YouTube just NUKED my channel

Added: 2026-05-19

[00:00:00]We have a crisis. I'm coming to you today because independent media is facing a real crisis on YouTube and I want to know what you believe is actually going on. Let me explain.

[00:00:12]Couple possibilities and I will I will lay them out and you tell me what's going on. Left-wing independent media on YouTube is crashing crashing. Since the beginning of April, YouTube has dramatically reduced performance for the vast majority of left-leaning independent media shows. Not every single one, but the vast majority.

[00:00:36]Importantly, this is not following the same trajectory as right-wing content.

[00:00:41]And to be clear, it it is not every left-wing channel, but it is ours, and it is a lot of them. I've been Faren Cousins put out a video about this a few hours ago. The short version is this.

[00:00:53]Videos that should perform well, videos people write to me about saying, "This is really important. Videos that do really well on other platforms are bombing. They're not reaching people."

[00:01:06]Every single day I get comments from viewers about how they don't see videos of mine in their feed anymore. I had to manually go to your channel, David.

[00:01:16]What's the point of subscribing if YouTube never shows me your videos? So, we started looking at the data. I want to go data first. And there's a couple important metrics that we found. One is impressions. An impression is YouTube shows you my thumbnail and title. You might be watching one video and on the side it goes, "Hey, you might like this." That's an impression. You might click it or you might not click it.

[00:01:38]Maybe it's an up next. Maybe it's on the homepage. The second metric we look at is called click-through rate. And that simply means if a hundred people are shown that they could click on my video, how many do? If five out of a 100red click it, that's a 5% click-through rate. If 20 out of a 100 click it, that's a 20% click-through rate. Now, YouTube has suggested to me that there is simply less interest right now in the sort of content that the left is putting out. Maybe people are fatigued. Maybe they're burnt out on politics. Maybe fewer people care about these stories.

[00:02:16]If that were true, you would expect the click-through rate to fall. In other words, if when people are interested, 20 out of a 100red click my videos when they are shown them. If people are less interested, maybe only five out of a 100red click. But all year, the click-through rate has stayed the same.

[00:02:36]The click-through rate hasn't gone down at all. When people are shown, here's a video from David. They are clicking it just as often as at the beginning of the year and January, February, March, a period during which the channel was growing massively, we were getting 15 million impressions a day and the click-through rate was close to 8%. And then April and May, click-through rate is still close to 8%. But impressions go from 15 million down to 10 million. Hm.

[00:03:09]But the click-through rate is almost identical. So, it appears that people are just as interested in hearing from the left on YouTube right now, but they are not being shown the videos. Now, if this were the entire story, I probably wouldn't even make this segment. But what makes this very difficult to ignore are the sheer number of people every single day who say things like the following. I don't get you in my feed at all. were showing screenshots of people leaving these comments. I don't get you in my feed at all. Pac-Man, not on my feed anymore for some reason. I had to search for his videos. You were being suppressed in distribution. I'm not seeing your new videos and I've been subscribed for years. I have hit the bell to make sure I get informed. And another one, Robin says, "This is the first time I've seen a post of yours in weeks." You know, at a certain point when you hear from hundreds and hundreds of people every single day saying, "I've been subscribed. I don't see any of your content." You have to start wondering, "Is something going on here?" Now, uh, I I want to be charitable to YouTube here.

[00:04:21]We've been on YouTube a long time. I think the people at YouTube are generally people trying to do a good job. And YouTube has offered a different explanation. And the argument from YouTube is click-through rate is deceptive. You know, during periods of explosive growth, when YouTube pushes your videos to more people, click-through rate tends to come down.

[00:04:41]It actually doesn't really mean anything. That clickthrough rate, they have this whole other explanation.

[00:04:46]However, one of the things that makes me question that is that the content is killing on every other platform. If it were true that people are less interested in leftwing political content right now, you would imagine that we would be getting fewer views on Tik Tok.

[00:05:04]We would be getting fewer views on Snapchat. We would be getting fewer reviews on Instagram and Facebook and the audio podcast would have declined.

[00:05:11]But every single other platform is doing fine. It's only YouTube, which to me undercuts the idea that there is less interest. Now, I am not arguing that someone at YouTube has flipped a switch and is deliberately suppressing left-wing channels. I believe that YouTube's systems are reacting in some sense to what they believe is going to keep people on platform more and this is sort of a side effect of it. Either way, the effect is the same, which is that this is an existential crisis for left-wing YouTube channels. So independent media survives or dies based on discoverability. So if you actually want to keep seeing the show, there is something very important that you should do right now. First of all, make sure to like this video on YouTube. If you're listening elsewhere, go to YouTube, like this video. But the concept is we don't want to rely on AI for recommendations.

[00:06:12]We don't want to rely on the algorithms.

[00:06:15]We have to go back to telling the platforms what we want. YouTube defaults users to what they call personalized notifications, which essentially means let AI choose whether to show me David's videos. You have to tell YouTube that you want to see certain videos. So, if you're not yet subscribed on YouTube, please make sure to subscribe and like this video. But after doing that, double check that notifications are actually turned on. There's a bell icon. Click it, tap it, and select all. There is a very good chance that YouTube has set this to personalized, meaning they're not going to show you the videos. You've got to go in and tell YouTube what to do. This is our best and only shot at reprogramming the algorithm, but also at circumventing it and simply telling YouTube, "Don't decide for me. I'm deciding the content I want." Also important, because we have no control over these platforms, make sure you're on my Substack mailing list because we do own the data there. We have no way to contact our 3.6 million YouTube subscribers if YouTube pulls the plug.

[00:07:26]We own our list on Substack. So, go to davidpackman.com/substack and make sure you're on that list. But the most important thing, like this video, subscribe, bell all, and I'll report back to you in two days and see if we can turn this thing around. You know, the United States started as a rebellion against a monarch who claimed divine authority. And the founders followed that by creating our secular constitution. No references to a deity, no religious tests, clear separation between church and state. That was on purpose. It was designed to protect pluralism and individual conscience and religious freedom for everybody. But today, we're seeing increasing efforts to challenge that. Donald Trump's America praise event on May 17th, which aligns government with Christianity.

[00:08:19]That raises major constitutional concerns. Our sponsor, the Freedom from Religion Foundation, works to protect separation of church and state because it protects you and it protects me. As we approach the 250th anniversary of the United States, the question isn't just what we celebrate, it's what do we defend. Visit ffrf.

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