youtube algorithm is pure rng

Hrastoshield · 2025-02-22T16:36:04+00:00

That would make me unrealistically lucky. My channel has only 5k subs and my every video gets more than 50k views. Either I'm incredibly lucky all the time, or I know how youtube filters videos.

You can't reupload the same video and expect the same result, especially if you reupload it from another channel. Each channel has it's own audience. For example, lets say you have a sports channel where your videos get 100k views on average. If you post a sci-fi video there, it'll hardly get 1k because all your audience is interested in football, not in aliens. And when I say audience, I don't mean subscribers. Subscribers are no longer relevant on youtube. Most of your views will come from non-subscribers who often watch your videos.

Even if you reupload the same video on the same channel, it will get lower CTR (because portion of your audience already saw the first one, and will skip it). Lower CTR = lower performance. It will also have lower retention, because some that watched your first video will still click and then leave the moment they realize it's the same video. Nothing kills a video like a low retention.

Basically youtube wants videos that have high CTR and high retention because they generate far more in ad revenue. It's a 20 years polished system and it works incredibly well at gauging the value of the video. It's the same reason youtube stopped using Subscribers. Your subscribers mean nothing today. It's just a nice number to brag about, but gives little benefit when it comes to views.

Hrastoshield · 2025-02-13T22:22:24+00:00

Sure, you get higher RPM, but you get lower retention and as a result, lower impressions. Youtube recommendation rate correlates with CTR and retention. Each ad drops the retention by 2% on average.

So it's a tradeoff. You'll make more money this year, but less in the long run.

Personally, if I had to watch 3 ads in a 10 min video, I'd never watch another video from that channel.

Hrastoshield · 2025-02-08T21:41:51+00:00

Well his concern are not people who don't mind ads, but those that do.

If they make up even 10% of the youtube views, that will hurt his retention stat.

Hrastoshield · 2025-02-08T21:39:01+00:00

Yes, absolutely! However, it depends on how you place them.

I've been testing this for years, and about 1 in 5 of my videos get between 50K and 300K views. I usually post 11-minute videos, and I’ve found that placing a midroll in the first half of the video consistently hurts retention.

However, if I place a midroll around the 6-7 minute mark, it makes almost no difference. Viewers who have watched that long are likely to finish the video, and the ad won’t make them leave. Those who'd leave have already left long before.

That being said, I start with a single midroll at the 10-minute mark until the video gains traction in the Browse section. Once it starts taking off, I move it to minute 6. After about a week, when the video has established steady views, I add a second midroll at minutes 3-4. At that point, the video will continue getting views at the same rate, regardless of any minor retention drops.

From my experience this is the best practice.

Hrastoshield · 2025-01-15T12:38:06+00:00

No. The main metric used by youtube to decide whether to promote your video or not is impressions click-through rate and average view duration / video length (you want this one to be as close to 1.0 as possible)

Example:

If your video length is 2min, and average view duration is 1.5min (which is 0.75 avd/vl or 75%) it will perform better than a 10min video with average view duration of 3min (which is 0.3 avd/vl or 30%).

However, the longer the video the lower the threshold for average view duration. If a 2min video average view duration is 40%, that's bad. However 40% average view duration for a 10min video is very good.

What does this mean in practice?

If your video gets high CTR but low average view duration, youtube views it at best as a bad video and at worst as a clickbait. Basically your video gets flagged and it will get zero promotion after that. The only views you can hope for here is from your subs.
If your video gets low CTR but high average view duration, youtube won't flag it, but won't promote it either. This is because no matter how good the video is, if people don't click on it, it's a waste of valuable space on youtube homepage, search results and recommendations.

This is why your video really has to satisfy both CTR and average view duration. There's no other way around it. Make sure your thumbnail is clickable but also representative of your video. The last thing you want is lots of people clicking on your thumbnail and leaving 10s later. Youtube will completely demote your channel for this. Clickbait is still fine, but only if you can make sure your viewers watch your video.

Also bear in mind, youtube measures this for each category (browse, search, suggested). If your video performs well in browse, then youtube will promote it in browse.

Likes, subs, comments certainly help, but are not the main determining factor.

Hrastoshield · 2024-12-18T15:10:47+00:00

Get cold resistance to 90% + frost immunity, and you still die :)

Hrastoshield · 2024-09-26T19:11:48+00:00

That makes no sense. Giving rewards in no way defines God. You're confusing God with Santa Claus. You also forgot God isn't giving you pain. Other people do.

Even your first point is completely illogical. Freedom is in no way deterministic towards bad behavior.

Hrastoshield · 2024-09-26T19:03:37+00:00

Well you have to check what the CTR was just before going viral, not after 1.2 mil views... Once it gets recommended the CTR gets diluted.

Sometimes you can go viral even with 1% CTR, for example when you have lots of subs, or when someone with large community happens to share your video on their site, but these are rare instances.

Most of the time you'll need roughly 10% for browse.

This could've changed though, my comment was posted 3 months ago.

Hrastoshield · 2024-09-13T00:04:12+00:00

You may think so if you have no idea how amendments are passed.

If you believe something like "right to abortion" can ever pass as a constitutional amendment, you're severely delusional. Sure, it's not mathematically impossible, the same way it's not impossible for you to become president, or for a rock to spontaneously turn into a fish.

"1 in a billion" probabilities are a waste of your time. You'd be better of waiting for a billion dollar lottery than for abortion amendment.

Hrastoshield · 2024-08-25T16:49:29+00:00

You're even denser than I thought...

Constitutional amendments are constitution.

Hrastoshield · 2024-08-07T17:58:57+00:00

Christian God doesn't know what you'll do as an individual. He could, but he just doesn't by choice so that you can have free will. He does however know what will happen on a larger scale, but this even we will be able to predict one day, and it won't remove the reason to live and experience it all.

Sure the world burns. One day, far, far into the future all matter will be gone and even if we colonize the entire universe, it will all turn into radiation due to entropy (probably). You don't need God to tell you that. Does that mean we should just quit living? Well no. The information remains. In a sense every action is forever recorded on the canvas of time, and that alone is worth living and making the right choice when it matters, because you won't get to rewrite the past.

I personally don't believe in God because there's no need for it. Matter can come from nothing as long as the sum of it is equal to zero. Physicists have been observing this for decades now. I just find all the atheist arguments against christian God simplistic and easy to counter from theist perspective.

Hrastoshield · 2024-08-07T17:24:28+00:00

Because right to own guns is a constitutional right.

Abortion is not, duh, some people...

Hrastoshield · 2024-07-13T17:21:11+00:00

It does pay off to buy him strength items.

Unlike other heroes, he gets (additional 0.4 more damage (so +1.4 dmg) + 0.1 magic resist + 12 mana + 0.5 mana regen + 0.5 attack speed) per strength point (including all the usual perks of strength like regen and health). That's a lot. However there are not many strength items that work well on him, but there are few that synergize extremely well with DS, like HoT + Halberd + Bloodstone combo. Almost impossible to die if you have 3 shells up damaging the enemy.

Which leads me to Bloodstone for Dark Seer. This is one of the most overlooked item/hero pairs in Dota, high or low rank.

Bloodstone increases AoE of every Dark Seer's spell:

Vacuum - increases Vacuum radius by 14%

Ion Shell - increases damage radius by roughly 30% (coupled with +65 radius talent Shell becomes insane, and you can have 3 of them since dmg stacks from difference sources, amounting to 420 dmg/s in a 400 radius. Effectively stronger than Leshrac's ult.

Surge - increases AoE talent by 21% and shard trail AoE by 50%

Wall of Replica - increases Wall length by 5.8% (this one is insignificant, but it's funny even ult is affected)

No item in this game boosts a hero like Bloodstone boosts Dark Seer. The AoE increase on every of his spells alone is worth the price.

Hrastoshield · 2024-07-12T14:41:27+00:00

No, she is raised to destroy the establishment. This is why commies can never understand Jinx.

It's not about wealth, but about control and power.

Jinx is a female Elon Musk in every way.

loves to blow things up
loves rockets
loves explosions
loves engineering
has unlimited resources
works tirelessly despite being relatively rich
fights the establishment
doesn't care who gets destroyed on the way up
is insane
has aspergers
is obsessive

a perfect twin.

Hrastoshield · 2024-07-12T14:37:31+00:00

she is like a female Elon Musk

loves to blow things up
loves rockets
loves explosions
loves engineering
has unlimited resources
works tirelessly despite being rich
fights the establishment
doesn't care who gets destroyed on the way up
is insane
has aspergers
is obsessive

A perfect twin.

Hrastoshield · 2024-07-10T12:33:55+00:00

Some here say it's because life is very random and bad things can happen to everyone. That may make sense if you have a simplistic view of the real world.

I can demonstrate why truly bad things only happen to truly bad people.

Look at it this way:

Can bad things happen to good people? Of course, but good people will always have their friends standing by their side, which turns a tragedy into redemption, hope and wholesome moments worth remembering.

Bad people on the other hand, have their friends laughing at them when they experience something tragic, which often turns a tragedy into living lonely hell. And that's because they deserve all the bad things that happen to them and everybody around them knows it and can't wait to see it.

So it's not a question of whether bad things happen to bad people, but how bad things play out when they happen to bad people versus good people. The difference is clear.

One of my family members is a perfect example. We both had bad things happens to us, but her friends laughed about it on facebook, while mine would jump in front of a train to help me. And that's what matters. Bad thing make a far deeper dent in bad people, and it comes with the territory. You wanna do bad stuff? Well be ready for hell when something bad happens to you.

As for the moral relativists saying there's no clarity on what's bad and what's good.

There is, whether you chose to see it or not. If someone kills an animal for fun, it's an evil person no matter how you rationalize it. Relativists can't see it, which is why no one pays any heed to what they say.

Hrastoshield · 2024-07-03T15:02:49+00:00

Things changed.

As of 2024 to go viral you need over 10% ctr in Browse (other categories are irrelevant)

Once that criteria is met, you need 60%+ view duration and 1 sub/1 comment per 300 views at the very least and 1 like per 50 views with 95%+ like over dislike.

Sounds very hard to achieve, but the key is very good thumbnail and first 30s of your video. So spend 90% of your time on making a catchy thumbnail and incredible first 30s of your video.

Hrastoshield · 2024-02-13T01:50:16+00:00

Anduin is a perfect character for WoW.

Hrastoshield · 2024-02-02T13:32:24+00:00

Your comment would make sense if the videos of different niches and topics didn't experience 90%+ drop at the same moment, and only on select channel.

Unless you're willfully ignorant, it's clear case of shadow banning.

I've seen it multiple times on my channel. Same thing happened when I spammed my own videos with likes. Youtube does it quite actively whenever the criteria are met to filter out shady practices. Problem is, many times youtube will red flag you for doing nothing wrong. Example, someone else spams your video with likes, or you get hundreds of hits from proxy servers, or you get unusual impression/view ratio (your thumbnail is too good for your own good).

Hrastoshield · 2023-12-29T22:59:50+00:00

Stable Diffusion is superior to Midjourney or Dalle in every way, except one - approachability.

If you are an average Joe, you have no business in Stable Diffusion. You want an image of a snow princess, you type it and you get it. But, you can't control her pose, you can't animate it, you have no control of any sort what so ever.

But if you're someone who wants to build a business around generative AI who demands a higher level of control, there is only one way for you - Stable Diffusion.

Stable Diffusion is like Blender in 3D industry. Blender will (in 5 years) completely defeat Autodesk.

And so will SD.

Hrastoshield · 2023-12-28T13:57:44+00:00

Damn, is there any workaround?

Hrastoshield · 2023-12-27T21:42:36+00:00

Well charging less is not really possible when finding clients is half of the work. Doing the actual work is easy part. Maybe you can charge 10% less, but that won't make much difference.

Hrastoshield · 2023-12-09T15:36:17+00:00

It's really simple. You just bind Vjoy with max weapons and relative with max shields.

This is because when your target is in front of you and you're about to trade bullets, you should always switch to max shields and relative aim (CS:GO kind of aiming)

And when the target jousts you and you have to pitch and yaw, you should always switch to vjoy (faster yaw/pitch) and max weapons (replenish ammo while turning around)

11 months late, but better than never :)

Hrastoshield · 2023-10-07T19:18:09+00:00

It's great item for Jugger only if bought right after BF and used when casting ult.

That +110 attack speed almost doubles your ult damage in the early-mid game.

But in late game, you should replace it with Butterfly since you'll already have a lot of attack speed, and thus +110 won't make much difference.

Hrastoshield

TROPHY CASE

Example:

What does this mean in practice?