Do people just not use the YouTube subscription feed?
Do people just not use the YouTube subscription feed?
I consistently hear people on YouTube complain that the subscribe button doesn't do anything for viewers, now that channel notifications are controlled by the bell. But it does do something: it puts the videos from that channel in your subscription feed, which is readily accessible on all versions of YouTube. So why do people act like it doesn't exist? I think it's super convenient, especially if you're subscribed to a ton of channels and don't want your notifications feed flooded with new videos.
I've heard that the subscription feed doesn't always show you uploads from the creators you're subscribed to.
I must not be subscribed to enough people for that to happen.
Otherwise, I don't let a non-subscription video live in my history unless liked it, and I generously block channels for the slightest click bait bullshit, so my home feed is pretty consistent as well.
I always use the subscription feed, in fact, my custom homepage has a link to specifically that page. However, my husband didn't even notice that there was such an option and only uses the recommended feed (we talked about it recently). I personally can't stand recommendation engines. These have destroyed my art business in social media platforms. I need chronological.
Thank you for asking this question because this has bothered me too. I subscribe to a bunch of mostly educational Youtube channels and then the only thing I do on Youtube is go to my subscribed feed and watch them.
But then I hear people talk about how channels they subscribe to just don't ever show up on the home feed so they end up missing things. Then Youtube implemented an additional system where you not only have to subscribe but you also have to set it to be notified of new videos. Thus starting the whole problem all over again where the home feed algorithm has too much stuff you are subscribed and notified to for it to all show up.
There is this nice little feature that shows you a chronological view of subscribed video releases that everyone ignores for no reason.
TBH I don't use the subscription feed often. I subscribe to many channels and rarely clean them out after not watching them for years. So that feed is full of videos that I'm not really in the mood for right now but I might watch some day. My home feed is filled with videos that I'm currently in the mood for - from subscribed channels and new ones I can then discover.
I only use the Subscriptions feed, and use an extension that blocks recommendations and shorts.
Additionally, before watching any video I'll check the channel page to see if YouTube is hiding any of that person's videos from me (which they do even on the Subscriptions feed sometimes).
Fuck the algorithm.I use the subscription feed. Definitely don't use the bell. Bell is so cumbersome where you get a email for a new video, then you get that pop-up preview on your browser, and push notifications on your mobile device. Too much for me, especially since I'm at a point where I subscribe to 600 channels or so, which makes it hard to play favorites. That's sort of what the bell is for I guess, determining whose content you value the most.
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I have zero notifications enabled and use the sub list exclusively (about to switch to RSS), although I'm probably an outlier since I have a habit of sacrificing comfort just to stick it to big tech.
I just use subscriptions as a super-like: please keep putting this channel's videos in my feed.
I'm generally not interested in seeing all the updates for every channel I like in one place, especially not per-artist. I just want a mix of stuff I'll probably like in with stuff I might like, so I stand a good chance of finding something cool.
I almost exclusively use the subscription feed. The front page is a mess of terrible recommendations on videos I have no interest in watching.
There was a short time when YouTube was removing videos from the feed, and the only guarantee was the bell. But that is not true for like 4 years now.
I guess those people still erroneously believe that's how it works.
Creators both put out so much dogshit that I have to cherry pick and also my sub feed doesn't account for actually good content.
So yeah I stopped paying attention to it. Even as a YouTube premium member.
The peak of garbage was when YouTube enforced a 10 minute watch time for max profit. They rolled it back but dude there used to be 8 minutes of fluff for a 2 minute video.
I very much use the subscription feed. I don't know how alone I am with this, but I usually only subscribe to channels when I want to watch almost all videos they post.
A lot of the time if a creator gets a little bit popular they start to spam videos and that's when I unsubscribe, even if I generally like their content. I feel like I cannot ever keep up anymore so I just watch their videos sporadically from then on.
I just use RSS feeds of the YouTube channels I want to follow. I am sure that will be taken away from us soon to force us to do things the way they want. Until then ... go RSS!
Yes thank you! I have thought the same thing and it annoys me so much when people complain about "subscriptions don't work anymore". Yes they do.
I don't rely on it at all because it likes to omit things I assume it thinks I won't like. Plenty of times I'll see a new video from a subscribed creator on the home tab to head over to subscriptions where I can't find it but see previous ones.
If it worked that would be great, instead I use third party apps to manage it and would just stop using YouTube if those tools were unavailable.
If you turn off history, it is very important and definitely shows in your Home feed, actually, it is the no.1 reason to turn off history
I used to, but then I got so many subs it wasn't really practical anymore. Now I just let the algorithm recommend new vids. Just too much great content creators, what can you do.
There was a period of time a few years ago (around whenever the bell was implemented, or perhaps caused the bell to be implemented) in which the subscription feed would often just not a show a video, or maybe it wouldn't show up until hours or even days later. I suspect for some people that made them suspicious of the subscription feed and more reliant on push notifications.
I have seen myself times where someones video just is not in my sub feed, but I can see it on the Youtube channel. Happened twice in the last year with Louis Rossmann for some reason?
I don't mind the YouTube algorithm cause at least I still have the choice. With TikTok or shorts I have to actively scroll to not watch something. So I let the algorithm give me new stuff on youtube, but it tends to focus on one or two areas at a time. So if I want to see more gardening in my feed I use my sub feed and watch a few gardening vids and presto old vids from channels I'm subbed to and new vids from new channels or cool one offs from the algorithm.
But I don't like my sub feed because I have such varied interests and moods I'm not interested in 60% of it at any one time.
My theory for the apparent need of "click the bell for notifications" is not that videos don't show up in the subscription feed but that most people just use the home page to get informed which does not show all content. My subscription feed worked without a hitch and not a single missed video since it's inception. I strongly believe most people just don't know about the subscription feed.
I use the rss feeds, so much better.
Man, the bell doesn't even fuckin' notify me of new shit. That was the point of subscribing in the first place: So I don't have to come and check the channel for new content all the time. It would just fucking tell me. I should not be surprised to find a video from someone I am both subscribed to and enabled notifications for on my recommended feed from 3 days ago. I should have been informed of it 3 days ago when it was uploaded.
At the very least, brand new, unwatched videos from subscriptions should be the first thing shown in your Home feed. I don't even feel a need to subscribe to things that post several videos or even 1 video a day. If I already know their schedule because it is so regular, I can just go to their channel every day for new content so I don't even subscribe.
The only merit subscribing and notifications have is for channels with sporadic uploads, which already get fucked over by the algorithm because they aren't generating as much engagement due to not having as many videos.
I use it all the time since the main feed is full of fluff half the time.
How else you are supposed to know when creator posts a video?
i've had the same thought as you.
i regularly use the sub tab. i watch youtube on weekends while i clean, so usually on friday i'll check my home page a few times throughout the day, see if there are any interesting recommendations and save them to my watch later.
then in the evening i do one more home page scroll, then i slowly scroll my subs page and make sure i save anything that looks interesting to my watch later. then i might watch one or two videos from my WL that evening and i watch the rest (or what i can fit in) over the weekend.
I don't get the point of subbing to a channel if you aren't checking your subs tab. Like....that's why it's there lol bc the home page is a bunch of recommendations
I used to rely on it, but with live streams and shorts it now looks like a junkyard. Now that I've moved to Piped that has filtering by content type (videos, streams, shorts) I find myself using it again.
Too many subscriptions Not enough time
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I both use subscriptions and watch what the algo shows me. According to a lot of big YouTubers I watch, their viewership mostly comes from people who find them organically and only a smaller amount of their views come from subscribers but sponsors like to see high subscriber counts as well as high view counts.
I don't use the subscriptions feed that much, i often just watch something i search for or something that was recomended to me. But i still don't want to get notifications from the channels i subscribe to, so i have notifications disabled for Youtube.
I still see how the notification bell can be useful for people that want to get notifications from some channels only.
How else can you use youtube??
I subscribe to a few news channels and my Subscription feed is absolutely overrun by them. There's new videos basically every few minutes. It is sadly useless for me so I need to rely on the algorithm.
I feel like the main page though for Youtube now is essentially just a subscription feed. I watch a random video on any fucking topic, and suddenly either that channel or that topic DOMINATES my main page. My kids watch videos on my account and now my home page is just filled with crappy minecraft/roblox youtuber videos and non-sensical kid's videogame content. Like, is there an r/all version of Youtube where I can just see what videos are popular and trending with everybody? Sometimes I just want out of my small world of interests and just want to see what kind of trash everybody else is getting into. Or has society lost its collective mind and the same shit my kids are watching just so happens to be the same crap that the rest of the world is watching? I feel like I tend to see hyper-specific videos that likely only I watch on there though, and seeing other people's home pages I can tell that they're getting individualized feeds as well, so I don't think it just so happens that I'm culturally aligned with the rest of the world.
I've found a new reason to use the subscribed page - it shows more videos per screen than the home screen, now that YouTube on Android TV has massively increased the preview panel to an absurd degree. There's barely any room for identifiers, just two or three video previews taking up the entire screen, like I've blown up a phone app on my TV. Wtf YouTube?
Seems like most people just click videos from their home page and not their subscriptions feed. If YouTube set the default page as your subscriptions we wouldn’t have that bell problem anymore but that’s not good for engagement cause people wouldn’t see different videos every time they opened YouTube so it’ll never change
I am often on the home page and complaining, this advice helped me. Thank you.
Probably the same people who browse all on lemmy.world and complain about the garbage in "their feed".
Over time that subscriber section has become less prominent. At one time it was the way to find content you wanted to see. I think most people now just use the feed YouTube gives you.
Subscribing does seem to affect the algorithm. If nothing else it should help the creator pay the bills so you can keep getting videos from them.
I use it. I have all notifications turned off, so that's how I keep up with my channels.
I use it, but I loathe having to scroll past random text posts, pics, and shorts before getting to content I actually subscribe to.
On iOS iPad, the subscription feed doesn’t update/refresh after watching a video. The video remains in the queue (same place), with the red progress bar showing that it’s been watched or partially watched. Pulling down to refresh does nothing. Plus, I don’t want to watch every video from every subscription.
So instead, I use the algorithm in a way that benefits me. I let it suggest videos to watch until I feel it’s lost its way. Then I have to go and find videos from my primary interest to get the algorithm back on track.
I haven't checked it out in a while but the problem I had with the subscriptions feed was that a lot of videos don't show up there. Sometimes it would take weeks for a new upload to actually show up in the feed, while some channels just never appeared there. IIRC, YouTube stated that this was at least partially intentional.
I checked some channels and I didn't see any videos that were missing but I don't really have the patients to check every channel I'm subbed to. Although, I'm subbed to over 150 channels on YouTube but the feed didn't seem to have a lot of videos posted in the past week.
Regardless of whether they fixed it or not, assuming YouTube still offers them, the RSS feeds were always reliable for me.
Honestly I rarely do. I almost exclusively use the for you page and click what I want to watch
I am also very pro subscription feed (and still don't get why people are angry that shorts made by the people they subscribe to are on that page...).
But it mostly speaks to the mindset in a similar way to "tags versus folders" for document organization and so forth.
I go to youtube to largely watch content by creators I like. So for me, the subscription feed is generally how I do that. For others, they go to look for topics they like and benefit from the front page showing them someone else who is playing Remnant 2 or whatever.
I have subscribed to so many channels (like, 800 of them by this point), that sometimes my subscription feed turns to shit, so I simply decide not to use it anymore.
Nowadays I only use it when I want to access my list of subscriptions.
Honestly I try to only use the subscription feed because the home feed is addictive. I installed the unhook addon to block as many recommendations and other algorithmic things as possible, and try to just search when I want to find a particular thing.
However, sometimes I find myself running out of ideas and just disabling unhook and watching a few things from the home feed before reenabling it and going back to subscriptions only. I think if I also disabled ublock, youtube would be infinitely less addictive, since it would shove ads in my face constantly, and I'd soon get fed up.
It's because the hot the button every time the channel asks them, constantly toggling it off an on.
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I don't use YouTube website at all. I'm not even logged in there. I use purely RSS feeds of my selected channels, and my RSS reader embeds those videos in its web UI. I hate all the noise of the standard YT.
Maybe unrelated but what I do when I find a good channel: I click their name, go to their videos tab and look if there's other good stuff. Often videos a bit older have very few views while the newer one has loads, which makes me think nobody ever clicks through all this.
But I also don't log in to Youtube. I had a separate Youtube account until they forced me to use a Google account. I can always delete my YouTube cookies when the recommendations get to shitty.
Maybe i misunderstood your question but i've also heard many say they weren't getting all the content from the channels they subbed to exactly on the subscriptions feed. Personally i've never noticed this but that's why some channels started recommending to also hit the bell.
I don't subscribe to anything. I search what i want to see, sometimes dabble a bit with the recommended feed until i search for the next thing.
Yeah I use it exclusively with no issues. I do find it weird that no one else seems to use it much and relies on notifications so much.
When the home page defaulted to the recommended view rather than subscriptions, many years ago, I simply saved the URL for the subscription feed as a favorite and that's it. I never had issues, all videos from all my subscriptions show up.
I don't
I didn't even know that "the bell" was a thing, until just now. I use my Subscriptions feed almost exclusively.
I use it rarely. YouTube is good at choosing suggested videos for me that I would watch.
I literally don't visit YouTube until I get a notification from someone I follow, and even then I close most notifications without looking at the video
Well I’ll be damned!
I use it to catch up on the latest vids from account im following. Occasionally I’ll also browse the algorithm feed as well.
I subscribe to a lot of channels, and they usually put out significantly more videos that I don't want to watch than videos that I do. I'll usually subscribe to a channel for a specific video in case they make more of that specific kind of video, but I won't care about their other stuff.
For example, I subscribe to the Game Grumps channel, but I only want to watch them play games that I've also played, or that I at least know enough about to follow along with the gameplay without focusing all of my attention on it. If they're playing a game I've never heard of - which they often do - then I don't care to watch it.
The algorithm does a better job of showing me the videos I actually want to see than the subscription feed does because it takes into account which specific videos I've seen and skipped for each of my subscriptions.
I use it sparingly. All the subscriptions/bells/whatever generate too much spam from the channels.
Yes. I mean no, ehm, I mean "yes, I use the subscription feed".
Pro tip: subscribe to @DinksterDaily to keep it organized. Thank me later.
I watch YouTube way too much to ever be satisfied by any form of subscription feed. On places like Twitter all I want is the feed of people I follow, but not so much on video platforms.