What YouTube Is Doing With Hype Is DIABOLICAL

What YouTube is doing is diabolical, and we can't let them get away with this. If you're a content creator, you're going to want to watch this video. It's been two years since YouTube introduced the hype feature, and many eligible creators are still waiting for access while others are already collecting hype votes, pulling in massive attention, and watching their channels skyrocket. that's not an equal playing field and apparently the hype button works very well in just the first four weeks of its initial beta youtube reported more than 5 million hypes across more than 50 000 channels 5 million hypes 50 000 channels in four weeks and that was two years ago since then YouTube has expanded the hype feature into more countries, created leaderboards, and continued developing additional features around it. So what exactly are we still testing? The basic system is straightforward. You put a group of videos in front of a crowd of people and let the crowd decide what they like. And if millions of votes are already being cast and creators are already benefiting from those votes, then clearly the basic system works. So why are many eligible creators still not allowed to participate? Many of you creators are just like me. You go to your favorite channels, you like the video, and you are given this option to hype the video. I see this all the time. This is an actual screenshot to a channel that I'm subscribed to and it allows me to hype this channel. However, let me show you a screenshot from my own channel. These are people in my comment sections and I'm sure many of you can relate to this. You get these comments all the time from your subscribers. Why can't I hype the video? They don't give me the option to hype. Now imagine being perfectly qualified to run for president, but you're told you can't enter the election yet because we're still testing to see if the system of voting actually works. Meanwhile, other people are allowed to run for president, people are voting for them, and many men are rising to power through the exact same voting system that they're telling you they're still testing before they'll allow you to participate. That's absurd. And that's exactly why I have a problem with the YouTube hype feature. I'm not asking YouTube to guarantee me views. I'm not asking them to guarantee me subscribers or to guarantee me that my videos will win or go viral. I'm asking for the opportunity to compete. Put everybody who qualifies on the ballot and let the viewers decide. if they don't hype my video, I lost. But if my audience isn't even allowed to vote for my video in the first place, I didn't lose the election. I wasn't even allowed to run. So it's been two years of testing. I understand testing something before releasing it to everybody. But how long does it take to test something as straightforward as allowing viewers to vote for videos they like? Remember YouTube's own numbers? More than 5 million hypes across more than 50,000 channels in the first four weeks of the initial beta. I always get comments asking me where's your hype button at? So it works and people love to use it and they want to hype their favorite videos. So what are we waiting for? People understand how to use it. People are willing to use it. In fact, The votes are being counted. Videos are accumulating hype points. The system is functioning very well. So what exactly requires another two years of unequal access? Because while many eligible creators are still waiting, YouTube hasn't been sitting around trying to figure out whether hype works. They've been expanding it. People take a look at this page right here. YouTube has a dedicated page just for the most hype videos. The top 100 hype videos. Now it may appear you just suck. Maybe your video could have been number one in the top 100 but guess what? You wasn't allowed to run. You wasn't even allowed to enter the competition. Now it seems as if YouTube is rolling this out for specific creators but it's starting to look real fishy because this is actually becoming another form of censorship at this point and not only do they have a dedicated page for hype videos meaning youtube knows this works and it's a good idea they've expanded it internationally they've developed leaderboards they've worked on different leaderboard categories and additional ways for viewers to publicly promote videos they've hyped. YouTube is already building on top of the hype feature while many eligible creators are still waiting to get underneath it. Think about how backwards that is. Hype works well enough to expand it. It works well enough to improve it. It works well enough to build new features on top of it. It works well enough for millions of people to use it. But somehow after two years, it still doesn't work well enough for every eligible creator to participate. If you're already building the second floor, how long are you going to tell everybody standing outside that you're still testing the foundation? Now companies improve products while testing them all the time, that's normal. But this isn't some cosmetic feature. This feature is designed to help videos get discovered. If YouTube is testing a new background color, I don't care. If they're moving a button from one side of the screen to another one, I don't care. But when you're gradually rolling out a feature that gives participating creators an additional opportunity to be discovered, every month of unequal access matters, because the creators who already have it aren't standing still while everybody else waits. They're building recognition, gaining viewers, and developing relationships with audiences while other eligible creators are still waiting for the opportunity to enter the same competition. My problem is that everybody isn't on the ballot. Everybody who meets the same requirements should have the same opportunity to compete. Put us on the ballot, then let the people decide. If somebody else get 50,000 hypes and I get 500, fine, I lost. But I can't lose an election I was never allowed to enter. And think about what happens over time. Imagine two perfectly qualified presidential candidates. One candidate is allowed to campaign. For two years, people see his face. They hear his name. They watch his speeches. He builds recognition. He builds an audience. people become familiar with him. The other candidate is standing outside the election waiting to be allowed in. Not because people rejected him, they don't even know him yet. Now, two years later, you finally let him enter and tell both candidates, okay, now compete. Those candidates didn't start from the same position. One spent years building familiarity with voters while the other spent those same years waiting for access. Time itself can become part of the advantage. That's what makes a prolonged rollout of a promotional feature different from waiting for some cosmetic update. One creator has another pathway for people to discover them, video after video, while another eligible creator spends those same years without it. The longer that continues, the more opportunity one creator has to become familiar to viewers while the other remains easier to overlook. So the hype leaderboard can tell us which participating videos received the most hype, but it can't tell us what viewers would have chosen if every eligible creator had been given the same opportunity to compete. You're measuring what viewers want from the choices YouTube allowed them to vote for. Now the question is, does hype actually help channels grow? And this matters because YouTube didn't create hype just to give viewers another button to press. YouTube created hype to help creators get discovered. Go back to the presidential candidate example. You don't have to guarantee the first candidate victory for the advantage to be real. You simply gave him an opportunity to reach people that the other candidate didn't have. So who gets to participate in the hype program? YouTube already has rules determining which channels and videos can participate. Certain videos aren't eligible, including shorts, age-restricted videos, and certain copyright claim videos. And YouTube also says misleading clickbait and sensational content can be excluded. Now we have another issue. Who decides what is sensational? because hype is supported to give viewers an opportunity to express which videos they want to support but before viewers ever cast that vote youtube determines which content is eligible to receive it now go back to the election example imagine telling voters you can choose whoever you want but before they enter the voting booth somebody else has already decided which qualified candidates they're allowed to see on the ballot the people are still voting but somebody else chose the available candidates first and sensational can become subjective very quickly one creator can make an extraordinary claim another creator could challenge that claim one video could qualify for hype while another creator may not even have access to the feature so imagine two channels going back and forth in let's say a theological debate one channel is being hyped one channel is not. You see the advantage here? So my point is that creators deserve transparency about who gets on that ballot and how those decisions are being made. And when you bring AI into the equation, it gets crazy. Imagine where this can go as AI generated content continues flooding the internet. I've experienced situations where me as a human, time after time, I've had my content marked as AI content, and I know that I'm an original creator and that the content is original. However, you will see straight AI channels pass as human. What's happening to the internet, folks? You got AI channels passing as human, and humans are struggling to keep our videos from not being marked as AI content. Now, we've already have channels using AI to generate scripts, voices, images, and entire videos at a speed human creators traditionally just can't match. So my argument is about what happens when you introduce AI into an already unequal system. Imagine having a candidate that's a human being who spent years developing his ideas, researching his positions, and building his campaign, and standing next to him is another candidate that isn't even human. Now imagine the AI candidate is allowed on the ballot while the qualified human candidate is still being told you have to wait. We're still testing to see if this system of voting actually works. That sounds ridiculous when you put it in those terms. But as AI generated content becomes easier and cheaper to produce at massive scale, This question becomes increasingly important. If AI-heavy channels have access to promotional systems that many eligible human creators still don't have, the imbalance doesn't disappear, it just gets worse. A machine-assisted content operation can potentially produce at a pace an individual human creator can't match, and then on top of that, it may have access to a discovery feature the human creator doesn't even have. Imagine trying to compete with AI slop. You can't match its production and it's allowed to participate in the hype feature and you're not. And if you think it ain't AI channels with the hype feature on them, you're wrong. Now it may seem that YouTube is deliberately using the hype feature to make certain channels grow while holding other channels back. So the longer we wait, certain creators keep receiving opportunities to be discovered video after video while other eligible creators keep waiting. The distance between those channels just keep getting bigger. A lot of people are wondering why their channel ain't growing the way they want it to grow. And you're comparing yourself to other channels that may have the hype feature and you don't. And even when they roll it out for everybody, the damage has already been done. You can't give a person a 2 year head start in a race and then when the other racers take off you think it's a fair race. I want to know what the hell they still testing cause people already done got millions of views from hypes and YouTube has continued developing additional features around it. So clearly the hype feature works well enough for YouTube to keep building on it. And if it works well enough to expand on and to improve upon, it works well enough for millions of votes to be casted through it, but somehow it still needs years of gradual rollout before every eligible creator can participate. I think creators just need to straight up ask YouTube what exactly is still preventing equal access to this feature. So right now, YouTube is not an equal playing field, and even when they do roll it out fully, some people can still get excluded due to sensational content. That's all I got for y'all about this. Share this video, especially if you're a content creator. I don't see too many people bringing this up, and I think YouTube thinks we forgot about Thank you.