I have something really importunate to talk about today.
Uh, it appears as though you think tube
may be generally messing with independent news and politics channels like the channel
we have, which now has close to 700,000 subscribers.
Now, I can't speak as broadly about this as I would like to, but I'll tell you what's
going on with our channel as a data point in the last several months, including with
the Steven Crowder, Carlos Mazda fiasco and for other reasons, there have been lots of
people making allegations of political bias within news and politics that youtube, there
are allegations that youtube is going after, right wing channel specifically de prioritizing
them, demonetizing them up because they are right wing.
Uh, there are others who say it's left wingers on youtube that are actually being hurt by
changes to the Youtube Algorithm.
And my position has basically been the same for a long time now, which is youtube is prioritizing
what makes them money by keeping advertisers happy.
There is a lot of crazy right wing content on youtube that's going to get caught up in
that.
That includes conspiracy stuff.
It includes racist stuff, it includes white nationalists content and separatists content
and there's also some wing stuff that's going to get caught in there.
When left wing channels talk about ongoing conflicts, whether they are in Syria or Iraq
or Saudi Arabia, Yemen, whatever the case may be.
There are algorithmic decisions that youtube is making that are going to disproportionately
hurt the left wing channels talking about those issues and they will not hurt.
For example, the youtube channels of corporate media outlets that are talking about those
exact same issues and there have been continued allegations through and through that.
Youtube is specifically going after one or the other side of the political spectrum.
But what I'm here to tell you today, and I'm going to back it up with some data, is that
at minimum there is an apolitical targeting, not have left or right wing content, but of
independent content, which is I believe being deprioritized in lieu of corporate news channels,
we are getting absolutely crushed on youtube as a result of the algorithmic changes that
have gone on.
Now I can't say if this is because of one thing or another.
What I can tell you is that this predates the Steven Crowder Carlos Mazda fiasco.
It may have been exacerbated by that, but this is bigger than that and it's really just
genuinely bad for our channel to make money on youtube, you need views and the views need
to be monetized, meaning it's not just views, but the views need to have ads play before
them in order for us to make money.
Now, there are a bunch of different ways that we get views on youtube.
One big ways called browse features.
Browse features include, we have, uh, uh, close to 700,000 subscribers on youtube.
When those people see our videos on their homepage, under their list of subscriptions
is that is called a browse feature view.
If someone views our channel through something like that, it's mostly a function of subscribers.
The more subscribers you have, the more browse feature views you are going to get.
There's another one which is called suggested videos, which are those videos that youtube
suggests alongside on desktop or below on mobile.
The video that you are watching, and this is a hugely variable source of views and it
is dependent on Youtube algorithmic priorities.
Our portion of views that come from this suggested video feed has declined by about 50% back
in September, about 33% of our views were coming from the suggested view.
A suggested features a sort of umbrella.
That number has dropped from 33% to under 17% and I'll explain to you why this is such
a big deal.
This is about half of what we were once getting from this algorithm.
And this decline started right after Youtube announced that in an effort to crack down
on fake news, it will be doing more backing as they say, of what they call authoritative
sources and of course what might be a well intentioned good faith effort to crack down
on fake news appears to be absolutely crushing independent producers like us.
This decline from 33% to 17% of our views coming from youtube suggested videos.
Feed is a huge blow to our revenue because it represents a ton of views.
We had three and a half million views in December, not on the entire channel, just from the suggested
video feed.
Okay.
In June, we'll be lucky to get one and a half million views from the suggested video feed.
That's a 2 million view shortfall.
Okay.
That's a huge revenue shortfall.
Now I have to be careful because my understanding is that youtube terms and conditions say I
can't give you specific revenue numbers, so I'm not going to, but losing 2 million views
because of changes to youtube algorithm is a lot more money than most people in the audience
would guess.
Okay.
Let me put it that way.
And in the meantime, although youtube is claiming that they're putting in place a better, more
efficient system to make sure the videos that are brand safe do get ads playing on them.
Look at what happened yesterday.
We had a video from yesterday, get 90,000 views in the first four hours, a very, this
is in the top 1% of our videos, uh, by getting 90,000 views.
And the in just the first four hours.
This was a video about Donald Trump's interview with George Stephanopoulos, where they talked
about Donald Trump's finances.
And the video was instantly demonetized.
As you can see from the yellow dollar sign on the screen, monetize videos have a green
dollar sign, there is nothing, not brand safe in this video, we appealed the decision were
told that those decisions should be reviewed within an hour.
And it was not reviewed for about 14 hours a until such time that the video had a 110,000
views.
It has now been re monetized, but we lost the revenue on 110,000 views.
So listen, I have no control about a over this.
I have no control over any of what's going on here.
Channels like ours are uniquely positioned to be the most damaged from these algorithmic
changes.
And I'll explain what I mean by that.
The big corporate news channels, CNN, whoever, they have huge ad revenue outside of Youtube
and youtube is favoring them anyway, so they're fine.
Really small channels don't depend on Youtube to fund ongoing multiemployer operations.
They're fine.
We who are in the top one and a half percent of youtube, but not in the top 0.1% we are
the people who will most suffer.
So what can we do?
I've said it before and I'll say it again.
We've got a separate funding from advertising.
That's it.
Okay.
We have direct support set up on our website where we get 98% of every payment.
Okay.
We pay a 2% payment processing fee, 98% of the contributions through membership on our
website go directly to funding the show.
We're looking at launching channels in other languages with our content dubbed in very
high quality to reach people who don't speak English.
We've started paying for the subtitling and closed captioning of our channel already.
We produce and give the show to 200 non commercial radio and TV stations.
All of that stuff costs money and under 1% of our audience funds us directly through
membership.
Right now, if we can get to 2% of our audience funding us directly, we laugh about these
youtube issues.
We'll be in great shape.
If we can get to 3% of our audience funding us directly, we would be absolutely crushing
it.
So this has to be a wakeup call.
Okay?
We've got to support the shows that we value directly if we can afford to do so.
If you can't, that's okay.
I'm still doing the show for you, okay?
I don't need your last dollar, but if you're used to buying one of those lattes or two
a month, consider going to www.joinpacman.com and saying, I can afford to three bucks a
month.
I can afford six bucks a month.
The coupon code.
This is 2020, we'll save you 40% we're not talking about a lot of money.
If you apply that code to the $6 a month membership, it's $3 and 60 cents a month, okay?
Uh, if you apply that coupon code to the yearly membership, it'll drop it from $60 to just
$36.
Let's make this happen because this is this.
It's not any more about this could happen.
This is happening.
We have lost half of our views on youtube from the suggested video feed and increasingly
the recommended, the suggested videos are corporate establishment, legacy media.
Let's make this happen.
Okay?
I truly believe that our audience is going to understand the importance of this and I
look forward to coming back to you in a week and telling you, uh, how inspired and flattered
I am from the audience support.