Tommy Edison, the blind YouTube star who built a sizable following by attempting menial tasks such as building things with Legos and identifying massive pool floats, called out the video streaming platform for potentially sabotaging his channel.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaOP2b4PbtY&t=1s
Edison uploaded a video titled “OUR YOUTUBE CHANNEL IS IN TROUBLE” on Thursday, in which he details his customer service woes with the company. Edison—who also reviews movies on a secondary account, Blind Film Critic—claims that many of his 536,000 subscribers don’t receive notifications when he posts a new video to his channel, despite opting to do so.
These aren’t baseless claims, either. For several months, Edison and his partner, editor/director Ben Churchill, meticulously tracked the views they received from notifications and how they correlated to their overall subscriber base. From April 5 to May 17, 2017, Edison’s channel jumped from 442,000 subscribers to 520,000 subscribers; his views from notifications increased from 1,963 to 2,967, accordingly.
The duo first noticed a dip in views and audience engagement on a video they posted on May 24, 2017, when they had 522,000 subscribers. The video only earned 1,582 views from notifications—down 47 percent from the previous upload. This number eventually dwindled to 1,035.
Edison and Churchill polled their Twitter followers about the issue, and 62.5 percent of responders said they had stopped receiving notifications, or would receive them months late. Edison himself didn’t even get notifications when his own videos posted.
They notified YouTube of the issue, and say they were given the run-around for several weeks. A representative for the company tried to dismiss issue by pointing out that notifications only drive 1 to 5 percent of traffic within the first 24 hours, Edison says. But as Edison explains in his new video, YouTube evaluates a video’s performance in its first hour, 24 hours, and seven days to recommend it to others. If it looks like subscribers have stopped tuning in to a channel when it uploads a new video, then those videos are less likely to show up on the “suggested” sidebar, where people who don’t have notifications enabled would find the video.
Edison and Churchill say they stopped receiving customer service emails from YouTube a month ago, which is why they called out the company in their new video. Granted, they still have 536,000 subscribers, so their channel probably isn’t in quite as much danger as they’d have you believe. Still, they want to get to the bottom of this issue right away—and with YouTube taking 45 percent of their revenue off every video, it’s easy to understand why.
YouTube did not respond to a request for comment.