Josh (00:00)
You may have heard a lot of different things going on the past week or two of what's been going on with YouTube. some things are myth, some things are true. We're going to talk about the huge updates. So let's actually get into it. somewhat of a myth, is the fact that a lot of people, or I should say a lot of the bigger YouTube channels like Linus Tech Tips and
Markiplier and large channels that have multi-millions of subscribers and viewers have claimed or have said that they have noticed a lot of a drop-off of viewers. And this kind of led to an outcry that YouTube was not really shadow banning, but more of changing the algorithm. It was changing something that it did not let creators know about.
beforehand. And this brought on a lot of people to kind of speculate a feature, not a feature, but a setting within your actual YouTube settings is called restricted mode. Now this actually has been disproven since this feature has been in place since I think it was 2010. It's been many years that it's been in effect or has been an option, but this kind of
set the ball rolling and that saying, hey, my views have disappeared or is cut by 50 % because of this feature. And many creators instantly jumped on this myth without actually doing any kind of research or anything. They said, yeah, if you turn this restricted mode on, all your videos, most of your videos disappear. Yes, that is very true, but...
that it was not the actual case for what was causing the issue. Now, it did come out probably a week later almost, it felt like a week later, know, the independent, or actually in the creator space, several days, it does feel like an eternity. But the issue was, is that the ad blockers, like YouBlockOrigin and others like that.
were actually causing an issue where YouTube wasn't recording the views for people that were using ad blockers. And this again goes back to the blocking ad blockers, blocking ad blockers type of back and forth between YouTube and ad blocker companies.
In my own personal opinion, I say use ad blockers because even the FBI prior to today or this
scenario had posted that for the public to use ad blockers when going through the internet. Because a lot of the times you can get your computer infected with malware from malicious ads that get posted inside your website feeds or watching ads on YouTube or wherever else. So it's a good idea to run an ad blocker.
And YouTube has been spinning the past couple years with a cat and mouse game of going back and forth of telling viewers that, hey, actually not telling, but punishing viewers, say, hey, you're using an ad blocker, stop doing it. Because it's against our terms of service, which yes, it is. It's the fact that the number of ads and
the length of them have only increased over the years that it becomes more of a user hostile environment, especially with ads. And I know a lot of other creators are completely against ad blockers. And I just have to say, how I look at it from my own personal view is that
You shouldn't really rely on ad revenue on YouTube, but if you do, that's your own opinion and everyone is entitled to it. with that out of the way, so a lot of people are saying, okay, what was causing the issue is because of the ad blockers. Like I said, I was not counting views in a certain way. Linus Tech Tips did have a...
So I'm gonna show, this is a still image from one of the WAN show from Linus Tech Tips showing the actual numbers of their views that were being suspect of being down. But as you'll see here.
the actual numbers showing the views are actually down. But as you can see in the graph here up above or in the screen share, their likes and ad revenue were actually up. So a lot of other content creators, ⁓ Josh Strafe plays, posted up a video that when this YouTube
fiasco with ad blockers happened and it happened on August 10th and he posted up his actual numbers showing that mobile and PC viewing pretty much before or prior to August 10th were kind of in line. But on that day and afterwards, the desktop views were way below mobile views. And now it was because most of the time, actually pretty much all the time that
for people who are watching on mobile won't have an ad blocker running on their phone or their device. But if you use an ad blocker, it's on your PC or your computer. So it kind of correlates with what was actually happening and we saw the numbers just get kind of skewed and desktop views were low while mobile views were at normal but higher rate.
So as you can see here, this is just one example of what was actually going on from August 10th to pretty much current day.
So YouTube came back and pretty much they confirmed it. I'm using air quotes to say that is because of the ad blockers. And I have an article here from nine to five Google says over the past month or so, many YouTubers have reported major drops in the to their video view counts. Theories have run wild, but there's one explanation involving ad blockers that makes the most sense. But YouTube isn't confirming.
anything directly. And this was about two days ago. So, and I think Renee Richie spoke about this as well, kind of not really saying yes, this is the issue, but we can all just assume safely that this was causing a problem was ad blockers and YouTube, again, not getting together and working hand in hand as they once were.
this was for a good week or two, this was like a big major drama with YouTube. Everyone was making videos saying, ⁓ my viewers are down. This was all caused because of this. you know, it's something where a lot of people jump the gun. They see another creator.
posting out a video saying, this is the reason why X is the cause of Y. And then they jump and say, oh, I got to create a video as well for this.
so many people were saying that is a reason why. Well, come to find out that wasn't the reason why. And we'll see if people retract those videos or ⁓ make corrected statements.
And what I actually wanted to talk about in this episode is the updates that YouTube has made. They made some major updates for live streaming and so for the general platform as a whole. And one of these updates was to the live streaming aspect of YouTube, which has been kind of, I'm not going to say forgotten, but it's been kind of
pushed aside in order for little brother shorts to have some time in a limelight for a couple years. So what they have updated is one of the things is that you can actually, they have put in an option for practice before going live to give creators a way to test their setup with no risk. Couple other platforms like Twitch has a capability where you can run a test stream into your channel.
So it's to see if your internet capability is up to snuff or anything is going wrong. You can actually see if it is affecting your stream before actually going live. So this is actually a good thing. One other thing is the Playables on live. So Playables were introduced last year as a fun interactive experience on YouTube with lightweight entertaining games like Angry Birds Showdown.
Cutthroat and many other games that you can play on your live stream. So if that's something that you want to do, it's coming down the line. ⁓ One of the big things I'm actually really excited about seeing is the ⁓ streaming across formats. ⁓ actually take it back is the
this one right here where you can have the horizontal and vertical streams in one studio window and the chat from both live streams are integrated into one chat window. So that's actually a great thing that they're actually it's not out yet. I'm sure it's being tested but it's coming down within weeks or months that pretty much everyone will be able to have access to it. But this
is something that was been asked about, asked about constantly from many people that want to stream both formats, horizontal and vertical. But you would have to have two streaming encoders going at the same time, and then you have to have the two windows for a chat in order to keep up to date for ⁓ the chat for both sides. Thankfully,
Thank you YouTube for actually integrating this into one studio window at the same time and same thing for the chat. The only thing I did not see is if they made any changes when if you're streaming to YouTube, you might have noticed that the chat automatically defaults to top chat, which is stupid. It should automatically, I don't know why top chat is there to begin with.
It should automatically be live chat as the only option because if you're in top chat, there might be an occasion where someone's chat message you will never see if you're in that particular section or that tier or whatever. And that person that chatted or sent that chat message and you don't respond to it, they're just gonna go away and be like, well, this person doesn't respond to chat or ignoring me, whatever.
So I hope in one day that they get rid of the top chat selection and just go for live chat. Just one, just be done with it. So I did not see in this update that they made that change. Unfortunately, it's still the same way. ⁓ You can also...
So they also have a building on a successful pilot. They're expanding the ability to react live to content on YouTube, allowing anyone to start a vertical live stream on mobile and react to other live events or even other creators who are currently live. So this is probably a good option for people who are covering ⁓ major events. I don't know if it's going to...
The thing is that you're probably not going to be able to have access to like the Emmys or the Academy Awards or the Tonys or some big high corpo event that is being shown on YouTube live. But I'm thinking or I'm guessing this is going to be for the like the streamer awards, something that is creator centric and creator driven and produced that this would be available to these people who
do react content. So they'll be able to, while the event is going live, they'll be able to be live as well reacting to the event. So that's actually pretty cool. So we'll see how that works out and the capability or what's the restrictions on that to begin with. ⁓ So they also have AI powered highlights. So turn live content into lasting content.
finds the most compelling moments from the live stream and automatically creates ready to share shorts. YouTube, Google as a whole has been shoehorning AI into pretty much everything. So what this is is basically after your live stream is done, when you go offline, usually it just sits there for a while for other people to watch. What's gonna happen is that AI ⁓ is
going to go through your content. I'm guessing if you allow it, have the option to turn this on, go through your entire live stream, ⁓ creating highlights or clips. So you can have it set ready to go for when you come back into it after waking up next day or whatever, say, yeah, it's created. Here's some shorts that we created and you can go through and probably edit them and then release or publish them on YouTube.
It'd be interesting to see how this functions because I know, because I use Riverside FM, they have a similar capability. It goes through your recording or your live stream and it does the same thing. pulls out any clips that might be interested to be published on ⁓ vertical formats like shorts, TikTok, ⁓ Instagram reels and stuff like that. So.
There's a lot of other different places. Descript does it. ⁓ Opus clips, CapCut, I believe does it as well, and ⁓ Nexus clips. So there is like tons of different services that you can pay for, but this is gonna be baked in into YouTube itself. So YouTube is gonna be probably using the Gemini AI ⁓ situation, or situation, system.
and creating these particular clips. ⁓ Monetization. Now this I'm interested in. What they have here is a core part of supporting creators is helping them earn a living from their work. And we know that creators are often hesitant to run ads that interrupt key moments on their streams, which is very true during a live stream. Ads being put in is very disruptive, especially for the viewer watching it.
They have here the new side-by-side ads are less intrusive format for viewers while helping creators get paid without pulling their audience away. This, I'm wondering how this is gonna work, how this is actually gonna flow. If you're watching a live stream on Twitch and the creator is monetizing, they have ads running, what happens is that the ad takes over the stream and the streamer is put into a small box above chat.
they're muted. You can't really see because it is like a very tiny window and then the ad plays and then of course after it's done it reverses the stream comes back and whatever you missed well you're at so well. With this they have here that the ads are side by side so I'm wondering is the ad I'm assuming that the ad is going to be playing with audio and then the stream is muted which
in of itself doesn't really change anything because the stream is being interrupted. Yeah, it's a bigger window, but you can't hear it. Yeah, you can see it, but you can't hear what's going on while an ad is playing and has taken over. this, we'll have to see how this works out when it gets released. hopefully, fingers crossed that, you know,
the stream is playing and it's just an audio-less ad running. It's just, you know, read the words and or just ignore it completely. So we'll have to see on that. ⁓ Beyond ads, we're giving more ways to offer value to creators' biggest supporters, rolling out a new feature that allows channel membership creators to easily transition from a public stream to a members-only live stream.
without disruption. What it was before is that if you are live streaming and what would happen is that, all right, we're going to be cutting off this stream and then if you want to continue our discussion or the event, we have a members only live stream that is being started up and if you want to join this, hit the member or join now button and then become a member to interact and be part of the members only live stream.
So there was like two different things that you had to do. With this new feature is what be easily transitioned from, like I said, from a public live stream. It's like, hey, for the next hour, we're gonna be having members only. Thank you for joining us. If you wanna join in, you know, the same spiel and stuff like that. So this is actually interesting. So the way how I'm thinking of my work is that it's gonna constantly, it's...
similar to what it is currently where the public live stream is going to redirect to a members only live stream, but it's going to be more seamless. So there is no like during you have to go to a different stream. It's just basically move your audience, your viewers from the public into the members only. So it'd be interesting to see how that works out. There's a lot of these, we'll see how it works out.
It'd be interesting to see. So there is also a couple of other different things that they ⁓ released. They have, let's see, new live updates, reinventing formats. This is basically going through the Made on YouTube ⁓ event that it did a couple days ago.
One of the things that I'm actually interested in, like I said, is the studio feature with the vertical and the horizontal. That is actually, I am looking forward to that because I would like to include a vertical stream. It was very...
I did it a couple times earlier in the year and it was kind of kludgy, was very janky and I didn't have a good experience going through it.
I'm hoping that the new process is a lot better. seems, just from the picture and how it's explained, it seems to be a better experience in how things are going. But one of the things that I really want to talk about is that all these changes with AI, the inclusion, or I should say the... ⁓
increasing the number of ads and stuff like that is maybe you might be feeling kind of overwhelmed or you're done with YouTube because of all of these changes with AI ads intrusion, all focusing on shorts for so many years that you kind of feel that YouTube is this not really the place for you anymore. So one of the things that I've talked about in the past is that there are alternatives. There's PeerTube.
that is a free open source system where you can self-host or you can go to an instance that might be looking or have an opening for people to upload their videos to their instance. know Makerspace is a place for, as the title suggests, for makers. So if you're an artist or you are a woodworker,
Craftsperson or anything like that. You might want to check out Makerspace as an alternative alternative if you're like I said done with the entire YouTube experience There's also till vids for edutainment type of content You can find our content the intercreate indie creator community content over on till vids as well I do have a link down in the description So yeah
So there are alternatives to YouTube. You don't feel like you're stuck. It's either that or nothing. And I do have to preface it that if you do use an alternative, you are not gonna have the same result, because those alternatives are extremely small compared to the likes of audience or potential audience that you can find on YouTube. So you just have to kind of weigh the pros and cons of what...
you're looking for and just take your time and figure out what you want to do. So with that, go ahead and close out this episode. If you enjoyed what you're watching, do be sure to join our community at indycreator.community. The link is down in the description. It is a forum that is open for all independent artists, creators, or anybody that is looking for alternative platforms as well. We have
our blogs, have links to our podcast episodes and other videos that can be found there as well, along with other people that are like-minded people as well. So with that, I hope you enjoy this episode and I'll see you next time. Later taters.