posted in Technology
YouTube now requires creators to have twice as many watch hours to start earning money
techcrunch.com/2026/08/10/youtube-now-requires-creators-to-have-twice-as-many-watch-hours-to-start-earning-money/
YouTube says the changes are being introduced to “keep pace with the growth of YouTube, which now sees over 200 billion daily Shorts views and over a billion hours of watch time on TV” every day.
This reminds me of some past employment positions I had with extremely lucrative companies that, upon several employees having pushed and developed their skills to be able to reach production quotas (despite increasing safety hazards), simply raised production standards to avoid paying what was promised (certainly not meeting the threshold of what workers are worth).
In short, if you are a content creator on YouTube, do it for the love of your hobby and make money with your day job.
In short, if you are a content creator on YouTube, do it for the love of your hobby and make money with your day job.
The problem with this is that if you want to get any exposure you have to keep the algorithm happy and the algorithm wants consistent release schedules which means you’ll always have that hanging over your shoulder and fucking up once means nobody will ever see your video in the sea of millions of other videos. It’s an absolute meat grinder which is why so many channels fade out and why people try to do it full time.
Sure you can upload as a hobby but if people aren’t watching it, why go through all the trouble?
Replying to @CmdrShepard49@sh.itjust.works
All creators start out with zero viewers. That’s just something you have to do until you get traction
The same goes for bands and whatever else
If you can’t deal with that then don’t try
Replying to @Evotech@lemmy.world
Yeah almost everybody starts from zero but the thing that boosts them up from that is typically the algorithm or ‘winning the lottery’ with some video that goes viral on other platforms. Imagine starting a band with your buddies for fun but you’re forced to play shows every week at the local bar for no pay. If you don’t see a return from that at some point, most would give up before long. I watch a lot of automotive youtubers who start out working on cars in their garage and a few have blown up big while most, at a certain point, just stop uploading or maybe upload once every 6 months before trying again and quitting again. Even ChrisFix with his tens of millions of subs has basically given up (though I think his situation is different where he can just coast off merch sales and revenue from past videos).
Replying to @CmdrShepard49@sh.itjust.works
Very few experience a sudden burst I think. Most just grind untill one day they have a solid base
Of course most just give up at some point where they can’t tank it financially or mentally anymore