Youtube Weirdness

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Youtube Weirdness

Post by bladeracer » 16 Apr 2022, 10:07 am

I've had a Youtube "channel" for some years now. It started as a repository to post my on-bike camera videos simply so my mates could access them rather than have to burn them to DVD or mess about with flash drives to get copies to them. And I'll put up videos I think I might want to access myself when I'm not at my computer, and I'll put videos up if I think it might be of interest to others.

I just checked and I have 71 subscribers, but I haven't checked in the past so I don't know if it's been that many since I started, a lot are probably mates I raced with and just my own family and friends. The main comments I get are from scammers and porn sites which I delete. Basically, I don't push them and they don't get spread around.

Until this week. I posted a one-minute video shooting the M1903-A3 specifically for a mate in Perth to have a look. There is nothing of interest in it, I kneel down, fire five rounds, stand up and turn off the camera. I noticed last night that there were 426 views! I figured something wasn't right but was just checking what the issue might be and it has 876 views this morning - what the hell is happening?

I sent it to two people, both of whom have little interest in firearms and certainly aren't on any firearm forums. Is there something in it perhaps that has triggered a Youtube algorithm? I'm not monetised and I don't promote my channel anywhere. Unless you know me you're unlikely to stumble upon it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ugd-IgrTyHo

Was hoping somebody might be able to explain what is happening. If I delete it and reupload it will that take it out of whatever wormhole it's in?
Last edited by bladeracer on 17 Apr 2022, 10:45 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Youtube Weirdness

Post by on_one_wheel » 16 Apr 2022, 10:37 am

It's probably just every watchdog just tuning in, SAPOL, WAPOL, NTPOL, VICPOL, NSWPOL, QUDPOL, TASPOL, ACTPOL, AFP, ASIO, FBI, ASSIS,
You'll be contacted shortly regarding terrorism training camps, incitement of terrorism, shooting more than 4 rounds in the prescribed period of time and all that stuff.
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Re: Youtube Weirdness

Post by wanneroo » 16 Apr 2022, 12:36 pm

The way Youtube works is they want to keep your eyeballs attached to the site, so when people watch something they want to feed that person more of it and feed others as well. So if it gets a good response and people watch the whole thing, it triggers being shown to more people in their feed and if more people watch it the cycle continues.

What YT is really good at is data, it's why they are the dominant player in video hosting and no one else can come close.

As most here know I have my own channel and I see the same thing. Most of my videos are over 10 minutes but for instance I put out an 8 second video of me shooting a Draco AK full auto and initially it attracted a few views and then after a couple of months went wild, over a thousand views a day for weeks, then trailed off to 500 a day, now maybe a couple of dozen a day, ending up at 32K.

I think what it might come down to is people might want to see someone shooting a M1903 and that's it, they don't want any commentary or whatever. So some of the short videos often do well.

I've also found some of my videos do a slow burn. At first no one is interested but over time they build views and grow. I did some berdan primer videos a year ago and strangely the past month they've been some of the most popular videos on a daily basis. Weird but ok.
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Re: Youtube Weirdness

Post by mchughcb » 16 Apr 2022, 1:20 pm

Deleting and starting again, may work.

The algorithm works in its own way. It will heavily promote stuff, even if its not monetized.
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Re: Youtube Weirdness

Post by bladeracer » 16 Apr 2022, 2:51 pm

We've been out for a deer recon this morning, just got back.

Rose had an idea and we may have found the issue.
When I Google the URL of the video to see if perhaps somebody has posted it to a forum or FB group, I got something strange.
Youtube issue Screenshot 2022-04-16 143808.jpg
Youtube issue Screenshot 2022-04-16 143808.jpg (28.5 KiB) Viewed 1265 times


The video URL come back with my screenshot but a description of a video about a boxing match :-)
I suspect Youtube screwed it up somehow.
I'll try deleting it and reupping to see if that fixes it.
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Re: Youtube Weirdness

Post by bladeracer » 17 Apr 2022, 10:51 am

I remember I accidentally posted a video a couple years back as a "short", no idea how I did.
But that got thousands of views in the first few hours before I realised and deleted it.
Can't even recall now what it was about but probably shooting.
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Re: Youtube Weirdness

Post by mchughcb » 17 Apr 2022, 4:55 pm

If you don't like people watching your content just change it to private or unlisted. You can only watch unlisted if somebody sends you a link. Private is by invitation only to friends.
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Re: Youtube Weirdness

Post by bladeracer » 17 Apr 2022, 6:42 pm

mchughcb wrote:If you don't like people watching your content just change it to private or unlisted. You can only watch unlisted if somebody sends you a link. Private is by invitation only to friends.


I don't have a problem with people watching my stuff, I think this is a different issue.
I don't think people are watching my stuff, or at least not voluntarily. I think they're being sent to my video in error when searching for something they are interested in. That's just wasting people's time, which I don't want to be part of.

Yes, I post a lot of videos unlisted just for family viewing.
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Re: Youtube Weirdness

Post by Griffo1337 » 17 Apr 2022, 10:16 pm

Wanneroo is spot on the algorithm is key.
The thing I've noticed with YouTube (purely my limited experience however) is it struggles tailoring shooting and gun-related content. So if someone has put in M1903 review, it probably wouldn't be much of a stretch for YouTube to decide 'yep your videos coming up next'. If it's short people will watch because, why not it's only xx mins or secs long.
Unless you start getting weird messages or contact from people, not worth worrying about. Just my 2 cents :D
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