this post was submitted on 11 Apr 2026
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I remember there being a bunch of people saying this in the YouTubers subreddit.
What they never quite grasped was this : the algorithm tries to put videos in front of people it thinks they will want to watch, with the goal of getting people to watch as much YouTube as possible, with one of the metrics used to make this judgment being whether the people who have been recommend the video have watched it, and if so, for how long.
If "the algorithm" doesn't like your video, it's because the people it has been recommended to have either not watched it, or have watched a very short amount before clicking away.
In other words, your video was shit.
"The algorithm" prioritizes short form content over longer ones due to their ability to serve ads. And studies by these companies have repeatedly shown that despite what people say, most people prefer shorter content over longer ones.
People would rather watch an okay 30-second tiktok than a good 4 minute video.
Which is nuts to me because I can't stand them. I love watching documentaries and long form videos. And that's why I don't use YouTube anymore.
You get downvoted because people doesn't understand that Youtube is not a video entertainment platform, it is an ad provider platform as it is providing ads to people. Your video is shit not because it isn't a high quality video, it is shit because it doesn't fulfill it's only purpose, serving ads to people. It is shit in the eyes of ad companies.
That makes no goddamn sense.
The more time you spend on the platform, the more ads Google can show you. A video that people watch is good for showing people more ads. If people don't watch a video, it's not useful for showing ads.
That’s not quite how I would phrase it. It’s not that the video was necessarily shit, but your audience was bored by it, and it doesn’t take a rocket-scientist-algorithm to figure out if people are bored by your video or not.
YouTube is still mostly a platform for entertainment, even when a video is supposed to educational. “Good” videos won’t get algorithm’d if people are bored by the video and/or your thumbnail + title don’t draw people in. Make an entertaining video that draws people in and it won’t matter how long your video is (granted, a 4 hour long entertaining video is a lot harder to make than a 2 minute video.)
Source: videos I’ve made that have and haven’t been algorithm’d.
If your audience was bored by it, it wasn't a good video.
Good is subjective, and I personally don’t think entertaining always has to equal good.
I get where you’re coming from. There’s a lot of bitching about the algorithm and it’s tempting to just say, “Maybe your videos just suck, man”, but it’s not always true, and, as a a bonus, not very constructive feedback.
I disagree about constructive feedback, if someone has decided "the algorithm" is the reason their video isn't getting views, they're not going to do anything to actually improve their content.
By pointing out it's people who are choosing not to watch their content, they might decide to actually do something different.
I agree that you need to point out that the algorithm isn’t to blame, but saying, “Your videos aren’t getting algorithm’d because your videos suck” isn’t constructive and is far more likely to piss people off. If you don’t care about pissing people off then 🤷
I kinda don't, especially the type of people who bitch about the algorithm on Reddit.