For all the reasons people click on videos, clicking on videos just because it has tonnes of views is a bad reason.
It helps to have some videos balloon up and have billions of views. But that’s a bad representation and a less fair system.
YouTube recommendations learn fast, and it is a good enough system. As a creator, you have three tools: thumbnail, title and watchtime. If the thumbnail or title is catchy, the video gets clicked, and the watchtime tells how engaging it is.
YouTube can learn from it and recommend better. But this all gets skewed when a video gets good enough views. There comes a fourth factor – the views. Many people click on the video just because it is popular and this metric gets mixed into the recommendation, and the video gets recommended more. And as a result, after a certain point, the popular video keeps on getting popular. It’s like saying watch this video because everyone else has watched it. And this isn’t a metric that should be taken into account.
How do you think YouTube could get rid of this problem? They could stop showing the view count.
If the solution is easy, then why does YouTube not implement this?
The reason is simple – status. If there isn’t any view count, you can’t prove how successful you are, how many views you are getting, you can’t flaunt, and of course – you would lose on the metric you count on. Many legacy old popular channels are making okay videos but get views because they get some initial boost from YouTube because they are old, and then the popularity factor kicks in.
It’s a vicious cycle. And this can be seen everywhere. The already established people would oppose everything new, even if the new system is fairer, simply because they would lose their established business. In the end, humans tend to be selfish.
That’s how Monopoly works, too. They become too big and then win because they are too big – they make the rules, stop innovation and vote against anything that might benefit anyone but themselves.
But let’s hope YouTube does implement this because it has a unique advantage. Even if they lose on the big brands, they will in on many small ones. In the end, YouTube would thrive – they have nothing to lose.
Till then, keep creating, thinking and making an impact.
Rohan's blog 