Imagine you sit down to a meal, open up YouTube for dinner entertainment as you always do, and travel to the profile of your favorite creator. Instead of the neat rows of videos organized by upload date, you see season tabs like that of a network TV show. You click on one of the seasons and see all the videos labeled as episodes.
Did you open one of your streaming services by accident?
No. This new interface was announced at the 2024 Made on YouTube event. The platform may look like a streamer, presenting high-resolution “episodes” that range from 25 minutes to several hours. But each video thumbnail maintains your favorite creator’s highly exaggerated facial expressions and oversaturated color edits, as always.
This may sound ridiculous, but YouTube plans to launch this feature in 2025, along with other new developments like AI-enhanced comment reply suggestions or AI-generated video ideas in the YouTube Studio.
These changes to YouTube’s interface make sense, considering the platform has been attracting the same, if not more, TV viewership as companies like Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, and Disney+. Gone are the days of YouTube’s top content being a 10-minute video recorded in someone’s childhood home.
But with these changes, is YouTube losing its identity?
The MrBeast Effect
Jimmy Donaldson, otherwise known online as MrBeast, changed the culture of YouTube through his crazy, eye-catching stunts, giveaways, and challenges.
Donaldson began posting to YouTube in 2012, but his channel rose to new heights thanks to a video uploaded in 2017 of him counting to 100,000. That same year, his channel reached 1 million subscribers. Today, he is the most-subscribed account on the platform with 336 million subscribers and counting. However, his rise to fame hasn’t been a smooth one.
Take, for example, the backlash Donaldson received for his 2021 video that recreated Netflix’s Squid Game. A dystopian, fictional show where contestants competed in deadly challenges for a ₩45.6 billion (US$38 million) cash prize, critics praised its unflinching, brutally honest representation of the present-day horrors of capitalism.
In Donaldson’s video, 456 contestants competed in the same series of games as the show for $456,000. Luckily, in Donaldson’s rendition, contestants were eliminated and financially compensated rather than killed. However, the video ignited much debate online.
Some viewers celebrated Donaldson’s production quality and offered some well-observed accolades. “I genuinely can’t get over the quality of the sets. Wow,” one viewer commented. Another said, “At this point you should take the next logical step and establish a movie/TV production company–you’ve pretty much already created one from scratch. I would love to see how you could shake up that industry.”
Despite Donaldson’s ability to recreate Netflix’s $21.4 million budget with $3.5 million, some criticized Donaldson for missing the show’s message entirely.
“I think it’s very tone deaf. Sure it’s fun, entertaining, and he helps a TON of people, which is amazing but the entire point of Squid Game is the exploitation of the poor for the rich,” one Reddit user stated in a thread discussing Donaldson’s video. A second user voiced similar sentiments: “To me, the show is about how poor people are exploited for entertainment by rich people in general. So the fact that he recruits people who need money and make them compete for entertainment does kind of put him on the same side as the bad guys in the show.”
Since Nov. 24, 2021, Donaldson’s video has garnered over 676 million views. His channel itself has over 66 billion total views. Regardless of the criticism his videos receive, Donaldson has successfully crafted his content to the algorithm so that, no matter the video idea, people will watch.
Donaldson isn’t the cause of YouTube’s changes; he is only an effect, handsomely rewarded for adhering to the new changes YouTube enacted some years ago.
Both Donaldson and Google, YouTube’s parent company, have yet to respond to the Daily Dot’s request for comment.
YouTube’s algorithm-first approach
In April 2020, YouTube ended its old creator studio and shifted 100% of its creators to its new YouTube Studio. These changes gave partners access to more in-depth channel analytics. This also allowed creators to game the platform’s algorithm since they knew the exact timestamps of where viewership dropped and soared.
The result? Profit.
YouTube’s ad revenue jumped from $19.7 billion in 2020 to $28.8 billion in 2021. But since these changes, some notable YouTubers have voiced how they’ve felt more discouraged than inspired.
With more content on the platform moving toward higher production value and grandiose video concepts, like MrBeast’s channel, is this the new standard to which all YouTubers should aspire?
What about YouTube has changed so much?
Tom Simons, or TommyInnit, uploaded a video on Oct. 4, 2024, titled, “youtube’s changed.” Simons, who has been uploading on the platform since September 2018, has over 15 million subscribers. In the video, he issues concerns about the view-hungry state of creating on YouTube–and the platform’s role in exacerbating it.
Sat in front of a camera, Simons speaks to the audience:
“People used to have no idea what the hell they were doing on [YouTube]. They were just doing what they reckoned might be good. And, now, it’s pretty different. People know what is good, what works. They know how to become the most popular YouTuber, man. [Expletive] me, maybe they even study for it. I think ‘cause of this access to knowledge once deemed, quite frankly, unknowable, YouTube as a platform has a general consistent theme to it now in a way it never had before.”
The changes Simons speaks of in his video are YouTube’s redefined algorithm and creator analytics page. Along with the 2020 YouTube Studio updates, YouTube’s algorithm began prioritizing watch times by the end of 2021.
The analytics page includes a one-through-ten ranking system depending on how a creator’s most recent video is performing. The lower the number ranking, the worse the video’s performance, made clear enough by the glaring red arrows pointing down. The higher the number ranking, the greener the up arrows, and the better the performance. Should a creator receive a one-out-of-ten ranking on their video, they’ll see colorful confetti shoot across the screen.
Combatting YouTube’s algorithm push
Connor Franta, a fellow YouTuber and content creator, said the numbered ranking system directly affects how users make content.
“YouTube has a feature that shows if a video is succeeding or failing and they’re trying to get you to change it to help it get more views. And the hard part about that is you either have to give in and change the title and change the thumbnail but then, at the core of it, you lose a little bit of your soul thinking the video’s the same regardless,” Franta told the Daily Dot in an interview. “The video’s the same. The only thing that’s getting people in is the title and the thumbnail, not the content? It’s a complicated dance to play.”
Franta has been uploading to the platform since 2010. He has also published three books, created Common Culture Coffee, and photographed celebrities for publications such as L’officiel and Paper. His channel has over 4 million followers and 421 million views today.
Despite YouTube’s push for performance-driven creation, Franta said he refuses to let the algorithm control his work.
“I made the active decision almost exactly a year ago to pursue the content that I am pursuing at the moment, which was not algorithm-focused, based upon time, title, or subject matter even,” he said. “It was more going back to a space of 2011 to 2014 where I felt as though I had no restrictions on the content I created.”
Forging a new YouTube
Looking at Franta’s channel today, anyone would notice the stylistic growth his content has experienced over his 14-year career. Take, for example, a video of his uploaded July 16, 2021, titled “i’ve avoided these questions for YEARS.” The title is vague and intriguing, and the video idea is compelling and curious. The thumbnail is a cutout of a worried Franta surrounded by distressing questions on a bright pink and orange background.
These techniques are combined to present to viewers a juicy puzzle that can only be solved by watching the video.
Today, Franta’s videos contrast his older content. His video, “my health scare,” was uploaded July 9, 2024. He tells a 5-minute story—from being raised by his physician dad to his January dermatologist visit that prompted this video. He speaks to his viewers with care, telling them to visit their doctors and take care of their health. This video is just one of his many imbued with honesty and authenticity. The titles are meaningful and thought-provoking. The thumbnails are sparsely edited, often taken directly from the video footage.
His entire channel shines with passion, which is hard to come by in a time of clickbait and cash-grab videos.
“I hope people leave my videos feeling better than when they started watching it,” Franta told the Daily Dot. “I always try to leave a piece of content with somewhat of a positive, inspiring, creative or energetic message at the end of it.”
In an era of YouTube marred by an identity crisis, Franta’s dedication to create for himself is a sentiment voiced by other creators, as well.
Simons, in his video about YouTube, points to the magic of the platform’s iconic slogan: Broadcast Yourself. He says the community drives his creation, not the numbers.
“There is no other place where random a** people like you and me get other people to hear us, to hear our voice, and that is brilliant,” he says in the clip. “I’ve recently been thinking about what it means to do this and why people do this, why I do this. And, look, I’ve got to tell you guys, all of the most fulfilling times on this platform for me haven’t come from milestones. Honestly, I don’t even remember hitting 3 to 9 million subscribers. It all came from those random moments where I didn’t even quite know what was happening until it was over.”
Here, Simons plays video clips he’s proud of, some from Minecraft gameplay and others from in-real-life boating and skydiving adventures. “These are the moments to live for,” he says, “Not this,” as he gestures to an overlay of screenshots showing the YouTube studio dashboard, video view counts, and channel subscriber counts.
Is there anything left to love about YouTube?
Simons has been on YouTube since 2018, not nearly as long as Franta. However, both creators celebrate the beloved platform for its ability to generate such strong communities.
“It’s such a beautiful thing to think that the smallest enjoyment someone may have can be shared by so many,” Franta told the Daily Dot. “And I think that YouTube continues to be royalty in that realm where it really does foster a community unlike any other digital platform.”
Donaldson may be the most subscribed channel, and his content may perfectly game the algorithm, guaranteeing a level of success unheard of yet for the platform. But that doesn’t mean that his kind of content is the only content on the platform. Amid MrBeast’s rise, there are YouTubers, like Connor Franta and TommyInnit, who still use the platform to do what they love.
In his video, Simons urges aspiring creators not to be discouraged by the numbers game. The spirit of YouTube isn’t dead, he argues.
“If, right now, you want to become a YouTuber, a real YouTuber, a person that’s going to stick with people, then you do it your own way,” Simons says. “And, right now, I can guarantee you one of you out there watching this video is in absolutely the right place in absolutely the right time. You just don’t know it yet.”
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