I think the mistake here is that google is making recommendations for the users. Google is making recommendations for google, to drive the users' attention to what benefits it most.
Bingo. I am a full-time YouTuber. I hate this reality.
Most people don’t understand the degree to which advertiser preferences dictate what they see on YouTube.
Creators are incentivized to only publish content that meets YouTube’s “advertiser-friendly guidelines.” When we publish content that is not suitable for all advertisers, YouTube doesn’t promote it, which is a death sentence for the video. YouTube claims that a video’s monetization status has no impact on discovery, but according to YouTube, all of the factors that influence whether a video is monetized directly impact video discovery. It’s smoke and mirrors.
An overwhelming majority of views on YouTube come from recommendations and suggested videos, and YouTube has little incentive to suggest or recommend content that is ‘unsuitable’ for advertisers. Because it doesn’t make them money.
To put some numbers on that, ~95% of my views come from YouTube’s suggestions and recommendations. I have millions of subscribers, but subscriber count is all-but meaningless. For any given video, subscriber notifications typically account for a negligible number of views, usually less than 5,000.
Remember when YouTube introduced the bell you have to ‘ring’ in order to receive notifications from the channels you subscribe to? That is one of many actions YouTube has taken to remove your ability to choose what you see. YouTube does this because people don’t decide what to watch based on whether or not it’s advertiser-friendly. They would rather decide for you.
I publish news. And there are highly-newsworthy stories that I haven’t covered because of the above. I hate it.
