BlockOfLapis

The new YouTube views change is resulting in people seeing an increase in views ranging from 20% on the lower end to nearly 100% on the higher end. I haven't found a pattern based on channel size.

⚠️IMPORTANT READ: If YouTube doesn’t solve its AI problem quickly, we won’t have many human creators left. (+ research insights) If you’re wondering why it feels like you’re seeing more AI content, and why human creators seem to be disappearing, here are the numbers from a real study by Goldberg and Lam. They analyzed what happened to the stock image market after generative AI was introduced. I’ve added an image showing what the data looked like month by month. Every single month after AI entered the market, 1 in 4 creators exited because the economics stopped working for them. Now, it wasn’t bad for everyone. Total consumption on the platform went up by 39% per month. But sales of human-made content dropped every month. The platform won. The buyers won. The human creators… didn’t. Think about what that would look like on YouTube. AI can already generate scripts, voiceovers, thumbnails, talking-head videos, and entire channels at a fraction of the cost and time it takes a human creator to produce a single video. The algorithm doesn’t care whether a video was made by a person who spent three days filming and editing or by a system that generated it in 20 minutes. This isn’t about being anti-AI. AI helps a lot of creators improve their output. But it is about protecting the type of content people actually want to watch. And I’m not just talking about removing AI slop. I’m talking about making sure human-driven channels are protected and prioritized over AI-driven content. The stock image market already ran the experiment that YouTube hasn’t fully felt yet. Don't ignore that. Here’s my ask to one person: @nealmohan I know you’ve seen some of my work (algorithm, platform changes, etc). I respect what you’re doing for the platform, but this is your moment to stand for human creators. It’s time to put public effort into protecting them. Not just AI labeling or low-lift solutions, they don't solve the problem in a meaningful way. No, we need a genuine, real, and public effort to preserve what YouTube was built on. You’re one of the few people in a position to set a precedent for every platform. Let’s talk. For those interested in the actual research, check out Samuel G. Goldberg and H. Tai Lam's paper called "Generative AI In Equilibrium: Evidence From A Creative Goods Marketplace"

🚨Important reminder: The YouTube algorithm actually changed, for the worse. (+Data) I’ve addressed this last year already and because we haven’t seen it being addressed, I thought it’d be a good idea to remind everyone of what happened last year. Before I begin, a direct note to all my friends at YouTube, I truly respect what you’ve been doing in the past year, and I know you’ll take this problem seriously, but urgency is key when creators are hurting. Let’s begin. Last year, creators of all sizes started noticing a significant change in the overall performance of their channels. Usually this is related to the overall behavior of audiences, however, this one felt different. It wasn’t just one or two channels, it was every single channel I was working on (and more). These are channels that pull 100 million to 1 billion views per month at times. At first, I was like: alright, let’s find out where we’re going wrong. Maybe we’re missing something. However, after weeks and months, no answers were found. This is very frustrating, not only for myself but also for the creators who are relying on these answers to maintain their channel, business and livelihood. But that’s when we made a breakthrough, a way of looking at data that we had missed. You see, this entire time we were analyzing the channel as a whole, new and old videos combined. However, we weren’t focused on isolating older content, specifically content with a publish date older than one month. That’s where, for the first time, we noticed something unusual. We saw a complete crash in short form views on content older than one month. (see image) What we found was that somewhere in the middle of September last year, YouTube had pushed a significant change in their short form algorithm which impacted nearly every short form creator across the platform. Why is this a problem? Because it affects every creator we all care about. It didn’t matter if you were a smaller creator or one of the top ten creators, we haven’t found many people who were spared. I’ll leave a brief explanation at the bottom so you can check your own channel. And these weren’t just entertainment or educational creators, it was both. What we found is that YouTube seems to have implemented a change that strongly prioritizes content uploaded in the last month, roughly 28 to 30 days, we’re still unsure. But what impact does this have, and why do I believe this is something that should be brought to light? The first impact is that we’re seeing a shift away from quality to quantity. Often, creators live off the revenue generated, not just Adsense, from these bigger content pieces. A strong portion of this revenue comes from their back catalog, meaning older content. With this change, you’re increasing the importance of high volume uploads in the first 30 days. What do I believe is happening, and why is this change going through? I believe there are two reasons why YouTube is pushing this change. First, to hit certain targets with Shorts. Plain simple, I don’t believe this is a “what’s best for the creator” type of play, it feels more like a “we want to compete with TikTok” type of play. Not unreasonable, even if the creator gets hurt by it short term. I’m just trying to think from a corporate point of view. The second reason, which I believe to be the actual leading reason, is a push for recency, freshness or novelty, whichever term they would choose to use. But if this is the reason, there’s a massive overcorrection happening. Some content needs that freshness: news, streaming highlights, medical information. However, this isn’t true for all types of content. Some content from years ago is just as good today. We have noticed that certain top content pieces, individual videos, still get a significant amount of views, so it looks more like prioritization than anything else. Regardless, while in private I find it fun to refer to this situation as “the flattening”, in reality this is a very concerning moment where simple ideas turn into a massive hit toward the creator economy. And this is just the tip of the iceberg of changes that have been affecting people. It’s important that changes on the platform aren’t just focused on the consumer, but the preservation of a healthy creator economy that allows creators to grow their business, teams, and create better content. Without a focus on both the creator and the consumer, you’ll quickly run into an issue of low quality slop that makes people want to go elsewhere. If there’s any call to action here for you, whether you’re a creator or a viewer, I strongly encourage you to leave your thoughts here to encourage YouTube to rethink this decision, or at least optimize it so that it’s also regarding the importance of keeping a healthy creator economy. Share your thoughts, and even data from your own channel, because this will be seen by people who have the power to make change. Disclaimer: I’ve left out some sensitive information. However, if you want to check this for yourself, go to Analytics, click on Advanced Mode, filter by Content Type (Shorts), filter by Publish Date (for example any short published from Jan 2025 to Jun 2025), set the data to Last 365 Days and take a look at the change happening around September last year. I think you can imagine why it took so long for us to find out where the issue began.