I genuinely wonder if YouTube is trying to drive content creators from the platform.
No joke, the cost to operate constantly goes up simply based on total videos stored on servers, but not every video is uploaded in an attempt to grow an audience thus limiting revenue. If they were to drive away many smaller channels or simply discourage the creation of new one's trying to make it big ultimately to fail then it could be a stopgap measure to limit the growing costs. Since failed channels don't exactly up and delete the videos when they give up on the attempted career. This would then limit viewer only users to choosing existing channels as sources of content. With higher viewership the cost for ads goes up on those videos increasing revenue.
Though one has to wonder why they haven't been clear on the changes and new requirements as even large channels have been hit hard. If they would be straightforward about all this then most successful content creators would jump on board(read as: adapt begrudgingly) while the smaller channels would be slow to play catch up and ultimately be weeded out. However, if they continue to be unclear they will just be hurting channels t random and end up driving everyone away to some new video platform.
But hey, it's just a theory, a business theory. Thanks for reading.
TLDR; Youtube is making a stupid business play.
Everyone keeps pointing out that Youtube is a business and as such is out to make money but what seems to keep being forgotten that although the viewers are customers (ads needs eyeballs to watch them to make money after al) so are the content creators... if they are trying to make money then making new content creators and/or old ones question the viability of the site to make a living from then they will look elsewhere.
If it is the new and small ones that are being targetted then Youtube has effectively put an end date on it's viability as a platform - the reason that it stays current is because of the intense competition and the larger channels having to stay current and innovate to keep ahead of the new big thing coming up... if there are no new small channels (or only a few) then the incentive goes away; just look at the US telecoms industry! Google, do you want Youtube to become that!?!
If it is the old channels that are feeling the rub then how exactly do Youtube think they are going top make money!?!? They rely on the big old channels to make money in the first place... taking them on (and they have the money and audience to go it alone much more easily, as well as the clout to face off against Youtube itself) seems like a lost battle for Youtube!
If it is the edgier channels that they want rid of then they don't understand their main viewer demographic... young people (who are less conservative than the average Internet user and certainly less conservative than the average person and absolutely less conservative than the average advertising airhead). I'll grant that there are plenty of not young people watching too but are they the ones subscribing? The ones that might move from Twitch!? The ones that are heavily dedicated to one specific personality or channel?? ... er, NO.
Youtube still being in investment mode is no surprise at all, that way they can spin the news internally that the fact they became very not profitable during the adpocalypse is not a big thing and just a bump on the way to becoming a more sustainable division. The other way to read this is that they really fucked themselves and are now being forced to make good on the implied promise there that they are trying to become profitable... but it is too late - there is no way for Youtube to do anything but become a minor player in the Internet video business with the culture that they created a long time ago and that will stay with them to the end of it's useful life.
It's really crazy in some ways that Google doesn't just keep Youtube on for the brand... it is one of the main two reasons that people like Google... Search and Videos and both are currently the only real option... except not so much with videos any more - because they are trying to make it make money... Youtube was, is and will always be very hard to monetize but very easy to advertise on and Google are in the best position to do this (never mind the amount of data they collect of user habits and preferences - surely this is worth almost any amount of money they are losing on it!)
The irony is that even if they just keep the safe, boring content then they will lose their audience since the majority of that is made by intelligent people who know how to protect their income streams and the viewers are generally not so interested in precisely which channel they get their educational content from.
For example; I know a few teachers who use educational videos from Youtube to teach in class - Youtube gets the eyeballs of dozens of children on their site, their adverts and their branding, and it becomes the default for those children when they look for videos... granted, the video only gets a couple of officially tallied views from that but most of the benefits to Youtube (and it's advertisers) are much greater for that... maybe something that would make more sense would be to work out who the teachers are and make sure you serve the safest and best ads to them but charge advertisers more because you can say these users are showing ads to many other people at the same time in one viewing session... but, again, this users the metadata they glean from having a site EVERYONE goes to and putting off viewers and content creators is just going to make it harder to collect these Whale watchers (rather than Whale spenders) and have them drive your brand into the minds of young children!! (Yes, horrific from a non-business point of view but gold from that business perspective everyone keeps refering to!)
Jeff Conte a popular musician.....I wonder if they know he's 1 of founders of Patreon when they made the video.
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