Hello all. I'm new here, but I've been on Youtube almost since the beginning. Despite being around for years the very niche content I make means I still have less than 300 subscribers. However I've had no problem getting the 4000 watch hours because the videos I make are often specialised and people watch them to the end. No 3 minute click-bait 'top-ten' type lists here!
The problem with Youtube's new limits is a lot of watch time on the platform is from peope wanting to watch something other than the mainstream. They want to see content that doesn't have enough interest to make into a TV show for the big networks because it won't ever get enough viewers to pay for it's production. So Youtube was a great platform for this, especially with the advance of smart TV's so you can sit in comfort to watch youtube and don't have to be chained to a desk any more.
However the new limits mean my channel, with well over 4000 hours of watch time per year but nowhere near 1000 subscribers has been demonetized. I made about £120 per year previously, which you might think is not worth worrying about, but to me that's a LOT of money.
What Youtube have done is sent out a clear message saying ' hey Andy, we don't give a crap about your informative and useful vidoes and frankly they just clutter up our platform. So here's a smack in the mouth in the hope you'll go away so we can use what we perviously gave to you and re-allocate it to support our own particular brand of mainstream crap like Logan Paul.'
Because of this I now feel totally un-motivated to make any more content for the Youtube platform. I have looked long and hard to try and find a competitor to Youtube, but I don't seem able to find one that does the same thing with the same degree of reliability.
My point is this... If all the small specialist content creators feel the same way I do, then Youtube will loose that diverse content which is what made it popular in the first palce. It will quite simply either dwindle and die or become more like the big TV networks which many people are increasingly turning away from.
