Several of YouTube’s most popular content creators have made videos accusing the site of manipulating views, with the platform’s most subscribed content creator PewDiePie threatening to delete his channel once he reaches 50 million subscribers in response.
“I feel like YouTube is a toddler, playing with knives, and you must take the knives away from the baby,” joked PewDiePie in a recent video that has received over 12 million views. “Now I used to be subscribed to H3H3 and I was like ‘why am I not seeing their videos?’ Well, I’m unsubscribed for some reason.”
“A channel that I actually watch like regularly, why would I be unsubscribed? And then channels I haven’t touched in fucking years I’m still subscribed to,” he continued, before moving on to the issue of declining views.
“I made this video where I said I was quitting the vlogs, part of it was because I thought no one liked them,” PewDiePie explained. “Now I figured out it’s because YouTube changed how you view videos… All I want is that the people that subscribe to me get to watch my videos. I don’t give a shit about whatever else, YouTube… Oh and don’t unsub me from channels that I’m watching.”
Popular comedy channel H3H3Productions also complained about recent changes at YouTube, pointing out that YouTube’s front-page trending section was almost entirely comprised of paid advertisements masquerading as popular videos.
“You know we get a lot of comments that are really nice and encouraging, but my favorite comments by far, and the ones that get me most motivated to keep creating for YouTube, are by far these ones here,” declared H3H3Productions’ Ethan Klein, before displaying a numerous comments of fans complaining that they don’t see his videos anymore. “That’s encouraging, that makes me really want to get out there and create videos for YouTube.”
“Let’s hop on over to the ‘trending’ tab, aka the ‘paid promotions’ tab,” continued Klein. “The number five trending places are literal advertisements, with shit views. Let’s start calling the trending tab what it is: the paid promotions tab. Let’s just cut with the trending bullshit and stop lying to people.”
Jacksepticeye mirrored Klein’s concerns, claiming in a recent video, “There’s been a huge algorithm change on YouTube recently.”
“Every now and then YouTube will make a really big change that will completely change how you watch certain videos, or how certain videos are promoted, or how well channels are doing,” he explained. “I thought it was me at the time, I thought, ‘well people are going back to school, people are not just watching as much, they’re doing different things…’ But then I started to notice that a lot of people are talking about it, and a lot of people had started to say different things, and I started looking up on it and surely everyone was having the exact same dip.”
“At least everyone in the gaming scene I follow were all just having huge crashes all of a sudden, like 30 to 40% loss,” he continued. “When such a huge dive happens and such a huge loss and blowout happens all at once, it’s kind of cause for alarm, because what I started to find out then from other people as well is that YouTube started unsubscribing people from channels.”
“It’s going to lead to some really crappy practices by people, which is already rampant on the site,” he concluded. “Absolutely insane clickbait… really shady tactics to get likes, like begging for likes, people asking you to comment all the time… so they get more views and are pushed up by YouTube’s algorithm more.”
YouTube, however, told the Mirror, “We’ve done an extensive review and found there have been no decreases in creators subscriber numbers beyond what normally happens when viewers either unsubscribe from a creator’s channel or when YouTube removes spammed subscribers.”
Charlie Nash is a reporter for Breitbart Tech. You can follow him on Twitter @MrNashington or like his page at Facebook.
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