Ask Lemmy
A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions
Please don't post about US Politics.
Rules: (interactive)
1) Be nice and; have fun
Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them
2) All posts must end with a '?'
This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?
3) No spam
Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.
4) NSFW is okay, within reason
Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either [email protected] or [email protected].
NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].
5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions.
If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email [email protected]. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.
Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.
Partnered Communities:
Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu
view the rest of the comments
Unfortunately, the stupid thumbnail and clickbait title is by design. Linus has spoken about this long before the latest controversy, but unfortunately they do increase views.
I'm fact, they trial different titles and monitor which brings in more views - if you catch a video early enough, you'll probably notice the title change a few hours later as they trial different ones. So as frustrating as it is, it's a symptom of the platform and the market at large.
For all of Linus' flaws and mistakes, he's generally a good businessman and make no mistake, LMG is a business at the end of the day. Put yourself in his shoes, is he going to do the thing that will get him 1,000 views but put off 1 person, or appeal to that 1 person but lose 1,000 views? It sucks, he been vocal about how much he also hates it, but it is what it is. His goal is to grow his business, at least he's up front about it.
I'm not completely defending Linus as an individual here, he's definitely fucked up a lot (especially lately), he still thinks he's a "little YouTuber" and doesn't appreciate how much sway he has, how his words can destroy an entire business overnight - the very thing his own company was nearly hit by several times in the past when he was small - but the clickbait and thumbnails aren't something I think he should be blamed for, he's just playing the YouTube game and if I was in his position, I'd do the same.
I get it. It's just not something I appreciate and at times it has gotten so annoyingly cringy I've unsubscribed for a bit.
The combination of the Youtuber face thumbnails and the lack of descriptive thumbnails makes me irregularly watch their videos. Probably as irregularly as if I wasn't subscribed and was finding them through the related video section.
Yup I hear that. I know they use different video titles because they've talked about that on the show a few times, but having worked in a very SEO-driven business myself, I would be surprised if they don't pay attention to all of the metrics - including numbers of unsubscribers (Which you can get a breakdown of per video) and things like that.
In this line of business, there's always some amount of churn/attrition, you literally cannot please everyone when your audience is tens or even hundreds of millions of people. The best you can do is aim for the net gain/growth and when you don't hit that, learn from it.
You're doing the right thing by unsubscribing, if you're not enjoying the content or engaging with it, that'll literally tell them as much. The only issue is if that same content is engaging with more other people, there's a good chance they won't miss you as a subscriber. Which sucks, but that's just business. It's one of the reasons why so many youtube channels have gone downhill, because you end up invariably chasing the numbers and the numbers are decidedly mainstream. LTT is firmly in that camp now.
They increase views at the cost of credibility. Not worth the cost in my opinion.
Their revenue is continuing to grow, it's really not an issue for them.
Yeah but for how long? Ship of thessius moment is going to sink them.
Why do you think that? None of this is new, they've been using clickbaity headlines and thumbnails for years and years now.
Yes but the public perception flipped when the long working hours, pressure to release videos and culture became evident in the recent scandal that ended with 3? apology videos.
Did it, though? They certainly got called out, but as far as I can see his content is still growing.