Maybe views are simply down. I can't be the only one getting tired of the out-of-control sponsored videos. Even if you pay for YT Premium, you get hit with that crap on most of the popular channels.

▲

meatmanek 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

And you think everyone simply made the same decision as you on the same exact day?

▲

bachmeier 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

It's possible that the YTers complaining about this are affected once you bring the algorithm into it.

▲

SoftTalker 5 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Anecdotally I am watching less. Not because of sponsorships, but because more and more content is AI-generated slop or copied (stolen) from other channels and reposted.

▲

jdiff 5 days ago | parent [-]

But we're talking about a substantial viewership drop, across a single platform (only desktop), all simultaneously on a single day. That's clearly not any sort of organic change.

	▲	bachmeier 5 days ago \| parent [-]
		Everything is driven by the algorithm. You can have big changes on one day and for specific platforms, even if it's something that's been building up gradually, because that might be the day the algorithm adjusted. It's hard to talk about "this caused that to happen" if you don't know what the algorithm is doing.

▲

pier25 5 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Anecdotal but my usage has been slowly dropping in the past year or two as the experience has gotten worse. First it was the terrible search results and then with shorts plaguing the whole thing.