YouTube: Behind the Scenes Cleverness?
September 17, 2025
No smart software involved. Just a dinobaby’s work.
I read “YouTube Is a Mysterious Monopoly.” The author tackles the subject of YouTube and how it seems to be making life interesting for some “creators.” In many countries, YouTube is television. I discovered this by accident in Bucharest, Cape Town, and Santiago, to name three locations where locals told me, “I watch YouTube.”
The write up offers some comments about this Google service. Let’s look at a couple of these.
First, the write up says:
…while views are down, likes and revenue have been mostly steady. He guesses that this might be caused by a change in how views are calculated, but it’s just a guess. YouTube hasn’t mentioned anything about a change, and the drop in views has been going on for about a month.
About five years ago, one of the companies with which I have worked for a while, pointed out that their Web site traffic was drifting down. As we monitored traffic and ad revenues, we noticed initial stability and then a continuing decline in both traffic and ad revenue. I recall we checked some data about competitive sites and most were experiencing the same drift downwards. Several were steady or growing. My client told me that Google was not able to provide substantive information. Is this type of decline an accident or is it what I call traffic shaping for Google’s revenue? No one has provided information to make this decline clear. Today (September 10, 2025) the explanation is related to smart software. I have my doubts. I think it is Google cleverness.
Second, the write up states:
I pay for YouTube Premium. For my money, it’s the best bang-for-the-buck subscription service on the market. I also think that YouTube is a monopoly. There are some alternatives — I also pay for Nebula, for example — but they’re tiny in comparison. YouTube is effectively the place to watch video on the internet.
In the US, Google has been tagged with the term “monopoly.” I find it interesting that YouTube is allegedly wearing a T shirt that says, “The only game in town.” I think that YouTube has become today’s version of the Google online search service. We have people dependent on the service for money, and we have some signals that Google is putting its thumb on the revenue scale or is suffering from what users are able to view on the service. Also, we have similar opaqueness about who or what is fiddling the dials. If a video or a Web site does not appear in a search result, that site may as well not exist for some people. The write up comes out and uses the “monopoly” word for YouTube.
Finally, the essay offers this statement:
Creators are forced to share notes and read tea leaves as weird things happen to their traffic. I can only guess how demoralizing that must feel.
For me, this comment illustrates that the experience of my client’s declining traffic and ad revenue seems to be taking place in the YouTube “datasphere.” What is a person dependent on YouTube revenue supposed to do when views drop or the vaunted YouTube search service does not display a hit for a video directly relevant to a user’s search. OSINT experts have compiled information about “Google dorks.” These are hit-and-miss methods to dig a relevant item from the Google index. But finding a video is a bit tricky, and there are fewer Google dorks to unlock YouTube content than for other types of information in the Google index.
What do I make of this? Several preliminary observations are warranted. First, Google is hugely successful, but the costs of running the operation and the quite difficult task of controlling the costs of ping, pipes, and power, the cost of people, and the expense of dealing with pesky government regulators. The “steering” of traffic and revenue to creators is possibly a way to hit financial targets.
Second, I think Google’s size and its incentive programs allow certain “deciders” to make changes that have local and global implications. Another Googler has to figure out what changed, and that may be too much work. The result is that Googlers don’t have a clue what’s going on.
Third, Google appears to be focused on creating walled gardens for what it views as “Web content” and for creator-generated content. What happens when a creator quits YouTube? I have heard that Google’s nifty AI may be able to extract the magnetic points of the disappeared created and let its AI crank out a satisfactory simulacrum. Hey, what are those YouTube viewers in Santiago going to watch on their Android mobile device?
My answer to this rhetorical question is the creator and Google “features” that generate the most traffic. What are these programs? A list of the alleged top 10 hits on YouTube is available at https://mashable.com/article/most-subscribed-youtube-channels. I want to point out that the Google holds down position in its own list spots number four and number 10. The four spot is Google Movies, a blend of free with ads, rent the video, “buy” the video which sort of puzzles me, and subscribe to a stream. The number 10 spot is Google’s own music “channel”. I think that works out to YouTube’s hosting of 10 big draw streams and services. Of those 10, the Google is 20 percent of the action. What percentage will be “Google” properties in a year?
Net net: Monitoring YouTube policy, technical, and creator data may help convert these observations into concrete factoids. On the other hand, you are one click away from what exactly? Answer: Daily Motion or RuTube? Mysterious, right?
Stephen E Arnold, September 17, 2025
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