[freetime2]

Is it the YouTube algorithm's fault? Or viewer preferences? I think YouTube would be happy to recommend the videos to more people if more people watched them.

I watch photography videos on YouTube, and camera review channels consistently have far more subscribers than channels who make content about taking photos. (Or at least they did in the past - in recent years camera tech has really matured and interesting releases are much less frequent, and reviewers seem to have taken a hit).

I think people just like gear. Should YouTube not show people what they like to see?

I've watched some Berm Peak videos in the past and I mostly know the channel for its videos about builds/repairs, or his video about the history of valves. The mountain biking videos are good too, but only hold my interest for so long. If I want to see mountain biking I'm more likely to look at some of the stuff Red Bull is putting out.

[atoav]

As a young film student my Prof asked me whether I wanted to go to a talk to which he was invited. It was on the genres shown in German public television.

There the summary of the discussion was: Our core demographic are 60 to 70 year olds which is why we only make shows that appeal to 60-70 year olds and our core audience watches TV while doing household chores, so it needs to be simple to follow, so they can do household chores while watching.

I told them that to me this sounds a lot like circular logic, where they justify the things they are doing with the outcomes that produced. It is obvious there are other markets targeting different audiences (e.g. the likes of Netflix have been explicitly mentioned) and these markets are growing based on the way demographics shift.

A bit like a drug dealer that says he can't do honest work since all his customers are drug addicts, they are using the status quo as an excuse to persist the status quo.

The real way to think about these things is to consider them feedback loops. If all your content targets a specific demographic of course you're gonna have more audience members of that demographic, which again leads you to make more content for said demographic, which leads to more audience members of that demographic which... Until you hit some systemic limit, e.g. you have saturated the market or it turns out your content isn't that appealing to begin with in comparison to other stuff.

That means if you want to be strategic about this you need to give incentives to creators to produce stuff for audiences you don't already have. Even better: you need to become a partner these creators can and want to trust in.

These are the levers YouTube needs to pull if they want to stay a relevant platform that people enjoy spending their time on.

[jonplackett]

I’m gonna say it’s YouTube. They are obsessed with pushing short form shit videos to me despite me never wanting to watch them. I hate YouTube shorts so much

[seb1204]

I'm with you on not liking shorts. I read there is a new option to limit time spent in shorts, if you set that to 0 they do go away. Have not tested it.

[jonplackett]

Where is this setting?

[marysol5]

In what context do you get Short Form videos? I've never once been pushed to them.

[jonplackett]

In the Home Screen it is always completely full of shorts. In my recommendations, full of shorts. There’s no way to just never be shown shorts. It’s very clear from the layout that they REALLY want you to watch shorts. I assume it’s because they are more addictive = more views = more ads. But I pay for YY premium! So why do they still insist on putting shorts everywhere? If I want shitty short videos I’ll use TikTok

[ssl-3]

Yeah, they're very pushy with shorts.

But there are ways to never be shown shorts. They just tend to require avoiding the YouTube app.

Remember the World Wide Web? Even here in 2026, YouTube is still just a website -- if you want it to be. Web browsers like Firefox can still be used to block whatever you don't want to see.

So an effective way to deal with this situation is to switch to a browser, block the shorts, and then cancel premium and block ads as well.

In this way: A person can still consume the content that they want, while also protesting with their wallet.

[Groxx]

Subscriptions and even viewing history(?!) pull shorts out of order and place them at the top.

Hell, many times I launch YouTube and it immediately starts playing a short, no interaction required. And I have "show touches" on, so I know it's not a phantom tap or something, it's doing it all on its own.

YouTube pushes shorts insanely hard.

[zdragnar]

I wonder if they are doing some A/B testing on this. I see shorts about once a month or so, which is when the "not interested" option runs its course. Other than that, they don't push it to me at all, and the app has certainly never started auto playing a short when I've opened it.

I've also never watched a short, or if I did I immediately removed it from my watch history. I do keep that trimmed with prejudice, because the algorithm is desperate to show me something other than what I normally watch.

[Groxx]

I somewhat suspect the auto-play is a bug with "accessibility -> remove animations". There are quite a lot of Google-product bugs with it enabled (nearly all other apps I use are 100% fine), though most don't render things unusable (except the recent apps list, WOW wtf). Youtube has also lately been jumping straight to "Shorts [that I have uploaded, which is zero]" when I open the "You" section, despite it being the last in the list and completely empty - this too is very likely an animation-related bug.

Why it happens with remove-animations: well I'm pretty confident they don't test with it. But it's super freakin' weird. I kinda doubt it'll get fixed though, doing so will cause "engagement" to drop, and it has been happening for most of a year now.

[rob74]

I don't get them on desktop either, but on the mobile app they're very hard to avoid. Seems like YouTube doesn't want to be YouTube anymore, it wants to morph into TikTok. We don't need more TikToks, having one TikTok is already bad enough thankyouverymuch!

[rconti]

In any context I can think of, even looking at channels I subscribe to on the AppleTV app, shorts are the second row.

[reddalo]

I also hate YouTube Shorts. Just put them out on another website.

Luckily I use uBlock Origin and ReVanced, and I blocked all Shorts from even appearing.

[jonplackett]

Yea on desktop I can solve it too - but on mobile it’s a pain. I’m subscribed now because I want background playback and using the various blockers was getting annoying. So the app is all I have.

But I subscribe now god damn it! Can’t I just only see what I want to see? Is this too much to ask?

[pjc50]

> show people what they like to see?

The thing is, "what people enjoy while watching", "what they derive lasting benefit, memory or happiness from", and "what they click on in a thumbnail" are three different things, and youtube optimizes for the latter. Which is why youtube face is a thing.

[freetime2]

Click-through rates are indeed very important, but that's not all they optimize for. They are also looking at watch time, what you do after watching the video (do you watch more videos from the same creator, or on the same subject, something totally different, or do you leave the site), whether you interact with the video by liking or commenting, channels you have subscribed to, things you have searched for, etc.

And I think that when you spend a significant amount of time watching videos on a certain subject or from a certain channel - or when you repeatedly decline to watch videos of a certain type when they are suggested - you are signaling a very clear preference.

Are the videos the algorithm serves up something that people will "derive lasting benefit, memory or happiness from"? Probably not - but I also don't think that's what most people are looking for from YouTube. Sometimes, maybe, but more often they are just looking for mindless entertainment. Engaging with media on a deeper level requires effort. YouTube is where people go when even finding something to watch on Netflix is too much effort, let alone doing something healthy.

To keep this all in context - the parent comment was complaining that the algorithm doesn't promote videos of a guy building bike jumps in his back yard enough. I like Berm Peak - but is that something that most people would "derive lasting benefit, memory or happiness from"? No, it's not.

Anyone who hasn't seen those videos hasn't lost out on very much. And for anyone who has spent any amount of time watching videos about bicycles on YouTube - they probably have been recommended Berm Peak videos on numerous occasions. I know I have. The guy has 2.77 million subscribers and 787 million total views on his videos. Whether or not people actually watched the videos when suggested is more likely a matter of personal choice than the algorithm doing him dirty.

[Scoundreller]

On the creator side, YouTube won’t monetize you until you have 1000 subs.

Which means the person that put up 1 video with a massive amount of views will get squat (but Google will gladly put in ads and take a 100% cut).

Protip: subscribe to creators that post useful but not very subscribeable videos. Sucks for creators that put up videos that don’t really relate to eachother.

Dunno why everything has to be a “channel”. That’s what search is supposed to be for.

[rconti]

> but that's not all they optimize for.

They must do this as a global level, not an individual level.

I've never noticed a single one of those awful algo-driven apps notice that I never watch short videos and in fact I often force quit the app the second they feed me trash I don't want to see.

And they keep doing it.

[Scoundreller]

There’s a bunch of websites where I’ve declined to install their app about 74747627282 times in a row and… tomorrow they’re still going to think they can nudge me into it.

[ben_w]

Yes, modulo only that "what people like enough to keep going through the adverts" isn't exactly the same as "what they click on in a thumbnail", and the latter combines with "did these ads convince someone to get the paid ad free experience" is what YT optimises for.

[close04]

I think it's the algorithm. Occasionally I get recommended videos that are 5-8+ years old (so old in terms of Youtube years) with no new comments so presumably not getting a lot of recent views. But soon comes a wave of fresh comments wondering why they never discovered this video before. So the algorithm starts the cycle, not the organic user preferences.

For this particular channel, I watched a bunch of his videos on this Reevo bike In January 2025, and a lot of bike/cycling related videos in general. Despite this clear preference to guide the algorithm, Youtube stopped recommending this channel to me. It disappeared from my feed.

I always suspected Youtube "motivates" creators to pay for promotion by giving them a taste for free, how it looks like to be on everyone's feed, and then takes them off.

[freetime2]

Old videos suddenly being heavily promoted again on YouTube is interesting. Sometimes there are obvious reasons, like this 6 year old video about the Straight of Hormuz that is recently making the rounds again [1]. Other times I think it's just the chaotic effects and constructive interference of 2.5 billion users interacting with 15 billion videos - like a rogue wave forming in the ocean.

There are two ways that I've noticed though that YouTube tends to consistently suggest older videos. One is when you first discover a new channel that you like and watch a few videos from that channel, YouTube will start recommending older videos from that channel until you've exhausted the back catalog (or lost interest).

The other way I've noticed is that when I hit the like button a video, YouTube will recommend it to me again after some time has passed. This also seems to depend on the type of video. Music videos are almost always recommended again after some time, while news videos almost never are.

I think these mechanisms are effective at driving traffic to older videos. If I look at my home page right now, most of it does tend to be newer content, but I'd estimate about 25% of it is more than a year old.

In response to your complaint about Berm Peak videos disappearing from your feed - obviously I don't know for certain, but is it possible that YouTube did suggest other Berm Peak videos after you watched a bunch of Reevo videos - but you didn't watch them? And that YouTube might have interpreted that as a lack of interest in the channel?

I've got a couple of channels that I consistently watch whenever they put out a new video. And I find that YouTube is really good about putting their videos at the top of my home page whenever a new video comes out.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udtVdDmSSoo

[2muchcoffeeman]

>* Is it the YouTube algorithm's fault? Or viewer preferences? I think YouTube would be happy to recommend the videos to more people if more people watched them.*

I always got garbage even if it suggested things I wanted to watch too.

The best way is to disable suggestions completely and then just make a note of your favourite channels. That way you get a completely blank landing page and are forced to search out exactly what you want every time.

[orrito]

You can disable suggestions and still subscribe to channels, I'd argue that's the easiest path while still keeping what you're actually interested in. If you have 200+ subscribed channels over the years it's less good, I'd just unscribe if you're not interested in it.

[smallerize]

He actually just did a video about that. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=E_PdRRfoBXo&pp=ygUJQmVybSBwZWF... It includes a recap of the last several years of content and how he was trying to keep his audience, sometimes by doing really risky things.

[freetime2]

Yup and he talks about how it was unsustainable, and how his priorities have shifted now that he has kids. He does mention the algorithm and the introduction of shorts as something he had to compete with - but mostly he just frames the bike park as an idea that has run its course and he has grown out of.

[smallerize]

YouTube mainly rewards people who are doing unsustainable things. It chews them up and spits them out, and when creators either go back to doing something sustainable or crash and burn, the algorithm just stops sending them traffic.

[tripdout]

I remember seeing a video where someone was talking about how from someone on the YouTube team said that their goal is for you to to replace the word “algorithm” with “audience”.

Whether they achieve that goal or not is a different story.

[freetime2]

I think that was actually Mr. Beast who said that [1]. The quote is also brought up in an interview with Rene Ritchie back when he was working for YouTube [2], and explaining what the algorithm does.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/shorts/RsWJ_rq93F0

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=as4I6aloi_A

[ryandrake]

A huge percentage of people who say they are into a particular hobby are really just collectors of that hobby’s gear. Photography is an easy example, but this applies to a LOT of hobbies.

[bluGill]

I have long ago realized that I cannot buy more gear for my hobbies unless I commit to using it. I want a lot of cool gadgets, but using what I have needs more time than I put into the hobby. (I need to play mandolin several hours a day to get better, in reality I often skip days or only put in 15 minutes). It is one thing to say "I need X tool for the next step and buy the tool, but I only buy that tool if I really do use it, not because it is a gadget that looks cool (and then I have the tool). I've also found great fun in asking "how did they do this before modern tools" - often I can find an alternate path without the gear.

[Escapade5160]

It's in YouTube's best interest to only show users content they're interested in. Replace the word algorithm with users and you'll have a more accurate representation of how YouTube actually works. The reason those videos didn't get the love they deserved is because they're niche content, the 10 minute review videos appeal to a wider audience and therefore gain more traction.

[RankingMember]

Coincidentally he just made a video elaborating on this as well as a general overview of the history and state of mountain biking channels on YouTube:

https://youtu.be/_oQ4XY4P1n8

[mulmen]

> Is it the YouTube algorithm's fault? Or viewer preferences?

I didn’t read the rest of your comment but it’s the fault of the algorithm because that tail wags the dog. It’s physically impossible to watch all videos so we are all at the mercy of the (a) algorithm.

[anukin]

Do you have some recommendations for photography channels on YouTube?

[freetime2]

I like Thomas Heaton for landscape photography. For gear reviews I like PetaPixel. And for tips/tutorials I think Simon d'Entremont is good.

There are a bunch of other channels out there too that I watch from time to time, but I think the above are the best in their respective categories.