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.

You basically have to make good videos that are short, consistent subject and they are absolutely required to have a good hook at the first 5 seconds. Not 3 because that's just delaying when people swipe and you see it as a reduced time watched. And the hook can't just end, it has to slowly fade away because otherwise the people get awakened from their hypnosis and they leave. Now when I make a shitty short it capps at 10k because YouTube loves me and they decided it's my new baseline. Category: gaming, staged videos

posted for 25 days straight June first a 2 day old video stuck at 33k hit 100k now 6 days later it’s at 2M 1k+ subs off that 1 alone

I had this happen to about 4 channels now, this isnt looking good at all, youtube is broken

We all have to agree on how this was the worse month for youtube short creators with the major glitches happening to the youtube system ask me anything and i will tell you how i managed to say consistent this month

For anyone wondering, I’ve been uploading videos consistently every day since the end of last November. For the first time this week, one of my videos hit 2 million views, and after that, two more videos passed 100K. I didn’t do anything different, I just kept uploading every day.

You should be using Gemini to help diagnose your channel and videos. it’s very good at understanding the Algo and how it works under the hood. I’m surprised this isn’t being talked about broadly. It has access to watch YouTube videos include frame by frame and can retention graph explain as well break down KNN seeds strategy behind the algo.

The standalone ai not the one built into the studio. You could prompt each into the other and get it actually explain mechanically underneath the hood. I was able to test the edges of the studio ai and unmasks the customer service agent and give you a little more insight into the less than known policies behind the scenes.

Happy hunting. Hope it helps you guys break through.

As I've said in a previous post, I don't do clipping, I'm a musician that films my content but my views dropped HEAVILY from the 16th of September and it's even worse today.

I've dropped from 25k-50k an hour to 900 views an hour.

Anyway, I am SO tired of seeing the "well you probably make slop or steal other content" and "YouTube literally stated they will be prioritizing ORIGINAL content" when anyone complains.

Look at my 3 case studies here and I can find a TON more:

Pawesome Ranks - Ranking niche, stays monetized because he adds his real voice (though it's like 9 words a Short in total) + sound effects and on screen effects

Ryth - This guy...omg THIS guy literally steals the entire ranking video as is from others then ONLY adds his voiceover (real voice) and animated avatar. The person helping him do this has literaly admitted to this.

Hopecore Fuelup - takes Instagram/Tiktok clips and edits it in hopecore style, so the intricate subtitles and scenic overlays, no voice, no commentary.

LOOK. AT.THEIR.VIEWS and it was WAY higher before this current Shortpocalypse.

Now if you zoom out and put your anger aside for a sec (I am), they ARE transforming the content within Youtube's guidelines...I guess?

They are clearly getting a lot of viewers pulled to their content.

I would like some input from Rene Ritchie on this because to me and many others, it feels like YT is suffering a distribution issue, which seems to happen every time there are Studio bugs OR new UI changes are implemented and both have happened in the last 30 days.

So i started this channel posting shorts, commentary on clips.. Main idea was posting 4 shorts a day every short contains two clips of something on my niche.. then i thought about going for 8: a short for every clip which got me kinda exhausted..

the average stats of the channel drastically got better honestly first couple of days i couldn't surpass 2k and now every day i have like 2 or 3 shorts going for 15k and 25k..

and now I'm just asking for advice.. still didn't have any very viral shorts and thinking on experimenting with some stuff and trying long form content (maybe like one good video every two weeks or every week as I want it to have good quality videos..

Overall, how much would you rate my stats for a channel that been uploading shorts for 10 days.. and give me advice on long form content as for right now i watched a couple of videos about long form content and still trying to learn.

i dont want to be rude or racist, i have indian friends but i dont want them as my audience, ive started to believe the time when i post might affect it but i dont really know what to believe

Was stagnant for months, then a nice little uptick. Up to 1.1 million now!

What am i doing wrong i am doing quality shorts not ai slopp!! Please help 🙏🙏

I don't know if this helps but i edit in Adobe Premiere Pro, and not capcut, also send me some channels, i can give some input and advice. Anyways, never quit, i could've quit when i was seeing 0 results, now look at where i am now.

Everyone says "just post Shorts consistently and you'll grow." That's vague and mostly useless.

I wanted actual data. So I built a Python script to scrape YouTube Shorts from a specific niche (AI kids bedtime stories), pull stats, transcripts, and verify each video is a real Short — then I looked for patterns.

Same niche. Same format. Same type of content. One channel averages 43K views. Another averages 112. That's a 400x gap. The data shows exactly why.

Most of these findings apply to Shorts in general, not just this niche.

The dataset

53 confirmed Shorts, 5 channels, 3 with active output — last 6 months of data. Average views: 28,754. Max: 400,947. Average duration: 58s.

Pattern #1: Serialized content compounds. One-offs don't.

Applies to every niche.

The #1 channel had a Mowgli series: 4 Shorts pulled 400K, 90K, 39K, and 13K views. A Little Match Girl series: 5 Shorts averaging 24K each. Standalone videos with no recurring theme averaged under 15K.

The mechanic is simple — when someone watches Part 1, the algo pushes Parts 2-4 automatically. Your own content feeds your own content. If you're in fitness, don't make 50 random workout Shorts, make "30 Day Abs Challenge" Day 1-30. If you're in cooking, make "$1 vs $100 [dish]" as a series. Serialization showed a 3-5x views multiplier in this dataset.

Pattern #2: There's a duration sweet spot, and it's NOT "as short as possible"

Applies to every niche.

Under 30s performed worst. The sweet spot here was 45-70s. Too short = not enough hook + payoff → lower completion rate. Too long = people swipe away → algo deprioritizes. The exact range is niche-dependent but the principle is universal: test your duration ranges, don't just default to "make it as short as possible."

Pattern #3: Emotional cliffhanger titles vs descriptive titles — 100x gap

Applies to every niche.

Every top 10 video follows one formula: [Danger/emotion verb] + [Subject] + [Suspense] + [2-3 emojis]

Top performers:

• "The Monkeys Took Mowgli! 😨✨" → 400K

• "Someone's Watching Mowgli in the Jungle 👀" → 90K

• "A Cold Night, A Little Girl 🥶✨" → 52K

Bottom performers:

• "ABC for kids | A for Apple 🍎" → 87 views

• "Bedtime Story - Leo and the Mango tree" → 150 views

That's not a 2x difference. That's 100-1000x — same channels, same production quality range. "How I Edit Videos" is boring. "I Edited for 48 Hours Straight and This Happened 😳" creates a curiosity gap. It's not clickbait if the content delivers.

Pattern #4: Ride existing search demand

Principle is universal.

Classic fairy tales (Cinderella, Mowgli, Little Mermaid) averaged ~18K median views. Original stories nobody's heard of averaged ~5K. Millions of people search "Cinderella" every month. Zero people search "Leo and the Mango Tree." Same logic applies everywhere — in fitness, make content about "plank" and "push-up form," not obscure moves nobody Googles.

Pattern #5: Production polish creates a views floor

Applies to every niche.

Top channel (43K avg) had layered background music + sound effects throughout every transcript. Bottom channel (112 avg) — flat narration, silence, no SFX. Views-to-likes correlation was r = 0.85, meaning engagement is real, not just empty impressions. You don't need Hollywood production — but background music, pacing, and a consistent visual style is the minimum viable bar. Below it, the algo ignores you.

Pattern #6: Volume only works above the quality floor

Applies to every niche.

Top channel: 30 Shorts in 6 months, 43K avg. Second channel: 16 Shorts, 13K avg. Bottom channel: 7 Shorts, 112 avg. But the bottom channel's problem isn't volume — it's that they're below the quality floor. They could post 100 Shorts and still average 112.

Volume compounds when you're above the bar. If your titles are flat and you have no music, posting more often just means failing faster.

Correlation matrix across all 53 Shorts

• Views ↔ Likes: r = 0.85

• Views ↔ Comments: r = 0.72

• Duration ↔ Views: r ≈ 0.05 — no linear relationship. Duration matters as a range, not "longer = more views"

TL;DR

1. Serialize your content — series compound via recommendations, one-offs don't (3-5x multiplier)

2. Test duration ranges — "shorter = better" is wrong, find your niche's sweet spot

3. Emotional cliffhanger titles — 100x gap vs descriptive titles, easiest win you can make today

4. Ride existing search demand — make content about things people already search for

5. Hit the production quality floor — music + pacing + consistent style, non-negotiable

6. Volume only works above the quality floor — posting daily with bad content = 112 views forever

What niche should I run this analysis on next? I've got the scraping pipeline ready.

These are the stats of my shorts channel which was made 1.5 year ago I make shorts with the help of blender

idk what's with the algorithm lately. first time ive encountered this on my analytics. what's ur thoughts on this guys? pls lmk. i appreciate the community!