A slightly unusual video from the fantastic Technology Connections channel. It articulates a lot of my own thoughts on social media, “algorithms” and AI.
What surprised me the most was the statistic that only 3% of author’s views come from the subscriptions feed. This is wild to me because subscriptions are pretty much the only way I have ever used YouTube.
I’m not all that sure; don’t they get the same amount of money from ads no matter how you find them? And they get a hefty chunk on “Join” and “Thanks” payments (a 30% cut, IIRC), which people are less likely to spend on non-subscribed channels.
I think that youtube wants to maximize watch time, if you just watch subscriptions you might get “done” at some point but with the home feed you can just keep watching forever
If you look at your Subscribed page and don’t see any updates, there’s a good chance you’ll leave YouTube without watching anything.
The Home page has a higher likelihood of tempting you to watch something you hadn’t planned on.
That’s a fair point, improving the subscription feed would be in their best interest for the people who use it, even if that number is low.