Technology

Google is now expecting users to watch ads that are sometimes a full 25% of the viewing time, or slowing access and requiring logins when adblock is being used. And even if you wade through all that, watching Youtube tech and info videos has become a lot like looking at online recipes. The majority of what you find is fluff and filler for only small amounts of useful content.

I used to go to Youtube daily for research and entertainment but now I avoid the site completely whenever possible. It seems we've finally reached an enshittification tipping point.

It's about time.

He generates far too much content without any depth, and it's all infotainment.

What I've noticed is YouTube recommending me more obscure videos, from very small creators.

I very much appreciate whatever they're doing, regardless of how these bigger channels are being hit by it. Yesterday I got recommended a video by an elderly woman, showing a mug warmer she bought. It was very sweet, had less than 30 views and it was a lovely contrast to the flashy, over edited videos stretching a paragraph to 10+ minutes.

Not saying the big channels are bad, I just personally like the small time channels and appreciate that YouTube has been (at least with the algorithm it has set for me) giving these small channels a shot at getting an audience.
I've connected with a lot of people from smaller channels, joined communities etc. yet this is much more difficult with the larger ones (in some I've been to, over the years, the chatrooms they set up are so huge the moderation sometimes just gives up or doesn't even exist in any practical way).

I dont know if anyone has noticed but...
Can we no longer watch youtube without being logged in? Every embedded video i see doesnt work. Every time i try to click on a video it tells me to sign in.
If i have an ad block running it basically blocks the website.

I really think its the auto plays and the untracked accounts.

Youtube would rather be able to track every user and make more profit per person than go big tent all audiences.

Everyone here is speculating about their content, but the simple answer is YouTube just changed how they count the view number. The change basically happened overnight, so it's not some slow attrition of views. They said in the WAN Show that while the view count halved, the number of likes hasn't changed (the view/like ratio doubled), and the revenue they earned hasn't changed (CPM doubled). All of this points that the same number of humans are watching, but what counts as a view in the "views" number just changed.

I'm sure declining viewers has nothing to do with the various controversies such as auctioning off prototypes, rushed reviews with misleading or false conclusions, mistreating staff etc. Channels like Gamers Nexus really laid into him.

Because people wont stay 14 to 16 year olds for long

Those stupid thumbnails pushed me away

I stopped watching LTT years ago. His channel is crap. He's a tech personality who seems to barely understand technology, so most of his videos are just over the top bullshit and stunts. Not to mention his awful annoying vocal fry. He's like the male Fran Drescher.

Plus, Linus has been a complete asshole to GamersNexus, one of the best channels for investigative journalism in tech. As far as I'm concerned, Linus is your typical business entity, and lacking ethics.

Because of short videos?

Some other analysis: https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2025/youtube-views-are-down-dont-panic

Probably doesn't help that a bunch of the decent channels were bought by private equity and are now churning out boring, safe and uninteresting content.

https://youtu.be/hJ-rRXWhElI (a yt link, lol).

A brief summary from https://www.dailydot.com/news/youtube-channel-private-equity/

Some channels like Donut Media, Veritasium, and Task and Purpose have been acquired publicly. Others, such as Dude Perfect and Coco Melon, have been acquired more privately, with no public disclosure.

Plenty others. A key giveaway is when a channel diverges their risk. When the front man who is the reason you have watched the channel suddenly has co-hosts and large segments from other channels in their regular content.

Maybe at some point we can all stop watching and hence supporting YouTube, that'd be nice.

Google is making users/consumers not want to use/consume google things by making those things more difficult, more invasive, less user friendly to use/consume.

That's it. That's all.

If I just want to watch a clip that I could before but now I have to sign in because it thinks I'm a not, NO

If it wants me to watch ads for things I'll never buy and actually forces me to, NO.

If it kills the front ends I prefer to use, or kills the ability to watch via proxy, for my privacy and/or security. NO.

If it feeds me Nazi shit without clicking a single link on a new install on a new browser with no profile on a new IP, fucking NO.

Folks here are missing the point blaming LTT for the drop. This has been a sudden drop, too sudden to be fatigue or audience tastes changing.

Also I can see the same on my own channel. About 2 weeks ago views suddenly dropped to a third of the usual views. And even high performing videos have had trouble getting views since. Even videos with a high impression percentage are getting lower than average views.

The same wsd also reported by Second Wind (old Zero Punctuation) and their experience is the same: way too sudden drop to be anything else except YouTube adjusting their algorithm.

I haven’t watched YouTube much since they broke the search. And that’s far from the only thing they broke, it’s just what stopped making the site very worthwhile to me. I’m sure I’m not the only one who’s significantly cut down or stopped using it.

Reasons I see:

a) the generation that grew up watching LTT is now at age where they don't watch as much YT as they did before b) increasing amount of things happen which put viewers off c) consumer technology peaked and is now "boring" d) new generations don't have as much interest in technology altogether

Let's explain:

a + c) people watching LTT years ago were living in an exiting tech era where it boomed and you had mayor leaps in tech basically on a yearly basis. Moving from floppy disks to CD's to USB sticks. CRT to LCD displays. 16-bit to 32-bit color. Solitare and Minesweeper to Call of Duty 4 and Need for Speed. Symbian and Blackberry to Android and iOS. Tons of manufacturers, tons of competition, tons of new and exctiting stuff.

Let's observe the state today: iPhone looks the same for the past half decade. Android is basically just Google and Samsung. Storage is now all in cloud. New games are recycled and upscaled old games. Every new generation of hardware is same thing just 10% better/faster. New OS releases are just refinements without new features. Most changes are done just for the sake of change. Existing hardware can basically be enough for 5+ years. What is LTT realistically supposed to talk about that is interesting? There is simply no more interesting tech.

This ties in into d) - tech peaked, new generations "just use it as it is", there is no need to tinker with it, prebuilt PC's are more than fine for years to come. Since AI the IT job landscape seems to be in decline, both in demand and in pay. People do other stuff now that is more lucrative.

LTT is dependent on stuff happening so that they can make videos about it. But, stuff kinda just isn't happening. Or the stuff that happens is just not noteworthy news anymore.