[thm_w]

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/invalid-traffic-affecting-electronics-channels-on-youtube/

[Fraser]

Interesting video from another content creator. He even suggests a possible cause. Could watching your own videos for QA purposes trigger the YouTube algorithm that detects invalid traffic ? According to him, YouTube confirmed that there is definitely invalid traffic on his channel but do not identify its source. It is also noted that some YouTuber found out that opening multiple browser windows on the same video created multiple advert streams and so recorded views…. They asked their viewers to do this in order to ‘go viral’ and that may have triggered YouTube to respond in a draconian manner.

https://youtu.be/0kYvkB8W_xY?si=lyXVs2A3zrvvc4cR

Fraser

[DavidAlfa]

Watching your own videos won't generate thousands of views...

[Fraser]

I think people are just struggling to come up with an explanation as to what triggered the invalid traffic detector at YouTube. I do not think it is the number of views changing dramatically as Sorin showed the statistics and there was no such significant spike in views on the YouTube plots. YouTube suggested that he not ask friends and family to view his videos as that could cause the issue ! What the heck ? I think the suggestion about not watching your own videos once uploaded may be just an idea that YouTube considers watching your own videos wrong as it increases your view count when you have a vested interest in that view count producing payment. It sounds crazy though and I would have thought many more people would have been affected as surely many content producers carry out QC checking of their videos after upload.

It remains a mystery and YouTube appear to be taking the view that their AI driven fraud detection system is perfect and cannot make mistakes. Such blind confidence may well be misplaced !

[Alex Eisenhut]

I don't even have a channel I just make comments on videos, and I got a weird message from YouTube about breaking community guidelines. No mention of which comment or which guideline. The feedback system that youtube offers just pops up a text box and a "send" button that doesn't do anything.
Wonderful.

[Veteran68]

Watching your own videos won't generate thousands of views...

Just watching your own videos *shouldn't* trigger invalid traffic, but clicking on ads in your own videos definitely does, and is one of the criteria specifically called out and what their system looks for. At this point though, it's clear the system is broken and innocent creators are getting punished, so I don't trust the reasons YT cites are the only reasons they're doing it. They either doing it intentionally, or they have some serious bugs in their bots that they refuse to acknowledge publicly.

[DavidAlfa]

Translated:
"It isn't taking OUR money out, we give zero f** for your's, so it's just fine".