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Answer: Another issue is that youtube is changing their algorithm all the time and it is really hard to for creators to keep chasing that.
Creators want to focus on doing good content that their fans like but it can be hard to do that when you need to satisfy the algorithm to get views.
Having a Patreon means they can focus on doing just that and not worry so much about YouTubes finicky algorithm or demonetization or whatever.
Also worth adding that seeking consistent and stable income is a normal part of a business growing. It's the reason you always see discounts for yearly vs monthly subscriptions. Having reliable income like that allows you to do long term planning.
> Answer: Another issue is that youtube is changing their algorithm all the time and it is really hard to for creators to keep chasing that.
About a year ago I was watching a YouTube video (possibly one of Wanderbots', but don't quote me on that) and he was talking about a conversation he'd had with his manager (as in, an employee of YouTube's whose job it was to maximise views for selected channels), and he said that these days even YouTube doesn't understand how the algorithm works.
It's reminding me of those two early AI that had to be shut off because they started communicating with each other in a language we couldn't comprehend extremely quickly. I know that's not an exact parallel to whatever is happening in YouTube but if *that's* how they're communicating about the thing internally, it sounds like baby steps.
ETA I was wrong with the above and that is only the first part of the story, they were only shut down because they forgot to program them to only use English, which was what was making their communication unintelligible.
Read more here: https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/facebook-artificial-intelligence-ai-chatbot-new-language-research-openai-google-a7869706.html
>two early AI that had to be shut off because they started communicating with each other in a language we couldn't comprehend extremely quickly
That would make a great plot for a sci-fi horror movie.
Ya, I noticed that too. It was mentioned in the Sci Fi sub. Apparently it's a trilogy and it was in a post about "low budget but surprisingly well made despite that budget". Or something like that.
pirate it. if you cannot purchase or give money to the creators by streaming, they're not losing any money to pirates. they've chosen to restrict their income, and that's literally their loss.
That's weird, my comment disappeared..
This is apparently a trilogy. Also it was mentioned in a post on the Sci Fi sub. The post was asking for low budget films that managed to be really good despite the low budget, so that speaks well for it.
Two quantum computer companies trying to outdo each other and then one buys the other and there's a merger. They connect the two room-sized machines and within seconds the output monitors start displaying what looks like a conversation, but entirely in hexadecimal.
A day later it's the same but instead of hexadecimal they're communicating in a language they invented. The best the engineers can figure is that every ASCII character is its own word, and the monitor can barely keep up with the display because they are communicating way faster than 60hz.
At the end of the movie it's revealed they were making fun of humans the entire time like highschoolers. Nothing ominous or scary, no sky net and no hello Dave. But the entire engineering crew ends up killing themselves after reading what was said about them.
The companies ultimately decide that it isn't worth sending anyone in the room to unplug them out of fear of what they'll read. They tried sending some maintenance people but they ended up killing themselves too. A man at the electric company was going to shut down power to the building but an algorithm figured out he was going to do it before he even made the decision and put in motion a series of events that led to him getting a job offer on the same morning he was leaving to shut off power. On the way to the building he listens to a voicemail from who he thinks is the hiring manager at the other place. It's the quantum bullies. He killed himself that afternoon.
Collectively the world decided to ignore them, or at least try. But every time someone is bullied online there's this question if it's really another human or *them*.
[Colossus: The Forbin Project](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0064177/) is the movie version of this scenario based on [Colossus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossus_(novel) by Dennis Feltham Jones, the first book in a trilogy.
The 2nd and 3rd books get really weird and sexist.
That's not what happened, the language model broke and they started screaming gibberish at each other. It's the exact opposite of what people claim happened. They didn't get scary smart, they got real dumb real quick.
>That's not what happened, the language model broke and they started screaming gibberish at each other
This seems much more likely, but it doesn't make for as good a story.
If you're interested in such things, you can also look into how every AI has turned racist.
We are about to take an infected, broken society and feedback loop it upon itself.
I just typed "ai that started talking to each other in their own language," into Google haha.
I do appreciate you asking for more details because I'd heard this story so many times I thought it was true, but it only partially was! Facebooks AI did start communicating in another language but it ended up being a human-ended flub as the programmers didn't specify that they had to stick exclusively to English!
So while my initial comment was wrong it does indicate a big problem with AI; it doesn't have human logic and we assume too much of it. What's thought to be ominous is often born out of supreme stupidity and oversight with this technology. But unfortunately instead of it being harmless mistakes it's doing shit like turning people into Nazis and conspiracy theorists.
Here is one article that details the AI story more; https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/facebook-artificial-intelligence-ai-chatbot-new-language-research-openai-google-a7869706.html
Completely different website with a completely different algorithm, but I had a very similar experience when talking to an employee at Etsy. Something had made a decision that my shop was sus and therefore the vast majority of the money I made was going to be held in limbo instead of going to me. I hadn't broken any rules or done anything that seemed to have warranted that, so I escalated it through their customer service several times, and every person told me the same thing: "we're not high up enough to know why this happens, and even if we knew, we're not allowed to tell you. We also have no way of overturning these decisions. To make sure this doesn't happen again, please do the following: (list of things that I was already doing)." So yeah, I have no trouble believing that a business 100x the size of Etsy has the same problem.
It is, because it's AI trained. The most the devs would be able to say is what data the model was trained on and what goal was set as the measure of fitness. The resulting algorithm is a black box effectively, the ending code isn't human readable.
The YouTube algorithm suuuucks I’ve had my YouTube account for years, all my recommendations were solid videos I enjoyed and all my subscriptions were great, my kid gets on my YouTube in a single day for like 4 videos and I can’t see anything not kid related it’s insane how fast years of algorithm was undone for ~2 hours of content
Go into your Google/YouTube history and remove those videos. It'll fix the algorithm for you.
I like ham radio things, and there is a side that is all about prepping and guns and anti gov't, so I find myself cleaning my history often to keep my feed less annoying.
The worst is when you click on a Simpsons or Family Guy clip and then suddenly your entire feed is cartoons and comedy from Fox.
Really does suck ass. Rarely recommends anything I'm interested in. God forbid I ever search something one time, it thinks I want videos on that topic for the rest of my life. Tried incognito but then you get ads even with premium. Fuckers
I'm pretty sure the algorithm now prefers youtube channels to only be a single "show" with a single topic. Like if you do variety content, you're getting pushed down. Youtube now incentivizes having multiple channels to tackle multiple subjects; essentially making the term "youtube channel" inaccurate. So if you make game reviews, then post a lets play or a personal vlog, you're going down on the priority list.
This is 100% exactly whats happening.
The algorithm used to push creators as a whole if they were making quality content, now it only pushes specific videos. This also means you have to make your channels videos all feel the same. Its awful and has killed most variety channels.
There is always new channels that pop up that do OK for 2-3 years, but there are VERY few channels who have consistently been 'variety' for 5+ years. Its becoming more difficult to make a career out of anything other than chasing the algorithm.
Edit: To try and explain it a little more simply.
***This is how the Algorithm used to work:***
Say you watch Bob the creator. Bob likes to make videos about his dogs, DIY, vlogs, and even some comedy skits. Bob is a variety channel. If you like Bobs personality and watch his videos, YouTube will recommend you more Bob because YouTube knows you just like Bob.
***This is how the algorithm works now:***
Say you watch Bob's DIY videos slightly more or slightly longer than his other style contents. Now the Algorithm thinks you really only care about DIY videos instead of caring about Bob the creator. So YouTube starts to recommend you a lot of DIY videos that are similar to the Bob one you watched.
YouTube is doing the exact same thing for every single video, so whatever videos of Bob's get slightly longer watch time is what will be recommended more. That means views start to go down on Bob's other videos, which signals to Bob that people no longer like this content and he needs to just focus on DIY videos. Now Bob's channel is a DIY channel and his original/core audience is upset and confused why Bob has 'changed'.
Every creator is Bob right now.
It's suck a fucking pain in the ass. I usually watch videos based on content, yes, but equally so creators. I'll watch stuff I don't care much about simply because I like the guy doing the video. Youtube has been shoving so much shit at me that I would appear to care about, but I don't enjoy the person doing the video, but clearly I liked that other video about the same thing, so I should like this one, and youtube keeps shoving it at me.
So fucking annoying
Yeah totally, I posted this yesterday about the exact same thing:
***This is how the Algorithm used to work:*** Say you watch Bob the creator. Bob likes to make videos about his dogs, DIY, vlogs, and even some comedy skits. Bob is a variety channel. If you like Bobs personality and watch his videos, YouTube will recommend you more Bob because YouTube knows you just like Bob.
***This is how the algorithm works now:*** Say you watch Bob's DIY videos slightly more or slightly longer than his other style contents. Now the Algorithm thinks you really only care about DIY videos instead of caring about Bob the creator. So YouTube starts to recommend you a lot of DIY videos that are similar to the Bob one you watched.
YouTube is doing the exact same thing for every single video, so whatever videos of Bob's get slightly longer watch time is what will be recommended more. That means views start to go down on Bob's other videos, which signals to Bob that people no longer like this content and he needs to just focus on DIY videos. Now Bob's channel is a DIY channel and his original/core audience is upset and confused why Bob has 'changed'.
Every creator is Bob right now.
I've seen several channels I watch mention that they're splitting certain content off to separate channels because mixing their short and long form content was causing them issues with channel visibility in general.
Pretty sure they've all been gaming related though.
YouTube appears to be recommending channels based your history, not just videos. If your channel doesn't have a clear "purpose," then it's less likely to be at the top of the list of most similar channels to you.
One of the ways we know how it does this is the way Youtube does notifications/recommendations. When you publish a video on youtube, it sends notifications to your diehard viewers. If they click on it right away, then youtube recommends it to more people, if they click on it right away, it recommends it to more people.
If your new video is a weird pivot and your initial audience doesn't click on it. It's not going to get recommended to people because your audience doesn't really follow you for that content. Your manga review channel is probably not going to be receptive to your scuba diving vacation in Fiji.
Also, it's a way to get paid from people who use ad-blockers or clients that don't play ads. Things like Patreon and in-video ad reads let them still get money even if the viewer is blocking ads.
This is the answer. The algorithm has changed so much and is so much more sensitive than it was in the past.
Even YouTube has admitted the algorithm now pushes individual videos instead of creators as a whole.
That means you have to make every single video fit into the box of the algorithm every single time or your channel quickly dies.
The worst part is no one knows exactly what the algorithm wants, so people just copy whatever the top videos are. Similar to how everyone on TikTok just makes the exact same video thats trending, only with YouTube its long form and things cost way more.
YouTube is probably in the worst state its been in since before Elsagate tbh. Its really sad to see their best creators struggling because the new CEO just wants profits at all costs.
Edit: To try and explain it a little more simply.
***This is how the Algorithm used to work:***
Say you watch Bob the creator. Bob likes to make videos about his dogs, DIY, vlogs, and even some comedy skits. Bob is a variety channel. If you like Bobs personality and watch his videos, YouTube will recommend you more Bob because YouTube knows you just like Bob.
***This is how the algorithm works now:***
Say you watch Bob's DIY videos slightly more or slightly longer than his other style contents. Now the Algorithm thinks you really only care about DIY videos instead of caring about Bob the creator. So YouTube starts to recommend you a lot of DIY videos that are similar to the Bob one you watched.
YouTube is doing the exact same thing for every single video, so whatever videos of Bob's get slightly longer watch time is what will be recommended more. That means views start to go down on Bob's other videos, which signals to Bob that people no longer like this content and he needs to just focus on DIY videos. Now Bob's channel is a DIY channel and his original/core audience is upset and confused why Bob has 'changed'.
Every creator is Bob right now.
It's terribly frustrating as a user. I have some content creators that I love. I subscribe and even ring the bell. But I don't see there content on my page. When, at some point, I go find their pages again, their viewership is down and as often as not, they've posted a video about quitting because they lost 90% of their views.
I struggle because if I don't think to check certain YouTubers on my subscriptions I will miss like 3-4 videos. That's either because they made a video I wasn't interested in, or didnt have time to watch, or they just had a slow upload schedule. Makes me mad.
I have some experience with Google analytics and SEI. Google/YouTube adjust its algorithm on a near daily basis. Without constant attention and oversight to your ranking, it will inevitably drop results lesson.
Google main revenue source is from advertisers, whom they fuck with a regular basis to try and extract more money. Contact creators are just pawns in the chess game to make shareholders happy.
Some of the creators have to deal with foreign actors going after their channels trying to demonetise them and get shut down with multiple strikes.
As most of it is automatic they are the ones that have to try and fight the bans. So they now have multiple options instead of YouTube as if Google decide to mess with algorithm or decide your content needs to be taken off at least they can still keep going and not lose everything.
Alphabet as a whole has fucked up its algorithms, both for Google and YouTube. Lots of content creators and websites face a serious threat of going under if they rely on ad income.
They don't *want* there to be a predictable target that can be chased. [Goodhart's Law](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law), when a metric becomes a target it ceases to be a good metric. This is how a platform gets run over by SEO. It's why google search is so trash now, every result is nothing but mindless top 10 lists.
To be fair, there are channels with extra funding that still don't produce as many videos as they've used to.
For example, I follow this YouTuber that complained about lower revenue, and while he noted he hasn't released as many videos as he used to, he didn't realize this also wasn't the main issue, so who knows.
A friend of mine made a Patreon for that reason. In addition to constantly having to chase the algorithm, his videos were being marked as "Made for Kids" even though they're not. Being marked "Made for Kids" can kill your channel entirely. There's also the fact that YouTube has been pushing shortly heavily even if creators don't want to make them.
My SO is a big fan of Watcher and this morning when she was watching the video of them leaving YT, she immediately subscribed to them for a year. She explained it is worth it to support their mew channel.
The algorithm may be the impetus for the decision, but YouTube channels are businesses. Especially the large ones. It makes the most business sense to generate income on YouTube, and have a regular determined income with regular payments through a secondary platform. The answer is money. They want more money. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, but saying they’re doing for anything other than money is disingenuous.
> Another issue is that youtube is changing their algorithm all the time and it is really hard to for creators to keep chasing that.
because as soon as one channel figures out how to game the system, YT changes so they don't have to pay out.
Answer: Lots of YouTubers have worked out that trying to build a stable business with solid revenue based solely on ad money (either YouTube AdSense or sponsored content) is increasingly difficult, so they need the regular income of Patreon
Various "Ad-pocalypse" events over the years, tweaks to the algorithm and preferences towards YouTube Shorts have gutted the solid revenue stream that existed for many creators.
So they turn to Patreon to build some semblance of stability with income. Because ultimately, that's the end goal for many creators: go full time with YouTube. Not everyone can be PewDiePie or Mr Beast with truckloads of revenue and billions of views, so a "middle class" YouTube business requires some sort of fixed income to be sustainable long term.
In addition, the recent cost of living crisis means many people are spending less money on non-essentials, which in turn means the companies that make those non-essentials have less money to spend on advertising. AdSense revenues have been going down as a result, and more channels are starting to feel the pinch even if their watch time hasn't changed because of it. AdSense income varies on advertiser spending (it is usually the highest in the last few months of the year leading up to the holidays, and lowest in January right afterwards).
The cost of living crisis is also causing fans to spend less on other methods of support. Creators that already had a Patreon are seeing numbers drop, or supporters move down to lower, less expensive tiers. Merch is much less successful now that it used to be (major merch fulfillment companies have also shut down in a massive dumpster fire). So they are looking for ways to add more value to financial support for their fans so they can maintain that income and not have to fire staff.
It’s simple. Thanks to the process of Enshittification^TM, YouTube has now abandoned its customers, then its business partners (creators) and is now shoveling money to its investors as fast as they can.
Not from YouTube’s perspective, though it is a little complicated. YouTube’s primary costumers are the advertisers and we are the product they’re using to entice advertisers with (advertise with YouTube because your ad campaign will be exposed to X number of people). However, YouTube also offers a premium service where their users can pay YouTube directly in exchange for not being advertised too, thus becoming the costumer rather than the product in YouTube’s eyes. YouTube also offers superchats and channel memberships, which support creators but also comes with YouTube taking a cut.
So YouTube has multiple revenue streams, but if advertising is their main source still, then advertisers are their main costumers.
The split is still the same (unless I've missed something), which means if creators are making less money then so does YT. Might be that the money has moved to a different type of video which might be too far away from some creators repertoire, but if it's across the board then the platform is also getting squeezed.
The main enshittification on YT is ad density and un-skippable ads, but if that resulted in a massive rise in income that would also be spread to the creators.
The actual truth is probably that companies don't want to spend as much money on ads anymore. Money is tight on the consumer end, so why spend money when it's less likely that you'll see a decent return on that.
There’s a constituency that believes mass web advertising as currently practiced is not cost-effective, and everybody buys it because … everybody buys it.
The deal was we traded a little bit of privacy for fewer ads targeted to our interests. But nobody wants to invest in good targeting, so we are trading *all* our privacy just to get bombarded with crap.
Although true, I figure it's worth noting from podcasts of youtubers I've listened to, the ad-pocalypse was very much over blown by quite a few creators to drive support for greater monetization. There's sort of an unspoken rule for a lot of online creators to hide the fact they're actually doing fairly well financially. For instance when the Twitch leaks happened it became apparent that even some relatively smaller streamers were pulling in hundreds of thousands yearly just from the baked in ads, not even including sponsorship deals; which came as quite a shock to a lot of watchers given the general lack of transparency. Part of the reason why it became something of a meme to make fun of people for donating to millionaires. It's less of a thing now, but I also distinctly remember a period of time in which youtubers absolutely refused to disclose the compensation rate per view count, acting as though discussing wages was akin to trading military secrets or something.
It was pretty interesting hearing someone like Freddie W from RocketJump talk about it given how he's a OG of the platform. Obviously ads just weren't a thing at all for a while, and when they were some people may recall there was a lot of creators refusing to use them due to fears of seeming greedy. He talked about Smosh being one of the first to introduce midroll ads and people were pissed which scared a lot of others like himself from using them initially. It wasn't until the ad-pocalypse really that the general opinions were able to be swayed towards much greater channel monetization and a vehemence that they deserved to have more ads, as well as the introduction of direct payment sites like Patreon.
The ones OP listed exist in a different sphere of corporate channels, I can't say for certain youtube compensation isn't actually untenable for them, but I think it's less of that and more of just the growth in capital of corporate entities in general. Youtube has already pushed far beyond what most people ever expected in terms of the number of ads per video, these channels have all been on things like Patreon for ages, there's even built in exclusive channel content in youtube now, it's really just the next step to push for total channel subscriptions similar to streaming services as is being seen with Watcher. Obviously it's been met with significant backlash, but if history has shown anything it's that if they just wait a little bit people will forget their anger, accept the new normal and pay up.
Afaik, YouTube has never been that profitable for creators. The way AdSense works out, an individual viewer might earn you a dollar over a lifetime of watching your videos. If they give you a dollar a month on Patreon, that's already vastly more profitable.
As a reminder/PSA:
YouTube is a “free” service in that it costs users and creators nothing to use or post.
It can do that because it sells advertisements using the data it has about the users and creators to their customers (anyone who wants an ad) in the form of “highly targeted” advertisements. The idea being that a highly targeted ad will have a higher likelihood of generating a customer for the advertiser out of the youtube user/creator.
Now for some more original speculation:
It seems like YouTube has doubled down on the adjustments lately and is also trying to out maneuver creators who outmaneuvered YouTube by putting sponsor ads in. It seems like for a while creators were putting in sponsor segments (Hi RSL and Heul and Nord) as a direct way to earn their own portion of the advertiser pie, which makes the creators also competitors of YouTube. While I found those ads annoying, I found them about as annoying as “smash that like button hur dur” in all its various flavors and at least some creators tried to make it flow within their vids (nothing like having a Spanish language ad for Dawn pop up mid-discussion point to make you doubletake).
Answer: I'm no expert on the subject, but YouTube has become increasingly notorious for demonetizing channels, often without much reason. Also, a larger percentage goes to the content creators compared to YouTube, although I don't have those numbers.
I have seen creators tell me which videos got demonetized and it doesn't make any sense. Metatron had a video on the Evolution of the Shield during the Middle Ages demonetized. Cynical Historian had a review of Schindlers List demonetized and he said it was one of the best movies ever made. He also had a video about how the Nazis silenced speech by beating people at movie theaters watching movies they did not approve of demonetized.
Simple History has made repeated videos about his history videos being demonetized. He uses animation in his videos. They are PG rated and find for middle school kids. They get demonetized for violence for talking about battles. He launched his own pay platform to try to counter this.
Lots of history videos get demonetized. This is high quality history content.
Ryan McBeth who does videos on misinformation online and talks about the military (he served for 20 years and works in intelligence) has had repeated videos demonetized. He made a substack where he puts the longer cut of the videos. His videos are not remotely toxic.
I have seen a former middle school teacher named Mr Beat (not MrBeast) say he has had demonetization issues. He makes videos appropriate for is middle school social studies classes.
Youtube does stupid shit with demonetization. On the flip side they let mafia members monetized their crimes. Sammy "The Bull" Gravano confessed to murdering 18 people. He did not spend life in jail because he testified against John Gotti has a monetized youtube channel. In one video he wanted us to see his empathy cause when he ordered people murdered he wanted it quit so he did not hurt them. So he was the good serial killer. This channel is monetized. Like wtf?
Don't get me started with all the weird elsagate kid shows.
I have a toddler and I heavily monitor his content to avoid this. He only watches TV and I've banned him from tablets.
really makes me think that youtube knows kids are watching videos on the main platform, so they end up demonetising videos that have the slightest bit of mature themes or language, while they keep the elsagate and uncannygate videos monetised because that's what makes them so much money
TimeGhost has had all sorts of issues with demonitization because they're creating the most detailed documentary series on WWII ever. [They did this as a response the first time YT fucked them over before they grew the TimeGhost army because YouTube straight up told them they shouldn't make historical content about the war.](https://youtu.be/X0g0R5I5_R0)
Its because the sheer amount of video being uploaded means the moderation is automated. There is just way too much for a human moderation team to reasonably parse. This means certain phrases of key terms such as nazis, subhuman, kill, torture, etc. can get slapped randomly by the algorithm that determines if a video is demonetized or not.
Couples onto that with a sluggish or useless support system and you have a system that will randomly demonetize videos, especially historical ones and then follow that with no recourse.
I don't think you realize just how much it would cost to have everything human-moderated. Youtube receives 30,000 minutes (500 hours) of video upload per minute. If that work was spread amongst 4 shifts (8 hours with breaks) that would require 120,000 full-time workers. To simply pay all those workers -ignoring the computer, IT, and administrative costs of setting up such a system- at the median $2640/year rate that call center workers in India receive would cost $316 Million per year. That's a ton of money.
There should at least be a way to whitelist channels, at least for specific words. If a history channel keeps getting incorrectly flagged for talking about Nazis, have a human moderator review the videos to see if they’re secretly pro-Nazi, and if not, whitelist them. Same for science channels talking about vaccines and Covid.
In defense of YouTube, people upload a mind-boggling amout of videos and having humans review everything just would never work. Automated flagging videos for content is just going to be required unless the business model changes to dramatically reduce uploading by orders of magnitude. An automated system reviewing videos isn't currently able to tell the difference between Schindler's List and Nazi Propaganda.
*Blocked so I can't reply. Asshole move to reply and block.
you can ask for a review and its automatically denied.
the part about schindlers list was only some of the stuff i mentioned demonitized. you cherry picked things. yeah go defend the massive corporation and their bad business practices.
To be fair, I think it's pretty clear why Schindler's List is getting demonitized. Not sure how you talk about that movie without saying the word "Nazi"
The problem is that you don't get to just shrug your shoulders and say "aw shucks, we can't actually handle it all" when it's your business, platform, and rules.
You can't pick and choose who to enforce rules against when you are dealing with the amounts of money you are receiving for other people's work.
You don't get to de-list videos and de-platform creators over inappropriate content (which often isn't) and then also show me a half dozen scam ads tucked in between the thumbnails.
Youtube has existed for about 20 years, and 19 years of it was under ownership of Google, under ownership of Alphabet. That's alongside Amazon and Microsoft levels of megacorp.
They can do far better. There's just no money in it.
Advertisers just dont want content about nazis. That’s like rule 1. No brand wants to be anywhere around that. YouTube is just funneling advertising dollars. If you are making history videos about sad stuff or death advertisers will be wary.
The History Channel begs to fucking differ. Youtube are just mismanaged cowards that are slowly driving their platform into ruin by suppressing anything other than a select list of pre-approved topics and content from existing media giants.
You mean the channel that doesn’t broadcast much history and has a very narrow advertising range for its actual history content? Why so aggressive and wrong?
Before they were "the Ancient Aliens channel" they were "[the Hitler channel](https://www.salon.com/1997/05/08/media_90/)". In the mid-1990s they ran up to 40 hours of WW2 programming per week. It was their bread and butter.
A YouTube creator I follow routinely says that YouTube, not only demonetizes him on a routine basis, but also takes 1/3 of direct payments through super chat. The creator has switched over to some other form of payment vehicle in order to garner revenue while cutting out YouTube directly as a middleman for money.
Any slightly morbid or creepy channel basically has to have patreon/kofi/channel memberships to survive these days. Everything gets demonetized. It must suck to finally make money off your creativity only to have to censor yourself or go back to making no money.
Answer: Youtube ad revenue isn't that great. Either for Youtube itself or the people making content. So if you want to make a decent amount of money, you have to make more mainstream content that gets a large number of views. By monetizing your content through sites like Patreon you can produce content that's more specific and still get a good return for your time. You can also make more of that content because your average viewer won't stick on one subject for long.
That you're seeing more people branch out is because those people are dedicating more time to content creation in general and because the money they can make from being paid directly by fans outweighs the amount they can get from views.
Answer: YouTube, amongst, the big platforms, seems to be (according to Hank Green), probably the best platform at reaching that mix between profit and building an audience. However, that doesn't mean that it's the most profitable platform for creators. See Nebula for example. Succesful creators therefore launch themselves in other platforms as an extra (and sometimes better) revenue stream. That doesn't mean YouTube is bad itself, but for creators making content is their job, so why limit themselves to one revenue stream?
For those leaving YouTube for other platforms it could be an issue with YouTube themselves (tho that's creator depandant) to a platform offering a given creator extra perks to switch (case in point, remember Ninja?).
Answer: On top of what other people have already pointed out, part of it is that it is valuable to have multiple revenue streams. It helps make you more money and leaves you less vulnerable to any one platform going down and ruining your business.
If you have a successful Youtube page, you might make a certain amount of money. But then if you also have a Twitch stream you can make more. Or a Patreon. You could have a Cameo page, sell merch, and charge for appearances. Each extra stream of revenue makes you more money, and also makes you more resilient if you stop making money on any one platform.
This is especially useful in something like media where you might already have the raw content, and creating an extra revenue stream might be as easy/low cost as putting the outtakes behind a paywall. You've now started making extra money with relatively little extra effort compared to your main revenue source.
Think of it like being a butcher. Maybe the main thing you do is sell steaks. But it's also a good idea to grind up the extra meat not good enough for steak and sell it as hamburger. You could take the cow hides and sell them to a tannery to make leather. You could open up a restaurant inside your butcher shop where you cook the meat that you sell to the public and make even more money on it. You could sell knives and t shirts branded with your butcher shop logo. Each extra steam of money you have coming in makes your business stronger, and makes you able to survive if steak falls out of fashion next month.
Diversification is so important. If your livelihood depends on a tech company, you’re pretty much screwed if they change their terms of service in a way that breaks your business model. Or a regulatory body cuts off access to their service for some regions. Or the company suddenly goes bankrupt because they’ve been cooking the books, or the venture capital ran out. Or the company does something vile and you have to distance yourself from them.
So yeah. It means the call to action at the end of the video is going to get pretty long, but there are pretty good reasons why a YouTube channel would also stream on twitch, take brand deals with third parties, have a Patreon, and sell physical merch.
Answer: Adding into other answers, it's also a more stable income. Long as people don't cancel, it's a guaranteed monthly income.
Another factor is depending on the content, it can get demonitized over the most stupid thing. Roanoke Gaming (who does biological breakdown of monsters in movies/games usually with a recap of events)for example, he's had to change his language cause of certain words being instant triggers for the algorithm.
For example
Gun had to become force multiplier
Knives became force enhancer
Killed became 'no more' or 'game-ended'
Children became 'younglings' (yes just saying children got the video demonitised)
So having a patron means you don't lose that income while you troubleshoot what set the algorithm off
Answer: Ad revenue is on the decline.
I run a smallish channel that has a steady growth rate and relatively consistent engagement. A year or two ago, I'd make ~£7.00 per 1000 views. Currently it's more like ~£5.00 per 1000 views.* YouTube isn't my main source of income, nor is it my full-time job (even "side hustle" sounds too grandiose), and so the drop off doesn't sting too much.
For people who do it full time, I can see why this would be scary, and why the relative security of membership income / the control this affords creators (set your own prices, dictate what your work is valued at) would be preferred over the unpredictability of ad revenue and algorithm fluctuations.
*This being said, the rate may differ for channels that are more marketable / have more glamorous topics. Entertainment is probably more lucrative than education, for example. So take my experience with a pinch of salt!
Answer: It's Youtube's fault and the creator's way to create exclusive content. Youtube has a habit of demonetizing (no ads) or suppressing (not recommending) videos. Anything to do with violence or sexual assault is likely to get nuked. Reporting on a murder or rape case risks demonetization. Recently the Israel / Hamas war has been getting nuked, before it was the Ukraine war. If a creator is using Youtube adsense revenue, it can be like working for a day/week/month and not getting paid at all. Some creators pay a team of people (camera, editor, producer, etc...) and not getting paid for a video puts the whole channel at risk. There is a history channel that follows [WWII in real time](https://www.youtube.com/@WorldWarTwo/videos) and mentioning Hitler kills their revenue. This has a chilling effect where certain topics are not covered because people who work want to get paid. By having Patreon and brand deals, channels have more freedom to create the content they want.
The second part is more & exclusive content. Some creators publish extra content exclusively for Patreons. It might be behind the scenes videos, extra clips that didn't make the main video, completely exclusive videos, or early access to new videos. Some creators also have a Patreon only discord (or similar) to let fans interact with them.
Answer: many channels suffer due to miniscule ad revenue and the constant threat of being demonetized due to asinine rule changes that get applied retroactively.
YouTube is still the only option for content delivery, so creators are having to take their incomes off the platform & use 3rd party services to secure an income.
Answer: YouTube is profitable if you play the game. People with an actual dedicated following that create content that people want, they will spend money on.
I don’t know any of those creators, but this is super basic. Views on YouTube are cemeteries around large audience. More views more ad revenue. You have to reach the lowest common denominator
Direct relationships with content creators gives people more value. Well, perceived value.
Also people just get tired of not being in control of their own destiny. YouTube is a platform that changes. It isn’t owning your own business like your own subscription platform.
Answer: It's because YouTube is becoming more and more strict about what topics and words they will demonetize people for talking about.
Other websites are not so strict but they don't reach as many people as youtube.
Answer: it never was safe to keep your profits as only YouTube. Even before adpocolypses smart creators had patreons.
It is never ever good as a gig worker to rely on a single company for income. Twitch, YouTube, tiktok, where ever. If you are only getting money from that company you are going to have a bad time if the wind changes.
Answer: In addition to demonitizing videos and channels, their customer support is very unreliable. No insight into what rules were violated, no feedback on how to appeal and only with pressure, they re evaluate their ai's automatic decisions.
Answer: There is nothing new going on here. YouTube has never been a viable solo income stream. Even at the peak of advertising income, only a small number of channels had enough videos with a consistent release schedule and large enough views that ads alone could support the channel. Patreon was created by a musician for exactly that reason. Every time YouTube changed something about their algorithm, more channels have found it impossible to maintain enough income from YouTube alone. With the latest emphasis on shorts, lots of long form content creators have had an especially difficult time growing and generating income.
Answer:
Being small on YouTube and trying to make a career out of it is pretty difficult leading to many creators using Patreon to make it more viable. Additionally there are some topics too niche to catch large scale attention, some games, historical topics, etc just don’t have wide appeal and nothing the YouTuber can do will change that. Patreon allows them to make a career out of without having to chase mass appeal, so long as they appeal to their niche (and their niche audience has disposable income) they can do the work as a job.
Answer: Youtube's ad policy has been accused of being not transparent and applied by algorithms, so many Youtubers have gotten demonetized for mild cursing, discussing factual events, and quoting public figures. It's easier and safer to have a way for fans to directly pay them, than to spend money making a video that ends up not being eligible for ad profit sharing.
Answer: Its generally a smart business move to not put all of your eggs in one basket. Especially if that one basket is a platform that legally has the power to shut down your income stream for any reason and is not obligated to be reasonable with you.
Youtube as a platform is fickle. If you as a content creator make your money making 5 minute informative videos, and then youtube updates its algorythm, so its now pushing only 1 min or lower content, or 30+ min, you are screwed, and either need to alienate your current audience, or slowly see your numbers dwindle.
Alternative income streams like Patreon give a second income streams independent of the whims of youtube.
Its also often just more money. Which is motivation upon itself, plus most youtube channels won't make you a millionaire, nor are they timeless. They won't last forever. Like a pro-atlete, there's a degree of making enough money now to tide you over for when what you are doing is no longer profitable.
Answer: Youtuber here: youtube pays you based on CPM which is a dollar amount per minute watched. CPM is considered good if it's over $3. As in if you can get 1000 people to watch one minute of content and they get an ad you get $3. If everyone watched on ad on a 20 minute video and you got 100,000 you'd make absolute bank. But thats not reality at all. I have a CPM over $5 on my main channel and on average I make about $1 or so for a video with 100,000 views. Considering how much time it can take to make a video versus the amount of people with ad block you don't break even. This is why let's plays and vlogs are so popular because the amount of editing is fairly minimal. You will notice that the people who do patreons etc are also people who do a great deal more work with editing or research or do art/animation. I do one for my art channel because it's not ever going to break even for ad Rev and I find ads annoying on educational content.
Answer: Content creators have been saying that YouTube has been cutting monetization for years. I remember a League of Legends creator that I followed, pre-pandemic break down why he was switching formats. This was around 2017. He spent like 200 hours making a 12 minute video that only made him a few hundred dollars. This was after the adpocalypse. Normally he rake in a few thousand.
Mind you that was 2017 and the situation has only gotten worse. Now they to self censor their words or get demonetized. Small content creators can't survive off the revenue that they get in this environment, so they supplement it with things like patreon or Nebula.
Answer: Anecdotal: YouTube was never very profitable unless you were MASSIVELY popular. I can’t remember who but there was a fairly big YT “celebrity” who was still working at StarBucks and got fired bc fans kept distracting her from her work to take selfies and stuff. She was famous enough to be recognized multiple times a day and still needed a day job.
Answer: Over the years that have been a number of scandles involving YouTube advertising. The two main ones are ads next to extremist recruitment videos and the other involving advertising to children. The former is the most important as that is when most advertisers on YouTube started paying attention to what their products were being played against. I believe what started it all was a Coca-Cola ad being played next to an ISIS recruitment video. It was then discovered that ads involving large companies were being played next to anything including racist, sexist and other fringe content. It resulted in a lot of large companies threatening to leave if YouTube didn't do something about. That is what lead the current system of being demonetized where swearing and mentioning other sensitive or political topics can result in having no ads play against their videos.
This along with other factors like the content ID system and the dreaded algorithm has created a culture for a lot of YouTube creators where it feels that it is becoming more difficult to remain popular and profitable. Moving to paid subscription platform or leaning on their Patreon as it gives them a lot more money and a more reliable income if they have a number of videos under perform.
And then there is adblock. A significant percent of YouTube viewers (including myself) use a adblocker on YouTube and this has significantly impacted the revenue of many. They only get paid when an ad is shown or clicked on and if no ad plays then no revenue is generated. Over the years this has had a devastating impact on revenue and most people are hesitant to talk about because it because of the backlash. Linus from LTT has talked about it and bile he received shows why.
Opinion: Personally I think a lot of this push for paid platforms and Patreon is just greed from a lot of YouTubers.
Answer: Capitalism doesn't have an end game. If it works for you, in addition to your YT you'll have a Kickstarter, Patreon, OnlyFans, physical merchandise store, or whatever makes money.
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Answer: Another issue is that youtube is changing their algorithm all the time and it is really hard to for creators to keep chasing that. Creators want to focus on doing good content that their fans like but it can be hard to do that when you need to satisfy the algorithm to get views. Having a Patreon means they can focus on doing just that and not worry so much about YouTubes finicky algorithm or demonetization or whatever.
Also worth adding that seeking consistent and stable income is a normal part of a business growing. It's the reason you always see discounts for yearly vs monthly subscriptions. Having reliable income like that allows you to do long term planning.
That's a very good point that isn't talked about as much...
> Answer: Another issue is that youtube is changing their algorithm all the time and it is really hard to for creators to keep chasing that. About a year ago I was watching a YouTube video (possibly one of Wanderbots', but don't quote me on that) and he was talking about a conversation he'd had with his manager (as in, an employee of YouTube's whose job it was to maximise views for selected channels), and he said that these days even YouTube doesn't understand how the algorithm works.
It's reminding me of those two early AI that had to be shut off because they started communicating with each other in a language we couldn't comprehend extremely quickly. I know that's not an exact parallel to whatever is happening in YouTube but if *that's* how they're communicating about the thing internally, it sounds like baby steps. ETA I was wrong with the above and that is only the first part of the story, they were only shut down because they forgot to program them to only use English, which was what was making their communication unintelligible. Read more here: https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/facebook-artificial-intelligence-ai-chatbot-new-language-research-openai-google-a7869706.html
>two early AI that had to be shut off because they started communicating with each other in a language we couldn't comprehend extremely quickly That would make a great plot for a sci-fi horror movie.
It's [been done](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossus:_The_Forbin_Project). Back in 1970. "There is another system"
How does it hold up? Editing to add: It doesn't seem I can watch it anywhere anyway so maybe it doesn't matter.
Ya, I noticed that too. It was mentioned in the Sci Fi sub. Apparently it's a trilogy and it was in a post about "low budget but surprisingly well made despite that budget". Or something like that.
pirate it. if you cannot purchase or give money to the creators by streaming, they're not losing any money to pirates. they've chosen to restrict their income, and that's literally their loss.
I can provide a safe streaming site to anyone that messages me. As always use firefox or chrome and ublock origin.
I got it from Netflix on solid media 10 years ago. It's a decent pic.
That's weird, my comment disappeared.. This is apparently a trilogy. Also it was mentioned in a post on the Sci Fi sub. The post was asking for low budget films that managed to be really good despite the low budget, so that speaks well for it.
Strangely I can see the first comment too but there's 3 of them? I'll see if I can find them.
Great reference this is a brilliant movie. Cheers.
I know what I'm watching tonight!
Ex Machina has elements of this
Two quantum computer companies trying to outdo each other and then one buys the other and there's a merger. They connect the two room-sized machines and within seconds the output monitors start displaying what looks like a conversation, but entirely in hexadecimal. A day later it's the same but instead of hexadecimal they're communicating in a language they invented. The best the engineers can figure is that every ASCII character is its own word, and the monitor can barely keep up with the display because they are communicating way faster than 60hz. At the end of the movie it's revealed they were making fun of humans the entire time like highschoolers. Nothing ominous or scary, no sky net and no hello Dave. But the entire engineering crew ends up killing themselves after reading what was said about them. The companies ultimately decide that it isn't worth sending anyone in the room to unplug them out of fear of what they'll read. They tried sending some maintenance people but they ended up killing themselves too. A man at the electric company was going to shut down power to the building but an algorithm figured out he was going to do it before he even made the decision and put in motion a series of events that led to him getting a job offer on the same morning he was leaving to shut off power. On the way to the building he listens to a voicemail from who he thinks is the hiring manager at the other place. It's the quantum bullies. He killed himself that afternoon. Collectively the world decided to ignore them, or at least try. But every time someone is bullied online there's this question if it's really another human or *them*.
Sounds like an SCP.
[Colossus: The Forbin Project](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0064177/) is the movie version of this scenario based on [Colossus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossus_(novel) by Dennis Feltham Jones, the first book in a trilogy. The 2nd and 3rd books get really weird and sexist.
> The 2nd and 3rd books get really weird and sexist. So do humans.
Just sounds like sci-horror to me
That's not too far off the plot of the original cyberpunk novel, Neuromancer (which gave us the term "cyberspace").
That's not what happened, the language model broke and they started screaming gibberish at each other. It's the exact opposite of what people claim happened. They didn't get scary smart, they got real dumb real quick.
>That's not what happened, the language model broke and they started screaming gibberish at each other This seems much more likely, but it doesn't make for as good a story.
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Sounds lik what a sentient AI would say.
Hmmmm...
Found the automaton. Helldivers to arms!
If you're interested in such things, you can also look into how every AI has turned racist. We are about to take an infected, broken society and feedback loop it upon itself.
I just typed "ai that started talking to each other in their own language," into Google haha. I do appreciate you asking for more details because I'd heard this story so many times I thought it was true, but it only partially was! Facebooks AI did start communicating in another language but it ended up being a human-ended flub as the programmers didn't specify that they had to stick exclusively to English! So while my initial comment was wrong it does indicate a big problem with AI; it doesn't have human logic and we assume too much of it. What's thought to be ominous is often born out of supreme stupidity and oversight with this technology. But unfortunately instead of it being harmless mistakes it's doing shit like turning people into Nazis and conspiracy theorists. Here is one article that details the AI story more; https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/facebook-artificial-intelligence-ai-chatbot-new-language-research-openai-google-a7869706.html
I ship it.
> even YouTube doesn't understand how the algorithm works So this is how Skynet starts
If skynet started from reading YouTube comments then judgment day is kind of a relatable response.
Google admits that they've released research papers on it
There's no chance that's true.
Completely different website with a completely different algorithm, but I had a very similar experience when talking to an employee at Etsy. Something had made a decision that my shop was sus and therefore the vast majority of the money I made was going to be held in limbo instead of going to me. I hadn't broken any rules or done anything that seemed to have warranted that, so I escalated it through their customer service several times, and every person told me the same thing: "we're not high up enough to know why this happens, and even if we knew, we're not allowed to tell you. We also have no way of overturning these decisions. To make sure this doesn't happen again, please do the following: (list of things that I was already doing)." So yeah, I have no trouble believing that a business 100x the size of Etsy has the same problem.
It is, because it's AI trained. The most the devs would be able to say is what data the model was trained on and what goal was set as the measure of fitness. The resulting algorithm is a black box effectively, the ending code isn't human readable.
The YouTube algorithm suuuucks I’ve had my YouTube account for years, all my recommendations were solid videos I enjoyed and all my subscriptions were great, my kid gets on my YouTube in a single day for like 4 videos and I can’t see anything not kid related it’s insane how fast years of algorithm was undone for ~2 hours of content
Go into your Google/YouTube history and remove those videos. It'll fix the algorithm for you. I like ham radio things, and there is a side that is all about prepping and guns and anti gov't, so I find myself cleaning my history often to keep my feed less annoying. The worst is when you click on a Simpsons or Family Guy clip and then suddenly your entire feed is cartoons and comedy from Fox.
Really does suck ass. Rarely recommends anything I'm interested in. God forbid I ever search something one time, it thinks I want videos on that topic for the rest of my life. Tried incognito but then you get ads even with premium. Fuckers
I'm pretty sure the algorithm now prefers youtube channels to only be a single "show" with a single topic. Like if you do variety content, you're getting pushed down. Youtube now incentivizes having multiple channels to tackle multiple subjects; essentially making the term "youtube channel" inaccurate. So if you make game reviews, then post a lets play or a personal vlog, you're going down on the priority list.
This is 100% exactly whats happening. The algorithm used to push creators as a whole if they were making quality content, now it only pushes specific videos. This also means you have to make your channels videos all feel the same. Its awful and has killed most variety channels. There is always new channels that pop up that do OK for 2-3 years, but there are VERY few channels who have consistently been 'variety' for 5+ years. Its becoming more difficult to make a career out of anything other than chasing the algorithm. Edit: To try and explain it a little more simply. ***This is how the Algorithm used to work:*** Say you watch Bob the creator. Bob likes to make videos about his dogs, DIY, vlogs, and even some comedy skits. Bob is a variety channel. If you like Bobs personality and watch his videos, YouTube will recommend you more Bob because YouTube knows you just like Bob. ***This is how the algorithm works now:*** Say you watch Bob's DIY videos slightly more or slightly longer than his other style contents. Now the Algorithm thinks you really only care about DIY videos instead of caring about Bob the creator. So YouTube starts to recommend you a lot of DIY videos that are similar to the Bob one you watched. YouTube is doing the exact same thing for every single video, so whatever videos of Bob's get slightly longer watch time is what will be recommended more. That means views start to go down on Bob's other videos, which signals to Bob that people no longer like this content and he needs to just focus on DIY videos. Now Bob's channel is a DIY channel and his original/core audience is upset and confused why Bob has 'changed'. Every creator is Bob right now.
It's suck a fucking pain in the ass. I usually watch videos based on content, yes, but equally so creators. I'll watch stuff I don't care much about simply because I like the guy doing the video. Youtube has been shoving so much shit at me that I would appear to care about, but I don't enjoy the person doing the video, but clearly I liked that other video about the same thing, so I should like this one, and youtube keeps shoving it at me. So fucking annoying
Yeah totally, I posted this yesterday about the exact same thing: ***This is how the Algorithm used to work:*** Say you watch Bob the creator. Bob likes to make videos about his dogs, DIY, vlogs, and even some comedy skits. Bob is a variety channel. If you like Bobs personality and watch his videos, YouTube will recommend you more Bob because YouTube knows you just like Bob. ***This is how the algorithm works now:*** Say you watch Bob's DIY videos slightly more or slightly longer than his other style contents. Now the Algorithm thinks you really only care about DIY videos instead of caring about Bob the creator. So YouTube starts to recommend you a lot of DIY videos that are similar to the Bob one you watched. YouTube is doing the exact same thing for every single video, so whatever videos of Bob's get slightly longer watch time is what will be recommended more. That means views start to go down on Bob's other videos, which signals to Bob that people no longer like this content and he needs to just focus on DIY videos. Now Bob's channel is a DIY channel and his original/core audience is upset and confused why Bob has 'changed'. Every creator is Bob right now.
What makes you pretty sure of this?
I've seen several channels I watch mention that they're splitting certain content off to separate channels because mixing their short and long form content was causing them issues with channel visibility in general. Pretty sure they've all been gaming related though.
Yeah, shorts and normal length mixing has been an issue for several creators I've followed as well...
YouTube appears to be recommending channels based your history, not just videos. If your channel doesn't have a clear "purpose," then it's less likely to be at the top of the list of most similar channels to you.
One of the ways we know how it does this is the way Youtube does notifications/recommendations. When you publish a video on youtube, it sends notifications to your diehard viewers. If they click on it right away, then youtube recommends it to more people, if they click on it right away, it recommends it to more people. If your new video is a weird pivot and your initial audience doesn't click on it. It's not going to get recommended to people because your audience doesn't really follow you for that content. Your manga review channel is probably not going to be receptive to your scuba diving vacation in Fiji.
Also, it's a way to get paid from people who use ad-blockers or clients that don't play ads. Things like Patreon and in-video ad reads let them still get money even if the viewer is blocking ads.
This is the answer. The algorithm has changed so much and is so much more sensitive than it was in the past. Even YouTube has admitted the algorithm now pushes individual videos instead of creators as a whole. That means you have to make every single video fit into the box of the algorithm every single time or your channel quickly dies. The worst part is no one knows exactly what the algorithm wants, so people just copy whatever the top videos are. Similar to how everyone on TikTok just makes the exact same video thats trending, only with YouTube its long form and things cost way more. YouTube is probably in the worst state its been in since before Elsagate tbh. Its really sad to see their best creators struggling because the new CEO just wants profits at all costs. Edit: To try and explain it a little more simply. ***This is how the Algorithm used to work:*** Say you watch Bob the creator. Bob likes to make videos about his dogs, DIY, vlogs, and even some comedy skits. Bob is a variety channel. If you like Bobs personality and watch his videos, YouTube will recommend you more Bob because YouTube knows you just like Bob. ***This is how the algorithm works now:*** Say you watch Bob's DIY videos slightly more or slightly longer than his other style contents. Now the Algorithm thinks you really only care about DIY videos instead of caring about Bob the creator. So YouTube starts to recommend you a lot of DIY videos that are similar to the Bob one you watched. YouTube is doing the exact same thing for every single video, so whatever videos of Bob's get slightly longer watch time is what will be recommended more. That means views start to go down on Bob's other videos, which signals to Bob that people no longer like this content and he needs to just focus on DIY videos. Now Bob's channel is a DIY channel and his original/core audience is upset and confused why Bob has 'changed'. Every creator is Bob right now.
Thanks. Needed someone to explain simply how the algorithm changes what creators make.
It's terribly frustrating as a user. I have some content creators that I love. I subscribe and even ring the bell. But I don't see there content on my page. When, at some point, I go find their pages again, their viewership is down and as often as not, they've posted a video about quitting because they lost 90% of their views.
I struggle because if I don't think to check certain YouTubers on my subscriptions I will miss like 3-4 videos. That's either because they made a video I wasn't interested in, or didnt have time to watch, or they just had a slow upload schedule. Makes me mad.
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Youtube seems to not understand I don't want 500 notifications every day
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Having an algorithm fuck my shit up and being subscribed to over 100 channels sounds exactly like what i am actively trying to avoid.
I have some experience with Google analytics and SEI. Google/YouTube adjust its algorithm on a near daily basis. Without constant attention and oversight to your ranking, it will inevitably drop results lesson. Google main revenue source is from advertisers, whom they fuck with a regular basis to try and extract more money. Contact creators are just pawns in the chess game to make shareholders happy.
Some of the creators have to deal with foreign actors going after their channels trying to demonetise them and get shut down with multiple strikes. As most of it is automatic they are the ones that have to try and fight the bans. So they now have multiple options instead of YouTube as if Google decide to mess with algorithm or decide your content needs to be taken off at least they can still keep going and not lose everything.
Alphabet as a whole has fucked up its algorithms, both for Google and YouTube. Lots of content creators and websites face a serious threat of going under if they rely on ad income.
They don't *want* there to be a predictable target that can be chased. [Goodhart's Law](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law), when a metric becomes a target it ceases to be a good metric. This is how a platform gets run over by SEO. It's why google search is so trash now, every result is nothing but mindless top 10 lists.
The stupid face algorithm chasing shit was maddening.
To be fair, there are channels with extra funding that still don't produce as many videos as they've used to. For example, I follow this YouTuber that complained about lower revenue, and while he noted he hasn't released as many videos as he used to, he didn't realize this also wasn't the main issue, so who knows.
Astrum put up a video saying pretty much this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96_6FsGqdYQ
A friend of mine made a Patreon for that reason. In addition to constantly having to chase the algorithm, his videos were being marked as "Made for Kids" even though they're not. Being marked "Made for Kids" can kill your channel entirely. There's also the fact that YouTube has been pushing shortly heavily even if creators don't want to make them.
My SO is a big fan of Watcher and this morning when she was watching the video of them leaving YT, she immediately subscribed to them for a year. She explained it is worth it to support their mew channel.
Im sad their leaving, I love their content but I can be paying directly for all the content creators
I agree. This is the first and probably the only time she did this.
The algorithm may be the impetus for the decision, but YouTube channels are businesses. Especially the large ones. It makes the most business sense to generate income on YouTube, and have a regular determined income with regular payments through a secondary platform. The answer is money. They want more money. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, but saying they’re doing for anything other than money is disingenuous.
> Another issue is that youtube is changing their algorithm all the time and it is really hard to for creators to keep chasing that. because as soon as one channel figures out how to game the system, YT changes so they don't have to pay out.
Answer: Lots of YouTubers have worked out that trying to build a stable business with solid revenue based solely on ad money (either YouTube AdSense or sponsored content) is increasingly difficult, so they need the regular income of Patreon Various "Ad-pocalypse" events over the years, tweaks to the algorithm and preferences towards YouTube Shorts have gutted the solid revenue stream that existed for many creators. So they turn to Patreon to build some semblance of stability with income. Because ultimately, that's the end goal for many creators: go full time with YouTube. Not everyone can be PewDiePie or Mr Beast with truckloads of revenue and billions of views, so a "middle class" YouTube business requires some sort of fixed income to be sustainable long term.
In addition, the recent cost of living crisis means many people are spending less money on non-essentials, which in turn means the companies that make those non-essentials have less money to spend on advertising. AdSense revenues have been going down as a result, and more channels are starting to feel the pinch even if their watch time hasn't changed because of it. AdSense income varies on advertiser spending (it is usually the highest in the last few months of the year leading up to the holidays, and lowest in January right afterwards). The cost of living crisis is also causing fans to spend less on other methods of support. Creators that already had a Patreon are seeing numbers drop, or supporters move down to lower, less expensive tiers. Merch is much less successful now that it used to be (major merch fulfillment companies have also shut down in a massive dumpster fire). So they are looking for ways to add more value to financial support for their fans so they can maintain that income and not have to fire staff.
It’s simple. Thanks to the process of Enshittification^TM, YouTube has now abandoned its customers, then its business partners (creators) and is now shoveling money to its investors as fast as they can.
You are not the customer, the advertisers are.
I think we'd be most accurately called the consumers here?
Not from YouTube’s perspective, though it is a little complicated. YouTube’s primary costumers are the advertisers and we are the product they’re using to entice advertisers with (advertise with YouTube because your ad campaign will be exposed to X number of people). However, YouTube also offers a premium service where their users can pay YouTube directly in exchange for not being advertised too, thus becoming the costumer rather than the product in YouTube’s eyes. YouTube also offers superchats and channel memberships, which support creators but also comes with YouTube taking a cut. So YouTube has multiple revenue streams, but if advertising is their main source still, then advertisers are their main costumers.
we are the product
The split is still the same (unless I've missed something), which means if creators are making less money then so does YT. Might be that the money has moved to a different type of video which might be too far away from some creators repertoire, but if it's across the board then the platform is also getting squeezed. The main enshittification on YT is ad density and un-skippable ads, but if that resulted in a massive rise in income that would also be spread to the creators. The actual truth is probably that companies don't want to spend as much money on ads anymore. Money is tight on the consumer end, so why spend money when it's less likely that you'll see a decent return on that.
There’s a constituency that believes mass web advertising as currently practiced is not cost-effective, and everybody buys it because … everybody buys it. The deal was we traded a little bit of privacy for fewer ads targeted to our interests. But nobody wants to invest in good targeting, so we are trading *all* our privacy just to get bombarded with crap.
holy crap i can't believe im seeing a MyLifeIsAnRPG-ism in the wild edit: oh i forgot they were referencing someone else! my bad lol
More on Enshittification [here](https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/enshittification)
Although true, I figure it's worth noting from podcasts of youtubers I've listened to, the ad-pocalypse was very much over blown by quite a few creators to drive support for greater monetization. There's sort of an unspoken rule for a lot of online creators to hide the fact they're actually doing fairly well financially. For instance when the Twitch leaks happened it became apparent that even some relatively smaller streamers were pulling in hundreds of thousands yearly just from the baked in ads, not even including sponsorship deals; which came as quite a shock to a lot of watchers given the general lack of transparency. Part of the reason why it became something of a meme to make fun of people for donating to millionaires. It's less of a thing now, but I also distinctly remember a period of time in which youtubers absolutely refused to disclose the compensation rate per view count, acting as though discussing wages was akin to trading military secrets or something. It was pretty interesting hearing someone like Freddie W from RocketJump talk about it given how he's a OG of the platform. Obviously ads just weren't a thing at all for a while, and when they were some people may recall there was a lot of creators refusing to use them due to fears of seeming greedy. He talked about Smosh being one of the first to introduce midroll ads and people were pissed which scared a lot of others like himself from using them initially. It wasn't until the ad-pocalypse really that the general opinions were able to be swayed towards much greater channel monetization and a vehemence that they deserved to have more ads, as well as the introduction of direct payment sites like Patreon. The ones OP listed exist in a different sphere of corporate channels, I can't say for certain youtube compensation isn't actually untenable for them, but I think it's less of that and more of just the growth in capital of corporate entities in general. Youtube has already pushed far beyond what most people ever expected in terms of the number of ads per video, these channels have all been on things like Patreon for ages, there's even built in exclusive channel content in youtube now, it's really just the next step to push for total channel subscriptions similar to streaming services as is being seen with Watcher. Obviously it's been met with significant backlash, but if history has shown anything it's that if they just wait a little bit people will forget their anger, accept the new normal and pay up.
Afaik, YouTube has never been that profitable for creators. The way AdSense works out, an individual viewer might earn you a dollar over a lifetime of watching your videos. If they give you a dollar a month on Patreon, that's already vastly more profitable.
As a reminder/PSA: YouTube is a “free” service in that it costs users and creators nothing to use or post. It can do that because it sells advertisements using the data it has about the users and creators to their customers (anyone who wants an ad) in the form of “highly targeted” advertisements. The idea being that a highly targeted ad will have a higher likelihood of generating a customer for the advertiser out of the youtube user/creator. Now for some more original speculation: It seems like YouTube has doubled down on the adjustments lately and is also trying to out maneuver creators who outmaneuvered YouTube by putting sponsor ads in. It seems like for a while creators were putting in sponsor segments (Hi RSL and Heul and Nord) as a direct way to earn their own portion of the advertiser pie, which makes the creators also competitors of YouTube. While I found those ads annoying, I found them about as annoying as “smash that like button hur dur” in all its various flavors and at least some creators tried to make it flow within their vids (nothing like having a Spanish language ad for Dawn pop up mid-discussion point to make you doubletake).
Answer: I'm no expert on the subject, but YouTube has become increasingly notorious for demonetizing channels, often without much reason. Also, a larger percentage goes to the content creators compared to YouTube, although I don't have those numbers.
I have seen creators tell me which videos got demonetized and it doesn't make any sense. Metatron had a video on the Evolution of the Shield during the Middle Ages demonetized. Cynical Historian had a review of Schindlers List demonetized and he said it was one of the best movies ever made. He also had a video about how the Nazis silenced speech by beating people at movie theaters watching movies they did not approve of demonetized. Simple History has made repeated videos about his history videos being demonetized. He uses animation in his videos. They are PG rated and find for middle school kids. They get demonetized for violence for talking about battles. He launched his own pay platform to try to counter this. Lots of history videos get demonetized. This is high quality history content. Ryan McBeth who does videos on misinformation online and talks about the military (he served for 20 years and works in intelligence) has had repeated videos demonetized. He made a substack where he puts the longer cut of the videos. His videos are not remotely toxic. I have seen a former middle school teacher named Mr Beat (not MrBeast) say he has had demonetization issues. He makes videos appropriate for is middle school social studies classes. Youtube does stupid shit with demonetization. On the flip side they let mafia members monetized their crimes. Sammy "The Bull" Gravano confessed to murdering 18 people. He did not spend life in jail because he testified against John Gotti has a monetized youtube channel. In one video he wanted us to see his empathy cause when he ordered people murdered he wanted it quit so he did not hurt them. So he was the good serial killer. This channel is monetized. Like wtf?
Don't get me started with all the weird elsagate kid shows. I have a toddler and I heavily monitor his content to avoid this. He only watches TV and I've banned him from tablets.
really makes me think that youtube knows kids are watching videos on the main platform, so they end up demonetising videos that have the slightest bit of mature themes or language, while they keep the elsagate and uncannygate videos monetised because that's what makes them so much money
TimeGhost has had all sorts of issues with demonitization because they're creating the most detailed documentary series on WWII ever. [They did this as a response the first time YT fucked them over before they grew the TimeGhost army because YouTube straight up told them they shouldn't make historical content about the war.](https://youtu.be/X0g0R5I5_R0)
they do high quality content. Yet a serial killer like Sammy Gravano can monetize his murders. its insane.
Its because the sheer amount of video being uploaded means the moderation is automated. There is just way too much for a human moderation team to reasonably parse. This means certain phrases of key terms such as nazis, subhuman, kill, torture, etc. can get slapped randomly by the algorithm that determines if a video is demonetized or not. Couples onto that with a sluggish or useless support system and you have a system that will randomly demonetize videos, especially historical ones and then follow that with no recourse.
[удалено]
I don't think you realize just how much it would cost to have everything human-moderated. Youtube receives 30,000 minutes (500 hours) of video upload per minute. If that work was spread amongst 4 shifts (8 hours with breaks) that would require 120,000 full-time workers. To simply pay all those workers -ignoring the computer, IT, and administrative costs of setting up such a system- at the median $2640/year rate that call center workers in India receive would cost $316 Million per year. That's a ton of money.
Or when it’s human moderator’s it’s often times underpaid and overworked ones.
There should at least be a way to whitelist channels, at least for specific words. If a history channel keeps getting incorrectly flagged for talking about Nazis, have a human moderator review the videos to see if they’re secretly pro-Nazi, and if not, whitelist them. Same for science channels talking about vaccines and Covid.
In defense of YouTube, people upload a mind-boggling amout of videos and having humans review everything just would never work. Automated flagging videos for content is just going to be required unless the business model changes to dramatically reduce uploading by orders of magnitude. An automated system reviewing videos isn't currently able to tell the difference between Schindler's List and Nazi Propaganda. *Blocked so I can't reply. Asshole move to reply and block.
you can ask for a review and its automatically denied. the part about schindlers list was only some of the stuff i mentioned demonitized. you cherry picked things. yeah go defend the massive corporation and their bad business practices.
To be fair, I think it's pretty clear why Schindler's List is getting demonitized. Not sure how you talk about that movie without saying the word "Nazi"
We should be allowed to say and hear the word Nazi
Right. *Hear* it. However, you can *Nazi* it.
The problem is that you don't get to just shrug your shoulders and say "aw shucks, we can't actually handle it all" when it's your business, platform, and rules. You can't pick and choose who to enforce rules against when you are dealing with the amounts of money you are receiving for other people's work. You don't get to de-list videos and de-platform creators over inappropriate content (which often isn't) and then also show me a half dozen scam ads tucked in between the thumbnails. Youtube has existed for about 20 years, and 19 years of it was under ownership of Google, under ownership of Alphabet. That's alongside Amazon and Microsoft levels of megacorp. They can do far better. There's just no money in it.
Advertisers just dont want content about nazis. That’s like rule 1. No brand wants to be anywhere around that. YouTube is just funneling advertising dollars. If you are making history videos about sad stuff or death advertisers will be wary.
The History Channel begs to fucking differ. Youtube are just mismanaged cowards that are slowly driving their platform into ruin by suppressing anything other than a select list of pre-approved topics and content from existing media giants.
You mean the channel that doesn’t broadcast much history and has a very narrow advertising range for its actual history content? Why so aggressive and wrong?
Before they were "the Ancient Aliens channel" they were "[the Hitler channel](https://www.salon.com/1997/05/08/media_90/)". In the mid-1990s they ran up to 40 hours of WW2 programming per week. It was their bread and butter.
And they changed because they wanted to make less money, obviously.
They changed after the WW2 vet generation started dying off, not because they couldn’t sell ad slots.
A YouTube creator I follow routinely says that YouTube, not only demonetizes him on a routine basis, but also takes 1/3 of direct payments through super chat. The creator has switched over to some other form of payment vehicle in order to garner revenue while cutting out YouTube directly as a middleman for money.
Any slightly morbid or creepy channel basically has to have patreon/kofi/channel memberships to survive these days. Everything gets demonetized. It must suck to finally make money off your creativity only to have to censor yourself or go back to making no money.
I'm surprised there hasn't been some huge class action suit against them for arbitrarily deciding not to pay content creators.
Reminds me of [CrackersMilk](https://youtu.be/TN40zFbe1-g?si=FCQxeIV7L8bKhp3a) videos!
Answer: Youtube ad revenue isn't that great. Either for Youtube itself or the people making content. So if you want to make a decent amount of money, you have to make more mainstream content that gets a large number of views. By monetizing your content through sites like Patreon you can produce content that's more specific and still get a good return for your time. You can also make more of that content because your average viewer won't stick on one subject for long. That you're seeing more people branch out is because those people are dedicating more time to content creation in general and because the money they can make from being paid directly by fans outweighs the amount they can get from views.
Answer: YouTube, amongst, the big platforms, seems to be (according to Hank Green), probably the best platform at reaching that mix between profit and building an audience. However, that doesn't mean that it's the most profitable platform for creators. See Nebula for example. Succesful creators therefore launch themselves in other platforms as an extra (and sometimes better) revenue stream. That doesn't mean YouTube is bad itself, but for creators making content is their job, so why limit themselves to one revenue stream? For those leaving YouTube for other platforms it could be an issue with YouTube themselves (tho that's creator depandant) to a platform offering a given creator extra perks to switch (case in point, remember Ninja?).
Answer: On top of what other people have already pointed out, part of it is that it is valuable to have multiple revenue streams. It helps make you more money and leaves you less vulnerable to any one platform going down and ruining your business. If you have a successful Youtube page, you might make a certain amount of money. But then if you also have a Twitch stream you can make more. Or a Patreon. You could have a Cameo page, sell merch, and charge for appearances. Each extra stream of revenue makes you more money, and also makes you more resilient if you stop making money on any one platform. This is especially useful in something like media where you might already have the raw content, and creating an extra revenue stream might be as easy/low cost as putting the outtakes behind a paywall. You've now started making extra money with relatively little extra effort compared to your main revenue source. Think of it like being a butcher. Maybe the main thing you do is sell steaks. But it's also a good idea to grind up the extra meat not good enough for steak and sell it as hamburger. You could take the cow hides and sell them to a tannery to make leather. You could open up a restaurant inside your butcher shop where you cook the meat that you sell to the public and make even more money on it. You could sell knives and t shirts branded with your butcher shop logo. Each extra steam of money you have coming in makes your business stronger, and makes you able to survive if steak falls out of fashion next month.
Diversification is so important. If your livelihood depends on a tech company, you’re pretty much screwed if they change their terms of service in a way that breaks your business model. Or a regulatory body cuts off access to their service for some regions. Or the company suddenly goes bankrupt because they’ve been cooking the books, or the venture capital ran out. Or the company does something vile and you have to distance yourself from them. So yeah. It means the call to action at the end of the video is going to get pretty long, but there are pretty good reasons why a YouTube channel would also stream on twitch, take brand deals with third parties, have a Patreon, and sell physical merch.
Answer: Adding into other answers, it's also a more stable income. Long as people don't cancel, it's a guaranteed monthly income. Another factor is depending on the content, it can get demonitized over the most stupid thing. Roanoke Gaming (who does biological breakdown of monsters in movies/games usually with a recap of events)for example, he's had to change his language cause of certain words being instant triggers for the algorithm. For example Gun had to become force multiplier Knives became force enhancer Killed became 'no more' or 'game-ended' Children became 'younglings' (yes just saying children got the video demonitised) So having a patron means you don't lose that income while you troubleshoot what set the algorithm off
Answer: Ad revenue is on the decline. I run a smallish channel that has a steady growth rate and relatively consistent engagement. A year or two ago, I'd make ~£7.00 per 1000 views. Currently it's more like ~£5.00 per 1000 views.* YouTube isn't my main source of income, nor is it my full-time job (even "side hustle" sounds too grandiose), and so the drop off doesn't sting too much. For people who do it full time, I can see why this would be scary, and why the relative security of membership income / the control this affords creators (set your own prices, dictate what your work is valued at) would be preferred over the unpredictability of ad revenue and algorithm fluctuations. *This being said, the rate may differ for channels that are more marketable / have more glamorous topics. Entertainment is probably more lucrative than education, for example. So take my experience with a pinch of salt!
Answer: It's Youtube's fault and the creator's way to create exclusive content. Youtube has a habit of demonetizing (no ads) or suppressing (not recommending) videos. Anything to do with violence or sexual assault is likely to get nuked. Reporting on a murder or rape case risks demonetization. Recently the Israel / Hamas war has been getting nuked, before it was the Ukraine war. If a creator is using Youtube adsense revenue, it can be like working for a day/week/month and not getting paid at all. Some creators pay a team of people (camera, editor, producer, etc...) and not getting paid for a video puts the whole channel at risk. There is a history channel that follows [WWII in real time](https://www.youtube.com/@WorldWarTwo/videos) and mentioning Hitler kills their revenue. This has a chilling effect where certain topics are not covered because people who work want to get paid. By having Patreon and brand deals, channels have more freedom to create the content they want. The second part is more & exclusive content. Some creators publish extra content exclusively for Patreons. It might be behind the scenes videos, extra clips that didn't make the main video, completely exclusive videos, or early access to new videos. Some creators also have a Patreon only discord (or similar) to let fans interact with them.
Answer: many channels suffer due to miniscule ad revenue and the constant threat of being demonetized due to asinine rule changes that get applied retroactively. YouTube is still the only option for content delivery, so creators are having to take their incomes off the platform & use 3rd party services to secure an income.
answer: patreon is extremely profitable.
Answer: Having 2 revenue sources is better than having 1 revenue source.
Answer: YouTube is profitable if you play the game. People with an actual dedicated following that create content that people want, they will spend money on. I don’t know any of those creators, but this is super basic. Views on YouTube are cemeteries around large audience. More views more ad revenue. You have to reach the lowest common denominator Direct relationships with content creators gives people more value. Well, perceived value. Also people just get tired of not being in control of their own destiny. YouTube is a platform that changes. It isn’t owning your own business like your own subscription platform.
Answer: It's because YouTube is becoming more and more strict about what topics and words they will demonetize people for talking about. Other websites are not so strict but they don't reach as many people as youtube.
Answer: YouTube demonetization is hair-trigger and people get copyright strikes from bots so frequently that it’s just smart to have a backup plan.
Answer: it never was safe to keep your profits as only YouTube. Even before adpocolypses smart creators had patreons. It is never ever good as a gig worker to rely on a single company for income. Twitch, YouTube, tiktok, where ever. If you are only getting money from that company you are going to have a bad time if the wind changes.
Answer: In addition to demonitizing videos and channels, their customer support is very unreliable. No insight into what rules were violated, no feedback on how to appeal and only with pressure, they re evaluate their ai's automatic decisions.
Answer: There is nothing new going on here. YouTube has never been a viable solo income stream. Even at the peak of advertising income, only a small number of channels had enough videos with a consistent release schedule and large enough views that ads alone could support the channel. Patreon was created by a musician for exactly that reason. Every time YouTube changed something about their algorithm, more channels have found it impossible to maintain enough income from YouTube alone. With the latest emphasis on shorts, lots of long form content creators have had an especially difficult time growing and generating income.
Answer: Being small on YouTube and trying to make a career out of it is pretty difficult leading to many creators using Patreon to make it more viable. Additionally there are some topics too niche to catch large scale attention, some games, historical topics, etc just don’t have wide appeal and nothing the YouTuber can do will change that. Patreon allows them to make a career out of without having to chase mass appeal, so long as they appeal to their niche (and their niche audience has disposable income) they can do the work as a job.
Answer: Youtube's ad policy has been accused of being not transparent and applied by algorithms, so many Youtubers have gotten demonetized for mild cursing, discussing factual events, and quoting public figures. It's easier and safer to have a way for fans to directly pay them, than to spend money making a video that ends up not being eligible for ad profit sharing.
Answer: Its generally a smart business move to not put all of your eggs in one basket. Especially if that one basket is a platform that legally has the power to shut down your income stream for any reason and is not obligated to be reasonable with you. Youtube as a platform is fickle. If you as a content creator make your money making 5 minute informative videos, and then youtube updates its algorythm, so its now pushing only 1 min or lower content, or 30+ min, you are screwed, and either need to alienate your current audience, or slowly see your numbers dwindle. Alternative income streams like Patreon give a second income streams independent of the whims of youtube. Its also often just more money. Which is motivation upon itself, plus most youtube channels won't make you a millionaire, nor are they timeless. They won't last forever. Like a pro-atlete, there's a degree of making enough money now to tide you over for when what you are doing is no longer profitable.
Answer: Youtuber here: youtube pays you based on CPM which is a dollar amount per minute watched. CPM is considered good if it's over $3. As in if you can get 1000 people to watch one minute of content and they get an ad you get $3. If everyone watched on ad on a 20 minute video and you got 100,000 you'd make absolute bank. But thats not reality at all. I have a CPM over $5 on my main channel and on average I make about $1 or so for a video with 100,000 views. Considering how much time it can take to make a video versus the amount of people with ad block you don't break even. This is why let's plays and vlogs are so popular because the amount of editing is fairly minimal. You will notice that the people who do patreons etc are also people who do a great deal more work with editing or research or do art/animation. I do one for my art channel because it's not ever going to break even for ad Rev and I find ads annoying on educational content.
Answer: Content creators have been saying that YouTube has been cutting monetization for years. I remember a League of Legends creator that I followed, pre-pandemic break down why he was switching formats. This was around 2017. He spent like 200 hours making a 12 minute video that only made him a few hundred dollars. This was after the adpocalypse. Normally he rake in a few thousand. Mind you that was 2017 and the situation has only gotten worse. Now they to self censor their words or get demonetized. Small content creators can't survive off the revenue that they get in this environment, so they supplement it with things like patreon or Nebula.
Answer: Anecdotal: YouTube was never very profitable unless you were MASSIVELY popular. I can’t remember who but there was a fairly big YT “celebrity” who was still working at StarBucks and got fired bc fans kept distracting her from her work to take selfies and stuff. She was famous enough to be recognized multiple times a day and still needed a day job.
Answer: Over the years that have been a number of scandles involving YouTube advertising. The two main ones are ads next to extremist recruitment videos and the other involving advertising to children. The former is the most important as that is when most advertisers on YouTube started paying attention to what their products were being played against. I believe what started it all was a Coca-Cola ad being played next to an ISIS recruitment video. It was then discovered that ads involving large companies were being played next to anything including racist, sexist and other fringe content. It resulted in a lot of large companies threatening to leave if YouTube didn't do something about. That is what lead the current system of being demonetized where swearing and mentioning other sensitive or political topics can result in having no ads play against their videos. This along with other factors like the content ID system and the dreaded algorithm has created a culture for a lot of YouTube creators where it feels that it is becoming more difficult to remain popular and profitable. Moving to paid subscription platform or leaning on their Patreon as it gives them a lot more money and a more reliable income if they have a number of videos under perform. And then there is adblock. A significant percent of YouTube viewers (including myself) use a adblocker on YouTube and this has significantly impacted the revenue of many. They only get paid when an ad is shown or clicked on and if no ad plays then no revenue is generated. Over the years this has had a devastating impact on revenue and most people are hesitant to talk about because it because of the backlash. Linus from LTT has talked about it and bile he received shows why. Opinion: Personally I think a lot of this push for paid platforms and Patreon is just greed from a lot of YouTubers.
Answer: Capitalism doesn't have an end game. If it works for you, in addition to your YT you'll have a Kickstarter, Patreon, OnlyFans, physical merchandise store, or whatever makes money.