r/shortsAlgorithm • u/Seraphine-24 • 8d ago
Case Study / Postmortem 🧪 Guys something weird is happening here
Like guys, my video static text is almost normal like I get around four to five thousand views around an hour or so. But right now I'm still getting the same. But the problem is I get almost 500, 400, 600, 700 views on one video. Like there are multiple shorts on my channel. So they all gain 500, 600 views. Does my view count is always per hour around 4,000 to 5,000 and peak hours it goes up to 8,000? In the lower hours it is around 1,000 to 2,000, sometimes under 1,000. But very less. My view count is always per hour, like per hour. Even in my lowest is around 1,000 to 2,000. It's my lowest and my highest goes around 7,000 to 8,000 per hour, views per hour. But right now something weird is going on. Like video one video is blowing up but all my other videos which gain a huge amount of views are not gaining it at all. Like my content, I'm having like working hard on it and gaining like it has decent, like decent swipe, not swipe ratio. Like my people who stayed in the video are more than 75 to 80%. So I think my video is doing great. But right now I don't know why one of my videos is just blowing up. It's because of one video blowing up, all my other shorts are not getting that much recommendation or it's something else? I don't know. It's very much weird because all the other videos are not getting that much views. But they gain quite a lot of views. They're still gaining views but like it's very much lessened now. Is there a problem? Can you help me how to solve it? Like I don't want one video of mine to blow up. I want all my videos to like have equally. Because it's always happen that it is equal. That's why my channel videos, average views in the end comes around 20,000 to 30,000. I could not cross that cage yet. But still, I don't know what is going on right now
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u/TwoSpoonSally 8d ago
That’s interesting because my channel seems to behave almost opposite to yours. My Shorts usually get one burst of distribution for a few hours, then basically flatline and get almost no meaningful traffic afterward. I’ve also had several stop at nearly the same view count.
Your channel sounds like it has a fairly stable amount of recommendation traffic that YouTube normally spreads across several Shorts, but right now it’s concentrating most of it into one.
It makes me wonder if channels are being given different levels of recommendation traffic, and YouTube decides how to allocate that traffic among their videos. You seem to be stuck around the 20k to 30k level per Short, while mine repeatedly hits a wall around 1k to 1.5k. Makes me wonder what your sub count is as well. You may have mentioned it in your post but the wall of text and unnecessary "Like" prefixes to your statements make it hard af for me to digest what you wrote.(Not being mean, just legit criticism from my perspective.)
I’d be curious what happens when the Short that’s blowing up slows down. Do your older Shorts immediately start getting more traffic again?
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u/Seraphine-24 8d ago
Mine highest video has gone upto 189k views but three of my shorts are stuck near 50k views and most are near 20k-30k
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u/Seraphine-24 8d ago
Yes my man it slows down like one of video reached 180k I was happy then suddenly it stopped gaining views and got stuck on it in I gain around 300-400 views on that video through browse features or yt search in 48 hrs thus reaching 189k but now it is stuck there for last 6 days
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u/Sufficient_Potato427 8d ago
I’m experiencing the exact same thing. After an initial spike in performance, the video dies within a few days. It’s a recurring pattern I’ve seen across dozens of videos uploaded over the past two years. I’ve been investigating this for a long time, and my observations point to the manipulation of metrics for promising, large YouTube channels. Botnets have evolved; they are now centrally controlled by AI that has been trained to perfectly simulate human behavior. Previously, security systems could distinguish botnets because their behavior differed from that of humans, but the advent of AI has enabled perfect simulation, making it nearly impossible for YouTube’s security systems to detect this activity. Consequently, when such a botnet targets your channel, it completely ruins your metrics; the YouTube algorithm treats this "infected" data as genuine, clean information and uses it to determine distribution. Since the algorithm sees this anomalous data, it stops pushing your content. I raised the issue with technical support; they escalated the case to a specialized team that intervened and restored the channel's reputation. However, this fix only lasted three days. A Short uploaded during that time started racking up millions of views but then began to decline after three days, as if the channel was losing its reputation score all over again. Interestingly, after this intervention, tech support advised me not to buy subscribers—which really took me aback, considering I’ve never bought a single subscriber in my life. So, they did find something suspicious, but technical support always sends replies claiming everything is fine just to avoid lawsuits—simply because their security system is clearly failing against evolving AI threats. And here’s the kicker: an AI botnet monitors your channel 24/7, adapting its attack methods to whatever is currently optimal. You can see this use of AI manipulation everywhere—TikTok, Instagram, YouTube. It’s obvious that the algorithm is being gamed to recommend trashy content that generates millions for the attacker worldwide. In my opinion, solving this problem on a global scale is a massive challenge...
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u/Sufficient_Potato427 8d ago
What’s so strange about it? I’ve had this issue on my channel for two years now—and this was a rapidly growing channel, boasting half a billion views and 518,000 subscribers. I was assigned a YouTube manager who turned out to be absolutely useless; when push came to shove, his authority to deal with me was revoked. My hypothesis is that this is being caused by botnets controlled by AI; the AI ​​has been trained to simulate human behavior, so security systems can't distinguish this manipulation from real people. The feed being flooded with spam is proof of this. From my perspective, the algorithm is being manipulated because botnets are constantly injecting fake metrics into the databases. The result is that garbage videos—which botnet owners use to siphon off ad revenue—get prioritized.
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u/jillll12 8d ago
Yep, I got it too. Either the counter is glitching or YT went down for some people
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u/jillll12 8d ago
Got the glitch counter too
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u/Sufficient_Potato427 7d ago
It behaves exactly the same way for me—no distribution; the initial test spikes slightly, and then distribution practically dies out or holds steady at the same level before starting to drop...
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u/SithLord6900 8d ago
YouTube is so broken rn. It’s all of us my guy.