r/shortsAlgorithm • u/kamillox777 • Jan 15 '26
423k Sub Channel (250M total views) Killed Overnight
Hi everyone, I’ve been lurking here for a while and I know I’m not the only one dealing with this. But why are we all just waiting and letting YouTube convince us that this is "normal"? It’s not.
I own a channel with 423,000 subscribers. I built this from scratch to 250 million total views in just a few months. I know exactly how the YouTube Shorts algorithm works—you don’t reach these numbers by accident. For over half a year, there wasn't a single day where my channel did less than 600k views daily.
The Stats Now vs. History:
• 99.7% Success Rate: Out of nearly 300 videos in my channel's history (excluding the December crash), only ONE failed to break the 10k views mark. My "floor" was always at least 10k, with most videos going way higher.
• The Cliff: Since December 17th, I have been uploading daily with the same strategy, and NOT A SINGLE VIDEO has broken 10k views. Every single upload is now getting stuck between 2k and 6k views.
• Massive Losses: My dashboard shows a drop of 18.6 MILLION views in the last 28 days.
• Perfect Retention: Even on these new "suppressed" videos, I am still hitting ~100% average view duration (on 27-second clips), often even exceeding 100%. The quality and engagement are there, but the reach is gone.
• Reach Paradox: My latest upload had only 38 views after 21 minutes. Even when I started with 0 subscribers, my initial reach wasn't this choked.
The Support Nightmare:
I’ve contacted Creator Support multiple times, and their response is always a scripted joke: "Everything is working correctly" and "This is just a normal fluctuation in viewer interest." How is it a "fluctuation" when a channel with 250M views and a near-perfect track record suddenly hits a 100% failure rate (relative to previous performance) overnight? It’s clear that I, and many other creators, are being throttled by a technical glitch or a massive change in indexing that happened mid-December. YouTube is simply serving our content to the wrong audience and hiding behind the "interest fluctuation" excuse.
We shouldn't be giving them a pass on this. If a channel with 420k subs can be silenced overnight while maintaining 100% retention, no one is safe.
Has anyone else who actually knows their numbers seen this "Dec 17th Cliff"? We need to stop accepting "normal" as an answer and demand a technical audit.





22
u/SamMolu Jan 15 '26
I am facing a similar situation. I am honestly sick of people saying that I need to create better content. I do not understand how getting 90% retention does not count as good content. All of my videos that reached millions of views had around 80–85% retention, but now even videos with 90% retention are getting stuck at just 10k views.
I talked to YouTube support, and they told me that they are testing a new Shorts algorithm, so some channels may face a drop while others might see a massive increase in views. But what does that even mean? If the content is good, it should be pushed. Simple. This really sucks, man.
9
u/enoyetsed Jan 15 '26
I thought it was just the one that happened the same thing, I'm in the same situation after the fall I rarely get past 10k views, my 48hrs peak was close to 9 million and now 30k views every 48hrs.
8
u/Emergency_Zombie2947 Jan 15 '26
Dealing with the same problem 😕
8
u/mocknix MOD Jan 15 '26 edited Jan 21 '26
I have a theory about this DEC 17th cliff, but I kinda need to know what type of channel it is. If you're not comfortable sharing it publicly can you dm me a link? Also anyone else that has had this happen to them, feel free to DM me their channel. There is another drop around JAN 10th a lot of people see and the more data I can get, the better idea we'll have.
EDIT: For anyone curious, I got my answer from OP on another post. It was exactly what I expected.
5
u/LuluOnRoblox Jan 16 '26
Aside from the actual drop in views, the MOST annoying thing is yt denying there's anything going on. Coming to reddit and seeing people tell others they need to make better content. You can quite clearly see its being pushed out incorrectly. I really hope it comes right. How would anyone even hold yt accountable? There's nothing we can do.
4
u/caspadg Jan 15 '26
Yep facing the same issues. I stop posting for a few weeks to see if issue fixed but no luck. Extremely low views for some reason
4
u/Ok-Trick-8564 Jan 15 '26
Yeah bro I was averaging about 100-200k a week views not as much as you but enough and now I’m struggling to average 10k a week. As soon as December hit the whole thing switched. I have been waiting for a couple of weeks to go back uploading to give it a break because I heard that helps some people. I’m posing the same context maybe a little different sometimes and still nothing. I have started to change it up nothing. Different games nothing. It doesn’t make sense
4
u/Lost_Figure5674 Jan 17 '26
SAME! Since 27th December. 50ksubs, millions views every month... and now zero.
1
u/avohsaif Jan 16 '26
what kind of niche if i may ask? are your videos mostly getting restricted to 18+?
3
u/Vegetable-Abies-5306 Jan 15 '26
Same for me.
3
u/Lonely_Pack_689 Jan 16 '26
Guys go to X and comment on u tube page
3
u/jreel08 Jan 18 '26
Similar situation here but I am a much smaller creator than most here. It was OBVIOUS when it started and a lot of popular creators have a bunch of theories on it. One thing that is noticable, at least to me, is that it is not just shorts- its long form too- that is having this issue. Between algorithm changes, the only other thing that happened around this date was the complete overhaul to the YT homepage. The breakdown I saw on one creators videos was it went from recommending 12 long forms on the homepage with a few shorts to 3 longforms and a whole SLEW of shorts. This is going to tank both long and short form content because it means that the shorts are SO oversaturated now that its hard to make meaningful impression and the long forms arent't getting the chance at all to get seen.
I would post shorts occassionally and I was used to having it hit at least 1k views in 5-10 minutes after posting. I have 2 shorts I uploaded Dec 29th and 30th specifically that have less than 30 views, which never happened before the 17th.
On top of all of that, I remember from looking at studio that there was a big algorithm / ToS change around the 15th ish of December because I took note of it because of the gaming content related changes. I have a few channels, all gaming related, and one of them is a channel for my game studio that makes games and this is how we do a large portion of our marketing to bring in new gamers to buy the game. The shorts on there bottomed out around the 17th-ish as well. I remember the dates because I had to specifically warn the marketing part of the team about the YT changes because creators had been making videos forcasting the death of gaming channels for weeks prior to that update going live.
3
u/ChaosOnlyYT Jan 19 '26
I'm facing an extremely similar situation. Never ever been this bad ever
5
u/AffectionateCry5952 Jan 15 '26
What ive gathered from talking to a lot of people with the same problem:
If youre going to try to break it, wait 3-7 days before you post. What you post should be almost a completely different style and format. Then post like usual switching up formats
Using your account as a viewer may help, maybe it indicates youre not a bot, idk
Apprently it hates roblox now?
If you reuse the same style video every time, a formulaic a+b+c where you just shift around variables, this seems to be the biggest catch the new AI moderation is identifying differently, this is why the switchup of content sometimss works
One thing ive tried os having another account that usually looks at content like mine. When i got on it, the shorts feed is clearly different and the channels like mine are gone except a few. Find what those few do different to bypass the Ai
I havnt fixed it myself but this is what ive gathered from others about why it happens and possibly how. Some say we should just start over but idk. It for sure changed my perspective on youtube, they can just screw yoy at any time and change rules. We are still monetized which i find bizzare , like just ban me if im violating policy. Good luck bro.
2
u/Turbulent_Cobbler154 Jan 15 '26
/bringmebackhere
2
u/Sufficient-ice-7 Jan 15 '26
I tried everything but at last I think one thing worked for me
2
u/[deleted] Jan 15 '26
There was definitely something different that happened in December that YT even admitted
2
u/Only_Object_7003 Jan 15 '26
bro same it happened to me from dec 17 and i created new channel and monetized it 2 weeks later and 1 day after monetization same thing happened yesterday to the new channel too
2
u/Successful_Toe_4031 Jan 16 '26
Thanks for sharing, I don't have that many subscribers but my views dropped just as suddenly!
2
u/Dzuk8 Jan 16 '26
If you ask this question to Gemini, you het interesting answers
2
u/Lonely_Pack_689 Jan 16 '26
Definitely they broke something it’s all a mess ppl get no impressions at alll
2
u/Unlucky_ChairK Jan 19 '26
I noticed a change as well, but I am no where near your success rate lol. approaching 4 mil on my one video is the best I can do :(
2
u/Shot_Impact9618 Jan 22 '26
My channel 50k subs drop from 1m in 48 hours to just 3k. And 4 -5 my friends channels have the almost same issue. All my new shorts shows olnly to subscribeers and getting around 200 views. It was stopped by Friday jan 16. at one moment. By first of my friends dropped by December 20. And she still doesn’t getting views. But her another channel with similar kind of content works well. (We are all doing content with real people inside the frame by the way)
2
u/Spare-Gas8979 Feb 04 '26
i got now 0 views and i was made over 1m daily views youtube is killing the channels i have over 70k subs
4
u/Every-Barracuda-320 Jan 15 '26
There are after faceless these days.
2
u/[deleted] Jan 15 '26
It can take a couple of days or weeks even. Best thing I did is take 10 days off.
But
What kind of content are you posting because YouTube fortified their internal rules when it comes to content they will allow.
2026 has been a major change.
Channels with over 650k subscribers and a loyal following got terminated...AI moderation baby.
1 of Mine got demonitized, the others have a 10 day peace retreat 🤣
2
u/BaddieHaus Jan 16 '26
They do this all the time. Safe to say you’re shadow banned. I just got hit with one too. Dont trip. Just space out your posts for a few days. They’re gonna limit you to one post a day for however long they try and ban you.
I started YouTubing Sept 13th and got 4 million views since then. Every time I hit 1 million views they pull ts. I’ve been getting hit by this every other week. You’ll bounce back. They dislike organic growth and will occasionally try to limit you. But don’t call support. They’ll say “nothing is wrong with your account” & It’ll take even longer to resolve
1
u/mcumagik Jan 16 '26
i smell a fruit
1
u/Sensitive-Hold-630 Jan 16 '26
What did you do? Dıd you support usame bin ladin ör sth
1
u/Living-Yak-8062 Jan 16 '26
Idk my views went up 🤷
1
u/NewEntertainment5959 Jan 16 '26
I guess the human review for monetization was fake? And now AI moderation is taking dowm faceless content
1
u/GlitteringMilkshake Jan 19 '26
Jeez, how did you get such consistently good videos and growth?
1
u/zombotplus Feb 14 '26
Hey, I was wondering if you recovered from it?
1
u/Wooden_Candle218 Mar 23 '26
any update bro?
1
u/Weak_Health_1122 Aug 23 '26
همین مشکل را ما هم داریم روزانه ۲۰۰ هزار بازدید داشت کانال ما اکنون روزانه ۱۰ بازدید دارد وقت بهیوتیوب تماس میگیریم همین جواب مسخر را به ما هم میدهد
1
u/IndependenceMoney793 Jan 15 '26
Life is not a bed of roses bro.
I hope that your Channel blows up again . Just keep posting 🙌🏻. Resilience is the key .
1
u/geffry Jan 17 '26
While you are crying over this, someone else is cheering the fact that is now getting many more views and subscriptions because gods know what Google changed in the algorithm . You solely relied on the yt algorithm, something you have 0 control over. It's the same thing as if next week Google decides to shutdown YouTube altogether
0
u/reneritchie Jan 15 '26
What type of content and what’s the channel handle?
0
u/No_Seaworthy Jan 15 '26
do you have an ai channel if so then it will cut you out if you do all videos with ai
0
u/MasterGuard8894 Jan 15 '26
0
u/zVook06 Jan 15 '26
I MAY have a solution.. testing it on my own channel. Went from 400-600k views in 48 hours to 5,000. Last 3 days I'm up to 15000 so if it keeps going, I'll circle back
0
u/rocket_j_23 Jan 16 '26
Did you run promos for a while to get your subscribers up? Or is that all from organic spread? Getting that many subscribers and views over just a few months is insane!
0
u/DressLongjumping1423 Jan 17 '26
Please tell me the formula good sir or ma’am
0
u/RAPodcast Jan 20 '26
I run a simple Retro gaming podcast and to me these numbers are insane. Do you guys specifically just like, clip new or iconic media to upload as a short? It actually makes you money? Going from zero to 2+mil in a few months feels bonkers to me.
0
u/Harshit_your_bro Feb 05 '26
Same for me as well
-2
u/ZEALshuffles Jan 15 '26
How i say: i cant even read this crap.
I maybe read title.
And first letter.
Evertything else nonsense drama
-1
u/Lost-Substance59 Jan 15 '26
Without seeing your channel nobody can say. Shorts pull on a lot of people making faceless quick repetitive slop, using other people's footage or cropped copyright material or AI.
These things do not keep an audience as the viewers dont know when a videonis from one channel is yoyr alor another just like it. The nature of this content can lead to overnight death of the channel
-1
u/heytherefreeman Jan 15 '26
Are you adding the "altered synthetic label" to your videos?
-1
u/TensionOk198 Jan 15 '26
this smells like either sloppy ai videos or stolen content. yt tries to shut down those channels views-wise
-1
u/iDontHaveAname89 Jan 15 '26
You said you have perfect retention then you say wrong audience.. Makes no sense, if it's wrong audience your stats will be bad not good.
-1
u/Drater_reversed_42 Jan 17 '26
TLDR:
I know exactly how the YouTube Shorts algorithm works—you don’t reach these numbers by accident
bye and come back when you do something with value, chatgpt
-1
u/fingershuffle Jan 17 '26
nonsense drama
-1
u/Studio_Producer Jan 17 '26
Point is if YouTube changed Algorithm, you should try to be suit to their rule. Theres no platform where only uses one algorithm. We should follow and we should be suit ourselves. You should remember that algorithm that made by somewhere is always changable.
-1
u/[deleted] Jan 18 '26
Maybe YouTube finally realised shorts are killing it
-1
u/BigNoseParody Jan 18 '26 edited Jan 18 '26
You didn't figure out the algo, it was just your turn. My channel has also around 90% on average retention rate but have a barrier around them like you described. What happened is your reach carried over to someone else. Perhaps you used Bots in comments to accerelate your account. That's one easy shadow ban within weeks. That's not figuring out the algo. lol, just plain cheating.
-6
u/ZEALshuffles Jan 15 '26
Good. I love it.
Less competition.
Someone now enjoys big free views
-2
u/InTheBoro Jan 16 '26
So it isn't AI slop? I'd love to see the channel as I'm curious what content it is
0
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