alt Hacker NewsIs 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.
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> 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.
>* 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.
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.
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.
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.
Do you have some recommendations for photography channels on YouTube?
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.
> 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.
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