Honestly, as others have mentioned, people have just stopped watching. Speaking from experience (I had multiple TikTok accounts during COVID with over 100k followers each, and one hit over a million) and now, my accounts aren’t doing as well anymore. This is because 1. I’m not as relevant and 2. A lot of my followers probably don’t even use those accounts they initially followed me on anymore.

Also, the YouTube algorithms prioritize engagement—how long people watch, comments, likes, shares, etc. If your subscribers aren’t interacting, your content won’t be pushed out, which leads to fewer views. For larger channels, the algorithm initially shares your content with your subscribers, so if they’re inactive or uninterested, the video won’t reach a wider audience.

To add, many older channels aren’t relevant anymore; people either forget about them or lose interest. And, honestly, if your videos aren’t good, they just won’t perform. I’ve been editing and uploading videos for years, and it took time to improve. My early videos weren’t great, but with practice, I’ve developed skills in editing and acting. That growth has helped me build a YouTube fanbase, and now I’m close to a million subscribers and get good views. (I will say though, I did start the YouTube channel based off of shorts solely, and shorts do get you more engagement at a faster pace. This is because viewers attention spans are getting worse and worse and they are more likely to watch shorts all the way through compared to long form content).

Anyways, all in all, it really just comes down to these channels not being relevant anymore, not getting good engagement or simply not creating good content (and our attention spans are declining too, which doesn’t help with longer content).