In summation, your honor: 1. If you're writing to comment that the sub tab working for you, great. But the number of people using the tab is declining likely because it isn't working for them. 2. This is not a complaint about declining views but rather thumbnail impressions. Clicking the subscribe button doesn't mean what RUclips viewers think it means. RUclips's AI decides what you're really subscribed to. 3. Giving users more control over the subscription tab by providing some filtering and sorting options would go a long way to making things better for everyone.
The thumbnails are the reason that Sponsorblock's developer made the addon DeArrow. It's a title/thumbnail replacer made to describe videos in more honest detail.
I had no idea about the whys and wherefores... I'm glad I'm subscribed to YOU. You can explain all this very well. Please...stay a space nerd, too. I like watching you on NASA Spaceflight as well. Much aloha to you!
Regarding: "1. If you're writing to comment that the sub tab working for you, great. But the number of people using the tab is declining likely because it isn't working for them." I can't help but think it isn't in your best interest to write this. As this makes it more likely that people who wanted to comment about that case won't comment. And the fewer comments this video has than probably less likely RUclips is to recommend this video. So by adding a comment that sort of preempts the comments that might happen might be working against your goal of more views. Just a thought.
It's a mess... I have maybe five channels I watch almost 100% of what they upload... you among them... it's SUPER hit or miss if I see your videos. I've also noticed that if you have different sub channels like LTT (short circuit, tech quickie, etc.) They don't show up under the main channel anymore...
The problem with the Home feed is that it's practically unusable. The other day I watched a video from a tech channel about him restoring an Australian car, it was a one-off video on this guys channel and it was pretty cool. RUclips then decided that my Home feed needed to be entirely dedicated to this one particular brand of car, even though the video didn't really emphasize it that much. Any time you want to watch something outside of the algorithm, it overcorrects so hard that it believes that one thing you just watched is your new passion. I often have to open a video in a Private tab with ad-block just to see if it's interesting.
Now, search doesn’t work either. I have to search on Google to find the video I’m looking for. RUclips search works like one or two videos that has the keywords then it’s a whole lot of shorts then, recommended videos from feed that has nothing to do with the search terms.
@@LordofBacon42 I agree that this is frustrating. I go to my history and remove those videos from my watch history. That usually retunes the algorithm to remove those related videos
Yes. I watch quite a bit of different things on YT. Like IT related, woodworking, etc. Anyway things that are way different. Right now YT seems to decide that if I watch few woodworking related vids it spams my feed fully of them and vise versa. Then there's like Pixel thing channel I wouldn't like to miss any vids and no matter how I select its subscribe button it virtually never shows its latest content.
I almost never use the main page of RUclips because it's based on the videos you already watched, not your subs. I always use the sub "tab" to get the videos from the people I sub to. Works fine for me and the videos are ordered by the time and date they are uploaded. Live streams will always show at the top and below them comes the uploaded videos.
As far as I can see it does show 100% of the videos but it's a firehose. If you have a lot of subscriptions (especially news channels) single uploads often get buried.
@@LonSeidmanI have 150 or 175 subscriptions and have no trouble finding anything. My displays all show four thumbnails per row under Subscriptions, while yours have three. That would equate to a lot more scrolling down, I guess.
@@LonSeidman I guess the solution is to not subscribe to channels that produce a large daily quantity of videos. The whole point of subscriptions is for the users to be able to find and follow channels more easily, dumping tens of videos in one go defeats that.
I often use the Subscriptions list further down on the left side. That lets me see who has uploaded videos recently (by the dot beside the channel name) and I can easily click on the channels to see what's new. I have well over 200 subscriptions, many of which only post fewer than one video a week, so the firehose is useless.
One of the reasons that I use my subscriptions tab as my main way of watching content. I always go there first and once I have finished watching the ones that look interesting I then go to my feed. But I don't subscribe to channels which post many videos a day. So for me in a 24 hour period there are maybe 100 new videos to scroll through.
I also use the subscription tab as well to see all the latest videos I'm interested in before I go to the Home tab. Granted, I don't watch news on RUclips. If I subscribe to a new channel, I'm afraid the latest videos that I might be interested in might get buried. This is especially when it comes to let's plays/commentaries of video games.
Yeah I pretty much exclusively do this. I only watch new creators when searching for something or if I see them referred to from another creator, a friend, etc.
I usually go homepage, subscription page, watch later. I've been using playlists a lot more into rap stuff that I'm interested in but just don't have the time to watch at the time.
You’re right about the Subscriptions tab, Lon; it’s a huge mess. It wouldn’t matter too much if the recommendations worked properly. I sometimes see the same video recommended every day for almost a week. Yet I rarely see videos from channels I subscribe to.
I turned off watch history about a year ago, and subscription is thusly my primary "home" feed. Maybe it's just me, but I feel like RUclips's attempt at "punishing" me with this whole "Your watch history is off" thing is a total failure on their part. If they had a better tool for blocking channels I *DO NOT* want to go to, *especially* in their searching tools, then maybe I'd feel they were making the effort at being less consumer hostile. For some reason, YT seems to think large marketshare = loyalty. Folks will start jumping ship once they find their niche requirements. And there goes your ad dollars. Fix it, RUclips!
You can already do that. Under a recommended video, click on the 3 dots. You will see "not interested" (in that specific video) and "don't recommend channel" (which removes that channel from recommendations forever).
I always wished RUclips had some kind of sub-folder system to manage your subscriptions, so I could organize youtubers by topic. Putting gaming related subs in a group, politics in anothet, Computing, History, Space Exploration, etc. Then you could go into rach group and see all the new videos posted by all the youtubers in that group or drill down individually, the click on another group to look at and list the videos for that group, etc
I'm honored to be a part of your RSS feed Lon. I followed the posts over on X - and I agree 100% with you. The subscriptions feed is busted - as are notifications. I'm subscribed to you with full notifications, none disabled on my device, yet only saw this video on the homepage - quite possibly because I've followed you on this topic. Thanks for calling this out and hopefully we see RUclips come up with a better feature set for subscribers.
I do use the Subscriptions page/tab probably 80% of the time when I'm browsing RUclips, but Lon is right about it being sub-optimal in a lot of ways. I purposely avoid subscribing to certain channels like local news channels or tech conferences that post a whole block of videos at once to avoid them clogging up my feed. I find myself scrolling back (on desktop) A LOT and then just "open in new tab" until I've got a whole queue of videos to fill up the time I happen to have available.
When I watch one or two videos on a new topic, RUclips decides that's all I want to see and it's like 50% that topic even if I tell RUclips I'm not interested. I have to go and delete the watched video. It seems like subscriptions barely even matter unless you watch almost everything they upload. Plenty of channels, even ones that I watch(ed) a lot have gone complete radio silence even though the creator is uploading regularly. I wonder if RUclips is weighting what they show you for monetization first.
In desktop Chrome on my PC I've started bookmarking my favorite creators. And I've sorted all the bookmarks into categories. So when I sit down and I'm in the mood for tech news... I can open all those creators' channel pages in separate tabs to find something to watch. Same for automotive channels, audio/video (like Curtis Judd!), photography, etc. It's a manual process... but it works for me on the desktop. Though on my iPhone or iPad I'm usually just looking for something quick to watch. So I typically just scroll through the algorithmic feed on those devices. 😎
It MATTERS so much to me, it keeps me watching most of their video uploads everyday on the subscription tab! When I get tired of a channel (rare occasion) I Unsubscribe. I NEVER click any notification bell. I only go to homepage when I have exhausted/consumed the newest uploads on my subscription page to look for new/fresh content. For example I kept subscribe to Green Ham Gaming TV even when that dude went dormant for years before focusing back on youtube, or to Jermgaming even when he has not made a new video in 3 years or more! I just think they have personal lives to take care of and deserves some time off or they found other careers. When we click the Subscription tab we should see all the uploads of channels we are subscribed to chronologically, youtube shouldn't mess with our programmed list! When I watch video topics that I dont want youtube bombarding me with, right click open in INCOGNITO or on another browser that is not logged in!
That's interesting, but this explains why I see everything. My YT bookmark is to the /feed/subscription link so I always see what my channels have uploaded. After I've gone through that I'll go to the home link to see some random stuff. But, if I see a subbed channel video in the home link then I mark it "Don't recommend Channel" because I use the home link to browse random videos I might want to check out. Showing me what I've already subbed to on there is (for me) pointless as I'll have already seen it. Well, that's how I do it anyway... I should note that I use an extension (Ublock) to clean up the YT site (hide shorts, clean up the sidebar etc), so it make it a much cleaner interface - similar to old YT.
Subs clearly don't matter, especially when I periodically find a channel in my subs that I didn't subscribe to. I check those by looking at their videos on their page and wouldn't you know it, not one video did I watch. RUclips sub system is messed up. also love the random unsubscribes as well. RUclipss recommendations are also terrible. I constantly get videos I have already watched showing up as something I might want to see and channels / subject matter that I 'Not interested in' and 'do not recommend this channel' and I am still constantly getting hammered for those topics.
I subscribed to you years ago and never really saw any of your videos, especially over the last few years. I somehow became unsubscribed to your channel and now I get loads of your videos in my feed. The homepage and feed algorithm is totally messed up anyway. I accidently clicked on a video, I did't even watch the video, next minute the feed is flooded with whatever topic the video was I accidently clicked on.
This is one reason why I've never used RUclipss home page. I bookmark my subscription page so it opens directly to that and have done so since the beginning. All my videos show up in order from all the creators I subscribe to. On mobile I do the same with a modified version of RUclips. The homepage is filled with crap I don't care about, this way I avoid the clutter and see only the stuff I care about. Every day I will go through the videos my creators upload and mark the ones I'm interested in as "save to watch later". I've rolled this way for 15 years or more.
The problem with RUclips is that the subscription feed is based on niche categories that the computerized recommendation system thinks you like at the moment. However, the instant you discover another niche (mistakably or otherwise), your homepage is going to get inundated with videos from that category. Now, the question arises, and is true for almost any social media platform (not just RUclips). What's it with the social media industry and being averse to chronological timelines?
I've never been subscribed to you, but RUclips recommends your videos to me all the time, probably because I watch them all the time. I have subscriptions that I never see recommended, probably because I lost interest in them and stopped watching them when recommended, and I'm too lazy to unsubscribe. I know creators hate the RUclips algorithm, but it more or less works for people like me. It's good that RUclips doesn't just recommend channels I'm subscribed to, otherwise I never would have discovered your channel and similar channels I enjoy.
As a podcaster, I actually only use the Subscription tab and bookmarked it in my browser. I figured I subscribe to a channel, I expect to find it there. Only the last few months I have been exploring the Home tab.
@@CaptainCaveman1170 my assumption is that the algorithm rewards channels that upload frequently/consistently, I believe many youtubers will testify to this. so if a channel misses a regular upload or views start to dwindle for whatever reason that channel gets relegated.
Only use the subs tab, it's the only thing I have bookmarked and it seems to work fine for me even puts a blue dot on the channel when there's unwatched content. I'd like to be able to group into sub folders for content type though, and be able to disable shorts because why would I want to watch vertical video on a 55" OLED TV? And also because I have absolutely no interest in shorts.
So true re Curtis Judd and many others. His vids hardly ever go to my recommended home page. Oft-times some of the recommended videos are so random. I utilize the "do not recommend channel" often, but the algorithm still sends stuff to that has baffled me for yrs. Thanks Ron for the explanation of what many of us suspected anyway. BTW I would not purchase an audio product for filmmaking without watching Curtis' take on it
Renee is correct, I’ve noticed in my own feed, that the feed show more content from channels I’ve watched recently. Mostly that works, but it’s got issues. If I watch one video, or maybe a few videos from one channel, then I’ll see more videos from that channel and other similar channels and fewer from channels I actually subscribe to. This is despite not subscribing to that new channel, where I saw 1 or more videos that were timely, but I don’t want to follow long term.
Sorry to hear you're having trouble here Lon. I got into the habit of just clicking on subscriptions tab as a way to keep up with whatever is new with the channels I follow ... and this is *mostly* manageable. I find that sometimes I miss videos if a channel posts multiple things in a day but by and large this works ok for me. BUT this only works because I am actively looking for it, and regularly keeping up on a day to day basis. I completely sympathize with you in that for a more casual or not-every-day user, your stuff could get buried in the firehouse that is the home feed and the subscriptions tab.
Thank you sir for fighting the good fight. I have a few channels that I have to actively search out every few weeks, even though I’m subbed. I find myself using RUclips less and less because my “feed” has become so narrow in recent times.
I always use the Subscriptions feed myself but it does have some big problems. What I encounter most often is that I may not be on RUclips for a few days so I have a long feed to get caught up on. I have to keep the feed open in my browser and then make sure that I right click on each video and open it in a separate tab. If I just click on each video and then go back, the page starts back at the top of the feed. Even worse is when I leave my browser open on the feed to come back to later and Windows has decided to do an auto restart for updates, so I lose my place in the feed and have to keep scrolling down to find where I left off. There needs to be a way to keep track of where you left off in the feed and to have the videos sorted oldest to newest from that point. Also the feed on the mobile app refreshes itself if I am casting videos to my TV and starts me back at the top constantly.
I almost exclusively use the subscriptions tab to view videos and haven't missed anything - unless I decide to not watch it at that time. What's annoying is if I miss so0mething a day or two before and I want to watch it, scrolling to find it can be very frustrating. The home page is useless though because it just feeds you based on what you've most recently watched. It's more annoying than anything else. And looking at channels you're subscribed too IS A pain - which is why I rarely bother with it.
Interesting info. I didn’t even know the home page showed my subscriptions. I only use the subscriptions tab to look for content I want to view. I do scroll through the subscriptions feed until I come across a video I’ve seen to know I’m caught up. I do unsub from channels I don’t watch anymore to keep my feed managable
Unfortunately to say a solution that seems to be fine w/ me is that I am only Subbed to about 20 to 30 of you content creators. That way the algorithm shows me all or I dont miss the 20 to 30 creators’ videos that I am subbed to and not even all the Creators upload frequently or at all. I only want to be subbed to great Content Creators and lets face it, there’s not that many out there. Lon is one of the greats!
I see the problem from your perspective as a content creator. You can no way to control how users use the app and they may miss your videos as a result. But as a user I see no problem. Any user that is bothered by missing content from a particular creator has a couple obvious solutions: periodically checking the Sub tab or periodically checking the channel's page. For me personally, I only subscribe to channels where I actually watch the majority of the content (eg. 70%+). Because of this my subscription list is only about 40 channels, which ends up providing a few hours of content per day. This makes my Sub tab completely manageable and is my primary way to browse. If I see anything I want to put off watching till later I'll add it to my "Watch Later" list. Easy and convenient. I don't understand the point of subscribing to huge number of different channels if you're only watching a small percentage, especially if you're bothered by missing content from certain channels.
EDIT: I had no idea about YT still using RSS. I'll definitely check into that! ..... I use tab groups and bookmark folders for 'firehose' channels that otherwise would clutter up my subs tab. Of course the issue is that only works on a browser and not the YT mobile app. But you are right, Lon, YT has messed up the subs functionality. Hope they fix it!
Finally enough, I have not seen one of your videos since I had subscribe only today. This is the first time I’ve seen one of your videos after I subscribed months ago.
I only use the sub tab now. I turned off my history (and subsequently ad recommendations) and as punishment, I no longer have a home page. When I go to it, I'm met with the message "Your watch history is off. You can change your setting at any time to get the latest videos tailored to you. Learn more" So, I've been weening off of youtube. I removed all subscriptions for channels that I rarely watch anymore and also removed all subs for channels I can get from other locations like from their site/other social media or Nebula. These days, I don't use youtube as television as you say. I only use youtube for finding how-to or reviews of things I am actively looking for or to keep up with about a dozen channels that I do find entertaining that are not found elsewhere.
I'm one of those people that (over) curates my own feeds everywhere consistently and avoids homepages/recommendations. And yeah. On RUclips I just bookmark straight to my subscriptions page. I'm obsessed with chronological feeds and have straight up left social medias and websites because they didn't have it. That said, I know I'm in the minority (especially being on desktop). And yes! Very much agree with some of your comments about the lack of granular control in the subscription page!
As a viewer I clean up my sub feed every now and then. I also try to only sub to channels I know I’ll watch consistently. As a creator I try not to chase trends because if isn’t a topic related to what people are initially subbed for, it’ll flop and you have to hope that the topic is popular enough to reach people. But these tech companies are so obsessed with keeping you on the platform because if they gave you a choice, you’d only watch for a couple hours and do something else. That’s why shorts are so appealing. You can waste several hours of watching and not notice it.
Something I've noticed as of late, as someone who doesn't use notifications and does most of my YT viewing on a computer. I got used to just looking for the little dot signifying new content next to the channel name on the left side of the screen. It used to be that when you clicked the "more" link at the bottom of your list, you were shown an exhaustive list of your subs, but now it only maximizes to show some number of them, leaving the rest "below the fold" as it were. The only place to see them is on the subscriptions page, and even then, there is no dot to signify new content on the subs page. Very frustrating.
Yep... I have one browser tab open that's just my RUclips subscriptions, and I open the videos I want to watch in a new tab... Watch video, close tab, go back to subscription tab, etc... When I finally make it to the newest video and run out, I refresh the tab and scroll back down where I just finished, and repeat that. I've done that for years. I'm sure there is a better way, but at least I know I'm not missing any Lon videos this way ;)
I almost exclusively watch RUclips thru the subscriptions tab or by adding notifications to the Watch Later playlist. I also wish they would allow the Watch Later playlist to have more than 5,000 videos. Subscriptions will always matter to those who use them.
I watch your videos through the sub tab. I watch most of my videos through the sub tab, because I know it was something I was interested in at some point. More than the randomness of the home page and recommendation shoulders. Not sure if RUclips Shorts have seemed to murk up the water some, because I feel like there's a lot of flaws in RUclips as of late. I've been recommended a lot off topic videos I would have never cared to watch. I watch nothing political, yet I was being fed Arabic RUclips news channels for like a month seemingly out of nowhere. I just kept forcing the "don't recommend channel", because I don't know Arabic nor care for politics in general. The only thing I rely on is my Subscriptions page and search (most of the time).
I hit "Subscribe" and see everything that gets uploaded, because I *only* ever come to RUclips via the Subscriber tab, then scroll back to see what's been uploaded since I last visited. Only maniacs use the "home" tab - like those who use "for you" instead of "following" on X.
I agree with the way RUclips does it. The Subscriptions tab is for videos by channels I subscribe to, in chronological order. The Home tab is for recommendations. They are different and serve different purposes. I think that has several benefits. For viewers, they get exposed to things to watch that they did not know about previously. For creators, that brings them new viewers who may decide to subscribe. For example in the last few weeks, I have been interested in reviews of laptops with the new Qualcomm CPU. That was how I was steered to several of your laptop reviews, and to this video today. Without YT recommendations I would not have been aware of those videos.
As a viewer, the sub tab doesn't work well. I feel like I need to open the sub tab at least once a day, maybe twice, just to make sure I don't miss anything. I'll add it to the Watch Later playlist (which I know is bad for RUclips metrics), but then at least I don't forget about it. Search is pretty bad too, after about 3 results it devolves into the home feed again, completely unrelated to the search. Usually if I'm searching, it's because I want something specific that it hasn't already tried to show me.
This is why I've never gone to the RUclips page and said "Dear Lord Algo, please show me a video that might pleaseth me". All RSS feeds for the channels I subscribe to feed directly into my reader for consumption. It's been years since I've actually visited the YT homepage.
I have to admit, I almost never use the sub tab anymore. There was a time I used to go there to see what's new but nowadays there are so many people making so much content that I just rely on RUclips showing me what's new and of potential interest to me on the home page. That's been enough to satiate my need for content as of recent times.
Back in the day i used rss reader and i could group channels by topic (by hobby). I wish RUclips let us create custom filters to group subbed channel by topic. Let's say i only want to watch news or only legal advice content etc. PS. Oh you mention rss later in the video, i didn't know you can still use it with RUclips!!! This is a great lifehack!
I agree that Subscriptions are a mess. As a viewer, it is terrible that we have few ways to sort or prioritize channels. There are channels I am forced to unsubscribe to because Subscription management as a viewer is such a mess.
Three of my favorite channels, I watch every single video, I'm subscribed, and I clicked the bell. The one channel I even went back and watched every single video from the back catalog before I subscribed to the channel. Many of the videos I have even rewatched. I rarely if ever get notifications from them. #lawnerd #lawtube #RSS #ham
Kind of shocked that no one has created a third party app for this. Imagine if you could have collections of subscriptions…favorites and ones YOU can curate and customize for channels that fall under specific topics of interest like technology, music, news, video production, woodworking, gaming, etc… it’s almost like creating smart playlists of your favorite creators that would make it much easier to keep up with depending on what you’re feeling like watching that day. This way you can have your overall subscription tab, but then when you’re feeling like you want to get caught up with news you care about, you can go over to that tab and scroll through creators you’ve subscribed to who can give you relevant news based on your interests. This seems like a no brainer.
I have noticed that what I want to see and subscribe too. I'm not seeing those videos and need to seek them out. On the other hand I keep getting shown stuff like CNN, Timcast IRL, Mr. Beast etc. stuff that I'm not subscribed to. I have a pattern of stuff I normally watch aka car and train videos that are hobby related and geared to an older person like myself in the 50 to 60 age group. This pisses me off. Just like this video, I'm not subscribed but YT thinks I want to watch it and some how knows I will write a comment about how YT sucks.
I agree despite the fact that I primarily watch things from the subs page. I'll leave it open permanently and just refresh it every time I work my way up from where I left off until I reach the top of the page and I miss stuff all of the time. Of course, I'm subbed to around 640 channels, so fire hose is probably too tiny of a mental image. And I still also click on recommendations in the side panel because occasionally there's some good stuff there. Yeah, I may have a bit of a problem when it comes to adding subs.
For years now I've been using the Subscriptions tab/page of RUclips as I never liked the Home feed. Home feed has always thrown random stuff at me with no relevance to things I watch. The recommendations under a video currently beign watched is no better. For example just earlier I was watching a Techmoan video and get recommendations for Indian or Arabic content. I don't watch those and I can't understand their language to know what those videos are about. So many of those instances are what makes YT recommedations and feed stink. Same with the ads I'm not from North Amerca or Europe and get served ads for things like Texas Intruments GaN technology, Indian Music videos, Toyota sponsored Olympic atheletes, Volvo & BMW Cars, etc. Nothing relevant to me. Back to the Subscriptions tab/page. Its horrible, particularly when it comes to community posts. Posts aren't there at all on Desktop and appear on the Home Feed, which I don't use since its not good and I have my watch history turned off (mostly because I get recommended channels that do topics relevant to me but I dislike said channels). The post from RUclips Liaison you showed with not being served content if someone doesn't watch a channel's content much is also true for Community Posts. I don't see the Community Posts of some channels I subscribe to who infrequently upload. Even on the Posts section of Subscriptions they don't appear unless I go the channel specifically and look at their Community tab. I've missed so many announcements by channels this way and I still can't figure out why YT does it like that.
Relating to the stinker recommendations of content I don't even watch. The recommendations/suggestions I got while watching this video relate to things like China's torture devices, Donut Media failing, Amercian government power crisis, Germany & British economic crisis, Female actresses & characters in Star Wars franchise, Stanford Nobel Prize scandal, NBA, Corridor Crew reacts, crap quality Cars made in China, etc. Nothing relates to this video and none of those particularly interesting to me. 33 irrelevant (to me) videos below I finally see another video from you relating to the FCC Docket. It took me that many videos to get past to see more of your content.
that algorithm makes sense. your home page should be RECOMMENDATIONS. The subscribed page should be SUBSCRIPTIONS only. i don't want subscriptions on my home page I want recommendations. on the subs page i WANT the firehose and I'll watch the stuff that looks good later. or now if i have time.
Am I the only one that watches videos almost exclusively from my notifications tab? I scroll down to where I left off and right click and open a new tab so I don't have to keep clicking the bell and scrolling down to where I left off. Wish they had an auto play feature so it plays the next video automatically instead of me going back to my initial tab and scrolling up to play the next video until I've caught up on all my notifications.
I can watch all of your videos since I have "All" under notifications. Now while I don't have push notifications on since I would constantly be bugged by them, I go to my home page and click the notification bell and it gives me a listing of what I want to watch, then I can go through them when I have time.
I rarely even bother with the Homepage, other than to mark one or two as Watch Later. Then it's on to the Sub page, or my subscription categories in PocketTube.
I did notice a big change about 2 months ago. I would search for videos and struggle to find them and see lots of videos that had nothing to do with the search that I'd carefully constructed. It would also show the same videos in the same terrible list repeating over and over making the list longer than it needed to be like I was accidentally missing the videos that I'd looked over and didnt want to see again. So I would open a video, find that it wasn't what I was looking for.. it would then think "oh you like that?" and give me more that instead of what I was still searching for. Also the home screen is so horrible that I sometimes think that I've not logged into RUclips and then I just flick it to 'Subscriptions' and the annoying shorts that I DO NOT WANT to ever see are there. Sometime ago I managed to stop those but they switched those back on... no matter how much I said that I didn't like those. It also keeps switching back on autoplay on videos, which I do not want and I keep switching that off too.. and know this because they switch it back on again each time.. I want to stop using YT but I don't know where to go right now and start over finding the channels I like on another platform. YOu can even search for the exact name of a vid and it will still not find it and show you some real rubbish that I have no interest in. it now takes me way too long to find the videos I want to watch and now I think I'm spending less time on it.. enough to no longer pay for the premium service. cos there is no way I putting up this AND ads too
if you are watching a video, click on the save after you click on the three dots then a playlist popin shows up then add a playlist and lastly checkmark the playlist added and repeat for new videos. this video is added to the LON GUY AND ANTENNAMAN playlist.
If you thought Google was a big company now could you just imagine how big they would be if they oporated using a normal business model??? One which is always working to improve their product for their customers.
I don't know if this combats some of what's being talked about but what I usually do is unsubscribe from everyone at the end of the year and then resubscribe to the channels that that I know I've been watching or that I know I've liked in the past even though I might not be watching too many of their videos recently. I do this because if I don't my subscription tab also becomes overrun. I also know that my interest cycle depending on what I'm interested in at the time so sometimes I'll be more interested in gaming, sometimes I'll be more interested in tech, sometimes I'll be more interested in movies. It just depends.
I literally have the home feed disabled with chrome extensions. they only way i engage with youtube is through the subscriptions tab. i cant see recommended videos, there's no autoplay. truth is the youtube platform will never be what you want it to be again, Lon. too many users are too content to just watch whatever the algorithm recommends. there are certainly ways for people to take back control from google and watch what they want to watch and not become puppets to some ai algo. but nobody wants to take the steps so. something the Liasson touched on is just because somebody is subbed doesn't mean they have time to watch your videos. hitting the subscribe button is so easy and ultimately means nothing because they don't engage with the sub tab. every single youtuber ever asking to sub and bell, and youtube making it light up?! when you say subscribe has contributed to the devaluing of subscriptions, im sure the average youtube viewer has 1000s of subs. never curating their list, as I do, because they don't have any reason to. if i have a trash subscription for content i dont really want clogging up my sub feed making it harder to find the videos I do want to watch, I unsub.
I have a decent number of subscriptions, but I imagine it can be even more crazy for many. I’ve been in the habit for years to look at my subscription feed and queue up things. But even at my quantity, I need to skip things to keep up. It’s been starting to feel like I watch more RUclips than anything else. And it can be overwhelming after things like going away for a week. That’s of course a _me_ problem. But the algorithms for all these platforms get it fairly wrong for what I usually want. But of course that’s not their goal. The algorithm is for them, not us. They just say it’s the help the users. It’s really just to get you down a rabbit hole and make them ore money.
I have zero complaints with my experience on YT as it pertains to the channels I subscribe to. Your channel shows up in my recommended almost immediately. On the days the recommended doesn't have anything interesting, my subscription tab is a perfectly fine alternative. So for that reason (and I understand this is only my experience), I disagree with the subscription tab being a cop out.
After cutting the cord -- bailing out of Comcast a few years ago -- I wound up realizing that "RUclips videos" was what I watched the most on the TV sets in my house. And that opened up a whole new world of using RUclips -- I found a third-party app that GAVE ME control over what I watched and how to get to what I want to watch, and so on. Just a handful of options made a huge difference, but the bottom line is that these options allow ME to decide what will show up "next," instead of being victimized by "RUclips's algorithm." Or should I say, "raped" by RUclips's algorithm. In the end, we need to do what we can to find alternatives that will let us ignore whatever RUclips wants us to see, or "build our own" organization out of bookmarks, folders -- whatever it takes.
I'm not going to stop subscribing, the Subscriptions tab works for me. (maybe due to not having that many and actually using the tab?) What does me annoy about the Subscriptions is that notifications are very much hit-or-miss. Oh, and my Subscriptions also show up on my 'Home' carousel , though not as promptly and often as they do in my Subscriptions tab.
8:32 Steve Lehto, I watched one or 2 of his videos once or twice, "I'm not a lawyer" YT now gives me every Lawyer channel on my home page among politics
If your subscriptions tab is a "firehose" you are subscribed to too many channels. For me, my subscriptions tab is for channels I already know, and the home tab is for discovery. Lon, you have almost 1300 subscriptions! That's insane! I'm pretty sure that makes you a pretty extreme outlier. I have less than 450, and I'm a heavy RUclips user.
I just went through my subscriptions page and started unsubscrbing from channels I don’t watch anymore or upload too frequently (multiple videos per day). That cleaned it up to make it more usable for me now.
I don't mind the subscribe button. I think a lot of creators only look at it from their perspective and want it to be an on/off thing. But honestly some people I do subscribe to release way to many videos. I still like their content but I don't want 20 videos uploaded in a day from the same person in my feed. I think this is why the "personalized" subscribe button is the default (the one where the bell isn't filled in). If you want everything you change it to "All" (the bell is filled in) and you'll see literally everything. Understand that using "All" could be REALLY abused by content creators to flood your home page with just their videos and drown out others. Also, on desktop, the list of all your subscriptions is right on the sidebar. You can go to any channel you want directly. It even does this nice thing of putting a blue dot on the channel if there are new videos. ALSO, if you search a channel name on mobile or desktop and the channel in the search results has a new video the blue dot shows up there as well.
That's why I think if they stacked videos from those channels in the sub feed it would largely correct that problem. They did announce that feature was in testing a few months ago: ruclips.net/video/mwhZUS7chsI/видео.html
From Montreal Canada! I agree with you Lon, RUclips does a horrible job of keep you interested in your subs. I think in general these algorithms are crap. Honestly. RUclips better be careful. We use to use Yahoo once apron a time.....
What I hate is the bell icon. The problem is the user has no control over when the notification is given(at least that I can figure out). I subscribe to creators from all over, mostly North America but not exclusively. I would get notifications randomly all day. So I turned them off. What I'd like to see is the ability to receive all the notifications once per day at a time that works for me.
I am ready to change services. I like the RUclips channels I subscribe to. That does not mean I watch every video put out. I don't like the shorts. Some channels say that have to put out shorts so RUclips will show them. Most videos I watch at 2x because I just want the information. There seems to be no way for it to do it automatically. I have a plug-in for my browser that works a while, but RUclips does something and it quits. I would complain to RUclips but have not figured out how.
I guess I watch RUclips differently than you because I don't see an issue. I only watch videos on a television and I'm either on the homepage or subscriptions and I see all the videos. Nothing gets buried and maybe that's because I have less than less than 50 subscriptions. Taking a closer look now, I'm not so sure. I don't recall seeing some of the stuff in the subscription feed when I click on each channel.
I've said for years that subscriptions on YT don't matter which is why I don't bother subscribing to anyone. I just keep the channel links that I like in a shortcuts folder and pop them up when I want to watch something.
I miss the days when RUclips would send an email when a new video was posted in a subscribed channel. It was much easier to keep up with new postings that way. Especially a live stream.
Every new video upload to any of the channels that I watch regularly appear on my front page. I personally see no benefit in subscribing to any channels. It's all right there as soon as I open youtube. The only thing I miss out on are live streams. But if I need to be notified that somebody's gone live, I'm probably busy doing something else anyway
I honestly think this is user error more than anything. I very much want to see subscriptions on the subscriptions page and I *don't* want to see them on the home page, which.is more of a "Discover" page. I mainly live on the subscriptions page and have no problems seeing everything I want. I click on "Home" when I want to discover new videos & creators. The big issue for me is that it has a load of subscription videos and stuff I've already watched mixed in on the home page. They should remove all videos from subscriptions on 'Home'. I don't understand how the subscriptions page can be too much unless you're subscribed to 1000+ channels and getting new videos show up every minute. In which case, it's user error again. Cut back on your subscriptions, the same way you would reduce your magazine subscriptions if you had 50 magazines showing up in your mailbox every day.
I turned my youtube history off a while back because it was suggesting some awful media. The result is that it turns off the Home page (on the mobile app). So, I am stuck with the firehouse of my subscription feed 😢 I agree finding videos within my many subscriptions really sucks the way Google has it setup.
I asked Rene in an AMA on TWiT about being able to create custom folders/categories for your subbed channels. Said they used to have it but people didn’t use it so they got rid of it. Great…
They’ve never had it - there was a test they ran awhile back so maybe he was referring to that. I think most users won’t go through the trouble of categorizing but it would be nice to have the option.
One issue with the youtube home page is that with all of the tracking they do, along with the AI's ability to scan audio and video for content, it seems like they intentionally give bad recommendation while not providing enough new content from channels I subscribe to. 90% of the channels I subscribe to, as well as probably 98% of the viewing is tech content, as well as photography (focusing more on gear or techniques). The rest are cute animal videos, and the occasional random video on some car related stuff. Why waste the bandwidth showing me videos like white house press conferences or other stuff where it is obvious that i am not going to click on it? While I understand them putting subscribed content less often if you do not watch every video from a channel, but a far better decision for content would be to show something from that channel rather than a random pres conference that my watch history should show that such content will not be clicked on.
Many moons ago, youtube had a folders feature, where you could define your own folders and put subscribed channels in there. In that sense, it worked like an rss feed. It was great. But alas, it's just another useful feature youtube removed in their never-ending quest to make youtube worse.
I’ve been using the subscription tab for years and even then I’ve missed a lot of videos. Of course I have a lot of subscriptions 1200+ however I left the home tab as it pushes content that for the most part I don’t have any desire to watch.
That's why I think if they provided more filtering/organization tools in the sub feed we'd miss less. I'm in the same boat as you - I have a so many channels in my sub feed that it's really difficult to prune after almost 20 years :).
And I did forget to mention that I’m a premium subscriber, as there’s no way anyone could watch RUclips free as you’re bombarded with commercials every five seconds and those blocks go on for several minutes. I think it’s honestly time to tell google to drop dead. They’ve gotten way too big and they don’t care about the people who have made the company what it is. The only issue as everyone knows who else is there for the creators?
I'm def old school the way I watch RUclips. I do it mainly on my MacBook Air laptop and not on my iPhone or TV. I mainly use the Subscriptions page to see when new videos are put out. I refresh that page a lot during the day (I'm 47 and retired haha). I watch videos that way, no subject just depends on when they go live and who I feel like watching that time. If I go to the RUclips Home Page it's mainly to see what I missed (they'll show a few days old videos of people I sub to and haven't watched yet) or I'll watch some new videos they suggest. Like I said, old school haha. Good video as a a;lways.
In summation, your honor:
1. If you're writing to comment that the sub tab working for you, great. But the number of people using the tab is declining likely because it isn't working for them.
2. This is not a complaint about declining views but rather thumbnail impressions. Clicking the subscribe button doesn't mean what RUclips viewers think it means. RUclips's AI decides what you're really subscribed to.
3. Giving users more control over the subscription tab by providing some filtering and sorting options would go a long way to making things better for everyone.
The thumbnails are the reason that Sponsorblock's developer made the addon DeArrow. It's a title/thumbnail replacer made to describe videos in more honest detail.
I had no idea about the whys and wherefores... I'm glad I'm subscribed to YOU. You can explain all this very well. Please...stay a space nerd, too. I like watching you on NASA Spaceflight as well. Much aloha to you!
Regarding: "1. If you're writing to comment that the sub tab working for you, great. But the number of people using the tab is declining likely because it isn't working for them." I can't help but think it isn't in your best interest to write this. As this makes it more likely that people who wanted to comment about that case won't comment. And the fewer comments this video has than probably less likely RUclips is to recommend this video. So by adding a comment that sort of preempts the comments that might happen might be working against your goal of more views. Just a thought.
@@johnvillalovos I just want them to fix the problem! :)
It's a mess... I have maybe five channels I watch almost 100% of what they upload... you among them... it's SUPER hit or miss if I see your videos. I've also noticed that if you have different sub channels like LTT (short circuit, tech quickie, etc.) They don't show up under the main channel anymore...
The problem with the Home feed is that it's practically unusable. The other day I watched a video from a tech channel about him restoring an Australian car, it was a one-off video on this guys channel and it was pretty cool. RUclips then decided that my Home feed needed to be entirely dedicated to this one particular brand of car, even though the video didn't really emphasize it that much. Any time you want to watch something outside of the algorithm, it overcorrects so hard that it believes that one thing you just watched is your new passion. I often have to open a video in a Private tab with ad-block just to see if it's interesting.
Now, search doesn’t work either. I have to search on Google to find the video I’m looking for. RUclips search works like one or two videos that has the keywords then it’s a whole lot of shorts then, recommended videos from feed that has nothing to do with the search terms.
@@LordofBacon42 I agree that this is frustrating. I go to my history and remove those videos from my watch history. That usually retunes the algorithm to remove those related videos
Yes. I watch quite a bit of different things on YT. Like IT related, woodworking, etc. Anyway things that are way different. Right now YT seems to decide that if I watch few woodworking related vids it spams my feed fully of them and vise versa. Then there's like Pixel thing channel I wouldn't like to miss any vids and no matter how I select its subscribe button it virtually never shows its latest content.
@@RicPerrott I delete items from history often and it does a pretty good job of getting my feed realigned to my interests.
@@marks-the-spot interesting. Might try this one.
funnily enough youtube recommended THIS video on my homepage, this is the first from your channel in a really really really long time
I almost never use the main page of RUclips because it's based on the videos you already watched, not your subs.
I always use the sub "tab" to get the videos from the people I sub to. Works fine for me and the videos are ordered by the time and date they are uploaded.
Live streams will always show at the top and below them comes the uploaded videos.
As far as I can see it does show 100% of the videos but it's a firehose. If you have a lot of subscriptions (especially news channels) single uploads often get buried.
@@LonSeidmanI have 150 or 175 subscriptions and have no trouble finding anything. My displays all show four thumbnails per row under Subscriptions, while yours have three. That would equate to a lot more scrolling down, I guess.
@@LonSeidman I guess the solution is to not subscribe to channels that produce a large daily quantity of videos. The whole point of subscriptions is for the users to be able to find and follow channels more easily, dumping tens of videos in one go defeats that.
same here OP
I often use the Subscriptions list further down on the left side. That lets me see who has uploaded videos recently (by the dot beside the channel name) and I can easily click on the channels to see what's new. I have well over 200 subscriptions, many of which only post fewer than one video a week, so the firehose is useless.
One of the reasons that I use my subscriptions tab as my main way of watching content. I always go there first and once I have finished watching the ones that look interesting I then go to my feed. But I don't subscribe to channels which post many videos a day. So for me in a 24 hour period there are maybe 100 new videos to scroll through.
I also use the subscription tab as well to see all the latest videos I'm interested in before I go to the Home tab. Granted, I don't watch news on RUclips. If I subscribe to a new channel, I'm afraid the latest videos that I might be interested in might get buried. This is especially when it comes to let's plays/commentaries of video games.
Exactly. I go straight to my sub tab every time I launch YT. Why would anyone expect the Home page to act like the Sub tab???
Yeah I pretty much exclusively do this. I only watch new creators when searching for something or if I see them referred to from another creator, a friend, etc.
I usually go homepage, subscription page, watch later. I've been using playlists a lot more into rap stuff that I'm interested in but just don't have the time to watch at the time.
You’re right about the Subscriptions tab, Lon; it’s a huge mess.
It wouldn’t matter too much if the recommendations worked properly. I sometimes see the same video recommended every day for almost a week. Yet I rarely see videos from channels I subscribe to.
I turned off watch history about a year ago, and subscription is thusly my primary "home" feed.
Maybe it's just me, but I feel like RUclips's attempt at "punishing" me with this whole "Your watch history is off" thing is a total failure on their part.
If they had a better tool for blocking channels I *DO NOT* want to go to, *especially* in their searching tools, then maybe I'd feel they were making the effort at being less consumer hostile.
For some reason, YT seems to think large marketshare = loyalty. Folks will start jumping ship once they find their niche requirements. And there goes your ad dollars. Fix it, RUclips!
Same. Subscriptions tab is the "best of the worst" (tm) out of ways to use youtube.
On my wish list is to Ignore a specific channel that keep getting thrown on my home page.
You can already do that. Under a recommended video, click on the 3 dots. You will see "not interested" (in that specific video) and "don't recommend channel" (which removes that channel from recommendations forever).
I always wished RUclips had some kind of sub-folder system to manage your subscriptions, so I could organize youtubers by topic. Putting gaming related subs in a group, politics in anothet, Computing, History, Space Exploration, etc. Then you could go into rach group and see all the new videos posted by all the youtubers in that group or drill down individually, the click on another group to look at and list the videos for that group, etc
I'm honored to be a part of your RSS feed Lon. I followed the posts over on X - and I agree 100% with you. The subscriptions feed is busted - as are notifications. I'm subscribed to you with full notifications, none disabled on my device, yet only saw this video on the homepage - quite possibly because I've followed you on this topic. Thanks for calling this out and hopefully we see RUclips come up with a better feature set for subscribers.
I do use the Subscriptions page/tab probably 80% of the time when I'm browsing RUclips, but Lon is right about it being sub-optimal in a lot of ways. I purposely avoid subscribing to certain channels like local news channels or tech conferences that post a whole block of videos at once to avoid them clogging up my feed. I find myself scrolling back (on desktop) A LOT and then just "open in new tab" until I've got a whole queue of videos to fill up the time I happen to have available.
When I watch one or two videos on a new topic, RUclips decides that's all I want to see and it's like 50% that topic even if I tell RUclips I'm not interested. I have to go and delete the watched video. It seems like subscriptions barely even matter unless you watch almost everything they upload. Plenty of channels, even ones that I watch(ed) a lot have gone complete radio silence even though the creator is uploading regularly. I wonder if RUclips is weighting what they show you for monetization first.
IKR… the magic “algorithm” is clearly simplistic and naive.
Same here. I've been subscribed to him for years. I've used his videos to decide what mics and recorders to use.
In desktop Chrome on my PC I've started bookmarking my favorite creators. And I've sorted all the bookmarks into categories. So when I sit down and I'm in the mood for tech news... I can open all those creators' channel pages in separate tabs to find something to watch. Same for automotive channels, audio/video (like Curtis Judd!), photography, etc. It's a manual process... but it works for me on the desktop. Though on my iPhone or iPad I'm usually just looking for something quick to watch. So I typically just scroll through the algorithmic feed on those devices. 😎
It MATTERS so much to me, it keeps me watching most of their video uploads everyday on the subscription tab! When I get tired of a channel (rare occasion) I Unsubscribe. I NEVER click any notification bell. I only go to homepage when I have exhausted/consumed the newest uploads on my subscription page to look for new/fresh content. For example I kept subscribe to Green Ham Gaming TV even when that dude went dormant for years before focusing back on youtube, or to Jermgaming even when he has not made a new video in 3 years or more! I just think they have personal lives to take care of and deserves some time off or they found other careers. When we click the Subscription tab we should see all the uploads of channels we are subscribed to chronologically, youtube shouldn't mess with our programmed list! When I watch video topics that I dont want youtube bombarding me with, right click open in INCOGNITO or on another browser that is not logged in!
That's interesting, but this explains why I see everything.
My YT bookmark is to the /feed/subscription link so I always see what my channels have uploaded. After I've gone through that I'll go to the home link to see some random stuff.
But, if I see a subbed channel video in the home link then I mark it "Don't recommend Channel" because I use the home link to browse random videos I might want to check out. Showing me what I've already subbed to on there is (for me) pointless as I'll have already seen it.
Well, that's how I do it anyway...
I should note that I use an extension (Ublock) to clean up the YT site (hide shorts, clean up the sidebar etc), so it make it a much cleaner interface - similar to old YT.
Subs clearly don't matter, especially when I periodically find a channel in my subs that I didn't subscribe to. I check those by looking at their videos on their page and wouldn't you know it, not one video did I watch.
RUclips sub system is messed up.
also love the random unsubscribes as well.
RUclipss recommendations are also terrible. I constantly get videos I have already watched showing up as something I might want to see and channels / subject matter that I 'Not interested in' and 'do not recommend this channel' and I am still constantly getting hammered for those topics.
I subscribed to you years ago and never really saw any of your videos, especially over the last few years. I somehow became unsubscribed to your channel and now I get loads of your videos in my feed. The homepage and feed algorithm is totally messed up anyway. I accidently clicked on a video, I did't even watch the video, next minute the feed is flooded with whatever topic the video was I accidently clicked on.
This is one reason why I've never used RUclipss home page. I bookmark my subscription page so it opens directly to that and have done so since the beginning. All my videos show up in order from all the creators I subscribe to. On mobile I do the same with a modified version of RUclips. The homepage is filled with crap I don't care about, this way I avoid the clutter and see only the stuff I care about. Every day I will go through the videos my creators upload and mark the ones I'm interested in as "save to watch later". I've rolled this way for 15 years or more.
RUclips home feed is the wild west. They send you what ever they want and ignore subs
The problem with RUclips is that the subscription feed is based on niche categories that the computerized recommendation system thinks you like at the moment.
However, the instant you discover another niche (mistakably or otherwise), your homepage is going to get inundated with videos from that category.
Now, the question arises, and is true for almost any social media platform (not just RUclips). What's it with the social media industry and being averse to chronological timelines?
my subscription feed is only my subscriptions. And they are always all there. I dont understand how people "miss" videos.
@@robichag Same here. My subscription page is only those channels that I subscribed to.
I've never been subscribed to you, but RUclips recommends your videos to me all the time, probably because I watch them all the time. I have subscriptions that I never see recommended, probably because I lost interest in them and stopped watching them when recommended, and I'm too lazy to unsubscribe. I know creators hate the RUclips algorithm, but it more or less works for people like me. It's good that RUclips doesn't just recommend channels I'm subscribed to, otherwise I never would have discovered your channel and similar channels I enjoy.
As mentioned in the video I think both approaches can work - but they constantly tweak the recommendations and have left the subs tab to rot.
As a podcaster, I actually only use the Subscription tab and bookmarked it in my browser. I figured I subscribe to a channel, I expect to find it there. Only the last few months I have been exploring the Home tab.
I do not believe that the subscriptions tab is a chronological feed of EVERY channel I am subscribed to
I am sure it was at some point.
@@CaptainCaveman1170 my assumption is that the algorithm rewards channels that upload frequently/consistently, I believe many youtubers will testify to this. so if a channel misses a regular upload or views start to dwindle for whatever reason that channel gets relegated.
Had not seen your stuff for a long time I had to actually search you up for it to start recommending videos again.
Only use the subs tab, it's the only thing I have bookmarked and it seems to work fine for me even puts a blue dot on the channel when there's unwatched content.
I'd like to be able to group into sub folders for content type though, and be able to disable shorts because why would I want to watch vertical video on a 55" OLED TV?
And also because I have absolutely no interest in shorts.
So true re Curtis Judd and many others. His vids hardly ever go to my recommended home page. Oft-times some of the recommended videos are so random. I utilize the "do not recommend channel" often, but the algorithm still sends stuff to that has baffled me for yrs. Thanks Ron for the explanation of what many of us suspected anyway. BTW I would not purchase an audio product for filmmaking without watching Curtis' take on it
Renee is correct, I’ve noticed in my own feed, that the feed show more content from channels I’ve watched recently.
Mostly that works, but it’s got issues. If I watch one video, or maybe a few videos from one channel, then I’ll see more videos from that channel and other similar channels and fewer from channels I actually subscribe to. This is despite not subscribing to that new channel, where I saw 1 or more videos that were timely, but I don’t want to follow long term.
Sorry to hear you're having trouble here Lon. I got into the habit of just clicking on subscriptions tab as a way to keep up with whatever is new with the channels I follow ... and this is *mostly* manageable. I find that sometimes I miss videos if a channel posts multiple things in a day but by and large this works ok for me. BUT this only works because I am actively looking for it, and regularly keeping up on a day to day basis. I completely sympathize with you in that for a more casual or not-every-day user, your stuff could get buried in the firehouse that is the home feed and the subscriptions tab.
Thank you sir for fighting the good fight. I have a few channels that I have to actively search out every few weeks, even though I’m subbed. I find myself using RUclips less and less because my “feed” has become so narrow in recent times.
I always use the Subscriptions feed myself but it does have some big problems. What I encounter most often is that I may not be on RUclips for a few days so I have a long feed to get caught up on. I have to keep the feed open in my browser and then make sure that I right click on each video and open it in a separate tab. If I just click on each video and then go back, the page starts back at the top of the feed. Even worse is when I leave my browser open on the feed to come back to later and Windows has decided to do an auto restart for updates, so I lose my place in the feed and have to keep scrolling down to find where I left off. There needs to be a way to keep track of where you left off in the feed and to have the videos sorted oldest to newest from that point. Also the feed on the mobile app refreshes itself if I am casting videos to my TV and starts me back at the top constantly.
I almost exclusively use the subscriptions tab to view videos and haven't missed anything - unless I decide to not watch it at that time. What's annoying is if I miss so0mething a day or two before and I want to watch it, scrolling to find it can be very frustrating. The home page is useless though because it just feeds you based on what you've most recently watched. It's more annoying than anything else. And looking at channels you're subscribed too IS A pain - which is why I rarely bother with it.
Interesting info. I didn’t even know the home page showed my subscriptions. I only use the subscriptions tab to look for content I want to view. I do scroll through the subscriptions feed until I come across a video I’ve seen to know I’m caught up. I do unsub from channels I don’t watch anymore to keep my feed managable
Unfortunately to say a solution that seems to be fine w/ me is that I am only Subbed to about 20 to 30 of you content creators. That way the algorithm shows me all or I dont miss the 20 to 30 creators’ videos that I am subbed to and not even all the Creators upload frequently or at all. I only want to be subbed to great Content Creators and lets face it, there’s not that many out there. Lon is one of the greats!
@@Sega_is_all_i_cd yes this is what I do too.
I see the problem from your perspective as a content creator. You can no way to control how users use the app and they may miss your videos as a result.
But as a user I see no problem. Any user that is bothered by missing content from a particular creator has a couple obvious solutions: periodically checking the Sub tab or periodically checking the channel's page.
For me personally, I only subscribe to channels where I actually watch the majority of the content (eg. 70%+). Because of this my subscription list is only about 40 channels, which ends up providing a few hours of content per day. This makes my Sub tab completely manageable and is my primary way to browse. If I see anything I want to put off watching till later I'll add it to my "Watch Later" list. Easy and convenient.
I don't understand the point of subscribing to huge number of different channels if you're only watching a small percentage, especially if you're bothered by missing content from certain channels.
I'm frustrated both as a viewer and a creator. For those who have a large number of subscriptions the sub feed just is not working.
EDIT: I had no idea about YT still using RSS. I'll definitely check into that! ..... I use tab groups and bookmark folders for 'firehose' channels that otherwise would clutter up my subs tab. Of course the issue is that only works on a browser and not the YT mobile app. But you are right, Lon, YT has messed up the subs functionality. Hope they fix it!
Finally enough, I have not seen one of your videos since I had subscribe only today. This is the first time I’ve seen one of your videos after I subscribed months ago.
True, and I rarely see your video popping up. Thought no longer make videos but when I go over to your page, it seems active.
I only use the sub tab now. I turned off my history (and subsequently ad recommendations) and as punishment, I no longer have a home page. When I go to it, I'm met with the message
"Your watch history is off. You can change your setting at any time to get the latest videos tailored to you. Learn more"
So, I've been weening off of youtube. I removed all subscriptions for channels that I rarely watch anymore and also removed all subs for channels I can get from other locations like from their site/other social media or Nebula.
These days, I don't use youtube as television as you say. I only use youtube for finding how-to or reviews of things I am actively looking for or to keep up with about a dozen channels that I do find entertaining that are not found elsewhere.
I'm one of those people that (over) curates my own feeds everywhere consistently and avoids homepages/recommendations. And yeah. On RUclips I just bookmark straight to my subscriptions page. I'm obsessed with chronological feeds and have straight up left social medias and websites because they didn't have it. That said, I know I'm in the minority (especially being on desktop). And yes! Very much agree with some of your comments about the lack of granular control in the subscription page!
Wow, I have several of the same channels subscribed as you Lon, including Steve Lehto. His admin reading a funny comment at the end is awesome.
As a viewer I clean up my sub feed every now and then. I also try to only sub to channels I know I’ll watch consistently. As a creator I try not to chase trends because if isn’t a topic related to what people are initially subbed for, it’ll flop and you have to hope that the topic is popular enough to reach people. But these tech companies are so obsessed with keeping you on the platform because if they gave you a choice, you’d only watch for a couple hours and do something else. That’s why shorts are so appealing. You can waste several hours of watching and not notice it.
Something I've noticed as of late, as someone who doesn't use notifications and does most of my YT viewing on a computer. I got used to just looking for the little dot signifying new content next to the channel name on the left side of the screen. It used to be that when you clicked the "more" link at the bottom of your list, you were shown an exhaustive list of your subs, but now it only maximizes to show some number of them, leaving the rest "below the fold" as it were. The only place to see them is on the subscriptions page, and even then, there is no dot to signify new content on the subs page. Very frustrating.
Yep... I have one browser tab open that's just my RUclips subscriptions, and I open the videos I want to watch in a new tab... Watch video, close tab, go back to subscription tab, etc... When I finally make it to the newest video and run out, I refresh the tab and scroll back down where I just finished, and repeat that. I've done that for years. I'm sure there is a better way, but at least I know I'm not missing any Lon videos this way ;)
I almost exclusively watch RUclips thru the subscriptions tab or by adding notifications to the Watch Later playlist.
I also wish they would allow the Watch Later playlist to have more than 5,000 videos.
Subscriptions will always matter to those who use them.
I also still receive notifications and videos from Curtis so... 🤷🏼♂️
I watch your videos through the sub tab. I watch most of my videos through the sub tab, because I know it was something I was interested in at some point. More than the randomness of the home page and recommendation shoulders. Not sure if RUclips Shorts have seemed to murk up the water some, because I feel like there's a lot of flaws in RUclips as of late. I've been recommended a lot off topic videos I would have never cared to watch.
I watch nothing political, yet I was being fed Arabic RUclips news channels for like a month seemingly out of nowhere. I just kept forcing the "don't recommend channel", because I don't know Arabic nor care for politics in general. The only thing I rely on is my Subscriptions page and search (most of the time).
I hit "Subscribe" and see everything that gets uploaded, because I *only* ever come to RUclips via the Subscriber tab, then scroll back to see what's been uploaded since I last visited.
Only maniacs use the "home" tab - like those who use "for you" instead of "following" on X.
I agree with the way RUclips does it. The Subscriptions tab is for videos by channels I subscribe to, in chronological order. The Home tab is for recommendations. They are different and serve different purposes.
I think that has several benefits. For viewers, they get exposed to things to watch that they did not know about previously. For creators, that brings them new viewers who may decide to subscribe. For example in the last few weeks, I have been interested in reviews of laptops with the new Qualcomm CPU. That was how I was steered to several of your laptop reviews, and to this video today. Without YT recommendations I would not have been aware of those videos.
As a viewer, the sub tab doesn't work well.
I feel like I need to open the sub tab at least once a day, maybe twice, just to make sure I don't miss anything. I'll add it to the Watch Later playlist (which I know is bad for RUclips metrics), but then at least I don't forget about it.
Search is pretty bad too, after about 3 results it devolves into the home feed again, completely unrelated to the search. Usually if I'm searching, it's because I want something specific that it hasn't already tried to show me.
This is why I've never gone to the RUclips page and said "Dear Lord Algo, please show me a video that might pleaseth me". All RSS feeds for the channels I subscribe to feed directly into my reader for consumption. It's been years since I've actually visited the YT homepage.
YT definitely has a lot of work to do here. As you said, "it seems to be an afterthought"...
I have to admit, I almost never use the sub tab anymore. There was a time I used to go there to see what's new but nowadays there are so many people making so much content that I just rely on RUclips showing me what's new and of potential interest to me on the home page. That's been enough to satiate my need for content as of recent times.
Back in the day i used rss reader and i could group channels by topic (by hobby). I wish RUclips let us create custom filters to group subbed channel by topic. Let's say i only want to watch news or only legal advice content etc.
PS. Oh you mention rss later in the video, i didn't know you can still use it with RUclips!!! This is a great lifehack!
I agree that Subscriptions are a mess. As a viewer, it is terrible that we have few ways to sort or prioritize channels. There are channels I am forced to unsubscribe to because Subscription management as a viewer is such a mess.
Three of my favorite channels, I watch every single video, I'm subscribed, and I clicked the bell. The one channel I even went back and watched every single video from the back catalog before I subscribed to the channel. Many of the videos I have even rewatched. I rarely if ever get notifications from them. #lawnerd #lawtube #RSS #ham
Kind of shocked that no one has created a third party app for this.
Imagine if you could have collections of subscriptions…favorites and ones YOU can curate and customize for channels that fall under specific topics of interest like technology, music, news, video production, woodworking, gaming, etc… it’s almost like creating smart playlists of your favorite creators that would make it much easier to keep up with depending on what you’re feeling like watching that day.
This way you can have your overall subscription tab, but then when you’re feeling like you want to get caught up with news you care about, you can go over to that tab and scroll through creators you’ve subscribed to who can give you relevant news based on your interests. This seems like a no brainer.
I have noticed that what I want to see and subscribe too. I'm not seeing those videos and need to seek them out. On the other hand I keep getting shown stuff like CNN, Timcast IRL, Mr. Beast etc. stuff that I'm not subscribed to. I have a pattern of stuff I normally watch aka car and train videos that are hobby related and geared to an older person like myself in the 50 to 60 age group. This pisses me off. Just like this video, I'm not subscribed but YT thinks I want to watch it and some how knows I will write a comment about how YT sucks.
I agree despite the fact that I primarily watch things from the subs page. I'll leave it open permanently and just refresh it every time I work my way up from where I left off until I reach the top of the page and I miss stuff all of the time. Of course, I'm subbed to around 640 channels, so fire hose is probably too tiny of a mental image. And I still also click on recommendations in the side panel because occasionally there's some good stuff there. Yeah, I may have a bit of a problem when it comes to adding subs.
For years now I've been using the Subscriptions tab/page of RUclips as I never liked the Home feed. Home feed has always thrown random stuff at me with no relevance to things I watch.
The recommendations under a video currently beign watched is no better. For example just earlier I was watching a Techmoan video and get recommendations for Indian or Arabic content. I don't watch those and I can't understand their language to know what those videos are about. So many of those instances are what makes YT recommedations and feed stink.
Same with the ads I'm not from North Amerca or Europe and get served ads for things like Texas Intruments GaN technology, Indian Music videos, Toyota sponsored Olympic atheletes, Volvo & BMW Cars, etc. Nothing relevant to me.
Back to the Subscriptions tab/page. Its horrible, particularly when it comes to community posts. Posts aren't there at all on Desktop and appear on the Home Feed, which I don't use since its not good and I have my watch history turned off (mostly because I get recommended channels that do topics relevant to me but I dislike said channels).
The post from RUclips Liaison you showed with not being served content if someone doesn't watch a channel's content much is also true for Community Posts.
I don't see the Community Posts of some channels I subscribe to who infrequently upload. Even on the Posts section of Subscriptions they don't appear unless I go the channel specifically and look at their Community tab. I've missed so many announcements by channels this way and I still can't figure out why YT does it like that.
Relating to the stinker recommendations of content I don't even watch. The recommendations/suggestions I got while watching this video relate to things like China's torture devices, Donut Media failing, Amercian government power crisis, Germany & British economic crisis, Female actresses & characters in Star Wars franchise, Stanford Nobel Prize scandal, NBA, Corridor Crew reacts, crap quality Cars made in China, etc.
Nothing relates to this video and none of those particularly interesting to me.
33 irrelevant (to me) videos below I finally see another video from you relating to the FCC Docket. It took me that many videos to get past to see more of your content.
Same here. Did not realized Community posts show up on the Home page. Oh well.
that algorithm makes sense. your home page should be RECOMMENDATIONS. The subscribed page should be SUBSCRIPTIONS only. i don't want subscriptions on my home page I want recommendations. on the subs page i WANT the firehose and I'll watch the stuff that looks good later. or now if i have time.
Am I the only one that watches videos almost exclusively from my notifications tab? I scroll down to where I left off and right click and open a new tab so I don't have to keep clicking the bell and scrolling down to where I left off. Wish they had an auto play feature so it plays the next video automatically instead of me going back to my initial tab and scrolling up to play the next video until I've caught up on all my notifications.
I can watch all of your videos since I have "All" under notifications. Now while I don't have push notifications on since I would constantly be bugged by them, I go to my home page and click the notification bell and it gives me a listing of what I want to watch, then I can go through them when I have time.
I rarely even bother with the Homepage, other than to mark one or two as Watch Later. Then it's on to the Sub page, or my subscription categories in PocketTube.
I did notice a big change about 2 months ago. I would search for videos and struggle to find them and see lots of videos that had nothing to do with the search that I'd carefully constructed.
It would also show the same videos in the same terrible list repeating over and over making the list longer than it needed to be like I was accidentally missing the videos that I'd looked over and didnt want to see again.
So I would open a video, find that it wasn't what I was looking for.. it would then think "oh you like that?" and give me more that instead of what I was still searching for.
Also the home screen is so horrible that I sometimes think that I've not logged into RUclips and then I just flick it to 'Subscriptions' and the annoying shorts that I DO NOT WANT to ever see are there. Sometime ago I managed to stop those but they switched those back on... no matter how much I said that I didn't like those.
It also keeps switching back on autoplay on videos, which I do not want and I keep switching that off too.. and know this because they switch it back on again each time..
I want to stop using YT but I don't know where to go right now and start over finding the channels I like on another platform.
YOu can even search for the exact name of a vid and it will still not find it and show you some real rubbish that I have no interest in.
it now takes me way too long to find the videos I want to watch and now I think I'm spending less time on it.. enough to no longer pay for the premium service. cos there is no way I putting up this AND ads too
if you are watching a video, click on the save after you click on the three dots then a playlist popin shows up then add a playlist and lastly checkmark the playlist added and repeat for new videos.
this video is added to the LON GUY AND ANTENNAMAN playlist.
If you thought Google was a big company now could you just imagine how big they would be if they oporated using a normal business model??? One which is always working to improve their product for their customers.
They are - their customers are the people that pay to advertise on RUclips.
@@martyplaysgames Yeah, well that sucks
I don't know if this combats some of what's being talked about but what I usually do is unsubscribe from everyone at the end of the year and then resubscribe to the channels that that I know I've been watching or that I know I've liked in the past even though I might not be watching too many of their videos recently.
I do this because if I don't my subscription tab also becomes overrun. I also know that my interest cycle depending on what I'm interested in at the time so sometimes I'll be more interested in gaming, sometimes I'll be more interested in tech, sometimes I'll be more interested in movies. It just depends.
My RUclips time is defined by my subscribtions page. I only go to the home tab when there's nothing else to watch.
I literally have the home feed disabled with chrome extensions. they only way i engage with youtube is through the subscriptions tab. i cant see recommended videos, there's no autoplay. truth is the youtube platform will never be what you want it to be again, Lon. too many users are too content to just watch whatever the algorithm recommends. there are certainly ways for people to take back control from google and watch what they want to watch and not become puppets to some ai algo. but nobody wants to take the steps so.
something the Liasson touched on is just because somebody is subbed doesn't mean they have time to watch your videos. hitting the subscribe button is so easy and ultimately means nothing because they don't engage with the sub tab. every single youtuber ever asking to sub and bell, and youtube making it light up?! when you say subscribe has contributed to the devaluing of subscriptions, im sure the average youtube viewer has 1000s of subs. never curating their list, as I do, because they don't have any reason to. if i have a trash subscription for content i dont really want clogging up my sub feed making it harder to find the videos I do want to watch, I unsub.
I have a decent number of subscriptions, but I imagine it can be even more crazy for many. I’ve been in the habit for years to look at my subscription feed and queue up things. But even at my quantity, I need to skip things to keep up. It’s been starting to feel like I watch more RUclips than anything else. And it can be overwhelming after things like going away for a week.
That’s of course a _me_ problem. But the algorithms for all these platforms get it fairly wrong for what I usually want. But of course that’s not their goal. The algorithm is for them, not us. They just say it’s the help the users. It’s really just to get you down a rabbit hole and make them ore money.
I have zero complaints with my experience on YT as it pertains to the channels I subscribe to. Your channel shows up in my recommended almost immediately. On the days the recommended doesn't have anything interesting, my subscription tab is a perfectly fine alternative.
So for that reason (and I understand this is only my experience), I disagree with the subscription tab being a cop out.
After cutting the cord -- bailing out of Comcast a few years ago -- I wound up realizing that "RUclips videos" was what I watched the most on the TV sets in my house. And that opened up a whole new world of using RUclips -- I found a third-party app that GAVE ME control over what I watched and how to get to what I want to watch, and so on. Just a handful of options made a huge difference, but the bottom line is that these options allow ME to decide what will show up "next," instead of being victimized by "RUclips's algorithm." Or should I say, "raped" by RUclips's algorithm. In the end, we need to do what we can to find alternatives that will let us ignore whatever RUclips wants us to see, or "build our own" organization out of bookmarks, folders -- whatever it takes.
I'm not going to stop subscribing, the Subscriptions tab works for me. (maybe due to not having that many and actually using the tab?) What does me annoy about the Subscriptions is that notifications are very much hit-or-miss.
Oh, and my Subscriptions also show up on my 'Home' carousel , though not as promptly and often as they do in my Subscriptions tab.
I use a feed reader, Feedly, to see all the new RUclips subscriptions posts so I never miss content I want. Works great.
Long, very informative. Had absolutely no idea. I'm sure you rattled some at RUclips. Thanks for sharing this.
This is one of your more enlightening videos!
8:32 Steve Lehto, I watched one or 2 of his videos once or twice, "I'm not a lawyer" YT now gives me every Lawyer channel on my home page among politics
They don't. In fact if you subscribe to a channel you see less of it via the algorithm
If your subscriptions tab is a "firehose" you are subscribed to too many channels. For me, my subscriptions tab is for channels I already know, and the home tab is for discovery. Lon, you have almost 1300 subscriptions! That's insane! I'm pretty sure that makes you a pretty extreme outlier. I have less than 450, and I'm a heavy RUclips user.
I just went through my subscriptions page and started unsubscrbing from channels I don’t watch anymore or upload too frequently (multiple videos per day).
That cleaned it up to make it more usable for me now.
You are right on as usual Lon! I have several hundred of channels that I'm subscribed to....the sub tab is useless.
Same problem here w your channel. Had to pure my YT history in order to see you again.
I don't mind the subscribe button. I think a lot of creators only look at it from their perspective and want it to be an on/off thing. But honestly some people I do subscribe to release way to many videos. I still like their content but I don't want 20 videos uploaded in a day from the same person in my feed. I think this is why the "personalized" subscribe button is the default (the one where the bell isn't filled in). If you want everything you change it to "All" (the bell is filled in) and you'll see literally everything. Understand that using "All" could be REALLY abused by content creators to flood your home page with just their videos and drown out others.
Also, on desktop, the list of all your subscriptions is right on the sidebar. You can go to any channel you want directly. It even does this nice thing of putting a blue dot on the channel if there are new videos. ALSO, if you search a channel name on mobile or desktop and the channel in the search results has a new video the blue dot shows up there as well.
That's why I think if they stacked videos from those channels in the sub feed it would largely correct that problem. They did announce that feature was in testing a few months ago: ruclips.net/video/mwhZUS7chsI/видео.html
From Montreal Canada! I agree with you Lon, RUclips does a horrible job of keep you interested in your subs. I think in general these algorithms are crap. Honestly. RUclips better be careful. We use to use Yahoo once apron a time.....
What I hate is the bell icon. The problem is the user has no control over when the notification is given(at least that I can figure out). I subscribe to creators from all over, mostly North America but not exclusively. I would get notifications randomly all day. So I turned them off. What I'd like to see is the ability to receive all the notifications once per day at a time that works for me.
I am ready to change services. I like the RUclips channels I subscribe to. That does not mean I watch every video put out. I don't like the shorts. Some channels say that have to put out shorts so RUclips will show them. Most videos I watch at 2x because I just want the information. There seems to be no way for it to do it automatically. I have a plug-in for my browser that works a while, but RUclips does something and it quits. I would complain to RUclips but have not figured out how.
I guess I watch RUclips differently than you because I don't see an issue. I only watch videos on a television and I'm either on the homepage or subscriptions and I see all the videos. Nothing gets buried and maybe that's because I have less than less than 50 subscriptions.
Taking a closer look now, I'm not so sure. I don't recall seeing some of the stuff in the subscription feed when I click on each channel.
i have over 250 subs and I dont miss any videos. I never understood why people complain about this.
I like the easier to unsubscribe idea and maybe group recents by channel so like news/music subs that post a lot aren't filling up the feed
I've said for years that subscriptions on YT don't matter which is why I don't bother subscribing to anyone. I just keep the channel links that I like in a shortcuts folder and pop them up when I want to watch something.
I miss the days when RUclips would send an email when a new video was posted in a subscribed channel. It was much easier to keep up with new postings that way. Especially a live stream.
Every new video upload to any of the channels that I watch regularly appear on my front page. I personally see no benefit in subscribing to any channels. It's all right there as soon as I open youtube. The only thing I miss out on are live streams. But if I need to be notified that somebody's gone live, I'm probably busy doing something else anyway
I honestly think this is user error more than anything. I very much want to see subscriptions on the subscriptions page and I *don't* want to see them on the home page, which.is more of a "Discover" page. I mainly live on the subscriptions page and have no problems seeing everything I want. I click on "Home" when I want to discover new videos & creators. The big issue for me is that it has a load of subscription videos and stuff I've already watched mixed in on the home page. They should remove all videos from subscriptions on 'Home'.
I don't understand how the subscriptions page can be too much unless you're subscribed to 1000+ channels and getting new videos show up every minute. In which case, it's user error again. Cut back on your subscriptions, the same way you would reduce your magazine subscriptions if you had 50 magazines showing up in your mailbox every day.
I turned my youtube history off a while back because it was suggesting some awful media. The result is that it turns off the Home page (on the mobile app). So, I am stuck with the firehouse of my subscription feed 😢 I agree finding videos within my many subscriptions really sucks the way Google has it setup.
I totally agree with you, the Subscription tab sucks. Especially on TV or computer.
I asked Rene in an AMA on TWiT about being able to create custom folders/categories for your subbed channels. Said they used to have it but people didn’t use it so they got rid of it. Great…
They’ve never had it - there was a test they ran awhile back so maybe he was referring to that. I think most users won’t go through the trouble of categorizing but it would be nice to have the option.
One issue with the youtube home page is that with all of the tracking they do, along with the AI's ability to scan audio and video for content, it seems like they intentionally give bad recommendation while not providing enough new content from channels I subscribe to. 90% of the channels I subscribe to, as well as probably 98% of the viewing is tech content, as well as photography (focusing more on gear or techniques). The rest are cute animal videos, and the occasional random video on some car related stuff. Why waste the bandwidth showing me videos like white house press conferences or other stuff where it is obvious that i am not going to click on it? While I understand them putting subscribed content less often if you do not watch every video from a channel, but a far better decision for content would be to show something from that channel rather than a random pres conference that my watch history should show that such content will not be clicked on.
Many moons ago, youtube had a folders feature, where you could define your own folders and put subscribed channels in there. In that sense, it worked like an rss feed. It was great. But alas, it's just another useful feature youtube removed in their never-ending quest to make youtube worse.
Interesting you had access to that - my understanding of that feature was that it was an "experiment" they were running on a limited number of users.
This video was on the top of my home page
I’ve been using the subscription tab for years and even then I’ve missed a lot of videos. Of course I have a lot of subscriptions 1200+ however I left the home tab as it pushes content that for the most part I don’t have any desire to watch.
That's why I think if they provided more filtering/organization tools in the sub feed we'd miss less. I'm in the same boat as you - I have a so many channels in my sub feed that it's really difficult to prune after almost 20 years :).
And I did forget to mention that I’m a premium subscriber, as there’s no way anyone could watch RUclips free as you’re bombarded with commercials every five seconds and those blocks go on for several minutes. I think it’s honestly time to tell google to drop dead. They’ve gotten way too big and they don’t care about the people who have made the company what it is. The only issue as everyone knows who else is there for the creators?
I'm def old school the way I watch RUclips. I do it mainly on my MacBook Air laptop and not on my iPhone or TV. I mainly use the Subscriptions page to see when new videos are put out. I refresh that page a lot during the day (I'm 47 and retired haha). I watch videos that way, no subject just depends on when they go live and who I feel like watching that time. If I go to the RUclips Home Page it's mainly to see what I missed (they'll show a few days old videos of people I sub to and haven't watched yet) or I'll watch some new videos they suggest. Like I said, old school haha. Good video as a a;lways.