Shadow Banning, Inauthentic Content and Dislikes with YouTube's Rene Ritchie

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We sit down with YouTube’s Creator Liaison to unpack how discovery actually works, what “inauthentic content” means, and why AI tools won’t tank monetization. Along the way we tackle pivots, faceless channels, ad blocker view drops, and the truth about dislikes and shadowbans.

• creator liaison role bridging product and creators
• platform incentives aligned by revenue share
• ai as a tool, disclosure labels, and monetization
• algorithm myths, age gates, and correlation vs causation
• pivots as audience rebuilds and sequencing strategy
• faceless channels succeeding through clear voice
• small-channel discovery tests on the homepage
• video length driven by context, device, and jobs to be done
• policy clarity on spam and deceptive practices
• inauthentic content defined by lack of unique value
• memberships vs premium for ad-free viewing
• upcoming dynamic brand segments for back catalog

Email us at theboost@vidiq.com. Join our Discord and send your questions. If you have tech issues, contact @TeamYouTube.

Transcript

Creator Turned YouTube Insider

SPEAKER_00 0:00

What is the voice that you're using? Is this video something that shows an expression of creativity regardless of the tools used to create it? That's the beauty of YouTube. There's no gatekeepers. We can make any video we want.

SPEAKER_01 0:10

Hey, welcome back to the only podcast that goes incredible lengths to bring you all the great information to help grow your YouTube channel. Of course, as always, I'm Travis, and we're here with an incredibly special guest, all the way from YouTube headquarters. Like, when does this happen? This never happens. Good friend of mine, Renee Richie. How are you doing, Renee? Really good. Thank you so much for having me on. Um, super awesome to have you here. Uh, I've actually known you for a while. Let's real quick uh pull the pull the court and the curtain back a little bit. Uh, this isn't like I don't know Renee. Weirdly, I knew Renee back when he was just doing tech YouTube. Uh, we've been friends for quite a long time, and then he got into YouTube, and I'm like, I have an in, finally, I finally have an in.

SPEAKER_00 0:48

We did tech podcasts together for a long time. Now we're doing YouTube podcasts together. The world's amazing.

SPEAKER_01 0:53

But let's let's talk about how you even got there. So you were literally like a YouTuber who then got a job at YouTube, which is really interesting and unusual. Just kind of tell us, A, like what your title is, what exactly you do, and then B, how did you get the job?

SPEAKER_00 1:05

Yeah, so I was like a tech YouTuber for a long time, but I was doing it for media companies. I worked for Mobile Nations, so I would do like reviews and how-tos and all of that. And then that company got sold. Uh, they kept the original channel. And so I went independent, launched my own channel. I think that was 2020. Um, then ludicrously, like that worked really well for me. Best job I ever had, most successful job I ever had. Being a creator is fantastic. Um, and then the most ridiculous story ever. My agent was gaming with some creators, including Mr. Beast, during the pandemic, because Jimmy was just bored and they invited me to join them. And uh, Jimmy introduced me to some people, actually, both my agent and Jimmy introduced me to some people who worked at YouTube. I became really good friends with one of them, and he suggested I try out for this job. And originally I was like, no, I'm a creator, best job in the world. I'm never going back to a company. I'd worked at companies like two previous companies for very long periods of time. I loved being like an independent creator, a full-time creator. But the ability to help other creators at the scale of YouTube was once in a lifetime. Like I loved helping people choose which phone to buy, which laptop to buy, but I always wanted something more and I never knew how I was going to do it. And this gave me that opportunity to really give back. So I'm YouTube's uh creator liaison. I get to spend half my day uh helping YouTube's product and policy and support teams better understand and empathize with creators, and the other half helping creators just better understand how YouTube works. Because as you know, there are so many myths and misconceptions out there.

What A Creator Liaison Actually Does

SPEAKER_01 2:33

There are, and I was excited when you got the job because I again I knew you beforehand and I knew you'd be a great advocate for creators. And um, it's just really cool to see YouTube actually pick someone from the community who is an advocate for creators, but then also really smart about how to do these things and kind of uh you know navigate the ways. So I'm curious, you go into the job being, I'm sure, like, all right, I'm gonna be able to do for the creators. What is the reality versus the the actual thought of going into it? Like you're like, I'm gonna fix everything, but what does that actually look like?

SPEAKER_00 3:05

Yeah, like so. One of the things I knew going in, because I'd had other friends who went to big tech companies, is like the the early impulse is to say, I will fix everything here because I am on social media and know what needs to be fixed. Uh, and then they bring out this drawer and says, like, this is what happened the first time we tried that, this is what happened the second time we tried that. And you're like, oh, uh, and I tried my best to avoid that, but like that still happened to me. I was like, hey, we could just do that. And they're like, let me show you which part of YouTube you just deleted. And I'm like, well, what about this? They're like, well, let me show you this other part. Because it turns out like YouTube is so vast. And like we use the word creator, but creators aren't a monoculture. There are things that would help like certain creators and hurt other creators. And a lot of these things end up being really intricate balancing acts that just keep the ecosystem growing sustainably for everybody. Uh, and our CEO Neil Mohan is so great at saying this. He's like, when stuff gets to me, there are no easy decisions anymore. If they were easy, someone would have made them long before me. And I can't even imagine the types of decisions he has to wrestle with, but it really is about keeping viewers coming to YouTube. So he would probably say like keeping creators, like giving them the best stage in the world to build on, so that viewers have the best stuff in the world to watch, so that advertisers want to pay to reach those viewers so that creators can get their share of that income. And I think that last part, the partner program at YouTube, where it literally is a revenue share, is so key because it forces YouTube and creators to be aligned. Like YouTube succeeds when creators succeed, creators succeed when YouTube succeeds. And I think that is just serendipitously one of the greatest innovations that YouTube brought to like media.

Reality Of Building For All Creators

SPEAKER_01 4:41

Yeah, I agree. And there is, I know there's uh some stuff that's been in the news recently, like YouTube pretty much pays the best uh pretty much against any of the other platforms out there, which is also nice. And it gives you an opportunity to do not just short form but long form live streams, like really cool things. So I not to pat YouTube on the back too much. Yeah, yeah, not to pat him too much on the back, but it is kind of a fantastic platform to be a part of, and super excited to have you here to talk about it. Thank you. For those of you watching, if you're new here, uh we do this every week. We talk to different creators and we also help you grow your YouTube channel, but we also take questions from the crowd, and this is make what makes this podcast a little unique. And we're actually going to take the questions you've submitted and give them right to Renee and see what he has to say. But before we do that, there's a couple things that I know that um are large-scale things that people have uh recognized over the last couple months. So I just want to ask them myself because I'm a little bit greedy. I got Renee here. I'm gonna go ahead and ask these questions. Um, let's talk about AI. Now, it's something that you cannot escape, but it is here to stay, pretty much, for content creation, whether you love it or hate it. It's here. Um, and obviously, YouTube is really spending a lot of time and money integrating AI into the uh the creation system and stuff like that. Talk to us about what YouTube thinks about AI and like what are they doing to make the creation of videos on YouTube easier using AI as a tool.

SPEAKER_00 5:57

Yeah, I mean, I'm sure different people will give you different opinions on this. For me, like as a creator, uh I remember when there was like stage and then multi-camera TV shows and movies, and then the dawn of CGI and now AI, and the same thing with music, where it was like live music and then uh records and CDs and auto the age of auto tune. Uh, like so like technology advances and people take these new tools uh and they do like wonderful things with them sometimes, and there's not such wonderful things. But in essence, it's a tool. And for example, there are just things I'm not good at, like pivot tables. Uh, I know like there's some creators who download all their data, put it in a spreadsheet, and extract wonderful value from that. That will never be me. But with Ask Studio, I can just start typing in questions like I'm talking to another person, uh, and they they give me answers that I just I would not even have known how to find that information. So that to me is like incredibly powerful. I also like I asked Gemini to roast, roast my script, roast it harder. Uh, just because like I I'm my own worst editor, and like sometimes I think things make sense and it'll sometimes I don't agree with it, sometimes I do, but it forces me to think and make sure in the end I have a great product. I do that with people too. Sometimes they have time to do it, sometimes they don't with me. So it's nice to have something who's always available. Uh, and then like things that I love that aren't quite there yet, but I can imagine on the horizon, like uh, I recorded this whole podcast with this big stain on my shirt. And now we like I have to call Trav and say, please, can we re-record the podcast? Look like an idiot. But I would like, I would just love to say, get rid of that stain. Or I was like too tightly, it would just happen to me. Like, I was just too tightly framed. Um, and there's like not enough headroom. And I would just like to say, like, I don't have to re-reshoot this, just give me some more headroom. Uh and I previously would do that with like Photoshop and masks and Final Cut and all these different things. But like to be able to just have that done for me, I think like I don't have a big special effects company budget. They can do that in Hollywood all the time. And previously I was forced to compete on budget. Now it's just creativity. So I think like as much as the day YouTube launched, it solved for um distribution. Any creator can distribute to the extent of like any studio. I think these tools in the hands of someone who is truly creative, a great storyteller, will let you tell stories that previously you just couldn't because of budgetary reasons.

SPEAKER_01 8:09

And that brings up a point. So there are a lot of ways now to make content that was uh almost impossible if you didn't have a team of editors and stuff before. And that brings up when you create content using certain AI effects and stuff, uh, at what point does it become monetizable versus non-pot monetizable? Now, I'm not talking about like inauthentic content. We'll talk about that later. I'm talking more about the the money of it. When you have to check that check mark, does that affect um you know discoverability? So let's start there. If I make a video with uh some AI B role and an AI voice, is that monetizable?

Revenue Share And Platform Alignment

SPEAKER_00 8:40

Yeah, so YouTube doesn't have specifics around like whether AI is monetizable or not. Those policies apply whether like you shoot it with a camera, whether you use stock footage, whether you animate it, whether you use CGI, whether you use AI, all of those policies are the same. So it's not the tool that's important. It's the the quality of the work that that matters. Um the other part of that is like we provide a lot of these tools. So uh the inspiration tab will give you ideas, uh, even like thumbnail prototypes. Auto dubbing will translate your video into I I'm losing count of how like over 10, like over a dozen languages, and that is AI audio, and that that's all perfectly monetizable. So I would think of it less about like is AI monetizable? And whether, like, is this is this video, is this channel, is this idea monetizable? Uh and to the second part, the checkbox is to tell everybody if you're making content that is synthetic or altered to a degree that it would confuse somebody watching it. Like, will they think their city's on fire and panic and try to evacuate? Not good for anybody. Um, so you check that box. That box, if it's like a minor thing, it'll be in the description. If it's like in certain sensitive areas, it'll be right on the video because we just don't want people, we don't want harm to accrue to that video. So we want to give people the information for them to make those decisions. But the same as like checking the sponsor box, on YouTube side, it makes no difference. There might be viewers who love AI and it'll make them more likely to watch it, viewers who hate AI and are less likely to watch it. The same like people who like the sponsor segment in a video and don't like it. Like audience has audience has agency. They get to decide what they like. But the YouTube discovery system is deliberately designed not to have knowledge of those sorts of things. Because we never want to or like artificially limit or like boost um boost like the reach of a video. All of that reach, we want it to be organic based on like how viewers are engaging with it.

SPEAKER_01 10:37

I'm glad you said that last part because um you know we've heard similar things before from YouTube, but I feel like finally, at least personally, because I knew you before you joined YouTube, that if you tell me that, I can finally like completely believe it. Because I'm sure you've seen videos in the past where um you know you'll see a YouTuber say, Well, as soon as monetation monetization went off this video, it completely lost traction. There's no more impressions on it. So we've we finally caught you, YouTube. It's all it's connected. It I just know you've seen those over the years. Uh, and I think some of those came out before you joined YouTube. So I'm like, okay, great. Renee gets to go in and find out if that's actually true. So you're basically saying it's true.

Audience Q&A Format Set Up

SPEAKER_00 11:11

Well, and you don't even have to take my word for it. Like what I love about VidIQ, like Rob did a whole video where he monetized and demonetized videos. Uh, and like the it didn't change anything for the videos. And again, it's because the the the algorithm, there, the discovery system doesn't know what the monetization status is. And that is deliberate. Like, uh, let's say you're a charity and you just you're not allowed to monetize it, or like by based on your own principles. Or let's say like there's some streamers who cover legal issues who just don't feel right about putting ads on, and so they use membership. There's no reason that those videos shouldn't get every bit as much reach as well as if they had ads on them. So turning ads on, turning ads off doesn't affect everything. I think where there is some confusion is there can be like people can confuse causation and correlation sometimes. So, like the the primary example is let's say you make, not saying you, but let's say somebody makes an adult video, uh, like a video like very mature themes. The monetization system may say like this does not meet our ad-friendly guidelines. Advertisers would not want to be on this video, and so the video is demonetized. At the same time, the discovery system might say this is not appropriate to put in front of like a 13-year-old older audience, and that video might get age gated, which means that you have to log in with an account that's over 18 years of age. Like you might see those things and think one caused the other, either way, but they're actually like different systems responding to the same signal. And there can be videos where like advertisers just aren't comfortable with them, but we they're not age gated. And there might be videos that are age gated, and some advertisers are perfectly fine with them. So the two systems aren't in lockstep either. But I think that because there are multiple systems acting on the same signals, people do conflate them sometimes.

SPEAKER_01 12:49

I I want to talk about one more thing before we get into the questions. Um, I recently spoke to Tim Danilov, who is a faceless channel creator. Uh, he has a business now, really fascinating interview we did. If you guys are watching this now, you can check out uh that podcast episode. It's really fascinating. And we talked a lot about faceless channels and kind of the explosion of that on YouTube. Um there, and I'm gonna, again, not inauthentic. These are like legitimate videos and whatnot. And I guess the question is does YouTube um are they paying attention to this kind of new? I don't even know if it's new. I mean, there's always been faceless channels, but there seems to be a slightly more explosive growth of this, mainly because of automation and all these other things that help making a faceless channel easier. Is that something that's on the radar for YouTube, or do they even care? It's just like, oh, it's just another content uh type, and you know, it is what it is.

YouTube’s View On AI Tools

SPEAKER_00 13:36

Yeah, YouTube tries really hard not to have opinions. Like YouTube wants the audience to choose. Like the YouTube doesn't want to pick and choose on their own. And like there are phenomenally successful faceless channels, like Wendover Productions, half as interesting, real life lore, um CG, like animated channels, CGB Gray, Hell of a Boss, uh, amazing digital circus, like ridiculously successful channels where like there's no human face involved. Um, there are tech channels where to this day, like back in the old days, you still only see the hands on the on the table with White Sox next to them. Uh like that that's that's technically the a lot of those videos are faceless. Phenomenally successful. 45 minutes, an hour long, like you know, like checking out a phone with like white socks on the table. Phenomenally successful. So all of those things, I think a lot of times it's helpful. Like if you think YouTube doesn't like a certain thing, look around. And if you see phenomenally successful versions of that, it's an indicator that it's not an issue at all.

SPEAKER_01 14:35

And then I think finally, uh last year we did a podcast about this, and a lot of channels talked about this. There was a kind of a drop in views for a lot of channels. I know Linus Tech Tips did a couple videos on it. Um, and they they eventually came to the conclusion that it had something to do with um uh like pop-up blockers on on browsers. And I know you guys must have heard about this. Uh, what was going on in your guys' uh kind of uh in your guys' mind? Like, did you guys handle it? Do you know what the issue was? Did the the thing that they came back to saying that they thought the issue was was that uh views that were on a browser that had a pop-up blocker weren't counted. Um is any of that true?

SPEAKER_00 15:19

Yeah, so nothing changed on the YouTube side in terms of how like this was prominently, like you said, Linus Tech Tips, people who had large desktop viewerships who would use an ad blocker, uh, like likely to use an ad blocker. So large percentage of that audience. YouTube didn't change anything on the YouTube side. Uh there was a change in how shorts views were counted, like there's now views and engaged views. That's separate from this. But um what was interesting with that is people were saying lower views, but same number of likes, same number, same amount of monetization. So we looked into it. A lot of people looked into it. I actually found the answer on social first from TO Joe, who uh said that a an open source, I think it was open source, was a commonly used list of um telemetries that a lot of ad blockers use to update what they're gonna block. Um and there was a line added to that at the exact same time that blocked telemetry that YouTube used to register a view. So basically, if you were using an ad blocker, the fact that you watched the video was no longer being sent back to YouTube, so YouTube couldn't count it. Um and I might not, I'm like no longer the tech nerd I used to be, so I might be phrasing that a little bit wrong. But uh if you like the video, the like signal was still being sent. And if you didn't have an ad blocker, like you were watching the ads, so that the ad money didn't change, but it was just those views on desktop uh because that one signal was being blocked. And my understanding is they've since changed that, like removed that, changed that, updated that, and I haven't heard about it being a problem anymore.

SPEAKER_01 16:47

Yeah, it kind of just disappeared out of nowhere. Um now we're gonna get into the questions that y'all have sent in. We've got a couple ways to do that. Uh, you can email us at theboost at videq.com, but we also have a Discord and we got a lot of questions from there. So, first we're gonna start with an email. This one is from Woody. Um, Woody has a channel called Eightfold Tattoo and started a channel about a year ago, which reached to a thousand subscribers super quick. And his second video gaining 10,000 views, uh, real quick, Renee. 10,000 views. That's not like something that everyone gets.

SPEAKER_00 17:18

No, that's amazing. I think like sometimes people will look at how many views like a huge mega creator will get and feel like that's not a lot. But if you imagine 10,000 people like sitting in front of us right now, that's a that's a large stadium. That's like a wrestling event or a sports event, like a big concert. 10,000 people is ridiculous.

Monetization, Labels, And AI Disclosure

SPEAKER_01 17:35

I'd be happy with that. Uh my first 20 videos all had good views for how old the channel is, but my heart isn't in Japanese tattoo and painting time-lapse videos. 11 uploads ago, I decided to change the direction slightly and make more educational videos based off first tattoo advice. In other words, like if you're getting your tattoo for the first time, which you can imagine has a quite quite a larger TAM, which is a total adjustable market. I believe this is an underserved niche, and even more so by someone who's had 20 years of professional career experience, such as myself. Uh, since making the transition, my views and subs have stalled almost completely, with my latest, most of my views getting 500 views at best. I believe my content is good, uh, but nothing is uh, I'm not getting a lot of views. And basically he's saying his uh content retention and everything is good. Um, and this is about pivots. So remember, he started off doing specifically Japanese tattoo and painting time-lapse videos, and now he's talking about first-time tattoo uh uh you know experiences. This is a different audience. Can we talk a little bit about pivots, expectations on pivots and how YouTube looks at a channel that had one type of content and now is kind of switching and why views don't necessarily follow?

SPEAKER_00 18:42

Uh I think the first thing that's helpful is that as much as possible, the discovery system tries to follow the audience. So you're almost Todd Beaupre famously said, like, you know, any question you have about how YouTube works, think about like just replace the word algorithm with audience and you'll almost always get a better answer. And these things, like pivoting is hard. If you are a musical group and you do a different genre, like we've seen how people react to that sometimes. If you like leave a one movie franchise, there's no guarantee the next movie franchise will be just as popular. If you leave like one TV show early on, you don't you no longer want to play that character and you go on another TV show, it's no guarantee the audience is gonna move with you, that show is gonna be successful. It's the same thing. You can start a new channel, um, but sometimes like for a creator, either it's already monetized and they don't want to give that up, or they believe that there's enough of an overlap that some of their like core audience will come with them. I think a lot of times we believe that people are there for us, but a lot of times people are there for the topic. Like we're talking about their favorite thing. If you're Casey Neistat, like the topic is Casey Neistat. You can do anything, but very few people are like that. Most of us are like bound to our topics. And I know I tried that. Like I tried uh doing like a bunch of other videos on my channel, wasn't great. I'd probably have to start like a dedicated channel or put as much time into the pivot as I would into a new channel. And I think that's key, is that like you've grown an audience who are used to going to your channel and getting that topic, getting that video from you. And if it's different, it's like their favorite Italian restaurant became a Cantonese restaurant overnight. And they go there the next time and they're like, wow, but I really wanted the lasagna and now I don't know what to do. And some of them might just go to another Italian restaurant. There might be a few who's like, well, I also like Cantonese and I like the chef, so I'm gonna give it a try. But like you are you are not gonna get that regular core Italian audience crowd anymore. So I would think like you need to invest in it. Sometimes people will do like for 10 videos, they'll do 80% old, 20% new, next 10 videos, 50% old, 50% new, next 10 videos, other way, like 20% old, 80% new, and then go 100% new because they want to build that audience. They want to try to convert as many people as they can. But I would like just for the sake of like our mental health as creators, I would look at a pivot as essentially starting a new channel with maybe a boost if you have like a strong loyal following.

Monetization Myths And Age Gates

SPEAKER_01 20:59

And it's not easy, and mentally, like you said, it can be very trying because you've established something and you're used to something. And as soon as you do this new thing, uh, fundamentally, I think we think, oh, you know, it'll still be pretty good views. But just like you said, um, and I really I think one of the things we forget about as creators sometimes is just think about this as a viewer. Literally look at a channel that you may have been watching for years that has changed content and and do you still watch them as much as you used to? It's possible that you don't, and that's literally what's happening. It's really it's more about the people than the algorithm, although, as said many times, I mean you just think of the algorithm as the people and yeah, just consider what that experience is like for your viewer and know that if you're doing good content and you do it long enough, uh, pivots are possible. It's just a little bit a little bit rough at times. You're just building out a new audience. Exactly that. Um, our next uh question is actually from a text message. If you're listening to the audio podcast, you there's a link in the show notes that allow you to send us a text message. And this one says, Hey, Travis and the Vid Eye crew, love the pod. Copyright strike question. I often use screen. Grabs from John Deere manuals for my tractor repair videos on my channel. It occurred to me that I could be flagged for copyright infringement down the road. However, it seems very unlikely as far as I can gather. Do you have any thoughts about requesting permission versus begging forgiveness using copyright material? And I'll just say this uh requesting permission versus begging favorites, begging forgiveness only sometimes works in a relationship and sometimes not even then. Um and while neither one of us are lawyers, uh I think if you think about uh I mean we're we're gonna give you like a better answer, but I'm just gonna say uh the chances of someone looking at a video and saying, Oh, you you know showed our our uh our instruction manual and that's bad, we're gonna copyright strike you, might be low. Having said that, Renee.

SPEAKER_00 22:45

Yeah, I'm not a lawyer. I can't give copyright advice either, but like as a creator, uh I face these sorts of things. And the part that struck me in that question is like going forward, like the future. Because there might be one answer today, and the answer next week or next year might be different. You see this too, like like even like when music libraries or content catalogs are sold, how a new company acts might be different than how a previous company acts, or like there's just so many variables. I try to only ever use anything that I own or have licensed just because like I don't want to put my channel at risk. It took me so much time to build it and put it together. Uh that said, like I would strongly urge like people to think about what the possible consequences are now and then and make educated decisions and talk to a copyright lawyer if you have any questions or confusion or concerns.

Faceless Channels And Audience Choice

SPEAKER_01 23:34

Absolutely. And Core Science on YouTube is really good for that sort of thing. Um, yeah, I mean, it seems like it's probably not something you have to worry about, but I think what Renee said there is super critical. Maybe all the leadership of John Deere right now doesn't care. They're like, you know, it's good promotion for us, show it everywhere. And then they get a new CEO tomorrow, and that person is like, nope, we're not doing that. And then what can you say at that point? So yeah, better safe than sorry. Um, we don't want to scare you away from it, but we just want you to understand uh what the possibilities are. All right. Next email, this one comes from Rob. Uh, thank you for an awesome podcast. I watch you guys on YouTube and learn and are learning all the time. I will make this as short as possible. Okay, I want to be clear about this. This email is a lot longer than what's here. I had to do the killing your darlings thing while I was editing this. I think I got most of it. Uh, let's see what we have here. Me and my wife have a travel YouTube channel. We've been digital nomads for seven years. We have about 8,000 subscribers at the moment. After about seven years on the road in 2024, we decided to get a home base in the Netherlands. Now we are in Europe and I'm starting a motorcycle YouTube channel. What I'm trying to do is start this new channel off as strong as possible. So this is similar to an email we had before. This channel is going to be all around a motorcycle. As I watched your last video, you talked about one of my fears, which is becoming a variety channel because the audience that cares about travel might not care about travel gear or the technical side of information uh about travel. Is it the same audience? Is the content that I'm making for my travel not hyped enough uh considering the you know the motorcycle crowd? And I think this goes back to the audience, knowing your audience. One thing that even as a YouTube coach, I've done many times is I've always told any creator, no matter how successful a video we make together, you will always know your audience more than me. I don't know your audience. I will never know them as well as you do, even if I understand concepts to kind of help get engagement up, reviews, whatever, it doesn't mean I'm gonna be a subject matter expert uh for your for your viewership. Having said that, I if I am coming to your channel to watch you guys go through uh a couple countries and stuff, and I think that's awesome. And maybe you use a motorcycle. I'm I might I might be okay for that. But if it's mostly motorcycling gear stuff, I'm no longer connecting with you as a creator. I'm more connecting with the devices and the content and the the tech stuff. Uh Renee, I know that in the tech field on YouTube, that's kind of a struggle for a lot of content creators. It was a little bit for me as well, trying to separate myself from the tech. So people came from me more so than the subject itself.

SPEAKER_00 25:59

Yeah, I mean, like I'm not clear from the email whether like they want to do it on the original channel or they're actually spinning off another channel. We typically the advice we typically give is if it's for the same audience, at least try it on the same channel. If it's for a different audience, try it on a different channel. Just because like the the the higher the odds that everyone wants to watch every video, the faster you'll grow. If you don't care about how fast you grow, like do whatever you want. Do variety, do anything. But a lot of people care about how fast they grow. They just want to blow up their YouTube channel. Um, the other thing I'd say is you like figure out if there can be an overarching theme to the videos. So, for example, Legal Eagle and Dr. Mike are variety channels. They will do movie reviews, interviews, um, how-tos, they will roast memes. Like they do a wide variety of things that would otherwise be considered a variety channel, but all of it is anchored in one thing. So, like Legal Eagle, it's for lawyers. It's not always about lawyers, but it's for lawyers. Think like a like a lawyer. Like all their primal branding is around this overarching theme. So that if you land there and it's like, oh, this is your this week it's this it's a movie review, this week it's a news deep dive, this week it's or Dr. Mike. Like Dr. Mike is like this week I'm ranked I'm rating the hotels in Minecraft, like the hospitals in Minecraft. It's still like for people who like medicine. There's a large chance to like this video. So there might be a way that you can like, is this channel for more in your own head, know who this channel is for. Uh, and if you can make that a superset of everything you're covering, just say that out loud early on, as often as you can, so that people start to know this is what this channel is for, this is what I will get for it, the complete corpus of what they're gonna get for it.

Ad Blockers And The Mystery Of Missing Views

SPEAKER_01 27:36

Absolutely critical to know yourself and know what the value is so that you can make that clear to your audience. Love that. All right, here we go with the Discord questions. This one came from Chris. If YouTube is giving people what they want, is YouTube allowing the smaller channels to be seen if the content is the same? If so, at what rate and by what standards? Content volume, content quality? How does a smaller channel that has been around for only six months get better visibility given the understanding that the channel's providing the same content and the sustenance, I assume, as a bigger channel? And I I want to say that I remember Todd talking about this uh a year or so ago that there was a team assigned to get um smaller content creators more visibility. And in truth, tons of times, multiple times a week, I will find super small channels being recommended to me on the homepage. Is that still a thing at YouTube or was it just a fluke?

SPEAKER_00 28:25

Yeah. Um like Todd's role is like he is the director of discovery and growth, and the growth part is critical. YouTube actually has a stat called Creators Making It that we track because like the goal is for more creators to make it. Uh, you know, that's that's an always thing. And there's sort of two things there. One is organic. Organically, the way YouTube works, the way that the discovery system helps people find an audience. And I should point out, like, YouTube does not push videos for creators, YouTube pulls videos for viewers. Like a viewer opens up YouTube and YouTube wants to find videos that they are going to be interested in, want to click on, want to watch, you know, want to like maybe like follow the channel, all these things. YouTube wants to make viewers happy or at least satisfied. Um, and so those goals are also aligned. And there are so many examples of creators who are like three months, six months, a year in who have absolutely blown the doors off of YouTube. I know like every creator here, Travis and myself included, biggest creators on the platform, we all started at zero. The fact that some creators are at like millions, tens of millions, hundreds of millions now, they started like we started at zero. So there is always every opportunity. Specifically, one of the things that the teams are testing and continue to test is how can we help, how can we faster help channels or videos actually that don't have a lot of data? Like if the system's not sure who this is a great fit for, if it's just like a little bit sure. And so there are slots in the homepage. Like when you open up the homepage, if you scroll down, you will see videos that have like a few dozen, a few hundred views. You should see that almost all the time. And that's because like they want to, they're not gonna give you a video they don't think you're interested in. Nobody wants to recommend or watch videos that, but it'll take a video that like we think this is the right audience. Can we test it and see? And then we can learn more about that video, more about that creator, and hopefully get them going faster than they otherwise might.

SPEAKER_01 30:16

I love that. And it's uh it's important for small creators to understand that while YouTube is a hard platform to grow on, it's actually easier than some other platforms out there. Like, I don't even know how you grow on Twitch. Like, there's not like an algorithm like there is on YouTube. So um, really, really great answer there. All right, we're gonna start dipping our toe into a subject here. This one says, dudes using AI cutscenes in a video that is mostly not AI count as original or AI slop?

SPEAKER_00 30:41

I'm not sure I understand this question either. Like cutscenes and things like that. Again, like YouTube, whether you use a camera or CGI or AI or stop motion animation or like hand-drawn animations, like whatever, that like use the tools that you want to use. Uh, you can create human slot. Uh, people have been doing that for like years and years and years, and you can create AI slot, like, but people can also create brilliant things by hand, by camera, uh, by stock footage, by like by AI, by CGI. So, like the what technology you're using, what like what tools you're using isn't the important thing. It's what content you're creating.

Pivoting Niches Without Losing Your Audience

SPEAKER_01 31:20

And I think that question is is kind of leading to something we'll talk about here towards the end, which is inauthentic content. It's a thing that is on a lot of people's minds, but we'll get to that. Don't worry. We're gonna get to that question. Don't you worry, everybody. Uh, all right, what about this one? Uh, does video length matter a lot in 2026? I see a lot of long 40-minute videos or longer that get a lot more views in the general in general, with minimal to no editing, beat 10 minute well-edited and entertaining videos. I just see longer videos being pushed out across all niches. Um, I will slightly push back on this because um personally, as a viewer and someone who watches a lot of YouTube and talks to a lot of creators, this is true in certain niches I've seen. Not all niches are the same. I think that you can find that there's tons of niches that are mainly shorter form uh content uh uh adjacent or happy. Um uh the one of the examples I like to give is if if you saw a video that told you how to bake a cake in three minutes or one that's like an hour and a half, which one are you gonna watch? I mean, do you need an hour and a half of baking a cake? Probably not. Uh, but I think maybe a couple minutes you can kind of get the general idea. It doesn't mean that the longer form couldn't give you more information, but sometimes you only need so much or so much entertainment about something, or and you will find that some creators have found a sweet spot and they will continue to hit that mark of time, sometimes within a couple seconds. I mean, we've seen some creators literally try to hit the same second every single time. Um, but I think that has more to do with the audience than anything. What are your thoughts on this?

SPEAKER_00 32:40

Um, the way YouTube works is recommendations can vary based on time of day, like device that you're looking at. So, for example, if you typically are waiting for your coffee in the morning and always watch shorts or shorter videos, YouTube might recommend like one and a half minute, 30-second videos, vertical, horizontal, either of those things because you're just snacking on content. But when you go home at night or on the weekend, if you tend to watch on the television and you're looking for longer videos, YouTube will tend to recommend those videos too. And I think a lot of it comes down to jobs being done. Like if you are on the go, you might want to be able to choose something quickly. But if you are at home and you're like you're cooking or working out or like uh doing housework, you don't want to have to stop every five minutes and choose another video. So you might want a video you can put on for 30 minutes, an hour, a three-hour podcast maybe, so that you don't have to stop and re-choose things. And I think like to your point on genre too, I think like some people will are happy to watch a 30-second dancing or cooking short, but they just would not watch a 30-minute dancing or cooking video. It's just like they love that topic, but not for a long period of time. So you have a lot of different things to balance, but the system is not weighed towards one uh length or another. Um, the audience is going to sort of drive, like we do see a trend on TV towards longer videos. On mobile, it probably trends shorter, but that's just because that's how the behavior exists for the audience on those devices.

SPEAKER_01 34:00

Uh, this one comes from Purple Strawberry. Uh, why is everyone getting banned instantly for spam deceptive practices and scam policy? I see horror stories like five to ten times a day. And even on a big channel I saw, I watched, got banned this way and definitely wasn't doing any scams or spams. Um, I I've seen this too on like uh social media a lot. You'll see people talk about, oh, this creator got and they're not a scam or spam person. Um, and I feel like there's probably things that we'll never truly know about all the details of what happened. But I also know I'm gonna dig back into my past. So I used to work at uh Amazon Corporate, and one of the things that I used to do was work with third-party sellers on the platform. And when they would get routinely like banned or or or suspended or whatever, they would get sent uh like a boilerplate response as to why they were suspended. Now, a lot of times the response wasn't exactly why they really got suspended, but why they got suspended was an actual reason they should have gotten suspended. So it didn't quite match. So there's a lot of confusion. Is that something that happens at YouTube at all?

One Channel Or Many For Variety

SPEAKER_00 34:59

So I I don't have the Amazon experience, so I can't correlate them, but like we are always and continuously wanting to provide better information. It's something we're working on. We're working on providing more timestamps, uh, more like specific uh information about any potential violations, all of that. It's like it's a project that we're very passionate about. We want to build out as much of that as possible. I think one thing that hasn't helped is there's a lot of um like like not get rich quick, but like here's how to blow up on YouTube. Just take a bunch of TV or movie or anime clips and like slap a thing on them and upload 300 of them. And like people see those, they go, yeah, that's a great way to get started on YouTube. And no nobody likes to lose their channel. Like whether like you did that and like you're aspiring to be a YouTuber and that just seemed like a kickstart to do it or an easy way to do it. Uh, I think like the heartbreak is always the same. So I have huge empathy for them. I always like when people tag me on social, um, if I see it, I almost always go and check. And there are some cases where like mistakes happen and we try really hard to fix those fast. Team YouTube is wonderful at that. If you like at Team YouTube, you'll see people like every day saying, Hey, help with this. And sometimes it's it's just the correct decision, and they'll say, like, we're sorry we got this reviewed, and uh it was a correct decision. Other times they'll say, like, we're sorry, like this, this is fine. You like everything is correct now, like you're back on YouTube, don't worry about it. Um, not don't worry about it. That sounds insincere. Let me say it again. Like, you're back on YouTube, like keep going. Um, so I I think those are the sort of things you see on social. Uh and I think people have just also learned that, or they think that like if you just raise a lot of noise on social, it's like an instaback, where like it's it really is like team YouTube is gonna look at it on a case-by-case basis and they will fix mistakes. Um, but a lot of it I think is just like you want to make sure that you're creating really good, original, distinct um like content with a value proposition for your viewers. And then I I don't think like there's a large worry uh of this with that.

SPEAKER_01 36:58

Uh what percentage of a video is safe with AI content in order to not be blocked or shadow banned? Now, uh we're gonna work we're not gonna talk about the inauthentic content yet because that's a question that comes up later. But I want to talk about shadow banning. We talk about shannow banning on this channel a lot. Um and I just want to hear from someone at YouTube. Is there a shadow ban thing at YouTube? Do you guys shadow ban? Someone's gonna say he's not gonna answer it. I I trust Renee to answer this very truthfully. Is there shadow banning on YouTube, or is it just when certain videos hit a restricted mark, which a lot of times we're told, sometimes we're not, and that's what quote shadow banning is. Or what do you define this as?

How Small Channels Get Discovered

SPEAKER_00 37:32

Yeah, so like most of the time when I get tagged on things that are like people use the word shadow banned, I go and I look, and they're still getting predominantly like most of their traffic from recommendations. I think like a lot of it comes down to, and I feel this acutely because like I have made videos that have not gotten the views that I want. And then for a split second, it's way easier to say, like, oh, is like does the algorithm hate me? Does YouTube hate me? Am I shadow banned? Like the truth is like some of the biggest media companies in the world with the biggest franchise in the world don't always get like the box office or like the ratings, like the viewership that they want. Uh, but there's no algorithm there to blame. On YouTube, just because there is a discovery system in the back of our heads as creators, it's like, this video did great, go me, this video did bad. Why does the world hate me? Uh so the vast majority of time, like I will look at that and it's just like this, it's innocuous. Like, there's no reason anybody would have any issue with that content, but it just didn't get the views that you want. Um, and I totally understand that. There are some cases where like copyright can get you blocked uh in certain or all markets. There are cases where you'll hit up against community guidelines, uh, and that can include things like um age gating, which means that people won't see you under the age of like well, they have to log in with an account that is over 18 in order to see you, and that will affect your views. Like YouTube won't put those videos in on like a TV set in front of the entire family. So those sorts of things can uh like affect your reach. Uh but the community guidelines, uh ad-friendly guidelines, uh, all of those things are public. You can go look at them. Also, like as a creator, um, we have a lot of choice. Like, we can choose our commerce hat, we can choose our voice hat. Like, and this is true too. Like, I'm going a little bit into ad-friendly guidelines and other things here, but like you can make a song with explicit lyrics and you may not get iHeart Radio Play or Radio Play. You can choose to make uh an R-rated movie and you might not get the audience you'd get with a PG 13 movie. Um, you might not like get the ad revenue uh on an adult video, but there's memberships, there's sponsorships, um, there's there's all these things. So we we get to choose the content that we make. That's the beauty of YouTube. There's no gatekeepers. We can make any video we want, but the community guidelines and those and like the copyright system and all of those spells out like if you if you use somebody else's IP or if you do something that is like excessively violent or sexual, like there, there are other there are policies that will apply. Love that. Uh all right.

SPEAKER_01 39:53

Do dislikes matter? Will a dislike video get no impressions? And this is like a holdover because I feel like when uh dislikes were still kind of a thing you could see counted, uh, people were like, oh, any engagement is good engagement. Um and then there became this muddy area of like, is it good? Is it bad? So what is it? Do dislikes matter?

SPEAKER_00 40:14

Some people think like any engagement is good engagement and like you can rage bait, whatever, but negative signals are negative. So um if but also it's highly personalized at this point. So let's say like there's a the same video, it's got a million views, like it's it's absolute performance, it's absolute performance, and you watch it and you give it a thumbs up, and I watch it and I give it a thumbs down just because of our personal taste. Uh like there's just something about it that you like and I don't like, you will you are more likely to get similar videos to that in the future, and I am less likely to get similar videos to that in the future. So it that will affect like our personal recommendations, but like if tons of people dislike the video, the tons of people who are gonna get less videos like that in the future. So it is something to keep in mind.

SPEAKER_01 40:57

That's really good. So essentially it's more of about a personalization thing, more so than an algorithmic thing overall.

SPEAKER_00 41:03

Well, it'll understand it because like if the audience is reporting negative like sentiment on that video, that is something that the system will understand.

SPEAKER_01 41:09

Okay. Uh, this is a great one because anyone who watches a lot of Twitch understands what this is. Are there any plans to expand channel membership features to include the option to provide channel-wide ad-free viewing for the selected membership tiers, which I think is great. I assume you've heard this before. Um, what's kind of the the latest on that?

SPEAKER_00 41:26

Yeah, I I have heard it. It's great feedback. I'm happy to pass it on to the team. I think right now, like YouTube Premium and the new YouTube Premium Lite are the way that YouTube is addressing ad-free viewing, and it's on the account basis rather than the channel basis. But I love this kind of feedback. And like the more people who send it in, like the more I'll pass it along.

SPEAKER_01 41:43

Amazing. Finally, and this is probably the main event that a lot of people are waiting for inauthentic content. Inauthentic content. This needs to be uh detailedly discussed. Uh, so many channels are getting demonetized lately because of this. I understand YouTube doesn't want the same AI images to be used across each video. But what about, for example, a channel that did have different images, different scripts for each video, but still got demonetized? Seems like using AI is wrong, but then again, YouTube is using more ways to create shorts with AI. Can't be understood the logic here. And then also, I think along with this, we need to talk about um something that's come up over social media a lot, is like channels being uh demonetized and stuff and people saying, oh, well, an AI did it. Like no human could have possibly looked at this because I got the rejection so fast.

Do Tools Make Slop Or Stories?

SPEAKER_00 42:24

Yeah. Uh I mean I addressed part of that before. Like, I'll go and look at it, and someone is just not going to be happy if they lost their channel. So like if they say like no human looked at it and then I look at it, it's just then I'm like not a good human. So like I totally get it. Like, I don't mean that to be facetious at all. Like I totally get it, like people are upset they lost their channel. I totally feel that. Um, inauthentic content doesn't apply specifically to AI. It applied like you can create inauthentic content. You could people have been doing it for years long before AI tools became prevalent. There's a video from a couple of years ago where I spoke to TK uh on the YouTube partner program and he talked about reused content, which people have similar questions about. Uh like what is reused content? How does that affect it? It's hard to give like prescriptive answers to these sorts of things uh because like the it all changes so quickly and the tools change so quickly, and how people look at it changes so quickly. But as a creator, the way I think about it is can I tell where this video was made? Like I talked about like faceless channels before. Um, whether they're AI or not, like I know a Wendover video. And like the minute I see it, I know this is a Wendover video. I know this is a CGP Gray video, I know that this is a Minute Physics video. I I can tell those videos and where their home is. And like that, I think talks about authenticity. It's about like what is your unique voice as a creator? What are you like YouTube's model was give everyone a voice and show them the world? What is the voice that you're using? And I think inauthentic taps into that. Like, is this video something that that shows an expression of creativity, of human creativity, regardless of the tools used to create it? If you actually go into the spam scam deceptive practices or you look at the inauthentic guidelines, there are a bunch of examples in there, like content. That's like machine produced and uploaded at scale, or like some of them are just um like people say, like, this is my own original work, but it's scraped from another creator, or it's like a TV show or a movie, and just editing it doesn't make it original.

Does Video Length Really Matter

SPEAKER_01 44:15

The one that I think of a lot I see sometimes is when uh there'll be it's almost like a it's almost like a video ad. It'll be a picture of a product and then it'll have like a voice over it, and it's just basically reading the specs for the voice, and then the links in the description are like essentially affiliate links. So it's almost like this advertising to click a link, and you're not really learning. It's not like product review per se. It's just the image and then a bunch of specs and then click to buy. Would you consider that inauthentic? I know you're not the arbiter, but does that sound like no?

SPEAKER_00 44:45

I'm not the arbiter, and I hesitate to give like because then people someone will say, like, someone at YouTube said this is fine or not fine. I don't want to give people bad advice, but like there are specifics in in the guidelines, things like um engagement farming, where like the video, like the entire video is uh, you know, uh hit subscribe for plus three brain rot or something. Like it's very well like like laid out in there. And I would just encourage people to look at it, but really like as a creator, ask yourself that question, like what about this as me? Because like the the opposite of inauthentic is authentic. And I think that's much easier to answer. And that is like, is it original? Is it authentic? Is it like providing like unique value, your unique voice? Uh like if people see it, they will they know immediately like that this is like Travis's work. Um, and I think that like is what gets us out of bed in the morning.

SPEAKER_01 45:31

A lot of times um these things change over time, definitions of things change over time. So I assume that uh YouTube pays attention to this. What kind of like um things does YouTube do to stay on top of the changing nature of content creation? Uh, I think this year I'm gonna see a lot of automated channels, automated uh uh content farms springing up, not all that are are inauthentic. I mean, there, you know, there's documentaries that can be you know automatically generated and stuff. What are like the processes that YouTube has to look at something and go, okay, yeah, this is good. We'll move on. Is there like a group that meets every so often, or how does that work?

SPEAKER_00 46:05

No, I think it's very, like in my experience at least, it's very fluid and dynamic and like you're literally every day you're learning because people come up with new and novel things every day or new and novel spins on things every day. Uh so you just have you you just have to be on top of it. You have to like you have to, you have to be, you have to humble yourself in front of the millions of uploads that are happening constantly, all the time, always. Uh, and just like think about, again, like balancing the ecosystem, what is in the best interest of creators, of viewers, and advertisers, because that's what has led to the tremendous success YouTube has. And now like 20 years plus uh of that kind of success.

SPEAKER_01 46:43

We're at the very first part of 2026 as this is being recorded. What are the things you're excited about seeing most for the rest of this year on YouTube? I mean, there's constant innovation coming to YouTube. So I'm I know some other things have been announced on the uh, you know, they at the beginning of the year they always do this thing in New York. What are some of the things you're really looking forward to uh this year from YouTube?

SPEAKER_00 47:02

I like so I'll give you like the boring answer and then like the sappy answer. Like the boring answer is I think like a lot of us are looking forward to dynamic uh brand segments so that you'll be able to, instead of burning in a uh a brand mention, you'll be able to put a slot for it, like you do a mid-roll, and then upload your asset and change that asset over time, maybe get different sponsors, maybe go to a house product. Eventually, we'd love to have it so like you can have different US or UK or different like regional sponsors. In the beginning, I believe it's going to be based on time, but like there's the option for views and like eventually maybe back catalog would be great because not everybody like had brand deals like when they were smaller, and maybe we can go back and add those in or just like remake, like get that those videos back into the market. I think that's fantastic. What excites me the most for though, and this is a sapp, is like there is a creator I don't know anything about today who could be like the best thing in my world next month or three months from now or six months from now, where I just don't want to miss their video. And I love that that's a constant thing at YouTube.

Strikes, Spam Policies, And Appeals

SPEAKER_01 48:00

Yeah, that actually happened recently to me. Uh, and I actually interviewed him here on the channel, Nomad Push, anyone who's uh on the YouTube channel, go check that interview out. What an amazing creator! Love that guy, and just a really cool content creator that just showed up on my homepage one day and now I can't stop watching him. Amazing stuff.

unknown 48:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 48:16

Renee, thank you so much for joining us today. Greatly appreciate it. Where can people find you in case they have a question about something?

SPEAKER_00 48:22

I'm at Renee Richie on almost everywhere. Uh but like if you have tech issues, please go to at Team YouTube. They are the superheroes of this world and they can help with like individual stuff. I just try to get like feedback and try to figure out how we can make the entire platform better for creators.

unknown 48:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 48:38

So if you have an amazing idea that YouTube's never heard before, then maybe reach out to Renee. If you have a technical problem, there's definitely a whole other team uh for that. But Renee, regardless of that, thank you so much for joining us today. We greatly appreciate it. What a beautiful studio you're in for this interview. Thank you so much. And we'll see everyone on the next one.