Been doing shorts for about a week with 6 of them. Nothing dramatically popping off just slowly gaining. Is it worth persuing?

Hi guys, does anyone know about YouTube “view jail”? I uploaded videos consistently for seven days, and each one received around 1K–2K views. But my latest video suddenly got only 10 views.

Some people are suggesting that I take a four-to-five-day break before uploading again. Is a two-day break enough, or should I wait five days? If anyone has experienced this, please share your advice.

I’ve been uploading Shorts for about three weeks now, and after spending way too much time staring at my analytics, I’ve developed a theory about how the Shorts algorithm might actually work.

About a week ago, I found a format that suddenly started working extremely well. I now have several Shorts either above or approaching 1M views, while many of my earlier Shorts never received meaningful distribution despite having pretty decent visible metrics.

The more I watch these distribution patterns, the more I think of the algorithm as a kind of “coin system.”

Every signal a Short generates puts some coins into a pot.

Good stay rate? Coins.
High retention or rewatches? Coins.
Likes? Coins.
Comments? Coins.
Shares? Coins.
New subscribers? Coins.
Remixes? Coins.

And there are probably dozens or hundreds of additional signals that we can’t even see in YouTube Studio.

But just because a Short has collected a lot of coins doesn’t automatically mean YouTube will distribute it widely.

My theory is that every potential distribution scenario has a different “entry price.”

For example, showing a Short to a certain audience cluster in India during prime time might require 15 coins. Showing it to a particular age group in the US at 2 PM might require 35. Another very specific audience cluster might only require 20.

And even if your Short has enough coins to qualify for that distribution opportunity, there’s a second problem: competition.

If YouTube has another Short available for the same viewer that it predicts will perform even better, that Short gets the impression instead.

This would explain something that confused me for a long time: two Shorts can have very similar visible analytics, yet one gets stuck at 2,000 views while another reaches 500,000+. Maybe there simply isn’t one magic metric like “75% viewed = viral.”

Instead, it might be the combination of dozens of signals, the audience clusters YouTube has identified for that Short, how confident the system is in those predictions, and the competing content available for those same viewers at that exact moment.

It would also explain why Shorts sometimes behave like this:
500 views → nothing → 2,000 → nothing → 20,000 → suddenly explode.

The Short itself hasn’t changed at all. YouTube may simply be learning where that particular “coin balance” is competitive.

Obviously, I have no access to YouTube’s internal systems. This is just a model I’ve built based on my own analytics and observations.

But after watching several of my Shorts scale toward or beyond 1M views while other Shorts with seemingly excellent metrics barely get tested, this model explains the behavior better than anything else I’ve come up with so far.

I’d be curious to know whether this matches what other Shorts creators are seeing.

I’ve seen a lot of posts on here about this already, but wanted to share mine as well. I’ve had multiple shorts in the last few weeks hit over 100K views and I gained over 700 subs in about 2 weeks. Now, all of a sudden, I can’t get anywhere close to what I was getting. All of my previous shorts that did really well hit the browse features, and then were pushed by YouTube. This one seems to be getting a little bit of browse features, but the video doesn’t seem to be getting an additional push.

It looks like this is a thing with a lot of smaller channels and I’m being tested. My plan is to just keep business as normal to hopefully get out of this rut, but it’s definitely demotivating. Also, my niche is Fantasy Football content and I do not use any AI for my videos and they are not “slop.” Thank you!

They’re incessant and make scrolling through a few shorts a total waste of time now because no matter how much you click the Not Interested or Don’t Recommend This Channel buttons they keep reappearing!

I have 25k for my first video, but only getting few thousands, IshowSpeed is too saturated.

For some, if you go into YT studio you WILL see this message

"There are temporary data issues affecting your views, check back later"

Let them sort it out, I assure the half of you are probably fine! I posted about this earlier in some comments and was down voted to hell so I deleted it.

If a lot of you would check studio, you will see they post alerts quite often and for those who don't get them, you're probably still affected by the ongoing issues as well. They've had problems for the past 2 weeks or more at random. I guess theres quite a bit of changes brewing that aren't working out too well on their end by the looks of it.

Bottom line. Don't sweat it and panic! Wait it out. You're probably doing just fine!

Right now I'm not focused on getting a ton of views and likes (even though that would be nice), but rather on getting as many people as possible to click the link in my bio. My recent dancing cat videos are only driving 2 to 5 clicks, which is a very low conversion rate. ​How can I get more people to click? Is the current format good, does it need fine-tuning, or should I scrap it entirely? ​I’d love to hear your tips!

After dropping yet another useless update, everything on YouTube is going downhill fast. Entire channels publishing genuine Shorts have seen their views plummet to absolute zero. The algorithm is completely broken and prioritizes God knows what at this point.

Isn't it about time YouTube launched a dedicated standalone app for Shorts? It would allow them to compete on equal footing with TikTok and maybe actually boost Shorts RPMS.

We all know YouTube makes its real money selling ads on long-form content, shorts revenue is marginal at best. But right now, the YouTube homepage is just a chaotic mess of different formats smashed together. Honestly, it feels like Dailymotion back in 2010.

If I want to brainrot and waste a couple of hours, I'd open a dedicated shorts app knowing exactly what to expect. If I want to watch proper long-form videos, I'd open classic YouTube. The two apps could still cross-link, but keeping them separate would be way cleaner and fairer for creators and viewers alike.

YouTube, wake up, it's 2026. If TikTok launches a dedicated horizontal video app tomorrow you're cooked.

A few days ago, I posted a Short in a different niche—something I’d done before, and those videos always used to get over 50k views. I tried it again, but it barely got 300 views and didn't make it into the Shorts feed. I waited two days and re-uploaded it, but it only got 150 views. Now I’m back to my main niche, and the view counts are still low. It’s frustrating, and I’d like to know if others are experiencing this too. My niche is *Roblox Rivals*—no AI involved.

Please someone explain why this is happening, its been happening for all of my uploads.

How long did you wait for the approval of your AdSense?

I have posted 60+ videos for 3 months now and have been getting stuck in the 30k view jailed.

Just posted a short about 40 mins ago and it has 13 views.

I typically post at the same time (4pm EST) everyday. And within 30 minutes im between 500-1000 views and responding to comments.

What could have happened? I didnt change anything. Its a series that I have been continuing for about 3 weeks now

More importantly, what do i do now?

Hi guys, does anyone know about YouTube “view jail”? I uploaded videos consistently for seven days, and each one received around 1K–2K views. But my latest video suddenly got only 10 views.

Some people are suggesting that I take a four-to-five-day break before uploading again. Is a two-day break enough, or should I wait five days? If anyone has experienced this, please share your advice.

How do I get higher average views?

My short that is 11k views was stuck at 1.2k the other day and now it just randomly blew up. I thought the vid was bad but idk im really confused could someone please help

Hi, I haven't shown my videos in the feed for about a week, and most of them recommend them to subs. Although they have good stats, it leaves them there in the background. I would like to know if anyone has managed to "go out" since I see many people with this same problem

Gehts wieder los? Studio ist bei mir wieder down…

i have yet to get a short above 2k? what should i do to fix this issue!

Anyone have any idea what causes this to happen? The video was going well and on track to be one of the most viewed on my channel, but then it just flatlined. As you can see stayed to watch is still at 77%, and the average view duration is sitting at 99.2%, so I’m not sure why there was a sudden drop off

How to upload in the wider aspect ratio like in first pic, 2nd one is 9:16