I freakin' hate UA-cam "shorts". The format (shape) is the worst or viewing, you can't use on-screen controls and they're too short to bother with. If I wanted to watch moronic Tik-Tok videos I'd watch Tik-Tok.
Because I use this on a computer, when Shorts show up on my Subscriptions page, I immediately click the three dots then Hide them. Only exceptions are certain friends videos which I watch first, then hide from that page. However.. if I were Fran, I would make USE of Shorts on every video. Example, before uploading a new video about opening up some electronic thing.. do a Short of the thing as an actual teaser... make sure to overlay text saying "Full video on my Channel soon" or similar. Then follow through. Reason being is that whenever you upload a short, you get a spike of traffic so you may as well make use of it. Very, very simple but possibly effective. And if the main content is ready anyway, why leave money on the table?
it seems catered entirely to cute chicks doing a low-effort 20 second dance and usually in some kind of cosplay, at least thats all I ever seen on my shorts bar lol
Even at eBay it is awful trying to deal with customer service, the managers are never available, and the reps look for reasons to ban, suspend account, or be 'offended', like if I say "this is b.s." they will say I am swearing at them...
That's exactly the type of creators yt wants to focus on. It means higher ad revs for yt. It's the star treatment. Influencer mode. The most popular channels can better finance themselves with their yt bucks. Yt can get bigger advertisers, and the advertisers get more, younger, demographics which is what advertisers want. As times get tougher, Yt is adjusting their core model to get more corporate creators who they also pay more. And get dome of tiktok's, short attention span audience.
The really concerning thing to me is that all of these companies with heavily algorithm-driven products - such as UA-cam, Spotify, Instagram etc. - ALWAYS make these manipulative changes in the dark, and tend to deny them or downplay their impact. It’s much harder to manipulate people when they’re consciously aware that they’re being manipulated. This shady, gaslighting behavior is disgusting and needs to stop. If our relationship with these companies was a domestic one, it would be a classic abuse.
Just made the same comment above. Social engineering via algorithm. They're shaping attitudes and personality traits. If you doubt, read Shoshanna Zuboff--surveillance capitalism.
The manipulation of shorts has become clear to me recently. There's a pull toward our base desires. It's hypnotic, a relentless gravitational well meant to please our lizard brain. It's turned UA-cam into a parade for the most attractive people rather than a platform for the substantive content that I want. I've decided not to watch ANY shorts, if I can manage.
That initial dopamine hit provided by shorts wore off for me, and I'm not telling Google why. I just don't bother with them now, even when there's no other content I'm interested in.
Occasionally I'm tempted by a short that is produced by one of the channels I subscribe to. But rarely is that new content, just snippet(s) cut from one of their longer videos just to appease the Mad King of UA-cam.
Any time I see a thumbnail for a short, or youtube tries to get me to watch one of the stupid things, it triggers a response in me like the whetting of my mouth before I'm about to throw up. Worse thing about them is, they're shorts of something I've already watched!!!
Even though I hate shorts, I find my lizard brain being sucked into a thumbnail that shows an attractive girl doing flippy/spinny/weight things. Or that Antoly Powerlifter guy tricking people in the gym. I feel ashamed.
UA-cam (and before them, Facebook) saw how TikTok's doing that (admittedly, even-more) was immediately getting them runaway money--; and both of the other services unceremoniously dived right-into the same pig-sty TikTok had just-previously created for itself, as if neither of the other two's models for intended type of niche, ever had meant anything to either one of them--. Yes, viewers and creators alike--:. We're "the product--(!)". UA-cam is now doing a Citizens United 2.0 by no longer affording a public platform to the individual citizen voice--; but instead is auctioning off the platform to the defaultly commercial or corporate, highest-bidder--. . A truly sad day for the public, both as creators and as viewers--. You're right that somebody else has to come in and fill this void. Original UA-cam had had no ads and only voluntary donations from viewers, and anybody could get their videos circulated in other viewers' feed--. What's wrong with just doing that to "do" it--; like a "not-for-profit--?". Greed for greed's sake, is the one thing that doesn't make sense, here--.
It’s fascinating that UA-cam recommended this video to me. I’ve never seen this channel before and i haven’t really been looking at stuff about UA-cam businesses so I wonder why they are pushing this video to random people based on what she says here.
UA-cam might be showing this to discourage new creators. Sounds crazy but by eliminating new and not so successful creators pushes the well established creators more. Those are the ones with the most ad revenue so start making people stop before they even start.
@@nicoleschaffer lol Nicole, i have to laugh because I lately "thought" about the ads on youtube! My phone appears to be reading my mind, not just listening, lol🙈
Fairly ironic that the first time I get a recommended video of yours, it’s this one about how UA-cam is deliberately suppressing ‘smaller’ creators. They certainly are, and I really wish there was an alternative. But, subbed to your channel now, so there’s that. Great work! I’m sure I’ll be lost for hours in all the content!
Many of us noticed that overnight UA-cam flipped a switch and our views were cut in half. Thank you for explaining the situation as most of us were just guessing.
Yep we thought it was a slow month at first... went from 10k-30k daily views and dropped overnight to around 1k and hasn't improved in 4 weeks. Coincidentally right when this happened the "Promotions (beta)" tab appeared in our Studio for a few days, then was removed. UA-cam support will just tell you to be patient, the analytics might still be pending but it's just lip service. Either 1/3 of the platform left or someone is in the back throttling things due to us independent creators not paying their promo ransom fee. We stopped editing our usual YT video releases this month and opened up a Patreon instead, along with accounts on alternate streaming sites. Don't get caught out in the cold folks... this isn't the 1st time UA-cam has messed with it's creators livelihoods this is a pattern.
@@TheNobbynoonar Enlighten you? Can't you do an internet search? There are more than a few video hosting sites and streaming sites out there. The more people start using them, the better.
This is what happens with capitalism.... We need workers control of the means of production. That means content creators get to have a say in how the platform is run and get profit sharing.
Welcome to the real world. There is competition out there....but creators don't seem to want to go there, so you will forever get manhandled by UA-cam when their financial situation gets pinched....and with the inflation of today, and the dead economy, you ban bet their getting the squeeze. (As revenue after all comes from ads, and companies getting economically squeezed don't buy as many ads on UA-cam) So get out there and spread your wings. Get your content on other platforms and bring your fans to there too!
My friend, no one around me on yours. They can't get off Tiktok. They're always asking why I'm on UA-cam. Us UA-camer who follow these teachers. UA-cam needs to jump into the new trends. UA-cam is strong. And studying channels on here. To jump into the world to not be left behind. We have to make shorts. I personally don't like them to find them harmful to the memory and much more. They youth is where others flock, and Tiktok is a business, and so is UA-cam. Let stick together and make shorts that bring them into longer content. Everything is a teaching moment
YT wont care or pay attention to this until they are about to go broke and have been abandoned by all the content creators who built the platform to begin with maybe when the end is staring them in the face they might get it but i doubt it as these kinds of people are brainless
It is possible that there is such an influx of new UA-camrs that they are using this as an excuse to lower the pay to the content creators. The average person will not be able to afford to start a channel. Over-saturation perhaps. Don’t want to hurt those who are making quality content who happen to have a lot of subs and views. But it may come down to boycotting UA-cam. Get them where it hurts (the pocketbook). Of course, they may be getting overtaxed. I know they (politicians and businesspeople) will hate this post.
YT only became profitable in 2018. Rn, first quarter of 2023, the ad revenue is down 15%. If you’re a stock holder, you’re not pleased. Maybe YT is merely making an effort to “stop the bleeding?”
Just have to be careful not to piss off the format runners. Like Elon Musk over at Twitter. He says he's all about "free speech" until you say something bad about him, then you get banned. So much for free speech.
Ironically, this is the first video I’ve EVER been “fed” of yours, @Fran Blanche. And I follow a *LOT* of folks in what I’d consider very similar “genres,” namely art/creation. So while I’m only one sub, I’m glad to have been introduced to your channel, and look forward to watching more!
I used to make UA-cam videos for fun and education. I started after I watched a helpful video that taught me a skill. I thought, "I can help others too." I never wanted to monetize my videos. I just made them because I wanted to help others. UA-cam forced ads, so I eventually stopped making videos. Making content took me time and money; it wasn't worth it. UA-cam will become one big infomercial. So sad.
That's why I have decided to use AI to destroy the algorithm, and turn UA-cam against itself. As it says in the Bible, " ..A house against itself cannot stand watching stinking ads.." or something like that.
They actually changed that motto a while back, around 2018 I think. I'm not sure what's more disconcerting; the fact they thought they had to specifically say they shouldn't be evil... Or the fact they then stopped saying it Lol.
You can use plugins to disable them. You can also demainstreamify youtube with another plugin with that name. Sorry to say but you do have to trick the site into singing and dancing to do what you want.
@@donnacsuti4980 They're half of the videos on my home page, so obviously crowding out proper videos! As for people who enjoy them - idiots with short attention spans. F**k them.
@@donnacsuti4980 I see so many people that forgo actual enjoyment by wasting days worth of time each week glued to short content. The message conveyed is generally pretty depressing to watch, since the message conveyed is generally NOTHING. A quick "heh" is average, occasional laughing, but absolutely NO memories attached.
UA-cam is using this video to push “promotions” because some of you will take the bait and purchase it, as she’s doing. They’re rewarding her for purchasing and promoting it!🤷🏾♀️
Sounds very much like all other platforms. Sucker people in for free, start doing advertising and when things get thin, go after the people creating the content.
This feels more to me like an early phase of something more sinister. I'm thinking that this will grow more and more of a way to corporatize the Internet space so that all content must have corporate sponsorship to be uploaded or even viewed. This would be an excellent way for corporations to shut down damning information that can mobilize voters, unions, human rights orgs, etc.
I keep wondering if some of this will come back to haunt UA-cam. If creators get their money through merch, their own advertisements, and Patreon then it'll be much easier for them to jump platforms. They requires there to be a competitive platform, but it'll happen someday
It's your typical race to the bottom. Look at what happened to the cable networks like A&E. You can't fix it because 'there is a sucker born every minute' and we don't have an education system that teaches critical thinking.
Whilst it's really disappointing that this is happening, can anyone truly say they are surprised? This is corporate greed at work, pure and simple. The people who run UA-cam are under pressure to increase revenue and profit year on year, so cutting the amount they pay to content creators from ad revenue is an absolute no brainer when you are basically the only game in town. In years to come, this may be seen as the beginning of the end for the original UA-cam concept.
So a question begs to be asked: "Who" exactly is paying the content creators then? Is it YT or is it those who are willing to "pay" to stay 'viable' whose money is going to others who are also willing to pay? 🤔
That 2018 change was when all the small creators making cool things stopped being front and center and then it became more about well groomed pretty influencers making shiny simple overview videos.
I created a new UA-cam account a few weeks ago. Starting out with zero subscriptions, the subscriptions page offers suggestions of channels to subscribe to. At the top? About 20 beauty influencers, all very pretty people talking about absolutely nothing. It's clear what makes UA-cam money just looking at those suggestions. I guess it's "what the people want" also? At least most people. Can't say I'm impressed by what the mainstream likes, culturally.
@@paszTube I also get those and "Hot women playing guitars in tiny outfits." I wish Google could use all this data to make an amazing dating site for us single people! I have a friend who has her own carpentry business and you know she is filming that day when the leggings and the tight top is on vs the scruffy shop clothes.
This is sadly so true. I make content professionally and wanted to just do little side stuff and help and started putting videos on youtube. They were pushing ads already even though I didn't hit the sub/watch mark so when I did I monetized. It takes a lot of time to make content and the rules keep changing. The shorts are OK, but they don't fit all types of content. UA-cam sent me a $500 card to try the "promotions beta" if i spend $500 on ads on my own videos. It is really absurd. It takes a lot of time to plan, film, edit even "low quality" content. At this rate I make maybe $20/hr of uploaded content, not factoring in all the time it takes to actually make the content. It might be $1-$5/hr at best. The policies are really pushing away people that want to create educational longer format content in favor of the "quick fix" videos.
You think that's bad. I'm a native American w no papers! I pay $30oz for silver and go to sell. They look at market price. Not fair! I have to pay for production. So we lose just walking in the door! I'm poor because of this. They don't care how much they hurt natives. Life is hard, join the club. Or get a different job you hate, I have to. I've done it often
Can Standard (Nebula) help you with in channel advertising? I suspect that this will only be solved if new UA-cam like platforms are supported by say European Governments. The problem for non-American UA-cam Creators is that UA-cam has an USA cultural sensibilities, thus it demonitizes videos that are challenging in the states but not in Europe & visa versa with say Guns being OK in the USA but pretty much verboten in Germany & the UK
The shorts are unironic trash. They put no effort in the technology and it doesn't even work right on PCs. And not even basic QOL features like volume slider.
I watch UA-cam in order to escape Hollywood (which I HATE). UA-cam offers all sorts of subjects that Hollywood would never touch -- everything from beekeeping to lawyers discussing legal cases in the news to paragliding. There's something for everyone.
Which you won't get for long if Google and UA-cam has it's way because of the way they are treating the content creators!!! Even now if you don't want ads you have to pay for Premium View!!! How long do you think it will be before Pay Per View, with or without ads????
in the u.k. of course the main stream tv channels are losing out to youtube and the likes, so they have started to make programs covering successful vloggers themes, e.g. more d.i.y., narrowboats, country walks/explores etc.
You showed up out of nowhere for me today. I don't know if you did something different that made the algorithm show me your channel. All of this information about how youtube treats its creators is interesting and depressing. I had no idea they were THAT money-grubby. And now I know why I am barely ever offered new choices.
Same for me, I don't usually see Frans videos. I'm taking a guess that Fran has experimented with using the Promotion option on this video and will report on the results in the near future!
If you're new, you should be researching what people like and want to see and you should see that shorts and reels are the rage right now. Start making shorts. =)
A wise man once said to me "Never build your life on something someone else controls". While this is easier said than done today, time and again I have witnessed what starts out as a great service slowly turn into a 'rent seeking' (economist lingo) i.e. exploitative business relationship.
Thank you Fran!! That explains it!!!! My channel has dramatically dropped by 75% - 90% back in January. I thought making more and newer videos would fix the problem but, all of my heroic efforts have been for naught. What's worse, is that my UA-cam videos drive my personal business, so it's rough for the home team. What's more, I've been watching my channel and saw new subscribers "drop off" in real time but the graph doesn't show them being ghosted. This explains why many awesome UA-camrs have gone to selling merch to make up for lost subscribers and lost revenue.
Many channels that I watch have been demonetized all off a sudden. Either they want to push us to a few mainstream channels or their adds revenue dwindle down an that is their way to mask it.
I thought this just happened to me. It happened so suddenly and I have no idea why my channel dropped so bad. At first, it has thousands of views but now no one watched it anymore. I tried to contact UA-cam via Twitter for help but no response at all.
@@CepatianPendekian You too? My views and revenue have dropped by 90% and, no matter how many new videos I post, it barely makes a difference. I started posting "shorts" and views have grown 300%. The problem is that my channel is an education channel, so shorts don't do anything for my students. I hope this gets better soon.
@@funkyprepper I am wondering if my conservative posts to other videos has anything to do with it, or if it's just that I haven't been posting tons of shorts?
"Never put your income in the hands of someone who can halt it." Our parents taught us that. It was a religion growing up. And they lived it. The only money they earned (and they earned a lot) came from activities they fully controlled. This is combined with "The hard way IS the easy way" meaning that it might seem hard to embrace trial and error to find something that YOU CONTROL that WORKS and provides income but that 'hard stuff' turns out to be a lot easier than having your income halted by someone else. .
of course you wouldn't recognize or understand sound advice if it landed on top of you like a boulder, typical.🙄 keep on drinking the corporate kool-aid, which you just endorsed and you don't even know what that means.
@@ZacksRockingLifestyle Get clear of needing the favor of someone to put food on your table. "You're fired" or "you're laid off" takes 2 seconds to say. If you develop your own enterprise - which will normally require trial and error - do you foresee a day where you might fire yourself? *_ANSWER IS NO_* You will work hard either way (for yourself, or as an employee), Might as well say "I'm not working for anyone except my own customers"
Do you remember when You Tube first started? You Tube didn’t pay any “content creator” for any video that was made and posted. When You Tube first started, people made videos purely out of the passion they had for the subject matter. Only once advertisements came on You Tube AND they started paying “content creators” to make videos, did there become a problem. As long as the Infrastructure (hardware & software of the hosting platform) is owned by someone other than the so called “content creators” (a term not used in the beginning), they’re going to be at the mercy of those that actually own the infrastructure. I always considered it problematic how much or for how long a “content creator” could expect to make money off their You Tube efforts.
Every time I think to myself that I should maybe perhaps some day make content about my hobbies, there a video around the corner explaining how YT is becoming worse and worse and I realize that I should not even attempt to do this in any serious capacity. Platform enshitification is definitely a thing here and YT looks to be is in the final exploitation stages before it finally dies.
It's a common theme. Take cable TV: once upon a time, you would pay one payment, and see all the channels that you paid for - ad free! Then they brought in premium channels (HBO etc) that you had to pay more for. Then many channels started doing ads - so we were back at what we had with broadcast TV - only now we were paying for it + wasting our time watching ads! There has to be a better way for creators to keep doing long form videos?
I have a channel that documents my hobbies but I don't expect anything from it. Its there just for family, friends, and interested people to see what I do. As long as you know that, go ahead and make your channel.
Yeah, I've always thought youtube was cheating their creators and I'm not a creator, so I'm speaking as a viewer acknlowledging all the work y'all do to create content for us to watch.
This reminds me of the Etsy controversy. You either have free shipping on anything over $30 or you didn't get seen. You didn't have to do it but they would suppress your views of you didn't. So sorry you're going through this now.
Yep, I came to the comments to see if anyone else thought this was similar to the etsy tactics. At least etsy straight up said comply or you won't be featured or recommended...
Reminds me of the PM in Canada. You don't have to get the shot, but you will lose your job and livelihood if you don't, but we are not making you..........or the Mob: 'You don't hhaaavvvveee to pay for protection....shame if you shop burns down.....'
there's a reason this video got more views than the rest. algorithms on all platforms have made a shift toward videos and content that grab your attention immediately, and your title is what has achieved that here. at the end of the day we all have to take a critical look at ourselves and consider whether we're making content that fits that mold or not. you can't just do things you think people will like anymore, you have to create content that people won't have a choice to tune out of, attention spans are dropping massively, and people are used to giving every video five seconds of attention or less, if you don't grab them within that timeframe they're gone, i'm guessing the watch time on this video even reflects that
There is a definite increase in the tendency now to the 'Shock and horror' headline that sometimes bears little resemblance to the actual content. Many creators feel they have no choice.
Making a platform where only the biggest players can succeed is what every other media has done. The whole thing with UA-cam is that it used to be a public video sharing platform. Once money became involved, someone had to decide that too many of the wrong people were making too much money so they had to 'fix' that. Sad but this is how things go just about everywhere.
Thank you for keeping your eye on what is happening, and telling us. Creating video content is a tough game, and youtube is certainly not on the side of creators. I hope that you will continue to find strategies that will make it viable for you.
I have several friends who are creators. Everything from movie to cooking channels. They say they have never worked so hard for the little money they make. Practically all the money they make is coming from Patreon. A person driving a Uber or door dash will make way more money for there time.
I think anyone creating a UA-cam channel for the sole purpose of trying to make a living is delusional in the first place. If you're going to do it, do it for the fun and because it's interesting to you - if success follows, great, but if not, so what?
I'm sure it's already been said ad nauseum in comments on insightful videos like this one, but it bears repeating: UA-camrs ought to unionize. The mad scramble to ever more egregiously exploit the lifeblood of this platform by the powers that be (the company, let's not forget, whose slogan used to be "Don't be evil") can only be repelled by creator solidarity
@@MattTee1975 I think few people realize how successful they can be as creators if they kept their day job, and simply turned on a camera while they did it. There's a lot of successful channels of people just showing their day jobs. Even something as seemingly mundane as fast food service draws lots of viewers who find the process of quickly making a sandwich or burrito fascinating, usually with some nice commentary. It's like old school vlogs.
@@kaymart8703 I don't think unionizing works in gig jobs. And yeah, "content creator" and "influencer" are gig jobs. UA-camrs are not employees of Alphabet (Google's parent company), they are more like business partners. And even though producing quality videos on a consistent and frequent enough basis, about subject matter people care about and/or with enough raw charisma to keep people coming back is much more difficult than it looks, the challenge is that it actually looks pretty easy. Which means that no matter how many fellow UA-camrs may join this union, there will always be scabs ready and eager to replace them.
It's a lot like what we call "STEAM". Instead of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (or "STEM"), those of us who prefer "STEAM" find the arts to be equally important.
Toooo many genres for 1 channel. People subscribe for 1 content type, if they see a genre they don't like to watch they ignore that video and youtube stops promoting the channel entirely
This explains why my favorite UA-cam channel creators are posting fewer videos lately and virtually every one of them is has Patreon subscribers. Google's motto has gone from the original "Do no evil" to "Do evil if possible".
I think it's called "business" and "monopole" rather than 'evil'. Alphabet isn't the only nor the first to abuse of his position and... there are alternatives out there.
Kids yourself that slogan was only their finger in your face that was never serious, so many people fall for that garbage Google is made up of scum bags they always have been
UA-cam used to be vastly different in the late 2000s I could remember. The golden times have passed for years now. There hasn't been a worst time to be a content creator, in fact it's kinda of dead end career now compared to the last decades. It's not even a career anymore because how the web is structured now.
Sorta disagree, the freenet died - yes, but as long as you keep quiet on certain subjects you can flourish. esp. with things like Patreon and P2P payments. obv this is contingent upon you conforming to a certain ideology - say no "bad things", but most peeps don't post UA-cam videos on the "bad things", they'd rather talk about the new Marvel movie, or the next Call of Duty installment... i do so dearly miss the days of open discourse tho. most are unaffected.
When UA-cam say it's not required to pay them for people to see your videos and that they will share your videos just the same as always. That can't possibly be true when you have the ability to pay for more views because that means that people who are paying are taking away views from someone else. Everyone can't be first in the serch results and in the related list. If you buy that spot everytying else will be pushed down and away from the viewer. I'm not surprised this is happing. This is exactly the same as with Google the search engine. You used to get the most relevant pages when you searched. Now you get mostly results from the big platforms that are able to pay for SEO or an actual ad.
Everything is a conspiracy. I stopped with any and all content creation. Instagram was doing something similar. They shadow banned me, meaning my posts wouldn't show up in hashtag searches, and then offered me a "promotion" like, pay to be found option. Crooks. Also, this video showed up on my front page of the algorithm. Also, Gordon Lightfoot is great.
it's the men(ladies too) behind the corporations.. if altruistic men/women at top of company maybe company not so opportunistic at expense of others.... just saying American Enterprise is why we have nice things, sellout opportunist grifters sending factories out of the place that established the base case for greatness is why we're losing.
We definitely need some underdogs presenting alternatives. I remember when search results were random and interesting instead of the popularity contest that most platforms turn into. *sigh*
Personally, I really like and appreciate variety channels. I know It isn't easy when it comes to the algorithm. But I think it's typical an untouched area of content creation. It gives to a piece of something for everyone to enjoy, or just more interesting topics for dorks like me. It would be awesome to see more of your cartoon art in future videos.
Fran, I appreciate you putting this out there in an understandable way. I am sure if this is happening to you, it's affecting all Tubers as well. Another problem this "money process" creates is that it makes "New Virgin" content harder to be created by new users. Thru attrition, YT may be cutting off its feet.
I'm not the slighest surprised youtube is heading this way. Eventually it will be pay to upload videos of any significant size, quality, length and how often you can do so.
@@Mark-kt5mh Because it's literally where the YOU in youtube comes from. There wouldn't be any popular creators if everyone didn't have a chance to upload a video in the first place. Google knew youtube wasn't sustainable when they purchased it. It's merely a means to serve more ads to people, which is their main business. This is all just the numbers catching up to them and google wants to keep as much to themselves as they can. Despite the fact that the creators do all of the work for them for a fraction of what their time is actually worth.
@@Matt_Deluca , great response. Little guys and gals were getting too much money. Newspapers and magazines nearly vanished while teenagers were buying Ferraris.
Hi Fran! This Video showed up in my feed….never had heard of you before. Thank you for describing what creators are going through with UA-cam. I’ve heard rumblings from creators I follow, some, with huge numbers of followers, questioning whether they will be able to continue because of the ongoing issues…..they just never said what those issues are. It’s wrong. It’s sheer corporate greed. Creators create the content…..and You Tube sucks up the gravy. I’m one new follower-I hope things get better.
There's a pattern here. Like Google, UA-cam started out thrillingly as a "wild West" situation -- total freedom, a dream come true of mass information sharing. Then one burden or restriction after another gets put on as the years progress. No surprise alas that YT is now reaching this stage. Hope your extremely welcome honesty doesn't get punished.
This is actually unbelievable. It is literally biting the hand that feeds you. Some weird mercenary capitalism going on there. Looking forward to the follow-up and what your stats show.
Indeed we had toxic capitalism in the 1920's through the 1960's. Then the counter culture came and helped moderate that toxic capitalism. However the old guard (read 60's hippies) are dying off and the kids and grand kids are even more mercinary than the original toxic capitalists ever were. A word of advice don't trust anyone under 40.
It’s absolutely self destructive on UA-cam’s part, but they don’t care. The only thing they care about is next quarter’s profit. They’ll just keep screwing content creators until it’s only the wealthiest content creators who are left. At that point youtube will be just another streaming service and will do away with free viewing altogether and demand a monthly premium from everyone who’s left.
It's not that weird, really. UA-cam is a monopoly. Monopolies, no matter how benevolent they are when they start out, inevitably move toward more and more oppressive practices. The ONLY thing that will fix this is competition. There are alternatives like PeerTube, but the problem is those are designed specifically to be free and difficult to monetize. We need someone to make a video sharing site that is specifically designed to support small, independent creators.
This is really disheartening to new creators, like me. It’s really hard to grow and everyone is selling YT like it’s easy! Thanks for sharing this update - you appeared in my feed today and I hope it was organic reach and you didn’t have to pay
Getting views can sometimes be easy, though. I am pretty much non-existent on YT and my rant or gameplay videos get next to actual zero views, but whenever I post some short videoquote from a cute anime - I will end up getting a hundred+ views on it. So I guess it is partly on us to adapt if we really want to harvest them clicks.
Yeah, because those creators make money on selling you a dream. Nobody makes money selling their creations. If you create a wallet, you'll make more on sharing the idea or concept than you will making the product. It's a money driven business model. We need to stay in the real world as long as possible or try other platforms. There is always a way to earn money, but you have to think outside the box or eat the crackers they feed you.
the worst YT advice to get is from the channels that are selling courses.. they have a motive to make UA-cam seem fun and easy (so you will pay them for the "secret")... they'll lead you on for months/years. Some of them are pure evil as they could care less about the fact that real humans are taking chances, spending tons of time/money to pursue the dream they sell. The best UA-cam advice is to simply watch your favorite channels and use them as inspiration... if a channel tries to follow a system/formula they may end up failing. But if they let things play out naturally, they might succeed (because they aren't as formulaic)
I am so grateful for this video. I was playing with the idea of starting my own lil' old school YT channel where I can basically rant and rave to my liking. This has now convinced me not to bother. It also explaines why other, similar platforms begin to pop up. Even bigger content creators have begun to move away. Again, thank you for this insightful warning.
@@TheBod76 It being more profitable does not mean it is more friendly to the user or the uploader. It just means the board figured out how to squeeze more money out. By starving content creators, YT is killing its golden goose. Do you seriously think Google is going to replace the missing content from creators who give up and drop out? Hell no, their channel will just become bland.
For what it's worth, your channel / this specific video was recommended to me on my home page. I don't know if you've already started paying, LOL. I had no idea who you are or what you do, but this specific video got some space on my home page... So I watched, and did a "like" and a "subscribe."
Fran, thank you for explaining all this so clearly. Of course as a viewer I've noticed trend of decline in quality of videos featured by youtube. From here it just looks like clickbait is becoming the whole story. All these tech companies have become bottom-line operations ... of course ... because over time, that's what our system creates.
Just found your channel as it popped up on suggestions. Somehow I feel YT wanted me to know about the "pay to play." I grew rapidly from the start, almost overnight then came to a screeching halt and now it has been a very slow grind. The only videos that get "pushed out" to new viewers are my dancing videos (I am pushing 70 so maybe older women dancing is the thing now) but if I do any other kind of video they don't get pushed out and it must be a short to get seen by new viewers and even at that it is now a slow grind of getting new viewers and finding they disappeared the next day. I remember when my FB fan page grew overnight and I had so many comments I could not keep up then suddenly the comments stopped. I found out my posts were no longer going out into the newsfeed for like/fan pages unless you "paid" to have your page promoted. Even today I can put up a post and no ones sees it on the fan page unlike in the past. It feels the same thing is happening with YT. Thank you for your information. Truly appreciate it.
I think I see what happened to your channel. Your most popular videos are about woman's clothing and you haven't done that in awhile. So you need to home in on that niche because it seems like that's what your viewers want to watch
You popped up on my feed for the first time ever today. I have an Ad Blocker, so I never see ads. But corporate greed in this country is out of control. Glad I found you.
This whole video speaks volumes to me personally as I feel I’m about in the same boat. I’ve tried with UA-cam promoting via payment and I’m not giving them another dime just to be potentially seen by more people on the platform I also run an art themed channel and love what I do and I’m always looking around for fellow artists alike with a similar theme. It sucks how UA-cam seems to jerk us around 😢
I think UA-cam would say that they aren't throttling anyone down but, the flood of channels paying for promotion just takes all the practical bandwidth at the top. In doing this they're essentially telling the market that this is how things work without saying outright that you "must" do this. "Pay to play" is exactly what it is. I think the healthiest view to take (if you want to be monetized and grow) is that it's all a business. These aren't your friends. They've decided on their business model and you've decided to take part. That's the deal. At no point are they discussing things with the users or creators on the platform. You also know, that's the deal. Move forward understanding the deal. There is no warm fuzzy center at the heart of UA-cam.
Interesting, just the other day UA-cam recommended to me an excellent electronics channel with only 282 subs. The Algorithm still seems to be working ok in some aspects at least.
For years my 'friends' urged me to start a UA-cam channel and throw my hat into the competitive mega-channel ring. I've always resisted this; I'd post the occasional thing, including a three hour documentary on a WWII combat veteran whom I befriended and later interviewed 'for posterity' before UA-cam was really a thing. After one of the very first vids that I produced got a lot of views, UA-cam reached out and offered me the monetize choice, which I ignored. Funny thing, that same video was removed a couple years later for violating various BS-YT restrictions. It had got around a half million or so views, and I hadn't seen a dime. But all this that Fran talks about here takes me back to decades ago when I was making my living playing music, mostly in clubs, with various bands in NYC, and over the course of a few years the whole scene kinda fell apart... Clubs that had been mainstays for us, in which we would play at least twice a month and were in high exposure locations (Greenwich Village, SOHO, etc) started booking these mostly younger 'Pay To Play' bands, who were either NYU student bands that had large followings of their school pals, or new 'Pop' bands who had fledgling record label deals who's management treated these gigs as 'Showcases" and didn't mind paying, as every dime ultimately got charged back to the bands revenues. They likely filled those seats with paid or invited audiences who were amply supplied with free drink tickets and swag (all on the band's tab) as well. And so, our 'old faithful' watering holes began to dry up; some would still have us in once a month, or quarterly, just to assume some kind of legitimacy/consistency with their old status of having the hotter, more creative bands on roster, with the hope of spreading said legitimacy upon the new usurpers, but it didn't work, and many of those clubs eventually closed down and became Starbucks or Gap stores... Anyway, I'm saddened to see this similar sort of corporate greed and acquisition spread into this venue, and it does seem as though my YT feed has become unpredictable and kind of boring lately. I guess in retrospect I'm glad that I didn't go all-in like my friends were urging me to 10-12 years ago or whenever it was. I've been struggling with chronic health issues for decades anyway, and I don't think those 'friends' had a clue as to how much effort and grueling work is involved in churning out consistent content for this meat grinder, let alone trying to nurture a BRAND, and all the BS and grunt-work that that entails. I wish you well Fran; I'm not at all familiar with your channel or work, but your plight resonated with me and I thought i'd give a wee blab about it... Cheers, -Paul D
You speak truth. YT only seems to want corporate videos these days. Known celebs, etc. The days of giving them content from those of us in the real world doesn't seem to provide enough greed for them. And the saddest part is they know they have us. We have no other options ... yet.
Perhaps you mean there are no other 'free' options with the same reach as YT, you're right there. All the others are smaller, less well known, and paid for by the viewers. What we need is another viable platform..
The entire internet has gone down the poop shoot. I remember when it came on line and there was so much promise and for a while there was and then corporate was like OH NO... the masses are getting access to information we don't want them to have, they are becoming educated and we can't control the message and the creative stuff.. I am 55 and watching the downward spiral is depressing. I had so much hope
They're visibly suppressing smaller content creators. I often dont get the notifications I request from my favorite channels, and yet my inbox gets "recommendations" everyday that I am sometimes bewildered as to why *I* got the particular suggestion. I never watch X kind of content, why suggest it to me?? Sometimes the suggestions the algorithm presents to me are, honestly, uncomfortable.
That is not my experience at all. Almost the exact opposite in fact. I never, and I do mean NEVER have anything appear on my home page that is not related to either channels that I view regularly or related to similar channels or videos from channels that I have watched at some time in the past. Likewise, at NO point ever do I get notifications from ANY channels that I am not subscribed to, ever. Why are our experiences different, I wonder?
Thanks, Fran. I'm so sad to see this happening. My young adult sons are artists and they are always studying the various platforms. They know much more than I do and so are much more cynical about the possibilities of YT. It feels like YT is shooting itself in the foot but I'm sure their business people have made all the calculations and coldly decide which direction makes the most money, which is obviously, sadly, their only concern now. Alex
Hi Fran, this must be so frustrating. What I will strive to do to help when I visit UA-cam is I'll make a habit of going to my subscription list first. UA-cam might try to present some alluring, over-financed content on the landing page, but quite frequently I am clicking "not interested" for a lot of it, because it's either clickbait or shorts. I'm not really interested in 60 second short videos, I'm much more interested in thoughtful, consistently well-produced content like yours. Any idiot can grab a smartphone and shoot a 30 second or 60 second video. Many might get attention, much fewer produce consistent QUALITY.
This was the first time I have watched your channel. Dont give in to UA-cam. See I if you can get your subscribers (I am one now) to link to you on other social media sites. Dont pay these jerks if you can avoid it because it encourages them to be even worse than they already are.
Shorts are the worst thing to happen to us creators, IMO. I'm not in this to make a ton of money or anything, but I'd at least like people to be able to FIND our regular videos. We're just over 2,000 subs but UA-cam just doesn't push any of our regular videos to our subscribers.
As we all know there's no other video hosting site with the reach of UA-cam, thus they have all the leverage, so rather than nickel and diming the creators, why not charge the advertisers more to place ads?
the point of the video by Fran here, is that you the creator are going to eventually be the ones that have to pay for advertising. Increasing that, will in the future make the problem worse.
@@justlooking777if UA-cam started putting ads in for premium, I'd pretty much stop using the platform altogether. I think they're more likely to lock more and more features behind premium than this though
Dear Fran, you have a fantastic and diverse old school Utube channel. I really hope you can keep it going, but if you feel you have to move on to a different system, Rumble etc, I'm sure most of us would still follow you. Wishing you the very best with your channel. ✌♥️🇬🇧
Post the “cartoons” under the UA-cam community tab on your channel. That way the videos tab doesn’t get cluttered with them, and it gives you the opportunity to post a still image and text explaining / describing the image.
Hi, Fran. A possibility for you to consider is to see if you can also get on to a platform that pays creators better. I've heard other creators talk the way you are about how UA-cam is strangling their compensation (incentive) and a bunch of them banded together to form Nebula, on which they can make videos that are not penalized by UA-cam's algorithms. They typically, for now, are still on UA-cam and have patrons & merch, too, but often post longer/non-UA-cam-optimized videos (i.e, the ones they'd like to make) and/or post them several days there before also uploading them to their UA-cam channel. I'm not a creator so I don't know your world and I'm not plugging Nebula particularly: it's just that it's the only "by creators, for creators" platform I know of. I really hate the single-minded, nothing-else-matters, soulless, exploitative, evil pursuit of profit. It underlies wage theft, labor exploitation, environmental destruction, even slavery. Remember when Google's motto was "Don't be evil."? #BeAForceForGood
Really though, in today's network of various platforms, if you don't hire someone to write a management script or write one yourself, how are you going to manage everything on every platform? You certainly can't do it manually and dedicating yourself to a single provider is really dangerous.
Exactly. Many are censored because they don't says the right thing. As I've said elsewhere, telling the truth is a dangerous thing in times of turmoil.
Typically Corporates offer a great deal for early take up, but once enough traffic is established, the ‘conditions’ are gradually constricted, until the benefits that once existed, end up becoming costs, in order to continue. Unfortunately money begets money, and everyone else has to fight over the scraps, through side hustles. I’m so sorry that this is happening to you, you deserve so much better. I hope you can continue to do what you do.
Seems like the real answer is for viewers and creators to move to new companies, offering better deals, and moving on when THEY start bullying, en masse. Make them offer special deals to lure in creators, and as soon as they get fat and greedy, the majority just leave. I think they work on the reluctance for people to abandon the tradition of years. We have to develop cynicism and a happiness to dump providers who start bullying and ripping off.
eBay did a similar thing, even using the minimum promotion can increase the impressions on your items by up to 10* showing just how much they are throttling your accounts if you don't pay them..
About a year and half ago my little channel got a bunch of growth in a month, going from 100 subscribers to around 300. It was neat to see that when people saw some of my videos, many liked them enough to subscribe. And then, just like that, there was a precipitous drop-off in views and subscribers. Right after this, in my channel's dashboard home, I found a bright and shiny ad from youtube that hadn't been there before saying something like "Want more people to see your channel, boost its visibility with ads." My immediate thought was, "oh great, UA-cam is becoming pay to play." My sense is that they've been working on how to nudge us all this direction for quite a while. It was actually this steep drop-off that scared me away from committing to YT full time. It's too precarious.
P.s. I don’t think I’ve ever seen any of your videos before today! Is that not a weird thing that UA-cam is doing? I just listened to a lot of narrated stories when I’m falling asleep and sometimes crime specials but this? This is brand new and I’m happy I found you but it’s weird what UA-cam is doing. They’re bringing people who don’t know about you over here too. Nice to meet you.😅😊❤
Knowledge is power; thanks for sharing. I am genuinely sorry to hear about both your plight and the near reprehensible shady shift in policy. Pleased to be a brand spanking new subscriber. Best wishes.
I remember when Facebook did this in the late 2010s. Absolutely DESTROYED my ability to communicate with my audience. I subsequently fell off because of it. You should be very afraid. It took EVERYTHING from me.
That's pretty terrifying. It's one of the main reasons why no matter how many subs/views i get, i will always treat YT as a hobby and hope i never rely on the money i get from it... cuz it can get ripped away from you overnight
Hearing that the amount of revenue given to creators, absolutely boils my blood. Mostly because it's already criminal how little our attention is valued already and in turn how much the work of creators is valued. Ads are also more prevalent now than ever, sometimes 4 or 5 ads in 5 mins.!
Same with eBay in Germany. They made it useless unattractive for privates and only companies sold stuff there. That’s why nobody really went to eBay anymore. Now they made a step back and made it more attractive for private people. I wonder if UA-cam really needs to learn the hard way. It is time for an alternative and quit UA-cam altogether
Tbh the fact that it's been free for so long is amazing. Think how much it costs to run UA-cam in hosting, storage and bandwidth costs. Google gets a good deal on bandwidth I'm sure, but at the end of the day still gotta power the thing with currently expensive electricity.
@@TheErador ah, finally somebody who has a clue. You're exactly right. Normally one has to pay to host and serve gigabytes of data, and imagine trying to organize all the advertising yourself. It's amazing what an attitude of entitlement some creators have, even those who should know better. If UA-cam is so terrible just host videos on your own site, or go to one of the many competitors..... oh what's that? None of the competitors are anywhere near as worthwhile as UA-cam? hmm....
@@iforce2d I'm not saying it ain't frustrating though if you're trying to make a living off of it. But sponsorship and patreon pays better and I think YT knows this. I'd be quite happy if Fran accepted a sponsorship deal from pcbway or keysight. BigClive gets away with it because people watch his entire video end to end - they don't have chance as he speaks right up to the final cut, there's no patreon crawl or intro or outro. The algorithm definitely respects that. I did mention this to Fran in a patreon comment whether she'd consider removing or speeding up the crawl as when your video is 8 minutes and 3 of that is patreon crawl YT is not gonna see that as engaging content if most skip that section and leave at that point - it looks like they got bored and left before the end. There's a reason lots of the successful channels switched to either running them over the actual content or having them real fast and a small content segment after. People'll watch to the end of the credits if they know there's smthg there - just ask Marvel.
You are absolutely right. I made a video recently about all the UA-cam rules. My channel isn’t seen at all. And I can’t afford to pay to play. I’m not monetized, yet there are ads on my videos. Thank you for sharing this. It takes courage to speak out. 🌸
@@havable thanks! I didn’t want to link it here. And I’ll say it’s not your typical video on the YT algorithm, but I hope you enjoy it and let me know what you think. 🙏🌸
Hi Fran - Whatever you did seemed to have worked. You showed up in my feed for the first time ever this morning. It was something different so I clicked on you. I am not a creator, just a consumer, but I found the analysis of your issue to be very interesting. I'm now going to see what other content you have created. I hope it didn't cost you too much to get me. 🙂
Google got a lot of experience with that from the Play Store :D The inevitable crushing destruction of the stupidest form of capitalism where pushing tons of completely worthless junk pays the best. I've always hated ad-supported business, and it's not hard to see why. Remember how newspapers didn't really like printing articles about how horrible smoking is? Surely that had nothing to do with the majority of their revenue coming from tobacco ads. Or the fact that newspaper is sold right next to tobacco products. Not paying for stuff sure doesn't seem like a great outcome for the customer. And it's absolutely amazing that the best way to make money on a platform like this is putting tons of money into advertising... so that you can make money from advertising. And why would Google care? They essentially get the transaction fees as their revenue stream; should we be surprised its turning into the same show as wallstreet brokers? :D
At this point, you can literally buy a server and put the videos on your own website, it might cost you even less money and you'll have absolute control over your content.
But how do you attract traffic to your site? Remember that finding independent none corporate sites in today's internet is pretty much impossible, you never stumble into them anymore, I've pretty been here since the inception of the world wide web and have seen how it has transformed, even if you have your own site you still need to build presence and people often do that through social media, so there isn't any escape unfortunately.
the problem is once you move off platform, you literally depend on your viewers to actually come with you, and for some people that's too much work. Very few creators have successfully made that kind of jump, and once you do, unless you advertise somewhere else and continue to bring in new viewers, you will style just be stuck in the bubble/cycle Fran mentioned. you'd probably still need some kind of UA-cam presence to draw viewers to your site, which means now you're responsible for maintain both your channel AND a website, and the new store she wants to put together, the workload adds up. The real and final solution is just a new viable platform and the hope that the same thing wont happen there.
@@baremetaltechtv Yep, absolutely true. Yet, some people are trying it - you can take a look at Odysee, with their model, this black-box algorithm bs is practically impossible. The question is, though, how would odysee work if there were as many people using it as youtube
@@HansensUniverseT-A with that kind of thinking there would be no Google or Facebook or UA-cam (or any other innovation). Are you working for the YT Mafia?
@@oddanneout They are completely right. It’s harder and harder to promote yourself without paying. Twitter, for example wants you to pay to be shown to new people. If you just have to pay elsewhere, it doesn’t help to leave YT.
I watch a lot of True Crime channels and whenever I see a big budget channel in my feed I immediately cringe and think about how television the way we used to know it might be creeping into UA-cam. I refuse to watch them
I freakin' hate UA-cam "shorts".
The format (shape) is the worst or viewing, you can't use on-screen controls and they're too short to bother with. If I wanted to watch moronic Tik-Tok videos I'd watch Tik-Tok.
Tip: If you copy the video ID, you can actually manually open them in the regular watch page.
And we've been trying to convince people to film in landscape on phones for ages. Now that idea is dead as shorts only accept portrait!
I just use a shorts blocker in chrome.
Because I use this on a computer, when Shorts show up on my Subscriptions page, I immediately click the three dots then Hide them. Only exceptions are certain friends videos which I watch first, then hide from that page.
However.. if I were Fran, I would make USE of Shorts on every video. Example, before uploading a new video about opening up some electronic thing.. do a Short of the thing as an actual teaser... make sure to overlay text saying "Full video on my Channel soon" or similar. Then follow through.
Reason being is that whenever you upload a short, you get a spike of traffic so you may as well make use of it. Very, very simple but possibly effective. And if the main content is ready anyway, why leave money on the table?
it seems catered entirely to cute chicks doing a low-effort 20 second dance and usually in some kind of cosplay, at least thats all I ever seen on my shorts bar lol
Rule #1. Corporations are not our friends.
"A corporation is an entity created to do what no individual human person could get away with".
"shut up conspiracy theorist"
YEAH....
Neither are governments
Dumb statement. An unsupported statement that offers no action.
seems pretty clear that UA-cam decided years ago to go all-in on corporate creators, and the indie creators who built their platform can get effed
Pretty much
Even at eBay it is awful trying to deal with customer service, the managers are never available, and the reps look for reasons to ban, suspend account, or be 'offended', like if I say "this is b.s." they will say I am swearing at them...
Well most successful indie creators have become corporations. At least you have to become a fulltime professional to see the light of the algorithm.
That's exactly the type of creators yt wants to focus on. It means higher ad revs for yt. It's the star treatment. Influencer mode. The most popular channels can better finance themselves with their yt bucks. Yt can get bigger advertisers, and the advertisers get more, younger, demographics which is what advertisers want. As times get tougher, Yt is adjusting their core model to get more corporate creators who they also pay more. And get dome of tiktok's, short attention span audience.
And it's our fault. You'd think it doesn't take much from each user to do a small change on our internet behaviour that will tip the buckets.
The really concerning thing to me is that all of these companies with heavily algorithm-driven products - such as UA-cam, Spotify, Instagram etc. - ALWAYS make these manipulative changes in the dark, and tend to deny them or downplay their impact.
It’s much harder to manipulate people when they’re consciously aware that they’re being manipulated. This shady, gaslighting behavior is disgusting and needs to stop. If our relationship with these companies was a domestic one, it would be a classic abuse.
Just made the same comment above. Social engineering via algorithm. They're shaping attitudes and personality traits. If you doubt, read Shoshanna Zuboff--surveillance capitalism.
@@Honeybee-ym5vi oh, no doubt.
Big brother is watching you ….
The manipulation of shorts has become clear to me recently. There's a pull toward our base desires. It's hypnotic, a relentless gravitational well meant to please our lizard brain. It's turned UA-cam into a parade for the most attractive people rather than a platform for the substantive content that I want. I've decided not to watch ANY shorts, if I can manage.
That initial dopamine hit provided by shorts wore off for me, and I'm not telling Google why. I just don't bother with them now, even when there's no other content I'm interested in.
Occasionally I'm tempted by a short that is produced by one of the channels I subscribe to. But rarely is that new content, just snippet(s) cut from one of their longer videos just to appease the Mad King of UA-cam.
Any time I see a thumbnail for a short, or youtube tries to get me to watch one of the stupid things, it triggers a response in me like the whetting of my mouth before I'm about to throw up. Worse thing about them is, they're shorts of something I've already watched!!!
Even though I hate shorts, I find my lizard brain being sucked into a thumbnail that shows an attractive girl doing flippy/spinny/weight things. Or that Antoly Powerlifter guy tricking people in the gym.
I feel ashamed.
UA-cam (and before them, Facebook) saw how TikTok's doing that (admittedly, even-more) was immediately getting them runaway money--; and both of the other services unceremoniously dived right-into the same pig-sty TikTok had just-previously created for itself, as if neither of the other two's models for intended type of niche, ever had meant anything to either one of them--. Yes, viewers and creators alike--:. We're "the product--(!)".
UA-cam is now doing a Citizens United 2.0 by no longer affording a public platform to the individual citizen voice--; but instead is auctioning off the platform to the defaultly commercial or corporate, highest-bidder--. .
A truly sad day for the public, both as creators and as viewers--.
You're right that somebody else has to come in and fill this void.
Original UA-cam had had no ads and only voluntary donations from viewers, and anybody could get their videos circulated in other viewers' feed--.
What's wrong with just doing that to "do" it--; like a "not-for-profit--?".
Greed for greed's sake, is the one thing that doesn't make sense, here--.
It’s fascinating that UA-cam recommended this video to me. I’ve never seen this channel before and i haven’t really been looking at stuff about UA-cam businesses so I wonder why they are pushing this video to random people based on what she says here.
Same!!!!!!!!!!!! Absolutely same here
Same...
Same! I have no idea why this showed up in my feed today. But I've been internally stewing over all the extra ads lately.
UA-cam might be showing this to discourage new creators. Sounds crazy but by eliminating new and not so successful creators pushes the well established creators more. Those are the ones with the most ad revenue so start making people stop before they even start.
@@nicoleschaffer lol Nicole, i have to laugh because I lately "thought" about the ads on youtube! My phone appears to be reading my mind, not just listening, lol🙈
Fairly ironic that the first time I get a recommended video of yours, it’s this one about how UA-cam is deliberately suppressing ‘smaller’ creators. They certainly are, and I really wish there was an alternative. But, subbed to your channel now, so there’s that. Great work! I’m sure I’ll be lost for hours in all the content!
Same
Rumble is growing by leaps and bounds. It's the free speech platform unlike commie tube.
Same here. Never watched this channel (not even a clue what it's about) until this of all videos was recommended to me.
I feel like this was deliberate by UA-cam, cuz same. I've never seen this channel before!
Same here!
Many of us noticed that overnight UA-cam flipped a switch and our views were cut in half. Thank you for explaining the situation as most of us were just guessing.
Yep we thought it was a slow month at first... went from 10k-30k daily views and dropped overnight to around 1k and hasn't improved in 4 weeks. Coincidentally right when this happened the "Promotions (beta)" tab appeared in our Studio for a few days, then was removed. UA-cam support will just tell you to be patient, the analytics might still be pending but it's just lip service. Either 1/3 of the platform left or someone is in the back throttling things due to us independent creators not paying their promo ransom fee. We stopped editing our usual YT video releases this month and opened up a Patreon instead, along with accounts on alternate streaming sites. Don't get caught out in the cold folks... this isn't the 1st time UA-cam has messed with it's creators livelihoods this is a pattern.
This is what happens when genuine competition is gone and a monopoly can then make up the rules to always suit them.
There is competition though. There almost always is. It’s just not as loud or obvious. We just have to see it and patronize it.
@@annaferrelli4009 please enlighten me. I'm sure Fran and others would appreciate your advice as well.
@@TheNobbynoonar Enlighten you? Can't you do an internet search?
There are more than a few video hosting sites and streaming sites out there. The more people start using them, the better.
This is what happens with capitalism.... We need workers control of the means of production. That means content creators get to have a say in how the platform is run and get profit sharing.
Welcome to the real world. There is competition out there....but creators don't seem to want to go there, so you will forever get manhandled by UA-cam when their financial situation gets pinched....and with the inflation of today, and the dead economy, you ban bet their getting the squeeze. (As revenue after all comes from ads, and companies getting economically squeezed don't buy as many ads on UA-cam)
So get out there and spread your wings. Get your content on other platforms and bring your fans to there too!
I used to think "everything is under control" was a statement of comfort before I realized it's a statement of alarm.
I live the quote from Gahndi...relax everyone...nothing is under control!❤
It sounds like what Angie’s List did just before they basically disappeared.
It sounds like UA-cam is ready for a serious competitor. I signed up as a new Subscriber and will view just out of spite.
My friend, no one around me on yours. They can't get off Tiktok. They're always asking why I'm on UA-cam. Us UA-camer who follow these teachers. UA-cam needs to jump into the new trends. UA-cam is strong. And studying channels on here. To jump into the world to not be left behind. We have to make shorts. I personally don't like them to find them harmful to the memory and much more. They youth is where others flock, and Tiktok is a business, and so is UA-cam. Let stick together and make shorts that bring them into longer content. Everything is a teaching moment
Waot theres no sicj tjing as angies list? I tjougjt theu have been a thing since at least 2004
I will always admire individuals who speak up when they see something isn't right. It shows courage, a rare commodity these days. Good for you
YT wont care or pay attention to this until they are about to go broke and have been abandoned by all the content creators who built the platform to begin with maybe when the end is staring them in the face they might get it but i doubt it as these kinds of people are brainless
I second that motion
It is possible that there is such an influx of new UA-camrs that they are using this as an excuse to lower the pay to the content creators. The average person will not be able to afford to start a channel. Over-saturation perhaps. Don’t want to hurt those who are making quality content who happen to have a lot of subs and views. But it may come down to boycotting UA-cam. Get them where it hurts (the pocketbook). Of course, they may be getting overtaxed. I know they (politicians and businesspeople) will hate this post.
YT only became profitable in 2018. Rn, first quarter of 2023, the ad revenue is down 15%. If you’re a stock holder, you’re not pleased.
Maybe YT is merely making an effort to “stop the bleeding?”
Just have to be careful not to piss off the format runners. Like Elon Musk over at Twitter. He says he's all about "free speech" until you say something bad about him, then you get banned. So much for free speech.
Ironically, this is the first video I’ve EVER been “fed” of yours, @Fran Blanche. And I follow a *LOT* of folks in what I’d consider very similar “genres,” namely art/creation. So while I’m only one sub, I’m glad to have been introduced to your channel, and look forward to watching more!
Yeah, me too! She totally got my sub, classy lady.
same
I used to make UA-cam videos for fun and education. I started after I watched a helpful video that taught me a skill. I thought, "I can help others too." I never wanted to monetize my videos. I just made them because I wanted to help others. UA-cam forced ads, so I eventually stopped making videos. Making content took me time and money; it wasn't worth it. UA-cam will become one big infomercial. So sad.
Can relate
That's why I have decided to use AI to destroy the algorithm, and turn UA-cam against itself. As it says in the Bible, " ..A house against itself cannot stand watching stinking ads.." or something like that.
@@campbellpaul Please share your techniques and tactics so others can do the same.
You can make content regardless of UA-cam. Stop blaming someone else for your own actions, that's just so sad...
@@RafiGish you clearly didn’t watch the video, right?
For a company whose motto is, “Don’t be evil,” it is crazy how quickly they forget it.
When someone has to advertise they are benign, they aren’t
They actually changed that motto a while back, around 2018 I think. I'm not sure what's more disconcerting; the fact they thought they had to specifically say they shouldn't be evil... Or the fact they then stopped saying it Lol.
The main feat of evil is lies.
They got rid of that motto. It’s no longer a concern of theirs.
they got rid of that motto 20 year ago.
I absolutely hate those Shorts. At first, you could dismiss them for a month. Now, they're like an infection that won't go away.
It is an indicator of social health.
You can use plugins to disable them. You can also demainstreamify youtube with another plugin with that name. Sorry to say but you do have to trick the site into singing and dancing to do what you want.
You do not have to open them or look at them it's your choice so why complain you just want to spoil things other people enjoy
@@donnacsuti4980 They're half of the videos on my home page, so obviously crowding out proper videos! As for people who enjoy them - idiots with short attention spans. F**k them.
@@donnacsuti4980 I see so many people that forgo actual enjoyment by wasting days worth of time each week glued to short content. The message conveyed is generally pretty depressing to watch, since the message conveyed is generally NOTHING. A quick "heh" is average, occasional laughing, but absolutely NO memories attached.
UA-cam is using this video to push “promotions” because some of you will take the bait and purchase it, as she’s doing. They’re rewarding her for purchasing and promoting it!🤷🏾♀️
Sounds very much like all other platforms. Sucker people in for free, start doing advertising and when things get thin, go after the people creating the content.
That's analogous to some relationships in the big city: "The first time is 'love'. Next time you pay".🤔 😳
This feels more to me like an early phase of something more sinister. I'm thinking that this will grow more and more of a way to corporatize the Internet space so that all content must have corporate sponsorship to be uploaded or even viewed. This would be an excellent way for corporations to shut down damning information that can mobilize voters, unions, human rights orgs, etc.
Exactly.
I keep wondering if some of this will come back to haunt UA-cam. If creators get their money through merch, their own advertisements, and Patreon then it'll be much easier for them to jump platforms. They requires there to be a competitive platform, but it'll happen someday
Time to move out?
At such a point, I2P and things like Gemini would inconspicuously become several orders of magnitude more popular, for No Reason At All.
It's your typical race to the bottom. Look at what happened to the cable networks like A&E. You can't fix it because 'there is a sucker born every minute' and we don't have an education system that teaches critical thinking.
UA-cam will never reward consistency, they only reward trends.
As has every broadcasting company since the beginning of time.
Why is there only youtube? Why is there no competition? For anything anymore?
There are other spaces besides UA-cam
Never? They could end up changing over time
@@williamyoung9401 There are, but they don't have the reach that youtube does.
Whilst it's really disappointing that this is happening, can anyone truly say they are surprised? This is corporate greed at work, pure and simple. The people who run UA-cam are under pressure to increase revenue and profit year on year, so cutting the amount they pay to content creators from ad revenue is an absolute no brainer when you are basically the only game in town. In years to come, this may be seen as the beginning of the end for the original UA-cam concept.
They're also social engineering content. They're driving certain themes, motifs, and predilections.
So a question begs to be asked: "Who" exactly is paying the content creators then? Is it YT or is it those who are willing to "pay" to stay 'viable' whose money is going to others who are also willing to pay? 🤔
All very true, but the beginning of the end is happening now, right here. We see and discuss it.
it'll be the end of UA-cam
@@sneak1677 The "tube" just censored RFK Jr; time to walk away....🤐
It looks like the algo liked this title for sure
That 2018 change was when all the small creators making cool things stopped being front and center and then it became more about well groomed pretty influencers making shiny simple overview videos.
Not just influencers, remember 2018-19 PewDiePie and T-Series? It marked the end of an era for youtube.
@@pavook Legit. No more low res, deep dive into people's pet interests. Well now influencers can pay so they can show off what they are promoting.
I created a new UA-cam account a few weeks ago. Starting out with zero subscriptions, the subscriptions page offers suggestions of channels to subscribe to. At the top? About 20 beauty influencers, all very pretty people talking about absolutely nothing. It's clear what makes UA-cam money just looking at those suggestions. I guess it's "what the people want" also? At least most people. Can't say I'm impressed by what the mainstream likes, culturally.
@@paszTube I also get those and "Hot women playing guitars in tiny outfits." I wish Google could use all this data to make an amazing dating site for us single people! I have a friend who has her own carpentry business and you know she is filming that day when the leggings and the tight top is on vs the scruffy shop clothes.
AMEN !!!!!
This is sadly so true. I make content professionally and wanted to just do little side stuff and help and started putting videos on youtube. They were pushing ads already even though I didn't hit the sub/watch mark so when I did I monetized. It takes a lot of time to make content and the rules keep changing. The shorts are OK, but they don't fit all types of content. UA-cam sent me a $500 card to try the "promotions beta" if i spend $500 on ads on my own videos. It is really absurd. It takes a lot of time to plan, film, edit even "low quality" content. At this rate I make maybe $20/hr of uploaded content, not factoring in all the time it takes to actually make the content. It might be $1-$5/hr at best. The policies are really pushing away people that want to create educational longer format content in favor of the "quick fix" videos.
There Is - NO LIMIT - to CORPORATE GREED... !!! -StayWell -70SomethingGuy
You think that's bad. I'm a native American w no papers! I pay $30oz for silver and go to sell. They look at market price. Not fair! I have to pay for production. So we lose just walking in the door! I'm poor because of this. They don't care how much they hurt natives. Life is hard, join the club. Or get a different job you hate, I have to. I've done it often
Can Standard (Nebula) help you with in channel advertising?
I suspect that this will only be solved if new UA-cam like platforms are supported by say European Governments.
The problem for non-American UA-cam Creators is that UA-cam has an USA cultural sensibilities, thus it demonitizes videos that are challenging in the states but not in Europe & visa versa with say Guns being OK in the USA but pretty much verboten in Germany & the UK
Have you tried Nebula/Standard????
The shorts are unironic trash. They put no effort in the technology and it doesn't even work right on PCs. And not even basic QOL features like volume slider.
as a company youtube is a dumpster fire. the only thing worthwile about it is the videomakers.
They'll continue to exist and they'll jump ship eventually to somewhere better and youtube will be left behind.
@@osakanone there's nothing actually better right now.
@@ArtisChronicles I've noticed switching to other platforms already happening
As the name implies… "You" Tube.
@@Exitof99 yes but the point is that the company doesn't have to be a dumpster fire. they choose to be that way.
What’s ironic is this video showed up in my recommendations from UA-cam and was my first Fran video that introduced me to the channel.
I watch UA-cam in order to escape Hollywood (which I HATE).
UA-cam offers all sorts of subjects that Hollywood would never touch -- everything from beekeeping to lawyers discussing legal cases in the news to paragliding. There's something for everyone.
Something for everyone, with incredible censorship, gatekeeping and shadow banning
Me too, the beauty of UA-cam, for me, is the natural unpolished uploads from unique gems of all sorts 🥰
Which you won't get for long if Google and UA-cam has it's way because of the way they are treating the content creators!!!
Even now if you don't want ads you have to pay for Premium View!!! How long do you think it will be before Pay Per View, with or without ads????
I can zero in on exact topics that interest me. I avoid pop culture.
in the u.k. of course the main stream tv channels are losing out to youtube and the likes, so they have started to make programs covering successful vloggers themes, e.g. more d.i.y., narrowboats, country walks/explores etc.
You showed up out of nowhere for me today. I don't know if you did something different that made the algorithm show me your channel. All of this information about how youtube treats its creators is interesting and depressing. I had no idea they were THAT money-grubby. And now I know why I am barely ever offered new choices.
Same for me, I don't usually see Frans videos. I'm taking a guess that Fran has experimented with using the Promotion option on this video and will report on the results in the near future!
Same
Same here.
Same here.
You popped up on my feed as well. Why I wonder?🤔🤔🤔🤔
This is disheartening news for someone like me, a new content creator just starting out 😢 Thanks for the heads up Fran.
Same here.
Same here. 😕
Assumable one should be _more_ disheartened by the fact that there are around 51 million youtube channels. That's 15% of the US population.....
we will overcome
If you're new, you should be researching what people like and want to see and you should see that shorts and reels are the rage right now. Start making shorts. =)
A wise man once said to me "Never build your life on something someone else controls". While this is easier said than done today, time and again I have witnessed what starts out as a great service slowly turn into a 'rent seeking' (economist lingo) i.e. exploitative business relationship.
Dead right, self reliance starts when you can control some of your life, cheers
UA-cam used to be a cool place. Hope there's a better alternative coming down the pike.
You mean one that will actually pay the creators fairly? Seems unlikely at this point
They need something like a co-op or employee-owned store, where members get a say and share.
@@Melds Nice idea. Google/YT would find a way to crush it.
@Hitogokochi Block chain is too inefficient and this isn't an ideal usecase for it.
Dtube, eh? I'm ready to explore alternatives... maybe others are too.
Thank you Fran!! That explains it!!!! My channel has dramatically dropped by 75% - 90% back in January. I thought making more and newer videos would fix the problem but, all of my heroic efforts have been for naught. What's worse, is that my UA-cam videos drive my personal business, so it's rough for the home team. What's more, I've been watching my channel and saw new subscribers "drop off" in real time but the graph doesn't show them being ghosted. This explains why many awesome UA-camrs have gone to selling merch to make up for lost subscribers and lost revenue.
Many channels that I watch have been demonetized all off a sudden. Either they want to push us to a few mainstream channels or their adds revenue dwindle down an that is their way to mask it.
I thought this just happened to me. It happened so suddenly and I have no idea why my channel dropped so bad. At first, it has thousands of views but now no one watched it anymore. I tried to contact UA-cam via Twitter for help but no response at all.
@@CepatianPendekian You too? My views and revenue have dropped by 90% and, no matter how many new videos I post, it barely makes a difference. I started posting "shorts" and views have grown 300%. The problem is that my channel is an education channel, so shorts don't do anything for my students. I hope this gets better soon.
Same here, my channel is dying and I've not changed anything
@@funkyprepper I am wondering if my conservative posts to other videos has anything to do with it, or if it's just that I haven't been posting tons of shorts?
"Never put your income in the hands of someone who can halt it." Our parents taught us that. It was a religion growing up. And they lived it. The only money they earned (and they earned a lot) came from activities they fully controlled.
This is combined with "The hard way IS the easy way" meaning that it might seem hard to embrace trial and error to find something that YOU CONTROL that WORKS and provides income but that 'hard stuff' turns out to be a lot easier than having your income halted by someone else.
.
Well said Greg ✌️😎🤙 agree 100%
Lol what a lot of gibberish.
of course you wouldn't recognize or understand sound advice if it landed on top of you like a boulder, typical.🙄 keep on drinking the corporate kool-aid, which you just endorsed and you don't even know what that means.
So, never accept a job without a firm contract because you can be fired at will without it?
@@ZacksRockingLifestyle Get clear of needing the favor of someone to put food on your table. "You're fired" or "you're laid off" takes 2 seconds to say.
If you develop your own enterprise - which will normally require trial and error - do you foresee a day where you might fire yourself?
*_ANSWER IS NO_*
You will work hard either way (for yourself, or as an employee), Might as well say "I'm not working for anyone except my own customers"
Do you remember when You Tube first started? You Tube didn’t pay any “content creator” for any video that was made and posted. When You Tube first started, people made videos purely out of the passion they had for the subject matter. Only once advertisements came on You Tube AND they started paying “content creators” to make videos, did there become a problem. As long as the
Infrastructure (hardware & software of the hosting platform) is owned by someone other than the so called “content creators” (a term not used in the beginning), they’re going to be at the mercy of those that actually own the infrastructure. I always considered it problematic how much or for how long a “content creator” could expect to make money off their You Tube efforts.
Every time I think to myself that I should maybe perhaps some day make content about my hobbies, there a video around the corner explaining how YT is becoming worse and worse and I realize that I should not even attempt to do this in any serious capacity. Platform enshitification is definitely a thing here and YT looks to be is in the final exploitation stages before it finally dies.
It's a common theme. Take cable TV: once upon a time, you would pay one payment, and see all the channels that you paid for - ad free! Then they brought in premium channels (HBO etc) that you had to pay more for. Then many channels started doing ads - so we were back at what we had with broadcast TV - only now we were paying for it + wasting our time watching ads! There has to be a better way for creators to keep doing long form videos?
I have a channel that documents my hobbies but I don't expect anything from it. Its there just for family, friends, and interested people to see what I do. As long as you know that, go ahead and make your channel.
@@littleshopofelectrons4014 sorta similar here. i make very few and most are just a way to host a video linked from a web forum
When there's still folks using phrases such as 'Platform enshitification', there is still hope. 😀
There are adverts on UA-cam 😉Revanced
Yeah, I've always thought youtube was cheating their creators and I'm not a creator, so I'm speaking as a viewer acknlowledging all the work y'all do to create content for us to watch.
thanks for caring about this
This reminds me of the Etsy controversy. You either have free shipping on anything over $30 or you didn't get seen. You didn't have to do it but they would suppress your views of you didn't. So sorry you're going through this now.
Yep, I came to the comments to see if anyone else thought this was similar to the etsy tactics. At least etsy straight up said comply or you won't be featured or recommended...
Reminds me of the PM in Canada. You don't have to get the shot, but you will lose your job and livelihood if you don't, but we are not making you..........or the Mob: 'You don't hhaaavvvveee to pay for protection....shame if you shop burns down.....'
I remember when Ebay was a "mom and pop" shop and now corporations are ruining it.
@@KindCountsDeb3773 etsy is basically mini Amazon now
Can’t stand Etsy!!!
there's a reason this video got more views than the rest. algorithms on all platforms have made a shift toward videos and content that grab your attention immediately, and your title is what has achieved that here. at the end of the day we all have to take a critical look at ourselves and consider whether we're making content that fits that mold or not. you can't just do things you think people will like anymore, you have to create content that people won't have a choice to tune out of, attention spans are dropping massively, and people are used to giving every video five seconds of attention or less, if you don't grab them within that timeframe they're gone, i'm guessing the watch time on this video even reflects that
There is a definite increase in the tendency now to the 'Shock and horror' headline that sometimes bears little resemblance to the actual content. Many creators feel they have no choice.
Making a platform where only the biggest players can succeed is what every other media has done. The whole thing with UA-cam is that it used to be a public video sharing platform. Once money became involved, someone had to decide that too many of the wrong people were making too much money so they had to 'fix' that. Sad but this is how things go just about everywhere.
Thank you for keeping your eye on what is happening, and telling us. Creating video content is a tough game, and youtube is certainly not on the side of creators. I hope that you will continue to find strategies that will make it viable for you.
I have several friends who are creators. Everything from movie to cooking channels. They say they have never worked so hard for the little money they make. Practically all the money they make is coming from Patreon. A person driving a Uber or door dash will make way more money for there time.
I think anyone creating a UA-cam channel for the sole purpose of trying to make a living is delusional in the first place. If you're going to do it, do it for the fun and because it's interesting to you - if success follows, great, but if not, so what?
I'm sure it's already been said ad nauseum in comments on insightful videos like this one, but it bears repeating: UA-camrs ought to unionize. The mad scramble to ever more egregiously exploit the lifeblood of this platform by the powers that be (the company, let's not forget, whose slogan used to be "Don't be evil") can only be repelled by creator solidarity
@@MattTee1975 I think few people realize how successful they can be as creators if they kept their day job, and simply turned on a camera while they did it. There's a lot of successful channels of people just showing their day jobs. Even something as seemingly mundane as fast food service draws lots of viewers who find the process of quickly making a sandwich or burrito fascinating, usually with some nice commentary. It's like old school vlogs.
@@AquarianNomadic I've been driving UberEats for 4 years, not a single accident...
@@kaymart8703 I don't think unionizing works in gig jobs. And yeah, "content creator" and "influencer" are gig jobs. UA-camrs are not employees of Alphabet (Google's parent company), they are more like business partners. And even though producing quality videos on a consistent and frequent enough basis, about subject matter people care about and/or with enough raw charisma to keep people coming back is much more difficult than it looks, the challenge is that it actually looks pretty easy. Which means that no matter how many fellow UA-camrs may join this union, there will always be scabs ready and eager to replace them.
Music? Electronics? Science? Now Art. Wow, a renaissance woman!
Man.
she always has great content.
@@billmyke746 you must be easily confused or don't know that much about biology. Why even come to this channel?
It's a lot like what we call "STEAM". Instead of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (or "STEM"), those of us who prefer "STEAM" find the arts to be equally important.
Toooo many genres for 1 channel. People subscribe for 1 content type, if they see a genre they don't like to watch they ignore that video and youtube stops promoting the channel entirely
This explains why my favorite UA-cam channel creators are posting fewer videos lately and virtually every one of them is has Patreon subscribers. Google's motto has gone from the original "Do no evil" to "Do evil if possible".
I think it's called "business" and "monopole" rather than 'evil'. Alphabet isn't the only nor the first to abuse of his position and... there are alternatives out there.
It was Don't Be Evil. Now they changed it to Do The Right Thing. But even that is not so much.
Kids yourself that slogan was only their finger in your face that was never serious, so many people fall for that garbage Google is made up of scum bags they always have been
UA-cam used to be vastly different in the late 2000s I could remember. The golden times have passed for years now. There hasn't been a worst time to be a content creator, in fact it's kinda of dead end career now compared to the last decades. It's not even a career anymore because how the web is structured now.
Sorta disagree, the freenet died - yes, but as long as you keep quiet on certain subjects you can flourish. esp. with things like Patreon and P2P payments. obv this is contingent upon you conforming to a certain ideology - say no "bad things", but most peeps don't post UA-cam videos on the "bad things", they'd rather talk about the new Marvel movie, or the next Call of Duty installment... i do so dearly miss the days of open discourse tho. most are unaffected.
When UA-cam say it's not required to pay them for people to see your videos and that they will share your videos just the same as always. That can't possibly be true when you have the ability to pay for more views because that means that people who are paying are taking away views from someone else. Everyone can't be first in the serch results and in the related list. If you buy that spot everytying else will be pushed down and away from the viewer. I'm not surprised this is happing. This is exactly the same as with Google the search engine. You used to get the most relevant pages when you searched. Now you get mostly results from the big platforms that are able to pay for SEO or an actual ad.
Everything is a conspiracy. I stopped with any and all content creation. Instagram was doing something similar. They shadow banned me, meaning my posts wouldn't show up in hashtag searches, and then offered me a "promotion" like, pay to be found option.
Crooks.
Also, this video showed up on my front page of the algorithm.
Also, Gordon Lightfoot is great.
was great...
Greatness transcends.
It's mafia methods
@@yessanknow302 Well, his works are still great, and always will be.
@@TheHesseJames yeah, but he's permanently dead.
To me, that is just Google goping just plain evil, serving their super rich already share-holders. And so the Corporation dance continues
it's the men(ladies too) behind the corporations.. if altruistic men/women at top of company maybe company not so opportunistic at expense of others.... just saying American Enterprise is why we have nice things, sellout opportunist grifters sending factories out of the place that established the base case for greatness is why we're losing.
Capitalism, "unlimited growth".
@@hurkamur1 except underlying resources are finite.
We all knew as soon as they got rid of the “do no evil” slogan that everything was gonna go down hill with google
CIA
We definitely need some underdogs presenting alternatives. I remember when search results were random and interesting instead of the popularity contest that most platforms turn into. *sigh*
Many content creators are moving over to Rumble. You can export all of your UA-cam vidoes there quickly and easily. I did
Personally, I really like and appreciate variety channels. I know It isn't easy when it comes to the algorithm. But I think it's typical an untouched area of content creation.
It gives to a piece of something for everyone to enjoy, or just more interesting topics for dorks like me.
It would be awesome to see more of your cartoon art in future videos.
You're very right Fran. YT is also nearly unwatchable. As a viewer, I get multiple, non-skippable ad insertion in every 4 minutes of video.
Fran, I appreciate you putting this out there in an understandable way. I am sure if this is happening to you, it's affecting all Tubers as well.
Another problem this "money process" creates is that it makes "New Virgin" content harder to be created by new users. Thru attrition, YT may be cutting off its feet.
I'm not the slighest surprised youtube is heading this way. Eventually it will be pay to upload videos of any significant size, quality, length and how often you can do so.
I don't see that as a bad thing. Video hosting is fucking expensive, why should they support small videos?
@@Mark-kt5mh Because it's literally where the YOU in youtube comes from. There wouldn't be any popular creators if everyone didn't have a chance to upload a video in the first place. Google knew youtube wasn't sustainable when they purchased it. It's merely a means to serve more ads to people, which is their main business. This is all just the numbers catching up to them and google wants to keep as much to themselves as they can. Despite the fact that the creators do all of the work for them for a fraction of what their time is actually worth.
@@Matt_Deluca , great response. Little guys and gals were getting too much money. Newspapers and magazines nearly vanished while teenagers were buying Ferraris.
Hi Fran! This Video showed up in my feed….never had heard of you before. Thank you for describing what creators are going through with UA-cam. I’ve heard rumblings from creators I follow, some, with huge numbers of followers, questioning whether they will be able to continue because of the ongoing issues…..they just never said what those issues are. It’s wrong. It’s sheer corporate greed. Creators create the content…..and You Tube sucks up the gravy. I’m one new follower-I hope things get better.
There's a pattern here. Like Google, UA-cam started out thrillingly as a "wild West" situation -- total freedom, a dream come true of mass information sharing. Then one burden or restriction after another gets put on as the years progress. No surprise alas that YT is now reaching this stage. Hope your extremely welcome honesty doesn't get punished.
This is actually unbelievable. It is literally biting the hand that feeds you. Some weird mercenary capitalism going on there. Looking forward to the follow-up and what your stats show.
Indeed we had toxic capitalism in the 1920's through the 1960's. Then the counter culture came and helped moderate that toxic capitalism. However the old guard (read 60's hippies) are dying off and the kids and grand kids are even more mercinary than the original toxic capitalists ever were. A word of advice don't trust anyone under 40.
It’s absolutely self destructive on UA-cam’s part, but they don’t care. The only thing they care about is next quarter’s profit. They’ll just keep screwing content creators until it’s only the wealthiest content creators who are left. At that point youtube will be just another streaming service and will do away with free viewing altogether and demand a monthly premium from everyone who’s left.
It's not that weird, really. UA-cam is a monopoly. Monopolies, no matter how benevolent they are when they start out, inevitably move toward more and more oppressive practices. The ONLY thing that will fix this is competition. There are alternatives like PeerTube, but the problem is those are designed specifically to be free and difficult to monetize. We need someone to make a video sharing site that is specifically designed to support small, independent creators.
@@aaronhunyadyrumble
Capitalism eats its own.
I like the diversity of your channel. Keep up doing what you do and if it requires sponsorship so be it.
I was wondering why my pay cheques got smaller yet my views Didnt go down.
This is really disheartening to new creators, like me. It’s really hard to grow and everyone is selling YT like it’s easy! Thanks for sharing this update - you appeared in my feed today and I hope it was organic reach and you didn’t have to pay
Getting views can sometimes be easy, though. I am pretty much non-existent on YT and my rant or gameplay videos get next to actual zero views, but whenever I post some short videoquote from a cute anime - I will end up getting a hundred+ views on it. So I guess it is partly on us to adapt if we really want to harvest them clicks.
Yeah, because those creators make money on selling you a dream. Nobody makes money selling their creations. If you create a wallet, you'll make more on sharing the idea or concept than you will making the product. It's a money driven business model. We need to stay in the real world as long as possible or try other platforms. There is always a way to earn money, but you have to think outside the box or eat the crackers they feed you.
the worst YT advice to get is from the channels that are selling courses.. they have a motive to make UA-cam seem fun and easy (so you will pay them for the "secret")... they'll lead you on for months/years. Some of them are pure evil as they could care less about the fact that real humans are taking chances, spending tons of time/money to pursue the dream they sell. The best UA-cam advice is to simply watch your favorite channels and use them as inspiration... if a channel tries to follow a system/formula they may end up failing. But if they let things play out naturally, they might succeed (because they aren't as formulaic)
@@Hugmir Yeah, change your content so UA-cam promotes it.
That's not creepy at all.
Well somehow you showed up in my algorithm so now you have a new subscriber
I am so grateful for this video. I was playing with the idea of starting my own lil' old school YT channel where I can basically rant and rave to my liking. This has now convinced me not to bother. It also explaines why other, similar platforms begin to pop up. Even bigger content creators have begun to move away. Again, thank you for this insightful warning.
Ever since Google bought YT everything they done with it is wrecking it.
They bought it for 1.6 billion in 2016, it made 35billion in annual revenue in 2021-22.
Doesn't look like they wrecked it at all.
They bought u2b in 2006
@@TheBod76 It being more profitable does not mean it is more friendly to the user or the uploader. It just means the board figured out how to squeeze more money out. By starving content creators, YT is killing its golden goose. Do you seriously think Google is going to replace the missing content from creators who give up and drop out? Hell no, their channel will just become bland.
@@TheBod76 Oh, they didn't wreck it for them and their profits--they wrecked it for us, the consumers. Get a clue.
Look up on the internet who owns Google and you'll have your answer.
For what it's worth, your channel / this specific video was recommended to me on my home page. I don't know if you've already started paying, LOL. I had no idea who you are or what you do, but this specific video got some space on my home page... So I watched, and did a "like" and a "subscribe."
Fran, thank you for explaining all this so clearly.
Of course as a viewer I've noticed trend of decline in quality of videos featured by youtube.
From here it just looks like clickbait is becoming the whole story.
All these tech companies have become bottom-line operations ... of course ... because over time, that's what our system creates.
Just found your channel as it popped up on suggestions. Somehow I feel YT wanted me to know about the "pay to play." I grew rapidly from the start, almost overnight then came to a screeching halt and now it has been a very slow grind. The only videos that get "pushed out" to new viewers are my dancing videos (I am pushing 70 so maybe older women dancing is the thing now) but if I do any other kind of video they don't get pushed out and it must be a short to get seen by new viewers and even at that it is now a slow grind of getting new viewers and finding they disappeared the next day. I remember when my FB fan page grew overnight and I had so many comments I could not keep up then suddenly the comments stopped. I found out my posts were no longer going out into the newsfeed for like/fan pages unless you "paid" to have your page promoted. Even today I can put up a post and no ones sees it on the fan page unlike in the past. It feels the same thing is happening with YT. Thank you for your information. Truly appreciate it.
I think I see what happened to your channel. Your most popular videos are about woman's clothing and you haven't done that in awhile. So you need to home in on that niche because it seems like that's what your viewers want to watch
@@ShalowRecord Thank you so very much for the observation. I will go back and take a look at that content.
You popped up on my feed for the first time ever today. I have an Ad Blocker, so I never see ads. But corporate greed in this country is out of control. Glad I found you.
This whole video speaks volumes to me personally as I feel I’m about in the same boat.
I’ve tried with UA-cam promoting via payment and I’m not giving them another dime just to be potentially seen by more people on the platform
I also run an art themed channel and love what I do and I’m always looking around for fellow artists alike with a similar theme. It sucks how UA-cam seems to jerk us around 😢
I think UA-cam would say that they aren't throttling anyone down but, the flood of channels paying for promotion just takes all the practical bandwidth at the top. In doing this they're essentially telling the market that this is how things work without saying outright that you "must" do this. "Pay to play" is exactly what it is.
I think the healthiest view to take (if you want to be monetized and grow) is that it's all a business. These aren't your friends. They've decided on their business model and you've decided to take part. That's the deal. At no point are they discussing things with the users or creators on the platform. You also know, that's the deal. Move forward understanding the deal.
There is no warm fuzzy center at the heart of UA-cam.
The "deal" works as summarized by Darth Vader.
Interesting, just the other day UA-cam recommended to me an excellent electronics channel with only 282 subs. The Algorithm still seems to be working ok in some aspects at least.
Australia: cat Weow, Europe: cats Meow, America: cats Peow 😮
I watch a lot of UA-cam videos and have learned a lot over the years. It is too bad creators are being so poorly.
For years my 'friends' urged me to start a UA-cam channel and throw my hat into the competitive mega-channel ring. I've always resisted this; I'd post the occasional thing, including a three hour documentary on a WWII combat veteran whom I befriended and later interviewed 'for posterity' before UA-cam was really a thing. After one of the very first vids that I produced got a lot of views, UA-cam reached out and offered me the monetize choice, which I ignored. Funny thing, that same video was removed a couple years later for violating various BS-YT restrictions. It had got around a half million or so views, and I hadn't seen a dime.
But all this that Fran talks about here takes me back to decades ago when I was making my living playing music, mostly in clubs, with various bands in NYC, and over the course of a few years the whole scene kinda fell apart... Clubs that had been mainstays for us, in which we would play at least twice a month and were in high exposure locations (Greenwich Village, SOHO, etc) started booking these mostly younger 'Pay To Play' bands, who were either NYU student bands that had large followings of their school pals, or new 'Pop' bands who had fledgling record label deals who's management treated these gigs as 'Showcases" and didn't mind paying, as every dime ultimately got charged back to the bands revenues. They likely filled those seats with paid or invited audiences who were amply supplied with free drink tickets and swag (all on the band's tab) as well.
And so, our 'old faithful' watering holes began to dry up; some would still have us in once a month, or quarterly, just to assume some kind of legitimacy/consistency with their old status of having the hotter, more creative bands on roster, with the hope of spreading said legitimacy upon the new usurpers, but it didn't work, and many of those clubs eventually closed down and became Starbucks or Gap stores...
Anyway, I'm saddened to see this similar sort of corporate greed and acquisition spread into this venue, and it does seem as though my YT feed has become unpredictable and kind of boring lately. I guess in retrospect I'm glad that I didn't go all-in like my friends were urging me to 10-12 years ago or whenever it was. I've been struggling with chronic health issues for decades anyway, and I don't think those 'friends' had a clue as to how much effort and grueling work is involved in churning out consistent content for this meat grinder, let alone trying to nurture a BRAND, and all the BS and grunt-work that that entails.
I wish you well Fran; I'm not at all familiar with your channel or work, but your plight resonated with me and I thought i'd give a wee blab about it...
Cheers,
-Paul D
UA-cam is sinking it's own ship. Never ending GREED.
You speak truth. YT only seems to want corporate videos these days. Known celebs, etc. The days of giving them content from those of us in the real world doesn't seem to provide enough greed for them. And the saddest part is they know they have us. We have no other options ... yet.
Someone remind YT that's called "television".
What do you mean there are no options, there are PLENTY of other options nowadays.
@@statinskill Name 10.
Perhaps you mean there are no other 'free' options with the same reach as YT, you're right there. All the others are smaller, less well known, and paid for by the viewers. What we need is another viable platform..
The entire internet has gone down the poop shoot. I remember when it came on line and there was so much promise and for a while there was and then corporate was like OH NO... the masses are getting access to information we don't want them to have, they are becoming educated and we can't control the message and the creative stuff.. I am 55 and watching the downward spiral is depressing. I had so much hope
They're visibly suppressing smaller content creators. I often dont get the notifications I request from my favorite channels, and yet my inbox gets "recommendations" everyday that I am sometimes bewildered as to why *I* got the particular suggestion.
I never watch X kind of content, why suggest it to me??
Sometimes the suggestions the algorithm presents to me are, honestly, uncomfortable.
That is not my experience at all. Almost the exact opposite in fact. I never, and I do mean NEVER have anything appear on my home page that is not related to either channels that I view regularly or related to similar channels or videos from channels that I have watched at some time in the past. Likewise, at NO point ever do I get notifications from ANY channels that I am not subscribed to, ever. Why are our experiences different, I wonder?
Yes! I subscribe to tons of channels, so I expect to see them. But no...🤬 Gotta navigate to that tab.
@@vallejomach6721 I don't know!
@@californianorma876 Right? Even if I have the "all notifications" bell on
Oh boy. If and when the day comes, UA-cam's gonna experience a big drop in viewership from people simply not putting up with their bull anymore.
Thanks, Fran. I'm so sad to see this happening. My young adult sons are artists and they are always studying the various platforms. They know much more than I do and so are much more cynical about the possibilities of YT. It feels like YT is shooting itself in the foot but I'm sure their business people have made all the calculations and coldly decide which direction makes the most money, which is obviously, sadly, their only concern now.
Alex
Alphabet a Technology conglomerate owned by investors. I just looked it up
Hi Fran, this must be so frustrating. What I will strive to do to help when I visit UA-cam is I'll make a habit of going to my subscription list first. UA-cam might try to present some alluring, over-financed content on the landing page, but quite frequently I am clicking "not interested" for a lot of it, because it's either clickbait or shorts. I'm not really interested in 60 second short videos, I'm much more interested in thoughtful, consistently well-produced content like yours. Any idiot can grab a smartphone and shoot a 30 second or 60 second video. Many might get attention, much fewer produce consistent QUALITY.
This was the first time I have watched your channel. Dont give in to UA-cam. See I if you can get your subscribers (I am one now) to link to you on other social media sites. Dont pay these jerks if you can avoid it because it encourages them to be even worse than they already are.
Wow. Don't negotiate with terr-iissts. I like it.
It's the music business play-by-play. How many times are we going to hear the plethora of artists tell the same story decade after decade?
Shorts are the worst thing to happen to us creators, IMO. I'm not in this to make a ton of money or anything, but I'd at least like people to be able to FIND our regular videos. We're just over 2,000 subs but UA-cam just doesn't push any of our regular videos to our subscribers.
Imagine what will become of youtube if the tiktok ban actually happens...
As we all know there's no other video hosting site with the reach of UA-cam, thus they have all the leverage, so rather than nickel and diming the creators, why not charge the advertisers more to place ads?
the point of the video by Fran here, is that you the creator are going to eventually be the ones that have to pay for advertising. Increasing that, will in the future make the problem worse.
@@justlooking777if UA-cam started putting ads in for premium, I'd pretty much stop using the platform altogether. I think they're more likely to lock more and more features behind premium than this though
@@StephenHoldaway I happily pay for premium as I watch a lot of UA-cam. But I despise ads. If they started advertising in premium, I'd walk.
we need p---hub to make a SFW video sharing site.
Rumble is the best alternative at the moment
Dear Fran, you have a fantastic and diverse old school Utube channel.
I really hope you can keep it going, but if you feel you have to move on to a different system, Rumble etc, I'm sure most of us would still follow you.
Wishing you the very best with your channel.
✌♥️🇬🇧
Post the “cartoons” under the UA-cam community tab on your channel. That way the videos tab doesn’t get cluttered with them, and it gives you the opportunity to post a still image and text explaining / describing the image.
Hi, Fran. A possibility for you to consider is to see if you can also get on to a platform that pays creators better. I've heard other creators talk the way you are about how UA-cam is strangling their compensation (incentive) and a bunch of them banded together to form Nebula, on which they can make videos that are not penalized by UA-cam's algorithms. They typically, for now, are still on UA-cam and have patrons & merch, too, but often post longer/non-UA-cam-optimized videos (i.e, the ones they'd like to make) and/or post them several days there before also uploading them to their UA-cam channel. I'm not a creator so I don't know your world and I'm not plugging Nebula particularly: it's just that it's the only "by creators, for creators" platform I know of.
I really hate the single-minded, nothing-else-matters, soulless, exploitative, evil pursuit of profit. It underlies wage theft, labor exploitation, environmental destruction, even slavery. Remember when Google's motto was "Don't be evil."? #BeAForceForGood
I couldn't agree more. We must fight it.
Really though, in today's network of various platforms, if you don't hire someone to write a management script or write one yourself, how are you going to manage everything on every platform? You certainly can't do it manually and dedicating yourself to a single provider is really dangerous.
Re: Google's motto. The silent, second sentence was, "Let us do it."
Stuff like this is probably why more and more creators are moving to Rumble.
That and sen-soar-ship...
Lots of creators post a few minutes on UA-cam then link to the rest of it on rumble
@@katie7748 nothing happens if you say censorship.
Exactly. Many are censored because they don't says the right thing. As I've said elsewhere, telling the truth is a dangerous thing in times of turmoil.
Just looked at rumble, but it seems to be full of right wing nut jobs..
Typically Corporates offer a great deal for early take up, but once enough traffic is established, the ‘conditions’ are gradually constricted, until the benefits that once existed, end up becoming costs, in order to continue. Unfortunately money begets money, and everyone else has to fight over the scraps, through side hustles.
I’m so sorry that this is happening to you, you deserve so much better. I hope you can continue to do what you do.
Thus is what Cory Doctorow called "enshittification"
Seems like the real answer is for viewers and creators to move to new companies, offering better deals, and moving on when THEY start bullying, en masse. Make them offer special deals to lure in creators, and as soon as they get fat and greedy, the majority just leave.
I think they work on the reluctance for people to abandon the tradition of years. We have to develop cynicism and a happiness to dump providers who start bullying and ripping off.
eBay did a similar thing, even using the minimum promotion can increase the impressions on your items by up to 10* showing just how much they are throttling your accounts if you don't pay them..
You are SPOT ON! I’m a newly monetized channel and I feel like all the work is for nothing 😔
Im soo sorry fran. You deserve much more. A video every single day is a huge feat. I will try to spread your channel around.
About a year and half ago my little channel got a bunch of growth in a month, going from 100 subscribers to around 300. It was neat to see that when people saw some of my videos, many liked them enough to subscribe. And then, just like that, there was a precipitous drop-off in views and subscribers. Right after this, in my channel's dashboard home, I found a bright and shiny ad from youtube that hadn't been there before saying something like "Want more people to see your channel, boost its visibility with ads." My immediate thought was, "oh great, UA-cam is becoming pay to play." My sense is that they've been working on how to nudge us all this direction for quite a while. It was actually this steep drop-off that scared me away from committing to YT full time. It's too precarious.
P.s. I don’t think I’ve ever seen any of your videos before today! Is that not a weird thing that UA-cam is doing? I just listened to a lot of narrated stories when I’m falling asleep and sometimes crime specials but this? This is brand new and I’m happy I found you but it’s weird what UA-cam is doing. They’re bringing people who don’t know about you over here too. Nice to meet you.😅😊❤
Knowledge is power; thanks for sharing. I am genuinely sorry to hear about both your plight and the near reprehensible shady shift in policy. Pleased to be a brand spanking new subscriber. Best wishes.
I remember when Facebook did this in the late 2010s. Absolutely DESTROYED my ability to communicate with my audience. I subsequently fell off because of it. You should be very afraid. It took EVERYTHING from me.
Yup. That's how it goes. If you don't control absolutely everything, SOMEone will find an exploit and clean ya out! 💪😎✌️ Humanity is classy that way.
That's pretty terrifying. It's one of the main reasons why no matter how many subs/views i get, i will always treat YT as a hobby and hope i never rely on the money i get from it... cuz it can get ripped away from you overnight
Hearing that the amount of revenue given to creators, absolutely boils my blood. Mostly because it's already criminal how little our attention is valued already and in turn how much the work of creators is valued.
Ads are also more prevalent now than ever, sometimes 4 or 5 ads in 5 mins.!
Same with eBay in Germany. They made it useless unattractive for privates and only companies sold stuff there. That’s why nobody really went to eBay anymore. Now they made a step back and made it more attractive for private people. I wonder if UA-cam really needs to learn the hard way. It is time for an alternative and quit UA-cam altogether
If they thought they could get away with it, UA-cam would take all the ad revenue. Their avarice is showing.
Tbh the fact that it's been free for so long is amazing. Think how much it costs to run UA-cam in hosting, storage and bandwidth costs. Google gets a good deal on bandwidth I'm sure, but at the end of the day still gotta power the thing with currently expensive electricity.
@@TheErador ah, finally somebody who has a clue. You're exactly right. Normally one has to pay to host and serve gigabytes of data, and imagine trying to organize all the advertising yourself. It's amazing what an attitude of entitlement some creators have, even those who should know better. If UA-cam is so terrible just host videos on your own site, or go to one of the many competitors..... oh what's that? None of the competitors are anywhere near as worthwhile as UA-cam? hmm....
@@iforce2d I'm not saying it ain't frustrating though if you're trying to make a living off of it. But sponsorship and patreon pays better and I think YT knows this. I'd be quite happy if Fran accepted a sponsorship deal from pcbway or keysight. BigClive gets away with it because people watch his entire video end to end - they don't have chance as he speaks right up to the final cut, there's no patreon crawl or intro or outro. The algorithm definitely respects that. I did mention this to Fran in a patreon comment whether she'd consider removing or speeding up the crawl as when your video is 8 minutes and 3 of that is patreon crawl YT is not gonna see that as engaging content if most skip that section and leave at that point - it looks like they got bored and left before the end. There's a reason lots of the successful channels switched to either running them over the actual content or having them real fast and a small content segment after. People'll watch to the end of the credits if they know there's smthg there - just ask Marvel.
Thanks for all your efforts, Fran. Hang in there.
You are absolutely right. I made a video recently about all the UA-cam rules. My channel isn’t seen at all. And I can’t afford to pay to play. I’m not monetized, yet there are ads on my videos. Thank you for sharing this. It takes courage to speak out. 🌸
I've been wondering what the rules are so I'm looking up your vid!
@@havable thanks! I didn’t want to link it here. And I’ll say it’s not your typical video on the YT algorithm, but I hope you enjoy it and let me know what you think. 🙏🌸
Hi Fran - Whatever you did seemed to have worked. You showed up in my feed for the first time ever this morning. It was something different so I clicked on you. I am not a creator, just a consumer, but I found the analysis of your issue to be very interesting. I'm now going to see what other content you have created. I hope it didn't cost you too much to get me. 🙂
Success on UA-cam is now like WWE, its a fixed race
Google got a lot of experience with that from the Play Store :D The inevitable crushing destruction of the stupidest form of capitalism where pushing tons of completely worthless junk pays the best. I've always hated ad-supported business, and it's not hard to see why. Remember how newspapers didn't really like printing articles about how horrible smoking is? Surely that had nothing to do with the majority of their revenue coming from tobacco ads. Or the fact that newspaper is sold right next to tobacco products.
Not paying for stuff sure doesn't seem like a great outcome for the customer. And it's absolutely amazing that the best way to make money on a platform like this is putting tons of money into advertising... so that you can make money from advertising. And why would Google care? They essentially get the transaction fees as their revenue stream; should we be surprised its turning into the same show as wallstreet brokers? :D
At this point, you can literally buy a server and put the videos on your own website, it might cost you even less money and you'll have absolute control over your content.
But how do you attract traffic to your site? Remember that finding independent none corporate sites in today's internet is pretty much impossible, you never stumble into them anymore, I've pretty been here since the inception of the world wide web and have seen how it has transformed, even if you have your own site you still need to build presence and people often do that through social media, so there isn't any escape unfortunately.
the problem is once you move off platform, you literally depend on your viewers to actually come with you, and for some people that's too much work. Very few creators have successfully made that kind of jump, and once you do, unless you advertise somewhere else and continue to bring in new viewers, you will style just be stuck in the bubble/cycle Fran mentioned. you'd probably still need some kind of UA-cam presence to draw viewers to your site, which means now you're responsible for maintain both your channel AND a website, and the new store she wants to put together, the workload adds up. The real and final solution is just a new viable platform and the hope that the same thing wont happen there.
@@baremetaltechtv Yep, absolutely true. Yet, some people are trying it - you can take a look at Odysee, with their model, this black-box algorithm bs is practically impossible. The question is, though, how would odysee work if there were as many people using it as youtube
@@HansensUniverseT-A with that kind of thinking there would be no Google or Facebook or UA-cam (or any other innovation). Are you working for the YT Mafia?
@@oddanneout They are completely right. It’s harder and harder to promote yourself without paying. Twitter, for example wants you to pay to be shown to new people. If you just have to pay elsewhere, it doesn’t help to leave YT.
I watch a lot of True Crime channels and whenever I see a big budget channel in my feed I immediately cringe and think about how television the way we used to know it might be creeping into UA-cam. I refuse to watch them
this is scandalous that UA-cam has turned into this, over the people that actually made the website what it is.. best of luck Fran
Thanks for pointing this all out, i didn't realize how fast downhill things are going.