Technology

Reasons I see:

a) the generation that grew up watching LTT is now at age where they don't watch as much YT as they did before b) increasing amount of things happen which put viewers off c) consumer technology peaked and is now "boring" d) new generations don't have as much interest in technology altogether

Let's explain:

a + c) people watching LTT years ago were living in an exiting tech era where it boomed and you had mayor leaps in tech basically on a yearly basis. Moving from floppy disks to CD's to USB sticks. CRT to LCD displays. 16-bit to 32-bit color. Solitare and Minesweeper to Call of Duty 4 and Need for Speed. Symbian and Blackberry to Android and iOS. Tons of manufacturers, tons of competition, tons of new and exctiting stuff.

Let's observe the state today: iPhone looks the same for the past half decade. Android is basically just Google and Samsung. Storage is now all in cloud. New games are recycled and upscaled old games. Every new generation of hardware is same thing just 10% better/faster. New OS releases are just refinements without new features. Most changes are done just for the sake of change. Existing hardware can basically be enough for 5+ years. What is LTT realistically supposed to talk about that is interesting? There is simply no more interesting tech.

This ties in into d) - tech peaked, new generations "just use it as it is", there is no need to tinker with it, prebuilt PC's are more than fine for years to come. Since AI the IT job landscape seems to be in decline, both in demand and in pay. People do other stuff now that is more lucrative.

LTT is dependent on stuff happening so that they can make videos about it. But, stuff kinda just isn't happening. Or the stuff that happens is just not noteworthy news anymore.

I'm watching less 'tube in general because youtube is obnoxious as fuck. They devote so many resources to getting you to watch ads, it actually causes the whole experience to suffer even with an adblock.

I completely stopped watching him after the GPU fiasco. I always thought he might be super slimy, but I think I can reasonably say that he is.

I've noticed this in many of the channels I subscribe to, 5 years ago they had something like 1m views on some videos regularly and now only 300k (or similar decline), all of them. Some of them even made videos about it. My guess, and theirs, is YouTube changed the algorithm and also the introduction of shorts.

the channel has lost its charm. its just puking out videos, but there is no content. no real hardware tests. only drama and clickbait crap. he has lost the techsavvy part of the viewers on his tech channel with pushing garbage into everyones face.

It's not about Linus specifically. Many other channels (with actual good content) have been experiencing the same. Creators are assuming it has to do with restricted mode, but I'm not sure it's convincing, it probably has more to do with algorithmic changes youtube has made.

Google is now expecting users to watch ads that are sometimes a full 25% of the viewing time, or slowing access and requiring logins when adblock is being used. And even if you wade through all that, watching Youtube tech and info videos has become a lot like looking at online recipes. The majority of what you find is fluff and filler for only small amounts of useful content.

I used to go to Youtube daily for research and entertainment but now I avoid the site completely whenever possible. It seems we've finally reached an enshittification tipping point.

It's about time.

I came here to see if it was the early signs of the demise of YouTube. I secretly want all these content producers to move to a privacy-respecting platform, especially those who produce tech or privacy related content.

Now, for why I don't watch videos anymore, the medium isn't as easily consumed by me. I prefer text. At home, it's noisy and I get interrupted every 90 seconds. I lose interest quickly and fast forwarding isn't as easy as scanning text for a topic shift. My mind wanders on some topics, internally exploring that topic deeper. With text, i can just stop reading. With video, i need to realize that I'm processing a thought and hit pause, then rewind a bit. I get interrupted a lot. On the bus, I need to remember headphones and I hate when people shoulder surf. That's harder to do with text. Give me a plain text RSS feed that I can read anytime.

Maybe at some point we can all stop watching and hence supporting YouTube, that'd be nice.

I wonder if it has to do with ad fatigue. Watching YouTube without a block is like going to an orgy with a bunch of ppl with STIs

Because people wont stay 14 to 16 year olds for long

It's interesting that no one seems to be mentioning the fact that new generation is using TikTok and older generation is watching media less and less. To me it looks like YouTube itself is cooked in the long term, and they brought it upon themselves. Restore the gotdamn dislikes so I can at least navigate the damn platform.

Yeah, because Linus is kinda shit more and more. Hes wholly turned me off from his content over the years because of how he acts, what he says, etc. And you can 'trust me bro' on that.

I really like and appreciate people like Steve. I like what he's doing and how he's doing things. He hasn't become a greedy corpo and hes just a very intelligent and caring person who believes in standing up for what's right; Even if that means calling out a friend in the industry.

I feel like Linus is out of touch with reality. He's not at all down to earth anymore.

The more interesting part for me, that they mentioned on the WAN show, is that while viewers dropped significantly, the revenue basically hasn't changed. They're more or less making the same amount of money from half the amount of reported viewers.

Are people pretending that Youtube doesn't tweedle the knobs and intervenes massively in the al mighty algorithm like it's not just a audience mind puppet but some kind of transcendental meritocracy ?

Problem with their channel specifically, is their hypocrisy, BS, lack of research and just misleading their viewer-base. People remember.

I'm sure declining viewers has nothing to do with the various controversies such as auctioning off prototypes, rushed reviews with misleading or false conclusions, mistreating staff etc. Channels like Gamers Nexus really laid into him.

So many possible reason.

Linus has a history of scummy behavior which turns people off.

Everything gets boring eventually. Especially things that are supposed to be funny.

Google ads are extra obnoxious making the entire platform more annoying to use and most of us will never pay for youtube. Those ads are not even selling products I would be interested in. Investment scams, car accident claim ads, AI voiced robot panda. It just annoying noise.

Nothing lasts forever.

My theory is that we have a limited number of hours a day to view content. We also have a growing number of channels and content in general. Algorithms include new content we kight enjoy, and for every new channel we get hooked on, one of the older ones drops off.

Tv shows rarely (ever?) Last forever. Why should channels?

Those stupid thumbnails pushed me away

LTT had multiple pretty bad scandals, didn't they? I recently needed to find some technical information and other places had better information. LTT seems to be more of a pop culture tech channel? I don't even really know how to describe what I mean. It's like the reviews are more like fluff pieces I guess? They aren't super duper technical. But I also don't watch them much so maybe I missed something.

My guess they started accounting for bot visits. Perhaps a lot of videos before were visited by bots. Not just to bump views but could be for training AI.

Maybe post actually interesting content instead of pumping out a bunch of variations of the same video about building yet another PC on a dozen of channels. After the whole drama about video quality we got a few more citations but the overall video quality got worse. And then 1/3 videos are paid as if Linus weren't a multi millionaire. Realize it LTT sucks.