I’ve been on YouTube for a long time. Not always as a creator though I am one of those. Not that I am a huge personality on there… I only have 380+ subscribers and low views. However, the last few years I have noticed that there have been changes that have made the platform less and less popular.
They have increased the standards to be a paid creator. They have increased censorship even on channels that have been labelled as adult viewers only. They have shown a bias against certain political beliefs and I am not talking about blatant KKK, Neo Nazi type stuff which I would support.
Now they have stopped email notifications for new videos being posted to channels that you are subscribed to! They have given the excuse that it is because the emails don’t get read and that they don’t increase viewership. Uh, excuse me? Advertisement studies show that email lists, etc. do actually work as they remind the consumer that your business is still around and interested in seeing your attention/money again.
I know that personally I used the email notifications to keep track of the NUMEROUS channels that I follow and to weed out the ones that I wanted to watch from the ones that had topics I was indifferent on. MrMattyPlays is talking about Bethesda games? Sign me up! He starts talking about something else that I am not interested in? Skip. I follow over ten different channels that span various topics from gaming to 3D modelling to politics. I also can’t log in multiple times a day to see if anything new has popped up. I relied on the emails to help me keep track and keep up! I know that I am not the only one either. There are HUNDREDS if not THOUSANDS of people on the announcement post that are complaining about it.
Google… I know that YouTube has never turned a true profit. That it was an experiment that got huge quickly on you, BUT, I also know that you have money coming into the company from other avenues that make YouTube seem like spitting into the fucking WIND! Trying to cut costs by closing down a fucking automated feature is so DUMB. You want to cut costs? How about you stop pandering to trendy politics and Nanny State fucking Karens? Set a crew of ten to twenty people on the site to deal with extreme issues and coming up with updates. Take away the ads and the money making aspect because creators have proven they can get money in other ways to fund them since you keep dicking around with the ad payments anyway. Bring back the emails. Tell companies that since there is no money being made with the videos on your site that if they want something other than free fucking advertising they should contact the creators. Because you know playing a game on a stream or uploading walkthroughs is fair use as long as they aren’t charging for it and is FREE ADVERTISING for the title chosen. Keep the age limits thing because that was actually a smart thing to do out of all the other stupid shit you have done lately.
I never got why so many companies have gotten their panties in a bunch about playthroughs, walkthroughs, lore videos, reviews, and so on. The music people have already gotten paid for the music in them, the game was sold to the person doing the video so they already got money for that, AND by having the video up it allows others to watch, learn, and desire to get the game themselves. I have personally bought at least three to five games myself that I saw through gameplay walkthroughs on YouTube.
All these decisions that have been made over the years brings me to believe that Google semi-secretly wants the experiment that is YouTube to just die. If they didn’t they wouldn’t be trying so hard to limit the audience reach. I miss the old days when we had people like Boeheim and Lonely Girl. Back when the platform was about creativity, sharing of knowledge, etc. and less about fucking money either for Google or the creators themselves. Greed eventually ruins everything people!
Derek's Mindscape 