Author Topic: World's first professional Youtuber quits Youtube  (Read 9106 times)

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Offline Red Squirrel

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Re: World's first professional Youtuber quits Youtube
« Reply #50 on: August 19, 2019, 03:42:05 am »
BTW, I've mentioned this someone else on here I'm sure.
But there has been a massive change in the Recommended videos section in recent times. It used to be great, it gave me a mix of stuff I'm subbed to, related videos to ones I've watched, and the occasional unrelated one so I can find entirely new stuff, I used it daily.
Now it is almost completely useless, constantly displays videos that are years old (half half the suggestions), a third of them I've already seen (it can't even track me any more), and just generally crap related content.
It was a huge change.
I asked about this on Twitter and without exception everyone else reported the same thing happening to them.

Many people say "Just use your subscription tab", but I don't want to do that, I want to new "intelligently" recommended content like I used to get that was valuable.

It's interesting how now and then a 10+ year old video will come up, and if you look at the comments, everyone is saying it came up for them too.     At the end of the day I think it's geared towards what can bring in more ad revenue, and not what is what people want to see.  if a 10 year old video has the potential of going viral again for any reason the algorithm sees fit, then it will show up, and Youtube will make a bunch of money off the ads.

I wonder if a lot of these old videos are also youtubers that arn't active or even monetised the video, so Google can just take all the money instead of giving them a cut.
 

Offline wilfred

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Re: World's first professional Youtuber quits Youtube
« Reply #51 on: August 19, 2019, 04:45:13 am »

Not sure what kind of business they are in. What is the point to throw at me same BigClive videos or Mr. Carlson videos or similar, every day same videos, what does Alphabet get out of me with that? Ads i just mute then skip them.

I mute ads as well. The vast majority of people don't. I don't pretend to know how the algorithm works but it does work. Billions of dollars are at stake. They will make it work. But just not for you or me as individuals. Not right away at any rate.

To understand how the algorithm works you would either need access to the code or take a longer term view of how recommendations are created and change and try to infer the logic from that. Which I imagine would be quite hard to do.

If you've read Asimov's Foundation series then I look at the algorithm as much like Hari Seldon's Psychohistory. It works over populations not individuals.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hari_Seldon
 

Offline EEVblogTopic starter

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Re: World's first professional Youtuber quits Youtube
« Reply #52 on: August 19, 2019, 05:09:11 am »
It's interesting how now and then a 10+ year old video will come up, and if you look at the comments, everyone is saying it came up for them too.     At the end of the day I think it's geared towards what can bring in more ad revenue, and not what is what people want to see.  if a 10 year old video has the potential of going viral again for any reason the algorithm sees fit, then it will show up, and Youtube will make a bunch of money off the ads.
I wonder if a lot of these old videos are also youtubers that arn't active or even monetised the video, so Google can just take all the money instead of giving them a cut.

I don't mind being recommended old videos, but when old videos combined with videos I've already seen comprises 80-90% of the recommendations every day, the algorithm ceases to become useful for me.
What was once a feature I used every day for years, I now despise.
 
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Offline wilfred

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Re: World's first professional Youtuber quits Youtube
« Reply #53 on: August 19, 2019, 07:15:38 am »

In addition to furthering "their" political agenda.
Sometime it's hard to know which reason they prefer more.
What appears to some to be a political agenda is just the threat to advertising revenue controversial views engender. If they disallowed a video unmonetised from distribution on the platform then I might be less sanguine about the algorithm as a means to manipulate free speech. But simply demonetising a video to protect advertising revenue doesn't seem to be a free speech issue to me.
I don't have any doubts that they are solely motivated by the pursuit of profit.
 

Offline magic

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Re: World's first professional Youtuber quits Youtube
« Reply #54 on: August 19, 2019, 08:01:04 am »
Sometimes they delete political videos over controversy, at other times they promote political videos despite controversy. As they say, corporations are persons too. They have their long term goals and don't behave "rationally", in the sense that short-sighted market fundamentalists define "rationality".

I also noticed that recommended videos are filled with stuff I have already watched. I must admit that I never login, but neither do I reboot the browser very often and I'm sure it is stuffed full with their cookies.

All I can think of is that perhaps we reached a state where 99.9% of their views are people watching pirate music videos or leaving it on autorun showing Spiderman and Elsa videos to their kids for hours a day, such that YT doesn't even care about catering to intelligent life anymore. :-//

edit
Or it's all true and they have been taken over by lizard people who want to dumb us down. Where is the tinfoil hat emoticon? :)
« Last Edit: August 19, 2019, 08:05:02 am by magic »
 

Offline jonovid

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Re: World's first professional Youtuber quits Youtube
« Reply #55 on: August 19, 2019, 08:10:03 am »
its so simple he is a white man! this does not fit the advertising / political narrative in 2019,
if TheMeanKitty was a Jewish feminist immigrant with pink or blue colored hair identifying as transgender or transsexual with an unusual pet.
YT would be falling over themselves to give it or her? the best algorithms!  >:D
Hobbyist with a basic knowledge of electronics
 
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Offline EEVblogTopic starter

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Re: World's first professional Youtuber quits Youtube
« Reply #56 on: August 19, 2019, 08:18:34 am »

In addition to furthering "their" political agenda.
Sometime it's hard to know which reason they prefer more.
What appears to some to be a political agenda is just the threat to advertising revenue controversial views engender. If they disallowed a video unmonetised from distribution on the platform then I might be less sanguine about the algorithm as a means to manipulate free speech. But simply demonetising a video to protect advertising revenue doesn't seem to be a free speech issue to me.
I don't have any doubts that they are solely motivated by the pursuit of profit.

You mustn't be watching the media. Whistleblowers are coming out telling what political agenda they have and how they manipulate the search results to further an agenda. Google employees caught on tape admitting it etc. It's known and out there.
 

Offline coppice

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Re: World's first professional Youtuber quits Youtube
« Reply #57 on: August 19, 2019, 10:28:18 am »
Now it is almost completely useless, constantly displays videos that are years old (half half the suggestions), a third of them I've already seen (it can't even track me any more), and just generally crap related content.
It was a huge change.
I asked about this on Twitter and without exception everyone else reported the same thing happening to them.
I've seen the same thing. I wonder if this is Google attempting to do something positive, and making a horrible mess of it. A lot of creators complain that most of their view come in the first 24 to 48 hours after uploading, and if anything spoils the video, like inappropriate demonetization, in that period the impact of the video is completely lost. Perhaps Google are trying to make the offered videos less focussed on new uploads, and have ended up offering a high percentage of really ancient videos.
 

Offline Galenbo

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Re: World's first professional Youtuber quits Youtube
« Reply #58 on: August 19, 2019, 10:57:31 am »
I don't watch Youtube, Facebook etc anymore.
I mean, I still watch the content, linked or shown in forums and links I visit, but never go to their site and watch their feed, suggestions etc.
If you try and take a cat apart to see how it works, the first thing you have on your hands is a nonworking cat.
 

Offline magic

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Re: World's first professional Youtuber quits Youtube
« Reply #59 on: August 19, 2019, 11:08:53 am »
I feel like they are just showing you what others were most likely to click in their suggestions after they watched whatever you are watching now. A kind of greedy and desperate optimization for "engagement", particularly targeted at masses of more or less identical noobs who are their first time on the Internet and react more or less the same way to the same old content and want the same content to follow.

Long story short, the Internet should have stayed exclusive to those who know how to install a web browser and antivirus and Steve Jobs was a traitor.
 

Offline SparkyFX

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Re: World's first professional Youtuber quits Youtube
« Reply #60 on: August 19, 2019, 01:42:05 pm »
Worst thing i - as a viewer - can say about the recommendations is that it becomes repetetive and often shows videos i already watched recently or displays the same ones over and over again, although i decided not to click on them or watch them later. Of course it does not work with multiple browser tabs (old recommendation watched in new tab does not remove the recommendation in the other tabs). Sometimes they bump interesting content i would otherwise not have searched for, but are similar to other channels i watch.

In other words i need to actually enter something in the search or use suggestions elsewhere if i want to see something different or manually check channels i subscribed to. But i might use it wrong, not using the bell icon very often and spending too much time on youtube in general.

You mustn't be watching the media. Whistleblowers are coming out telling what political agenda they have and how they manipulate the search results to further an agenda. Google employees caught on tape admitting it etc. It's known and out there.
Unheard of so far over here, is there a link or source to further read? (edit: nevermind, found this and this, but would see this as a problem with expecting Youtube to be a "News" source or journalist kind)
From what i read in recent years there were players that used sponsored ads and external content to build up some echo chambers, but in itself it does not mean the platform does have an agenda, their services were used to promote these campaigns like everyone else uses them. No one bothered, because mostly this starts with grey zone statements.
« Last Edit: August 19, 2019, 02:32:49 pm by SparkyFX »
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Offline rsjsouza

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Re: World's first professional Youtuber quits Youtube
« Reply #61 on: August 19, 2019, 03:49:11 pm »
You can't blame YouTube's algorithm for an oversupply of cat videos, but there are serious problems with the algorithm:
'An ecosystem of hate': How YouTube radicalized Brazil
https://nationalpost.com/news/world/youtube-gave-rise-to-a-radical-right-wing-movement-in-brazil
I read an article that stated these videos became popular through echo-chamber groups in Whatsapp, as Facebook has a deal with carriers for free traffic.
(political rant) How novel... A story sourced from NYT about a "radical right wing" movement blaming the system and not the people that actually got awakened by 14 years of vile theft and mismanagement from the left wing party. This is a similar phenomenon that happens here in the US: people got woke, others reacted with vitriol to their BS.

(carry on... sorry for the derailment)
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Offline ve7xen

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Re: World's first professional Youtuber quits Youtube
« Reply #62 on: August 19, 2019, 07:55:40 pm »
To understand how the algorithm works you would either need access to the code or take a longer term view of how recommendations are created and change and try to infer the logic from that. Which I imagine would be quite hard to do.

If you've read Asimov's Foundation series then I look at the algorithm as much like Hari Seldon's Psychohistory. It works over populations not individuals.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hari_Seldon

We're well into the AI era now. Having the source code would tell you little to nothing about how the algorithm is actually working. Probably even the engineers at YouTube have only a surface level understanding of what it's doing, and influence it only be weighting the metrics it's optimizing for.

In general, sometimes I find these approaches are scarily accurate, but very often (Google search results, too) make it more difficult than it used to be to find what I'm actually looking for because the AI is trying to out-clever me. So I think there's two things going on here - one is that the AI is weighted towards the average user, and for users with niche interests probably isn't as good (definitely think this is happening in Search). The other is that the AI is trying to optimize Google's profits while not hurting viewer engagement, neither of which is directly viewer satisfaction, so while we may bitch about the recommendations, are we actually watching less monetized content? As much as I hate the recommendations system lately myself, it hasn't really reduced my YT consumption - yet, I think I'm getting there.
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Offline SparkyFX

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Re: World's first professional Youtuber quits Youtube
« Reply #63 on: August 19, 2019, 10:45:29 pm »
Probably not AI, but clustering of keywords and ranking the matches.
These algorithms are more or less a positive feedback loop, which is fine if you search for some knowledge. In other words, once you choose autoplay, you are kind of drawn into the center of some topic, with every video you get the most or highest ranked keyword matches of the last few ones as the highest ranking for the next recommendation.

It is bad if the starting point is at some opinion based content, you get like the most matches and it seems some people in their basement are choosing wider ranges of keywords than news outlets and therefore beat them in that regard, matching more often in these positive feedback loops, no matter where you started.

What these algorithms can´t detect is satire and cynicism, which do have stronger matches/better association to certain keywords (by naming it more often, using it more specific) than most serious content and then it drifts off into fictional areas, which are somewhat related.

(political rant) How novel... A story sourced from NYT about a "radical right wing" movement blaming the system and not the people that actually got awakened by 14 years of vile theft and mismanagement from the left wing party. This is a similar phenomenon that happens here in the US: people got woke, others reacted with vitriol to their BS.
I am not sure if a purely stereotypical approach does what you think, without a healthy amount of dissent most systems are bound to fail, no matter the intentions they started out with. It might be a bad idea to brush it off this way.
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Offline KL27x

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Re: World's first professional Youtuber quits Youtube
« Reply #64 on: August 19, 2019, 11:04:43 pm »
What's your favorite TV show? How long did it remain on the air? 8 years? I think the average is probably 2-3 years. Ok, if you like CSI:[city], I guess that is a weird exception. I don't know if it really counts as one show, but it just doesn't die. 

I never heard of MeanKitty, and I don't feel like watching his video. But I'll take Dave's word that he was broken by the algorithm. This is sad. I venture he was made by the algorithm, to begin with. In this particular case, I don't know why he would have been targeted. It doesn't sound like he had a political agenda or anything. But I bet his show stopped growing and started losing popularity. A channel that is actively growing is quite a different thing from one that is steady. And that is quite a different thing from one that is shrinking. The "algorithm" may soon abandon the latter. And a show with this particular sort of content and following, that could mean a very quick death. That is not necessarily unnatural.

If 96+% of your viewership doesn't subscribe and only gets there by random/placement/visibility/recommendation to begin with, it is possible he was successful by gaming the algorithm(or random chance/luck?) to begin with? I seems like he hit upon some part of the algorithm that gave his videos a high level of visibility for many years... and if his subscriber base is still so small he can't afford to continue... maybe YT improved the algorithm in some ways?

Mainstream stars also live and die by their masters. Sure, they have beauty and charisma. But they were created. And they can be (and are) broken. Happens all the time. For having the wrong political views. For trying to build their own platforms that bypass the mainstream media. The kings behind the curtain destroy them in a blink of an eye. Youtube will be no different.

As long as there's still a few people striking it big, people will be happy to pick up a shovel and start digging. Youtube will be happy to loan them the shovel.
« Last Edit: August 19, 2019, 11:43:31 pm by KL27x »
 

Offline maginnovision

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Re: World's first professional Youtuber quits Youtube
« Reply #65 on: August 20, 2019, 12:04:23 am »
The Simpsons is the only TV show I've watched for than a couple times. I've seen every episode even the new ones. So 30 years.

I don't doubt that some of his subscribers will go, but some will also be new. Every day someone probably goes to youtube for their first time to get some cat videos.   It's an ebb and flow.  If all of a sudden your channel dies it's probably not that everyone got tired of your channel or stopped watching. An algorithm change doesn't have to be targeted to destroy you. As most of us know one small change can have a large effect elsewhere.  He also had a few channels. What are the odds all your channels fall out of favor with their audience?
 

Offline PlainName

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Re: World's first professional Youtuber quits Youtube
« Reply #66 on: August 20, 2019, 12:48:17 am »
Quote
An algorithm change doesn't have to be targeted to destroy you

I think it can only create you. There is nothing in the algorithm that can stop someone seeing a video - all it does is bring new viewers to it. If you know of the video or subscribe you can still go and view them, so what we're talking about here is essentially churn.

If your channel relies on new viewers then it's not exactly a popular channel since existing viewers don't find it entrancing enough to come back. All the algorithm can have an effect on, the, is pushing new viewers to an otherwise so-so channel, or make an already popular channel bigger.
 

Offline maginnovision

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Re: World's first professional Youtuber quits Youtube
« Reply #67 on: August 20, 2019, 12:58:02 am »
You have to remember that the audience is changing regardless of the content. If an algorithm change helps keep new viewers from discovering the hannel while others are deciding they're going elsewhere or just done with that content your channel will fail. Looking at stats many channels have times where the losses match the gains, so it looks stagnant. Technically it is but more people know about the channels than before even if some of them no longer like it.
 

Offline PlainName

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Re: World's first professional Youtuber quits Youtube
« Reply #68 on: August 20, 2019, 01:48:25 am »
Quote
the audience is changing regardless of the content

Sure, for some channels. And some channels will have a core of persistent viewers (the subscribers, for instance). There is a question as to how big that core might be in relation to passing viewers but, again, I think it would depend on the channel.

I don't believe you can blindly say that all channels will fail if they don't get a continuous stream of new eyeballs via the algorithm. As an example, I've watched quite a few of Dave's videos (well, most of the way through them anwyay :) ) but I've never got to them via the algorithm and I don't subscribe.
 

Offline KL27x

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Re: World's first professional Youtuber quits Youtube
« Reply #69 on: August 20, 2019, 02:10:26 am »
Ok, I watched the video.
  |O I know I'm a doucebag, but:
"I'm probably quitting. Definitely not today, definitely not next week. Maybe in October. On the 14th anniversary of my first channel."
- read, please YT god, make my quitting video go viral and put me back on the map. lol.

But also he mentions plans to move to "his own platform." Anyone know what he is talking about? If he was serious and vocal about this on his YT channel in the past, well hello reason to be targeted by YT.

 

Offline EEVblogTopic starter

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Re: World's first professional Youtuber quits Youtube
« Reply #70 on: August 20, 2019, 02:17:43 am »
I never heard of MeanKitty, and I don't feel like watching his video. But I'll take Dave's word that he was broken by the algorithm.

Not my word, he shows data from his metric that show all this channels drop off a cliff after the algorithm change.

Quote
This is sad. I venture he was made by the algorithm, to begin with. In this particular case, I don't know why he would have been targeted. It doesn't sound like he had a political agenda or anything.

He was targeted in any way, Youtube just changed the algorithm that happened to affect his channels. But given that his content is different across different channels and they all went down, the Algorithm has some sort of side effect on connected channel. e.g. EEVblog, EEVblog2, and EEVdiscover are all connected under the same Google login.

Quote
If 96+% of your viewership doesn't subscribe and only gets there by random/placement/visibility/recommendation to begin with, it is possible he was successful by gaming the algorithm(or random chance/luck?) to begin with? I seems like he hit upon some part of the algorithm that gave his videos a high level of visibility for many years... and if his subscriber base is still so small he can't afford to continue... maybe YT improved the algorithm in some ways?

Nope, not possible. He has 1M+ subscribers, and IIRC got a few hundred K view each video, so normal sub/view ratio for a Youtube channel.
 

Offline KL27x

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Re: World's first professional Youtuber quits Youtube
« Reply #71 on: August 20, 2019, 02:20:19 am »
^So 1 million subscribers? And he claims to be quitting Youtube?

I take 100 to 1 odds he doesn't quit YT, today, next week, or in October.
 

Offline EEVblogTopic starter

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Re: World's first professional Youtuber quits Youtube
« Reply #72 on: August 20, 2019, 02:20:28 am »
But also he mentions plans to move to "his own platform." Anyone know what he is talking about?

 :-//
Probably some paid subscription thing on his own website?
There are other free video hosts out there like Bitchute, Daily Motion, Vimeo, and even Facebook.
If you are still making content I don't know why you'd quite Youtube and only put your material somewhere else, it's not a rational choice.
 

Offline EEVblogTopic starter

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Re: World's first professional Youtuber quits Youtube
« Reply #73 on: August 20, 2019, 02:23:51 am »
Actually, if you look at his videos and views there is a possible explaination in the drop from a few hundred K views to a few 10's of K views - there was an over 3 month period where he released no videos:
Maybe the algorithm published him severely for that?

 

Offline SparkyFX

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Re: World's first professional Youtuber quits Youtube
« Reply #74 on: August 20, 2019, 02:25:17 am »
For having the wrong political views. For trying to build their own platforms that bypass the mainstream media. The kings behind the curtain destroy them in a blink of an eye. Youtube will be no different.
But as much as i like pets, i kind of think that this kind of video is only made popular by the algorithm and if there is no other factor keeping the viewers there, then certain problems will take over, even without a change in algorithm.

You don´t need "kings behind the curtain", if enough people figure cat/pet videos are easy to make and very popular, they´ll saturate the "market". I.e. pick up the viewers, which devalues content you make, they´ll make it quicker, more accessible and maybe more often ... and they outnumber you, they also want to be served viewers by recommendation. Only way around this is to keep it interesting and entertaining, so people come back.
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