Aardvark Daily

Please visit the sponsor!

Pushing back against AI

I am totally sick and tired of the tsunami of AI-produced content on YouTube.

I've lost track of the number of interesting looking video titles I've seen which, when clicked on, simply lead to an AI-written, AI-narrated montage of scraped images and video footage with some Nano-Banana or other AI-created additional stuff.

The results are so formulaic that they are instantly recognisable.

The same few germs of information are repeated time and time again, so as to pad the video out long enough that it can be littered with mid-roll ads for maximum revenue.

As a creator, it angers me that these "zero effort" and zero value videos are being promoted so heavily by YouTube, while many of the genuine, authentic creators I've followed for years are throwing in the towel.

Those creators were still making great content well worth watching but the sad reality is that the AI dross has simply crowded them out of the market.

People generally only watch the videos that appear in thumbnail form on their screens and YouTube is deprioritising traditional content in favour of this "new generation" of talentless drivel -- probably because stupid people are duped into clicking on those thumbnails.

In fact, the once-critical performance metric of "retention" has now been relegated to the back of the room, in favour of click-through from impressions. What that means is that YouTube doesn't care if people only watch 30 seconds of a video after clicking it because you've already been shown two pre-roll ads by that point. If you click-away to another video they get the chance to show you two more pre-rolls but if you stay, the next set of ads might not be offered up for five minutes or more.

YouTube makes a lot more money if you click away from a video early-on.

So, folk like me, who try to make their videos interesting and/or informative and who choose not to burden viewers with endless mid-roll ads (or any mid-rolls in my case) are often not even shown to their subscribers.

The fact that YouTube prioritises these AI-dross videos becomes very apparent when you look for a way to filter them out from search results.

There isn't one.

Even though creators are supposed to declare when a video is AI and the platform apparently even does this automatically now -- there's still no way to say "No AI thanks" -- because YouTube knows you're more likely to click away early and be shown some more pre-rolls when you hit an AI video.

The good thing is that every day, the opportunity for a new platform to kick the chair out from under YouTube's feet becomes stronger.

Today, I will do a little more on my attempts to get into this market (albeit not at a commercial scale) by trying to figure out the problems I've encountered whilst setting up my own VOD server here. Once I've got that sorted, I will be self-serving my videos for those who want to give YouTube a wide berth while watching my content.

A further indication that YouTube has jumped the shark is their all-but-admission that it's no longer viable for many people to earn a living from Adsense revenues. They're now bending over backwards to try and help creators get "brand deals" (aka sponsorships) so that they can continue making content without YouTube having to pay them anything.

In less than two weeks I'll mark the 20th anniversary of the first video I uploaded to the platform and hopefully it'll also mark my first real efforts to shift away from it.

Carpe Diem folks!

Please visit the sponsor!

Here is a PERMANENT link to this column

Rank This Aardvark Page

Change Font