Is Youtube dying? The short answer is yes, and if you ask the content creators making videos on Youtube, it’s pretty clear what they think of Youtube’s current state. After some creators lost upwards of 30% of their revenue, the production, editing cost, and overall effort required for many channels became far less appealing. That isn’t to say creators weren’t still making healthy livings, but the vast majority of smaller content creators were hit the hardest by these changes, forcing many to simply give up. It also created a surge of additional ads. As creators found their revenue dipping, they resorted to adding more ads to their videos to compensate, which drove fans even further away.

Compared to any other website, Youtube is still the king, but that doesn’t mean they haven’t taken a huge hit. The chart above pretty obviously shows what happened to Youtube following the Adpocalypse of April. This was when demonetization – which had already been a problem – reached its peak. At this point, every content creator on Youtube noticed the hit, and dozens of them took to their platforms to start showing the injustice of Youtube’s system.

Worst of all, Youtube offered no explanation. Creator’s understood Youtube’s need to protect advertisers – since the whole thing started over ads appearing on offensive videos – but they didn’t understand what that had to do with playthroughs of Halo or other games, and why Youtube made no effort to explain how creators could avoid demonetization.

It’s pretty obvious though, that Youtube didn’t respect the traffic generators enough, since their unique visitors went down by almost 50% in the months following.

Since then, Youtube has released a statement saying that they have updated their system which should result in 30% fewer videos classified as de-monetized. However, it’s worth mentioning that every single youtuber, and especially all the content for Destiny 2 and Fractured but Whole were demonetized. Cutting 30% is good progress, but it still seems to indicate that the system is broken. There’s little to no reason that many creators should be getting tagged in the way they are, and while Youtube is showing slightly better numbers, it’s entirely possible that the talent behind the videos is finally fed up.

If that’s the case, then everyone will be waiting on what the next big video platform will be. Youtube is dying, but it’s going to be up to them if that’s an inevitable fall, or just a hiccup.