Got this idea from perhaps the first half-decent recommendation YouTube has given me in years, ironically, but it explains quite a bit why I'm ironically getting hundreds more views on Newground's Movie Portal alone than the supposedly-more-mainstream YouTube:
So I'm sure many of you are like me in that you upload on YouTube in addition to Newgrounds' Movie Portal just to reach more people, especially people who for whatever reason still see Newgrounds as the stereotypical "edgy" website and feel more comfortable on the more-mainstream YouTube as a result. Even if you don't post on YouTube, you probably like going to YouTube for tutorials and video essays and probably have noticed that your favorite animators or long-form content creators don't seem to post on YouTube nearly as much as they used to, or the recommendations from YouTube itself seem to have gotten worse and worse despite all the data the website collects just to tailor the recommendations and especially ads towards you.
Now as someone who hardly ever treated YouTube like a full-time job and certainly never made money off my videos, but still seemed to do surprisingly well when I first joined at only 16, uploading amateurish garbage and still somehow getting 200-500 views per video this overall drop in views I've gotten over the years despite improving my skills and still mustering 200-500 views in the Newgrounds versions of the same videos can create a serious sense of "Imposter Syndrome."
Am I out of touch compared to when I first started making YouTube videos at 16? Possible, I don't think I've understood "the kids" since memes like Skibidi Toilet and "Six-Seven" became popular, but on the other hand, I could easily make up for it by overall being more competent at what I do than when I was a dumb teen myself, and of course at 31 I'm not THAT old, yet. And, of course, if I'm lucky I could actually create cool trends and memes similar to how SpongeBob seasons 1-3 basically predicted modern meme culture just by being as funny as the writers possibly could muster at the time.
Is my stuff not good enough for the algorithm? Partly true, if I'm being honest. I've always struggled with sticking with one specialty until I'm absolutely great at it, not just "good" or "competent", and for my latest Punk n' Gunk cartoon, I've received some very good feedback on how I could make my animation less...unintentionally-terrifying to look at. But that doesn't explain how the YouTube version couldn't even muster 27 views while the Newgrounds version got over 100 views, a few 5-star ratings from my most loyal fans here, and maintains my usual average of getting 3-3.5 stars for every Movie Portal submission that I actually put a ton of work into. Or when I shared the link on the even-more-niche Blender Artists forum, it managed to get two "Likes," which was still two more "Likes" and general engagement than I got on the YouTube version.
While I think it's good to take responsibility for your own YouTube channel's decline and figure out ways to make your animation more polished for mainstream audiences, with these Web 2.0 social media sites and their ever-changing algorithms, you should also recognize that sometimes, it's just not your fault that junk you made as an amateurish teen got more views back in the day than more-competent stuff you make now. If you haven't had time to watch the video above (but somehow had the time to read all these walls of text--I'm sorry, that's just how I am on the forums), it basically says YouTube's algorithm and UI has quietly-but-drastically changed to prioritize vertical "YouTube Shorts" content over horizontal "regular" YouTube videos, even the short horizontal videos, and even hugely-popular channels that mostly prioritize horizontal videos, like Mr. Beast, have seen a huge and impossible-to-ignore drop-off in views and general engagement since this particular change.
Basically YouTube has inevitably become a sadder version of TikTok. Or Instagram Reels.
I can actually see the upsides of this as someone who specializes in animated videos. Animation takes absolutely forever to make (even poor animation takes a ton of time), yet these algorithm-based sites reward you for uploading fast and constantly. By prioritizing shorter stuff, this could give animators a fighting chance on YouTube again by making a lot of 10-second animations, rather than spend months and months on an animation, only to not even get views from your own irl family and friends.
THE PROBLEM, unfortunately, is that YouTube's algorithm changes also hurt the chances of Shorts consistently getting views, according the video. It has a strong "recency bias." Basically, if you upload a Short and the almighty algorithm decides to show it to a ton of people, you could get way more views than you're used to getting in less than 24 hours--personally, I've gotten around 1,000-2,000 views on Shorts when I got lucky like that. BUT, if your Short flies under the algorithm's radar in the first 24 hours since it was uploaded, then your views on that particular video will be in the single digits and stay there forever because the algorithm also never again shows Shorts made more than 24 hours ago to potential viewers--so the answer is not as simple as "upload more Shorts and less horizontal videos," especially when you also account for AI slop flooding YT Shorts the same way they already flood TikTok and other short-form websites, or that your more intellectual fans who fear short-form content is making humanity dumber likely have an ad-blocker or extension that ensures they won't ever see the YouTube Shorts feed at all on their YouTube account.
This could very well spell the end of YouTube itself if they don't remind themselves that YT was always at its best as a long-form video platform where people could actually make a career out of simply making high-quality YouTube videos everyone wants to watch. At least we animators have the Newgrounds Movie Portal as an alternative that not only also supports long animation uploads, but actively encourages longer animations--if YouTube no longer exists for other long-form content, like comprehensive Blender 3D tutorials, thoughtful video essays or accessible archives of lost/forgotten media dating back to the 1800's, where else could we turn to?
As it stands, I'll still (reluctantly) use YouTube, even for re-uploading my longer Movie Portal Animations, just so that I can easily share video links to my family and friends, as well as other websites like Blender Artists forums, Discord, LinkedIn and other websites that otherwise don't have the bandwidth for videos longer than 1 or 2 minutes. But yeah, YouTube is weirder than ever these days, and you probably shouldn't beat yourself up if your views and subscribers on that site just plummet for no good reason, especially for standard horizontal videos more than 2 minutes long. You certainly shouldn't use YouTube as a potential stable career path, or expect to get your animated pilot picked up by a major Hollywood studio, however.
