Q: BILL I JUST SAW AN AD ON YOUR BALL & STICK VIDEO ARE YOU INSANE
A: no, what happened is i finally realized once and for all that youtube is now recommending videos much more if they have stronger monetization. i have heard rumors that they would start doing this and knew they would eventually, but i proved it very clearly recently. because the ball and stick video was listed as #2 on trending when you click into the trending list, but, it was not showing up in recommendations where top 5 trending videos are supposed to show up. i did a test on a clean cookie-free (identity-free) browser, and went to youtube.com. on the front page of youtube, the top row of 5 videos is recommended trending videos. if you keep refreshing it, it seems to display mostly videos from the top 8 or so, switching around slightly with each refresh but usually mostly the same videos, all taken from the top of the trending list. but i refreshed it several times and mine was simply never there, despite being listed as #2 on the actual trending list. so i did an experiment and turned on 5 sec skippables for that video, and it instantly started appearing on the front page every time. so essentially this proves to me that the youtube algorhythm is strongly favoring videos with better monetization, which i always suspected would eventually be true. so essentially i can no longer trust youtube to give my videos a fair shake if they have the weakest monetization settings (i.e. display ads only). the good news is, i still offer all my content downloadable for free on billwurtz dot com, so they can be played in an offline video player of your choosing, which for me personally is the way i strongly prefer to watch content anyway. in fact i never even wanted to join youtube because i can't stand watching videos in an online streaming player. much prefer to download. but i gotta get the stuff on as many sites as possible, and play by their rules if necessary. after all that's probably how most of you found me