- Hey everybody, Derral Eves here.
Now there's a lot of upset creators
on YouTube, and they're really frustrated right now
because they've seen a decrease in views,
and they're actually losing subscribers.
Now some mention that there's a YouTube bug
known as the unsubscribe bug,
and it's taking over the internet,
it's taking over YouTube,
and literally unsubscribing people
from the channels that they actually subscribe to.
The thing about it, it's news to a lot of new people,
but this bug has been around for a long time.
It's been here since 2012.
If you're interested in this issue
that's been plaguing YouTube for a long time,
then this is the video for you.
- [Announcer] derralEVES.com.
Now we live in a world that there's a lot of people
that are always upset,
however, YouTube, there's a reason
why a lot of content creators are actually upset.
Now Ethan from h3h3Productions
actually brought up a concern
that he noticed a dip in views,
and also that he was losing subscribers.
Also Boogie and PewDiePie mention the same thing.
PewDiePie said, oh I'm delete my channel
once I hit the 50 million subscribers,
and we'll see if he does that,
'cause he makes claims like that all the time.
Now here's the thing, here's the thing,
is there is a known issue with YouTube.
Now I'm not gonna talk about Ethan's issue
of losing views, that's another video
I'm actually gonna do later on this week.
However, talking about the unsubscribe bug,
it's real, but not a new issue.
Now one of the community managers at YouTube
did this following statement.
It says, "We've recently heard that many of you
"believe that you're automatically unsubscribed
"from a channel.
"We take feedback seriously.
"We can confirm that YouTube does not unsubscribe users
"from channels, so we'd like to learn from your experience.
"For five minutes, please take this brief survey."
Guys, the survey's actually in the description,
but here's what's interesting.
This is not a new problem.
Now this is an issue that actually started back,
way back in 2012,
when YouTube did the subscriber purge.
Now let's kind of peer back in May of 2012,
and we're able to see the top 10,
most subscribed YouTube channels.
You're able to see that out of the top 10,
seven of 'em were losing subscribers,
and there was a huge purge on YouTube at that time.
Now before the purge actually happened,
YouTube actually put out a blog post
explaining what they were going to do.
What's interesting about this blog post is
YouTube recognizes that there's a few creators
that were actually losing subscribers
and it affected their public view count.
They basically said, it was not big deal,
it was something they've been working on since February.
That they were trying to remove additional closed
and inactive accounts from YouTube,
from the system itself.
This is happening since February.
What was interesting, is if we peer back to February,
that we're able to see that
hey, they're first addressing some changes
in the algorithm too.
That they're actually adjusting the way
that they actually figure out if somebody's
actually subscribed or not,
by deleting accounts off YouTube,
and creating a purge process
that they were actually doing some beta on.
Then come the latter part of May,
they actually did a purge all across YouTube,
where it happened across a couple days,
where they literally took down all the deleted accounts,
all the spam accounts, all the inactive accounts,
and took it all off the system, all at once,
freeing up a lot of resources for YouTube.
Now, I get it.
Trust me I get it.
I understand what YouTube's trying to do.
However, there's a couple things
that are really flawed.
Now let's go back to help forum,
back in February when they actually started this process
with Robert YT.
This is what he says, "Many people on YouTube
"have been stating for some reason
"they got unsubscribed from channels
"that they didn't manually do, makes no sense."
Basically YouTube was unsubscribing them,
automatically, from channels.
This was happening back in 2012,
February 2012.
Now wait a second, this really ticks me off,
because this issue's been here for a very long time,
so hold on a second.
Okay.
Now here's the thing.
I had to take off that YouTube shirt,
because here's the issue,
this has been happening for a lot of years, okay.
Now you can go back through their support requests,
and all the forums, and really search,
and really dig deep.
There were a lot of creators that spent a lot of time
putting out support issues
that were literally not responded to by YouTube.
They basically turned a blind eye
to the creators.
Now, here's the thing, let's just be transparent
on what you're doing.
I'm not saying that you need to disclose
the whole algorithm.
No.
What I'm just saying is that you need to be open and honest.
Is there a bug, or is that part of the system?
That's it.
If it's part of the system
have your PR team spin it
and tell us why it's great for all of it.
That's it, that's all you gotta do.
Now what we're able to see,
people that actually manage a lot of YouTube channels,
my company we actually do that.
We actually work with a lot of content creators.
We're able to see a lot of data,
and data doesn't lie.
Something's going on.
Let's go ahead and peer into one of our accounts.
Now I want to show you an account
that we market and manage.
We had a great year.
Since the beginning of the year,
we had 820,000 people subscribe to this YouTube channel.
Also we had 146,000 people that were unsubscribed.
Now let's really look into it.
Now YouTube says that hey, they're just gonna just go ahead
and take all the closed accounts off.
You can see right here, closed accounts is the option here,
and you can see that 6,077 is a negative here,
so they actually deleted these YouTube accounts
completely off YouTube.
They're no longer there.
That's why there's a negative there.
Also, there's 1200 that were gained
for total subscriber loss of 7,286.
This right here,
this number here I would assume
that it's some inactive.
I'm not too sure, because they don't really clarify
what it is.
It's just basically a closed account,
but really don't know.
Now here's where it gets interesting.
I totally get video and and recommended channel.
I totally get that, but I don't understand
what this other is.
You can see right here, 513,000 subscribers.
You can see how many were gained and how many were lost,
that's a really high ratio of losing subscribers.
Now what's really, really interesting
is when we actually break it down.
I like to see a couple things.
I'm gonna go ahead and click on subscribers lost,
and you're able to see that it pretty much looks like this.
That every peak, I'm here to tell you,
and I went through every single one of 'em,
is when we actually uploaded a video.
First off when we actually uploaded a video,
it triggered something to evaluate it even further,
to see who's actually active or not active,
to see if they're gonna be subscribed or not.
Now this is just a theory.
I don't work for YouTube.
I have not idea the ins and outs of this,
but it's just something that just kinda makes sense.
You can see that we lost a lot of subscribers
on this day.
We lost 5,303 subscribers.
Now the thing for me, is I want to know where we lost 'em.
Let's go ahead and click on that one,
that that one specific day.
When you watch a video.
When you actually watch a video on YouTube,
and you don't like a video any more,
you don't like that channel any more,
and you want to unsubscribe,
are you going to click to go to the channel
to unsubscribe, or right on the video,
right by the video itself,
are you gonna click the unsubscribe button.
Now here's the interesting thing is
on the video itself, only 240 people actually did that.
The rest went to the channel / other
that unsubscribes,
so we actually had 5,000 people,
or 5,000 of 'em got unsubscribed somehow
because they didn't like the content,
and they were unsubscribed,
or they were inactive.
That's kind of where it's at.
It's an interesting thing if you break it down
to see exactly where things are at.
You can literally go through any of these days,
you can see right here, on this day right here,
we actually lost 1,000 subscribers,
and you can see that we actually gained 5,000 subscribers.
What's really interesting is the breakdown
of that again it's on a release.
Something that was there,
and you know what it's not on the video itself,
it's on this channel / other.
I have no idea what the other is,
and that's YouTube needs to be transparent.
Now I actually find it really fascinating
that every day that we actually upload,
that it triggers,
we actually get a lot more unsubscribers,
and they're not necessarily closed accounts,
they're actually unsubscribing
from the other channel thing option.
I don't know what that is,
so YouTube, if you're listening,
which I probably doubt that you are,
we would love to know what that actually is.
What is that other?
Is it actually people being unsubscribed
that actually have current accounts,
because that's what it looks like.
It looks like people are being unsubscribed
that are not active on the channel,
but they still have YouTube channels.
I don't know, but that's what our guess is,
because you're not telling us.
We have no idea.
Guys thank you so much for watching this video.
I have a new video that's coming out in a couple days,
that we're actually gonna discuss Ethan's issue
with WatchTime, with h3h3Productions.
He had this rant that he's actually seeing a dip in views.
That's coming up.
You don't want to miss this,
but before you go, I want to hear your thoughts.
Is YouTube broken?
Put it in the comments below.
Is YouTube lying to us?
Put it in the comments below.
I would really love to hear your thoughts.
It's really interesting, I think for me,
it's just kinda one of those things,
that hey, we're not gonna talk about it.
We're not gonna talk about it.
We're not gonna talk about it, and it'll go away.
Never, never.
Thank you guys so much for watching this video.
Make sure you hit that subscribe button,
'cause you know what, you'll be unsubscribed tomorrow,
probably.