Thursday, January 23, 2025
The Tiktokification of YouTube
While all eyes are currently on Tiktok, because of the major developments and uncertainties about the future there, YouTube over the past month has done major changes in the background to its algorithm to become a bit more like Tiktok. The YouTube algorithm has changed to make it *less* likely that a new video from a channel you subscribed to is appearing on your main page, and make it *more* likely that videos are suggested to you based on what you have recently watched. You can test that: Take a random channel you have never watched before and watch two of its videos back to back in full length. Refresh your main page, and you'll see more videos from that channel suggested, even if you didn't subscribe to it.
This change in algorithm increases what is called "discoverability". Among creators, Tiktok was known to have better discoverability, which is to say that a new creator had a better chance on Tiktok to see his videos suggested to viewers, while on YouTube established channels had a better chance of seeing people herded their way. YouTube moving towards better discoverability is good news for new creators, and bad news for established channels. For niche subjects, for example Dungeons & Dragons, the change in algorithm has led to a significant drop in earnings for major established channels, leading to many of them shutting down. Being a full-time content creator and earning enough money to make a living from that on YouTube has become more difficult. Making a bit of money part-time on YouTube has become easier.
There is a philosophical debate to be had whether that is a good thing or a bad thing. Pursuing a career as influencer is a bit like pursuing a career as rockstar: Lots of people dream of it, but only few actually manage to make a living that way. If all the advertising revenue of any given platform would be totally equally distributed amongst all creators, nobody would earn enough with that to even make rent. Inequality between content creators enables some of them to turn this into a full-time job. Different people have different theories in how far that is a result of luck, talent, or hard work. Especially on Tiktok it is known that superficial factors, like having the luck to be conventionally beautiful, helps a lot.
I received a grand total of one "buy Tobold a coffee" donation in 2024 for my blog. Thank you, you know who you are! I never even tried to turn this into a job. Video content is more "marketable" as written content, but video isn't really my medium of choice for what I want to express. Thus, as a financially completely unsuccessful content creator, I can see the charm of a social media platform on which there are no superstars, and where everybody is just making a small bit of money. But I am also aware that some of the more spectacular content on YouTube wouldn't be possible if those creators weren't making much more money than most. And if I compare the quality of different content creators, for example when playing, streaming, and commenting the same video game, I can see the quality difference between the more successful channels and the average content creator. So success as a content creator isn't unearned, and I assume that for a lot of people this is actually a hard job. The change of YouTube algorithm shows again that it is also a very unstable job, where fickle changes of fortune can destroy your livelihood without a safety net. So maybe a system with more equal distribution of earnings, and fewer full-time content creators would actually be healthier.
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Is this actually a recent change? For me at least what you describe is how youtube has worked for some time now.
What you can do to combat the algorithm is regularly clearing your watch history and looking at your subscribed feed instead of the main recommended for you feed.
I will tend to clear my watch history after watching any genre of video where I know YouTube will start filling my feed with garbage I don't want. I enjoy occasionally watching a few specific channels about cars for example. The problem is if I watch one of their videos and don't clear my watch history my feed will quickly fill up on general car videos I'll never watch and I'm not interested in. Since youtube also tends to continue recommending the same 30 or so videos even if you refresh this quickly becomes annoying.
What you can do to combat the algorithm is regularly clearing your watch history and looking at your subscribed feed instead of the main recommended for you feed.
I will tend to clear my watch history after watching any genre of video where I know YouTube will start filling my feed with garbage I don't want. I enjoy occasionally watching a few specific channels about cars for example. The problem is if I watch one of their videos and don't clear my watch history my feed will quickly fill up on general car videos I'll never watch and I'm not interested in. Since youtube also tends to continue recommending the same 30 or so videos even if you refresh this quickly becomes annoying.
I don't know how recent the change is. But among the D&D channels, this is currently a hot topic. One major established D&D channel was big enough to be invited to talk to people from YouTube directly, and they told him about algorithm changes making his current channel concept less viable, which prompted him to quit that channel and try something new.
It's years since I saw any YouTube recommends on my home page. They were fine once but then there was a period when they became ludicrously inaccurate and very annoying so I added an extension to Firefox that forces YouTube always to open on my home page with only my subscribed channels visible. That means I see every new video from all my subscriptions as soon as they appear and none from anyone else.
Since I did that, the apalling version of the algorithm that so annoyed me has been retired, at least as far as I can tell by the recommendations I get alongside videos I watch. Those also used to be good, then got very bad, but are now pretty good again. I assume the people at Google are always fiddling with it but so are lots of other people. If you're not getting the recommends you want, I suggest checking out the available solutions. I'm sure there are several.
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Since I did that, the apalling version of the algorithm that so annoyed me has been retired, at least as far as I can tell by the recommendations I get alongside videos I watch. Those also used to be good, then got very bad, but are now pretty good again. I assume the people at Google are always fiddling with it but so are lots of other people. If you're not getting the recommends you want, I suggest checking out the available solutions. I'm sure there are several.
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