Algorithm ate my homework

Online games news Tedious Retro Gamer, 14-03-2023
Online Games Bay

While YouTube has its fair share of problems and stupidity involved in the process of "making it better", it looks like some of the youtubers just can’t help themselves and blame YouTube for something that is... I can’t believe I’m gonna say that... not YouTube’s fault. Oh god, I’m gonna need a shower after this one.

I already mentioned that problem some time ago in the curious case of OutsideXbox - some people do believe that changes in YouTube algorithm (as stupid as they usually are) caused a lot of problems for the creators. On surface it seems legit, in case of OutsideXbox, the channel with 2.6 million subscribers is struggling to produce a video that would reach 100 thousand views (often even 50 thousand is a problem). The fans of OutsideXbox were quick to judge "because of YouTube algorithm everyone is struggling for views".

Yes, that would explain their lack of views, although I spent quite a lot of time listing all the poor decisions made by the channel owners that lead to their decline. Not to mention that there are thousands of channels that have no problem finding new audience, like f.e. Fooster, BigFryTV, Mustard and many more - despite the changes in algorithm they retained their audience and gained new one. But OutsideXbox fans were not the only ones to blame new algorithm for decline in their viewership, some youtubers started to do the same. One of them, quite well known, Markiplier, also mentioned it recently.

While Markiplier can hardly complain about viewership with around 150 million views most of the months, but it is far from 250 million that he used to get in last 2 years. It was pretty interesting that he blamed algorithm for this sudden drop, especially since he had some not great moments in 2022. Let’s see - he started from high note with another Five Nights At Freddy’s game, which gathered a lot of views, then he spent some weeks with fewer uploads while he was finishing filming "In Space with Markiplier", then in April / May for a while he wasn’t uploading much because he was promoting "In Space with Markiplier", during the summer he regained some audience, then he got COVID on his trip to South Korea and was almost absent, then he spent weeks on a stupid OnlyFans stunt to promote his podcast, while the trademark of his channel, "3 scary games" disappeared for a while. All of this put together makes about 10-12 weeks, out of 52 in 2022, of subpar (or lack of) uploads from Markiplier. So... yeah, sure, it was the algorithm that did it.

And the not that funny thing is, he was awarded a pointless title of Gamer of the Year during some awards show (that he even himself joked about) - in a year that he spent about 20% of away from his usual job, yet somehow he was the best gamer among streamers. This year he started with uploading every day, sometimes twice a day, which... did not changed much so far - most of his videos are struggling to reach 2 million views on a channel with over 34 million subscribers. Which means less than 6% of his subscribes can be bothered to watch his recent videos. Sure, it’s the algorithm.

Of course changes in algorithm could affect new channels, which are trying to break through to bigger audience, but when established channels like OutsideXbox and Markiplier are complaining about it, it’s just silly. Recently Markiplier returned to "3 scary games", each video of the series gets easy 2.5 million views within days, while uploads of Callisto Protocol or Bendy and the Dark Revival lay below 1 million views. Again - it’s the algorithm, right? You can’t convince huge majority of your subscribers to take a peek at your recent videos, so of course it’s that evil algorithm’s fault.

Another youtuber, The Mighty Jingles, recently shared some data that he got from YouTube about his viewers and, according to him, less than 20% of views he got in 2022 were through suggestions made by YouTube (or to put it in other words, the evil algorithm), while over 50% of the views were from his own subscribers or through visits of his channel. Of course, his data might not apply to other channels, but overall algorithm might make it harder to discover your channel, once someone is subscribed it’s completely up to you to keep those viewers interested.

14-03-2023