YouTube continues to have a YouTube problem. The latest furor – YouTube’s answer to money troubles is to create a system where the rich get richer and the poor stay poor.
Truly a company for our times!
YouTube To Demonetize Channels It Deems Too Small
YouTube continues to have a YouTube problem. The latest furor – YouTube’s answer to money troubles is to create a system where the rich get richer and the poor stay poor.
See, losing the monetization won’t kill me too much. I spent 3 years unable to access it because of… some reason? But I got used to that until last year it was just available to me again.
The bit that fucking IS INTOLERABLE is that enabling monetization:
A) Appears to be one of the factors in whether the YouTube algorithm will push your video
AND
B) Is connected to a couple key features of the backend, such as the ability to schedule videos.
So not only will it become harder for small channels to make the progress they want us to make (can’t monetize videos > channel becomes less visible > can’t meet quota), I can’t even BLOODY SCHEDULE A VIDEO? I might not make a lot of content right now, but the ability to schedule content makes it a lot easier to be consistent. Consistency helps grow a channel. It also gives YouTube time to process my fucking video and then release it at a prime viewing time for my region, something I can’t do at work.
So… Fuck.
So that’s what youtube meant when they said they were “working on it” about the whole Logan Paul thing, a method that’ll benefit him more. lol
Its almost impossible for new channels to grow big on YT these days. The algorithm is totally working against us!!!
Damn just as I was reaching the 10,000 view mark that used to be required, the bar has been lifted higher. Not that I make much content but still, it was a goal I had been creeping toward for a long time.
This while they kept promoting the garbage fire that is the Logan bros. I felt intense satisfaction when that backfired on them. YouTube really keep topping themselves with the dumb decisions this last year.
Im making appx 350$ a year with youtube, and this has been growth within the past year.. but I am nowhere near the 4000 hour requirement.. that is going to translate to almost 1000$/year which is rediculous because there is a huge difference between less than 100 and 1000 per year.
350 or even 1000 a year is huge for a creator like myself because it allows me to update my camera equipment and produce better content. This almost completely axes that possibility…
For fucks sake ugh
YouTube really needs a competitor
You guys need to organize a union, maybe do a strike. Make all your monetized videos private for a day or two en-masse. This is all only going to start getting way worse. But I think you know that better than I Jim.
I expect YouTube to someday just close accounts that have low views and no longer allow free hosting of videos. Since it costs them money to put more servers to host the videos.
Also; it’s really evil because there’s a lot of quality channels with a high quantity of videos, yet low amount of views… reason is because YouTube doesn’t promote them in the “link-section” as much anymore as they used to in the beginning. YouTube has a big deal in who they make big and who not. Not trying to self-promote, but as an example: I’ve been on YouTube for 12 years, 17k subscribers and 282 videos. I’m out of shot-range for now, but my channel is nowhere as big as similar channels with the exact same content. I’m also seeing a lot of gaming channels with less than 3k subscribers with actually good commentary gameplays who deserve much more views.
and this is somehow going to keep big channels from doing stupid shit, the stuff that normally gets all the unwanted attention that has caused most of the problems that is.
This is so annoying thankfully I am now over the threshold, but had this of happened a year ago I would probably have stopped producing content as the goal post had just been moved quite drastically. YT are making it more and more difficult for new ‘talent’ to rise. Where is the next PewDiePie going to come from if YT keep stepping on the little guy?
I was going to contact you about this as well. This really bites me because I’ve been on this website since pretty much as soon as YouTube started. I was one of those “YouTube Directors” back in the day when it was still in its infancy, essentially one of the first YouTube Partners.
Now I admit that I have drifted away from YouTube, deciding to focus more on my feature films that make more profit than online shorts with thousands of views (as well as preferring to tell stories in movies than just do shorts online).
But then they also just kept getting worse and worse. Half of all of my videos lost their monetization, especially as a horror film director and most of my videos being trailers or behind the scene stuff for horror. Paying less on ads in general also seemed noticeable. And now, since I do not focus all of my effort on the low paying YouTube option (for comparison 4500 hours of YouTube viewing pays about $75 versus 1000 hours streamed on Amazon Video pays about $400), I am being thrown out entirely.
YouTube doesn’t want the smaller guys (and gals) to have a chance anymore, it seems. It just wants the big monsters. It wants dead bodies shown off instead, I guess. This is even funnier to me as Amazon Video, a large and somewhat seeming more “official” outlet more or less allows all creators to submit directly with no distributor so long as you have captions.
But hey this just confirms I won’t really use YouTube anymore, short of sharing trailers. In one sense this lets YouTube win since they want less small channels, but I just don’t care enough to struggle in this constant uphill battle with YouTube. I have other, better options. I’ll miss you YouTube, but you aren’t the man I fell in love with.
I’m 200 subscribers away but have 4x as much watch time as they want, it’s like they didn’t even consider the 1% of channels with loyal followings and instead looked at all the thousands of channels with no videos that enabled monetization just because it was easy. Oh well, here’s hoping Patreon keeps their act together. Maybe Twitch Uploads will finally get a subscription feed or something.
I am devastated that those who are affected by this will no longer be earning 2 dollars a month.
Thank you YouTube, may I have another lashing?
To play the Youtube’s advocate for a moment, I COULD see this also being a counter to all those pirating channels. Y’know, the ones that ACTUALLY break copyright and make money illegally by uploading anime, movies, TV shows, that sort of thing then slap ads on it through the partnership program or perhaps other means.Obviously I’m not counting the who knows how many channels that get struck with false flags every day on the site and didn’t deserve it, I mean just the actual pirates that really are breaking the rules.
That said however, even if this IS about that, pirates will find a way around it, they pretty much always do. And in the end, this overreaching change will hurt more legitimate small channels more than knocking out any pirate channels. Or…if this really was never about piracy, they’re just flat out screwing over the little guys just for the sake of not having to pay them cuz they fucked up. S’almost like Youtube’s a giant, uncaring corporation or something.
They tell us to “up our game”, and yet no matter how good you are, getting initial subscribers is COMPLETELY down to luck. You could be the best channel in the world and not have 1000 subs. The trick to getting big on YouTube nowadays is to just keep going until eventually you’re lucky enough to actually get seen. 5 years down the line, I wish I had that luck.