This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Had a discussion with another creator buddy and they said it appeared that there was a load less scraping going on which inflated their viewer figures for months. I wonder if youtube is finally stopping their whole content being scraped perpetually?
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.
It's not particularly about him, his channel, or his content. If his channel had been declining, that's usually a downward trend. What happened instead is that LTT lost 50% of their viewers suddenly in the last month. Other YouTubers have also stated that in the last month, out of nowhere, their viewership dropped crazily, up to 60%. However, LTT analyzed that although they have half as many viewers, 'like ratio' skyrocketed and ad revenue stayed the same. Josh Strife Hayes made a video blaming YT's new feature "restricted mode" for this, which, when active, blocks a lot of videos for seemingly no reason. Some others have also noted the problem and are investigating, but a lot of information points out to something youtube did as the cause of the issue.
Can't prove anything, but I have always had trust issues with Youtube's numbers. Youtube is a for profit company with horrible owners at the top, and would they distort the numbers for political or financial reasons? I think they would.
I think Youtube and Reddit inflate and deflate vote counts and view counts when something is important to the owners.
Granted that is what I think. Can't prove it. But Google, Alphabet, Youtube, and the new entrants like Grumble, they are black box for profit companies. Can they pass an independent audit for their view and subscriber counts? We should not trust anything from these bad actors. Certainly don't assume good faith. Audit them by five (more than one) independent and transparent auditing companies to prove their numbers are legit. Every six months. Every year. Forever. Until then I take all those view and subscriber numbers with a fistful of salt.
Linus from LTT was ostensibly really popular. I never watched it. Lets say their old numbers were legit. Is it possible some nephew of Youtube's CEO is starting a competing channel and Youtube fudges the numbers to help push the nepo channel ahead? To me, yes, it is possible. I have very little trust for those black boxes. "Trust me bro" is all they got so far, and I have little reason to trust these entities.
So basically Google/Alphabet/Youtube reports a new number to Linus. Are the old and the new numbers legit? Can we ascertain it beyond the Youtube's "trust me bro" nonsense? We need to start there, and don't jump to conclusions about the viewership habits.
Yeah but they've been doing that for a long time. Other channels are meeting the market for in-depth tech content, and LTT is bigger than all of them.
And that's what people watch. This didn't change.
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).
Unfortunately, most of those so called "small channels" are actually bots using AI content farm.
YouTube should have a way to filter out certain content.
Like sub 1000 subscriber Chanel's, 1000-10,000 channels, >10,000 etc
Sometimes you just don't want to watch the big time YouTubers.
What we, as users, desere is transparency in the algorithm and significant input into how it works for us. Do you like big channels, small channels? etc. The problem is when people opt-out of sponsored content, but also refuse to pay. Transparency in the cost of delivery of service and the income from advertising would help there too, except if the service provider is wanting obscene profits.
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.
Could back up that theory that it's autoplay views being reduced and they are not worth much anyway
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.
Youtube would rather be able to track every user and make more profit per person than go big tent all audiences.
True, but consider that Google, Alphabet, whatever, is fundamentally an information broker. All of their services and technologies are simply a means to that end. They have no incentive to go big tent if it means sacrificing their ability to harvest data on individuals and groups.
I haven't been logged in for years, and I can still watch it. If they're blocking, it's an A/B test and not everywhere. I watch on Firefox w/ uBO (four different machines), NewPipe, and Grayjay.
It's hit or miss for me with my VPN, but between using an Invidious instance, Freetube, DDG video search, and cycling VPN locations, I'm never, ever logged in to YT.
And yes, Google/YT wants to track everything. Third party doctrine means that governments will pay them for this data rather than run their own surveillance systems. Anything that you've watched that can be used against you will be if it suits someone else.
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.
It's not just him though it's lots of channels reporting issues. So clearly no, it's not as a result of the controversies, at least not exclusively.
Because people wont stay 14 to 16 year olds for long
Personally I was only 14-16 for like 5 years at most
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.
It's actually worse than that.
He does know some stuff about technology and his team knows the stuff that he maybe doesn't know.
But in the fight with GamersNexus Linus basically admitted that they don't have time to properly fact check stuff because they would make less money if they released less videos.
That's from way back when. They shut production for a week, reassessed how they make things, and came back with the promise to be more thorough and not release a video when it's just not done that day. And they have "missed" some days since.
His complete lack of self awareness and ability to own up and apologise when they've dropped the ball put me off the channel entirely. For example they found out one of their main sponsors Honey were scamming their viewers and essentially stealing from people, they just kept it quiet rather than owning it.
That, and Emily was the best thing about the channel and she left so..
About Honey, they didn't find out that Honey was scamming viewers until everyone else did.
What they found out earlier, at the same time as many other youtubers, was that Honey was "scamming" the youtubers themselves by replacing the youtubers reference codes.
At the time they thought the viewers still got discounts, so they didn't announce anything about it since it would seem like they asked the viewers not to take the discounts so that LTT could make more money.
Oh Linus is a giant child.
He once got pissed off, because they got called out by an actual scientist. They were creating videos promoting fake products. Then they played victim and pushed it instead of, ya know, taking the high road.
Hes an emotionally stunted 13 year old, that thinks its funny to keep dropping/breaking things that most normal people could never afford to even touch, who is quick to criticize the wrongs of everyone else, but acts like a goddamn martyr as soon as you criticize him and his behavior.
his response to GamersNexus "being mean" by reporting facts backed up by receipts and evidence is only the tip of the iceberg.
Because of short videos?
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.
Oh, so that is why Veritasium went to shit. That's such a shame. It was a great channel that I was excited about when a new video would drop. Then low quality videos started coming out and I don't watch them anymore. Haven't unsubscribe yet though, maybe I should get around to that.
Some other analysis: https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2025/youtube-views-are-down-dont-panic
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.
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.
I stopped watching LTT videos when they just became long-form ads. Or when everyone five minutes was a sponsored segment.
