How YouTube’s Shifting Algorithms Hurt Independent Media | Hacker News Reader

How YouTube’s Shifting Algorithms Hurt Independent Media

nytimes.com

109 pointsytNumbers69 comments

I know at times I may sound like a shill for Patreon, but I have no connection to them whatsoever beyond "normal customer", and don't care if you use a competitive service to them or whatever. But if you are in the position of finding yourself with a growing show like this, I implore you to set up some sort of voluntary subscription revenue as soon as possible, before you embed into the very foundation of your content a dependency on ad dollars. Even if you use it as an augment to ad revenue, it's so much better for you. It's more stable against Youtube deciding to tweak an algorithm one day. It's more stable month-to-month. It's even more socially stable since it releases you from having to chase ad dollars by keeping advertisers happy instead of your "actual" customers. If your primary money base is subscriptions rather than ads, you could even completely shift video services if you need to without crashing your income.

My interest in pitching this so often is my desire to play my little part in sticking a stake in the idea that getting advertising money is the default path to monetization. I'd rather move to a world where it's either merely one option among many, or even, dare I dream, a last resort considered vaguely déclassé.

Oh, and I would also implore you, let your patrons download video directly somehow. I'd love to not even have to go through YouTube at all. Of course, I'm a crazy Linux user for whom YouTube isn't as convenient as it could be, but it's another way to detach your patrons from a particular video service.

Fellow crazy linux user here. I follow many youtube channels but, as a canadian, am not allowed to support them with cash. (Red and all the other premium schemes never include us.) I too have trouble with youtube's interface and am often on a sat connection which makes everything more frustrating. Instead i use a combination of tools to download the vids directly, which denies my favorite channels even basic ad revenues. Youtube is the choke point.

A bit of a sidebar but what tools do you use? Youtube-dl and a script to handle lost connections or something more complicated? I'm looking for a solution to a similar problem.

I use a rather shady service popular with filesharers. For about 3$ a month i get access to a web interface that will download from the various hosting services (ie rapidgator) but also youtube. The video downloads then as a normal mpeg file over a secure connection, not a stream. They do the same for torrents, allowing me to get many linux distros without running a torrent client over a sat connection.

The script is barely necessary, youtube-dl resumes downloads when run again. If it's a regular thing, set up a cron job to run more frequently than necessary, if it's one time run the command then ; sleep 300 ; the command again

Youtube-dl just does what you want 90% of the time, and good docs for the rest.

I made https://github.com/raszpl/smplayer4YT for windows and chrome/vivaldi/opera

The flipside to this is that there are people who will never ever pay money for your content, and ad revenue is the only way to directly capitalize on your popularity among those people.

This also means that when your ad revenue disappears, you will NEVER get that revenue back. Your only recourse is to get more popular, as your supporters are already buying your merchandise and donating.

It's going to become much more difficult to support yourself via creating content if step 1 becomes "be famous".

It's going to become much more difficult to support yourself via creating content if step 1 becomes "be famous".

It's already becoming like this for certain forms of media. Videogames, in particular. It's amazing how many things become easier, once you've already gotten notable. Come to think of it, it's been true to some degree, even in the days when media only existed in the form of spoken word and songs.

But to get money from ads you have to be famous too.

10,000 views means "famous?"

10,000 ad views means supporting yourself from ad revenue? I mean if one person buys a t-shirt you've probably made more money, so I don't really see the advantage to ad revenue over merchandising, Patreon etc.

No. YouTube announced recently that they aren't paying out on videos with less than 10K views.

http://www.theverge.com/2017/4/6/15209220/youtube-partner-pr...

By "make money", they meant "make more than peanuts", not "make their first $0.01".

Just to clarify this it's 10K views for the channel overall, not individual videos.

If your channel has 10k views total across all videos, you can monetise the next video from viewer 1.

Thanks, that was unclear from YT messaging.

Maybe just don't even try to capitalize on those. If you cannot sustain your work via better means then maybe it is just not worth it.

That's like telling Google to turn off all ads on Youtube tomorrow, and only rely on people who use Youtube Red to make a profit.

Or maybe Youtube is just not worth it?

"It's going to become much more difficult to support yourself via creating content if step 1 becomes "be famous"."

You don't have to become famous. One of the things I love about Patreon are how some of my obscure things nobody has ever heard of are now providing a low-to-mid-grade middle class lifestyle for people you've probably never heard of.

Wander around a bit on https://graphtreon.com/ , and bear in mind a lot of what you see is hobby work, not attempts to make a living.

And also bear in mind there is no option where anybody ever just wakes up one day, decides "I'm going to make a living as an Internet content provider!" and a thousand people pour out of the woodwork to give them $3 a month right away. The question is not whether Patreon successfully thrusts success on people... the question is whether it enables it.

i.e., if I love Patreon so much why haven't I switched to make a living on it? Well, I have a realistic view of my own "content creation" skills and realize that it's not really an option for me. Patreon isn't going to magically fix that for me.

I'm speaking from experience here, I have ad revenue and Patreon.

If my ad revenue tanks, Patreon does not automatically go up, I'm just out my ad revenue for the month. For some artists this is the difference between being able to pay rent or not.

>ad revenue is the only way to directly capitalize on your popularity among those people.

Are these people clicking ads, though? I doubt it. And if not, you aren't monetizing them directly via that method, either.

They don't have to click to monetize, but yes, some click.

Enough so that you can offset the cost of the hobby in many cases, and make a living in that rarest, most desirable of cases.

Most advertising is cost per impression, not click. Search is pretty much the only major cost per click type of advertising.

Putting adds on your content if you have viable patreon fan base just means you value your fans time at ~30 cents per hour, its a slap in the face with rotten fish.

If the channels I enjoy were all setup through the same service, whatever it may be, it would be easy for me support new media while tracking my budget better. I can be forgetful, and it feels like some subscriptions are built around attaching themselves to your credit card and staying under your radar. But I need to do a better job of supporting these channels I spend so much time on.

This sounds like a problem worth solving. What about a browser add-on, something like Patreauto? You could budget some amount per month, and it would automatically distribute payments to the top 40 video creators you watch?

id use that

You're describing the Payments feature in the Brave browser:

https://blog.brave.com/introducing-brave-payments/

What you're describing is effectively what YouTube Red does. You pay a flat monthly amount and revenue is distributed out to creators based upon the videos you watch. [0]

Full disclosure: I work at YouTube but not on Red.

[0] https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/6306276?hl=en

I use YouTube Red and love it. My YouTube usage has doubled because I don't see ads. And I feel good knowing I'm helping the video makers whether I skip ads or not.

Sorry if i missed something obvious, but from the linked page it not entirely clear to me if my monthly amount would be distributed only between the channels I actually watch or like Spotify where content producers get their revenue based on their share of total views in the pool favoring the people on top.

"New revenue from YouTube Red membership fees will be distributed to video creators based on how much members watch your content."

Unfortunately it sounds like it uses the Spotify model.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VvaxkpeSg_4

Ok, then Red makes no sense for me and the channels I watch as a viable alternative to patreon.

As soon as you guys bring Red to the UK I'm on it. Do you know of anything about the rollout schedule? It actually feels like YouTube's given up on Red from this end of the pond.

My interest in pitching this so often is my desire to play my little part in sticking a stake in the idea that getting advertising money is the default path to monetization.

If Google and Facebook are The Internet (and for some large number of people, this is likely more than half true, in an empirical time-measurement sense) then The Internet is driven by advertisement. It's just become Cable TV 2.0.

I'd rather move to a world where it's either merely one option among many, or even, dare I dream, a last resort considered vaguely déclassé.

This was presaged by Scott McCloud. http://scottmccloud.com/ http://www.scottmccloud.com/3-home/essays/2003-09-micros/mic...

And it was rejected by the mainstream, led by those with a vested interest in the new status quo. https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2001/06/22

d love to not even have to go through YouTube at all

Agreed! I already back many of the people I watch regularly on patreon and am sick of all of the irritating adverts, so I'd much rather just download the videos and watch them directly.

i just adblock and yes on android too on a rooted device, and patreon everyone that has it setup much much better experience and it doesnt cost much... and yes its unfair to youtube, but hey, they make their own choices that are unfair are well

From a user's perspective, though, I'm a little annoyed how Patreon has "won" in terms of user-backed content. I don't want to commit to a monthly. I would've preferred if something like Flattr had market dominance for this kind of thing.

Although obviously, content producers sided with Patreon because it gives them predictable income, which keeps them from starving.

"I don't want to commit to a monthly."

Another part of the reason I tend to support the model is that I've watched micropayments for.... umm... gosh, about 16-18 years now. It isn't going to happen, or if it is, it's going to require something relatively fundamental to shift.

I expanded more on that 3 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14117016 (Also why I decided I need to disclaim being a shill, since these two things came in quick succession.)

Twitch is doing micropayments now https://blog.twitch.tv/introducing-cheering-celebrate-togeth..., they call them bits, 1 bit is ~$0.015

First micropayment service that actually is _micro_.

Not really first. I run Tapview, we do micropayments that you can put on your own site, and we go down to 1 cent. Also, I'd say we are definitely not the first.

There are other methods, I think. At least one guy I back does it based on a per-comic basis. Granted, the comics are big and usually go longer than a month, but it's pretty good, I think. Takes some of the 'gotta-deliver-constantly' off him, and it only charges what is delivered.

Which may just be an open pre-order on my part. Which is sort of the stupidest way to buy anything, I suppose, except for the social trust aspect I have in him.

As a content creator a small monthly fee can be better. Otherwise you risk everything to turn into a "gifrecipe" format. Monthly income can make it possible to make more in depth content.

This is why people are adding Pateron to their channels. Asking for monthly or single pledges from their fans to continue making content. There are many people already doing this.

Easter Egg: "Bos in the house"

Regards,

Does Patreon work on a per view basis? I'd love to be charged per view of a video similar to an add, but I can add in value as I want to. It would be nice so that I don't have to pay one person more than I should and others nothing.

No, Patreon has two options: Monthly and Per Release, which has a monthly cap that patrons can set. I'm not sure that there is enough of a hook into the various platforms to allow a per-view style payment system.

It would be nice to have something similar to youtube red for watching videos I just don't really want to pay youtube. I'd like content to be spread around a little more.

The difference between advertising and Patreon is B2B versus B2C. It is the difference between sales based on economic value and donations solicited through donor development; between competing based on ROI and competing based on prestige and need each individual's alma mater, place of worship, or local food bank.

Creating content every day or several times a day is what fans demand. It's not a question of if a dumb idea will make it into production and upset the audience, just a matter of when. Consider it like bugs.

PewDiePie's patron, Disney, dropping him was a reversion to the norm. As recent stories about large advertisers reallocating dollars illustrate, it takes something a lot worse before eyballs and clicks don't drive the decision.

If you like a persons content enough to pay them for it, then it might make sense to view the videos some way that isn't youtube. Perhaps, Pateron should team up with someone and offer the video hosting perhaps.

I'd like to see competition for youtube. They'd fuck up less if there were a more compelling reason for them to stop fucking up.

I'd love to see IPFS video (https://ipfstube.erindachtler.me/ ) get used for this sort of thing. For static, high-bandwidth content like video, that is created by users and for public domain, it makes more sense to be than a fat centralised pipe that's extremely expensive to maintain.

It's funny because the NYT pushed an entire beat about companies needing to limit their digital advertising to only respected outlets...you know, like the NYT.

In hindsight it was easy for them to play up the "offensive content" straw man, get a few execs riled up, and convince google to kill their upstart competitors.

Precisely. It's not "YouTube's shifting algorithms" that are killing independent media, it's the wave of bad publicity in publications like the New York Times that lead to advertisers pulling out and made allowing ads on anything even vaguely political or controversial an existential danger to YouTube. The algorithms didn't do this by itself. And the clear-cut line between "videos that espoused extremism and hate speech" and "video makers who bear no resemblance to terrorist sympathizers and racists" that the NYT is attacking YouTube for not recognising doesn't exist. There are definitely loud, vocal, media-connected groups who classify The David Pakman Show under the former category, for example, because of his choice of guests.

Terrorist sympathizers are equivalent to racists now?

Hell, Google themselves celebrated a terrorist sympathizer with a special custom doodle.

- http://www.vox.com/2016/5/19/11713686/yuri-kochiyama

- https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/websearch/CSW...

It really tells us a lot about their values and priorities when they celebrate (by making doodles) people like that instead of, for example, Easter.

Media plays both sides of the coin because they don't care about what happens to other media sources, they care about the ad revenue from clicks to their site. Playing both sides of the coin only increases clicks since both perspectives are engaged.

Or enough of the legacy media sees the clicks as a zero-sum game, and seeks to strangle the competition before it gets too powerful.

It's sort of weird to blame the New York Times when the articles that prompted the change in YouTube advertising were not published by the NYT. They were published by the Wall Street Journal and the Times of London.

I canceled my youtube red over this. They've blacklisted channels that are specifically against racism because of some channels that support racism. They don't want to offend racists? I'm keeping my 5/month and will not consider their new 30/month service that I had been excited about.

$5/month? My Youtube Red subscription is $9.99/month.

A few years ago I did an evaluation of google seo to assist with a project. I distinctly remember my conclusion being that due to the proprietary and closed source nature of the algorithms google is using, I predicted they would be tempted to artificially manipulate them to produce profit through siphoning the ad revenue, and that I suspected it was already happening to the blackhat seo technique sites. They weren't taking measures to stop blackhat seo, they were taking measures to profit off them.

All conjecture on my part, but perhaps it's relevant to this story? If the algorithms are the dark secret sauce of your power that no-one talks about, why not abuse them for profit? Publicly you have plausible deniability, because no one can see inside your box but you. If there is enough of a PR issue you can artifically adjust to match the needed PR stance, but still keep the rest of the manipulation system in place.

Especially given googles close ties to the gov, and certain political groups, I question if we really want such a power to exist over the future of the internet.

Legal discovery is a pretty good disincentive to trying this when you're Google's size.

Well. I guess that the NYT, WaPo and WSJ can be proud of their accomplishment.

They managed to hurt the independent media on its revenue, but to their vein it seems like most youtubers actually have a passion for what they do and their subscribers are also smart enough to see through all this bullshit and support their favorite content creators through other means than watching ads.

but theyre nazi creators! (i wish i was misrepresenting their words...)

It's all about YouTube becoming profitable. It's not about the algorithms or any specific political ideology or any other silly idea. It's cold hard cash that Alphabet wants from YouTube and it's not delivering. So how do they handle that? Especially if the advertisers are the ones funding this? More control over content and more gate keeping are the likely options YouTube's bosses are going to pick. It's just inevitable that Youtube content creators are going to get squeezed harder. I expect YouTube soon to have moderators that will vet any content of channels of a certain size before that channel's owners see a dime. Hell, I expect YouTube to require content creators to fork out a few hundred bucks to be given free license to publish videos on the site eventually. Why? Because showing an ad on a video is a risk and if it doesn't generate enough money or have enough people viewing it then why are they hosting it? We all have to think like this when approaching YouTube and Alphabet with respect to the current and future changes to YouTube.

This is why people should not put all their eggs in one basket. He can get sponsors. He can drive people to other places like Facebook and his own site. That way when some company needs to change something to be better for them it does tank your business. If you have a show you are a business. If you want to keep it then learn business.

I get around 500,000 views a month. No way would I ever invest my career in YouTube not just due to shifting algorithms but the fact that there is no competition makes it next to impossible to invest heavy amounts of time.

I don't understand why non-youtubers care about these nuisance. These 'independent media' provides little to no value or productivity, these people are mostly equivalent to those who dance on the train or street to get money. Online, they get the money by deterring from their own content to who-knows-what advertisers who paid the most.

If anyone actually produces any value in need, they should be able to create a business model where people would exchange money for it.

Because people enjoy the content provided by these creators.

For what its worth, all the ones I follow switched from ads to Patreon or ads+Patreon.

This has been my experience too. Just in the last few weeks basically all of the channels I follow have had a total freak out and started patreon to save their livelihood.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com