The CEO Quit... Now What?

Appreciate the discussion on firearms. It often feels like gun channels are treated like the black sheep of the creator community.

On top of the bizarre, vague, and seemingly secret rules, the biggest problem with firearms content is that even if PLclip had sane rules, they don't seem to have any employees who are qualified to interpret what they are seeing in a video and whether it actually violates those rules or not. Also, you guys got everything right.

Absolutely ridiculous that channels like Forgotten Weapons and hicock45 have ever had to worry about these kinds of issues, the most informative, non controversial (I think the worst Ian has ever done is swear on occasion) and responsible creators in the genre who were worried that they were just going to be taken offline for the most bizarre and seemingly arbitrary reasons. As someone whose interest in firearms is primarily from the mechanical side, Forgotten Weapons is an absolute treasure and the historical context he provides is so important to understanding how and why a weapon is designed the way it was.
And they were worried that they were going to be taken down for showing Axis weaponry. Absolute madness.

Thank you two so much for being educated on barebones facts about firearms! Regardless of your stance politically I'm just happy to see people actually understanding the reality of firearms and their capabilities.

As somebody that is an arms dealer (FFL/SOT) in the US, I've never been more surprised at somebody actually knowing what they're talking about than when I was listening to you talk about suppressors and firearms. Nearly flawless! I had no idea you'd know anything!

huge respect linus for bringing up the firearms channel shenanigans. You have a pretty big voice in the influence world and it means a lot

The most baffling thing about PLclip to me is the push to spend millions to bind creators to PLclip, just to have their broken copyright system strike these creators (or equivalently sized channels) out of existence until some person in PLclip personally intervenes (which can take days). I have seen multiple instances of singers singing their own song on stream and getting their stream ended for it, even after telling PLclip that they are going to do it.

And then it turns out that Wojcicki's replacement is a fan of NFTs and the Metaverse.
_That_ promises to be an _interesting_ trainwreck.

If Garand Thumb went to Float Plane, that would be the push I would need to sign up.

I’ve never been a big fan of Google but there’s no denying that YT is offering an insane amount of good videos for pretty much every topic I could ever want

REALLY surprised that there was no comment on their outlook on what Neal's regime will look like. New era of NFT and metaverse integration? Did they talk about it in another segment of the podcast?

LMG is one of the only channels I've ever watched with perfect color accuracy. Makes it feel like I'm damn near in the room. 👌

I’m far from alone on this, it seems, but my heart sang during the firearms discussion. Thank you both for acknowledging the average Joe’s movie-watcher understanding of these tools, and for coming from a place of balance and knowledge on this subject.

The thing about PLclip is that as a almost 20 year social network it should worries about maintaining it's legacy with older videos. If a super old video gets copyright striked, probably the owner doesn't even login anymore. Just make a way to keep it alive instead of taking it down.

I’m against a lot of what she’s done, but YT is a success. I despise how they suppress information, but clearly they bend the knee to advertisers.

If like Donut, Brandon Herrera (AKGuy), and Demolition Ranch all went to floatplane, I'd probably pay to join, but I don't know a lot of creators on floatplane now, so I don't have a huge incentive to go over there.

There is that supreme court case going on about if content providers should be held responsible for the content that 3rd parties upload to their site. Your discussion at the end reminded me of it. And, I'm gonna be honest with you: While I do not believe that online content providers should be responsible for the things people upload, I do believe that that immunity drifts away when those content providers refuse to allow end users to curate their own libraries.
You guys where talking about suppression of certain types of content. And while I, personally, don't believe in censorship as it can go wrong in so many ways, I think that some people do have a point when it comes to at least Google/PLclip's algorithm. I think having an algorithm to help curate and sort through the vast amount of content is necessary but it should be a supplement to end-users curating their own content. Once you remove an end-user's ability filter what stuff they want to see and force them to solely rely on the algorithm, then I think at that point you become responsible for all content that you show your end-users.
Or, to put it another way:
If I dislike a video, then I better not see that video or videos similar to it in my feed. Because the moment I see that video back in my recommended list is the moment that PLclip becomes responsible for that video and the content contained within.
They need to value the user's feedback when it comes to the content the user wants to see. I shouldn't be seeing algorithm recommended videos that are unrelated to my search terms when I am search for something.

Hopefully they can get another ceo trained up by the time she leaves, otherwise they’ll have to shut down for a bit, until the new one learns how to run everything

They need an Adult PLclip mode. Like PLclip Kids. Plus more openness & transparency. Plus bring back the dislike button...

It's actually kinda nuts, cause Mythbusters used to be like " gun in the barrel, cocked, safety off, the whole deal, but now it's like wow... Honestly coming from a non-gun guy, it's not rocket science to put the bullet in the tube, I don't get why they cant show a cartridge being loaded...

Funny, I wouldn't have thought that Luke would immediately look at it from a business perspective.

Linus Id love to personally see firearms creators on floatplane, that would be amazing. Overlap of my hobbies, also kudos for firearm knowledge, its apricated when someone knows something about it!

Idk how long she's been CEO but if the changes that came to YT in the past few years had anything to do with her. Then this might be a good thing. PLclip has only falling lower and lower.

Gonna argue she changed things for the worse. My experience has only gotten worse since they started trying to be a monopoly and kick tiktok in the balls. I'm pissed about this move cause it's ruined the experience I set out to have and enjoyed for years

Susan did oversee PLclip rise to the behemoth it is today. Some might not like the things she did, but honestly things could have been much worse and I fear issues are more likely to get worse not better with something like her exiting.

youtube will never announce a new change like that to its users, it would just give time for people to make videos on it and potentially " riot" and they certainly don't want that.

But can we attribute the entire success of yt to her actions?

I still refuse to believe removing the dislike button was for the official reason given. If it was really that stupid... Damn. Just, god damn.

New policies should never harm creators when applied to old content.

One thing PLclip has over tick tock is revenue, when we take ourself out of the 2010s tech bubble mindset where growth is the only thing that matters and companies don't have to make money, tick tock doesn't seem as impressive. PLclip feels like it has escaped the tech startup zone and feels like it's transitioning into a real company tick tock doesn't feel that way yet

PLclip has added so many commercials to it that they are just threatening a competitor to come. If there was anyone out there who had content, I would jump. PLclip feels like the cable company to me.

"Right before the insertion, it would just blur that area"- Luke, Feb 2023

This wording sounds very familiar ... I used to work in an US company and there basically they also moved the CTO out with a similar wording scheme and we all knew that that was not the real reason.

Not to mention they launched PLclip Kids and then made the normal PLclip conform to the kids guidelines as well. Completely defeating the purpose of it

PLclip might be successful in terms of watch time but that does not matter, looking at the income PLclip generates and the income it generates for those that push content onto the platform. With the income being easier/greater than on other platforms they will continue to be successful. Though the problem with the further and further restrictions on the platform that what it allows could kill the platform in the end. Certainly the problem with pushing out new rules that literally fall out of the sky all of a sudden and require ever more silly workarounds for ever more content makers to work within the confines of these rules. The fact that they just spring this on content creators without any prior notice is terrible from a business standpoint and that is what a lot of the bigger youtubers are running a business who's business climate is extremely unpredictable due to this.
We have seen in the digital world what will happen to countries with a bad business climate, they tend to loose businesses as they find that the costs and the risks are not worth the rewards and what is left is either very small or very corrupt. This is a real possibility for the future of PLclip if they continue to hurt their businesses that are on the platform they will find alternatives and move there simply because you cannot build a business in an environment where the rules change without notice and severely impact your business and its income.
With the way PLclip and its parent have been behaving lately I hear more and more people voice the same opinion that PLclip is a necessary evil which will hopefully be replaced by something better and less restrictive in the near future. I see more and more competition trying to get in on the action as they sense that the giant is weakening and they would love to be the once to pick up the pieces.
A video sharing side like PLclip is not going to go away without a fight and I think that if Google wanted to it could turn the tide, but the window of opportunity for a serious competitor to step in is certainly open right now.

THANK YOU for saying "magazine" and "suppressor" instead of "clip" and "silencer"!! 😆

I'm doing my best to ensure YT has high viewing time! ;P

The fact that people felt nostalgic for Susan when she left kinda scares me...

is the Google CEO the boss of the PLclip CEO? genuinely asking!

And now Linus says he’s quitting. That’s crazy

On the rule part, you only have to look at formula one, where it's not wether it's allowed, it's more along the line of wether it's not prohibited anywhere.

if anyone needs this: return youtube dislike extension

To be honest, I reserve judgement on Google's analytics transparency because I trust it as much as I trust ByteDance, Facebook, CNN, and NewEgg. Words and claims are meaningless from these companies; their actions and we the consumers verifying the accuracy of their claims for ourselves is what I look for, not some executive or ad praising how revolutionary and astounding their product is .

Hoping they fix the search. Having people also watched/you might like suggestions is very annoying...

With sub sonic ammo and a suppressor, my AR is stupid quiet.

The dislike button never went away if you're using chrome, brave, derivatives of chrome. Literally takes a click on an extension to bring it back.

Without PLclip compilations videos of Vines, none of them could have make it with Vine only

_"-Outside demands for moderation and potentially offensive content and increased regulation."_
I typed _"the OTHER C-word"_ in the middle of a long comment I made on a friend's video and it was auto-banished to the shadow realm within 3 minutes. 🤷‍♂ Susan's iron grip on not only free speech, but simply casual online conversation in hopes to appease a bunch of third-party schmucks. _"Ma'am, this is a video platform. People post their visits to the Zoo, here."_

Extremely 🌶️ take: *Susan should have been made CEO of Google/Alphabet* after the Sergey and Larry left.

I'm kinda starting to be of the opinion that channels that predominately show ATF should be restricted to 18+. Possibly while also having a warning at the start of the videos indicating as such (similar to TV shows that depict such things). While the warnings wouldnt do that much, it *might* apse advertisers and would mean channels in the "Adult" category wouldn't have ads running not appropriate for that content (if at all), wouldnt show up in search results with lower age content.
Its not fun, dont get me wrong but if they are so hell bent on making advertisers happy, then content creators have to unfortunately start thinking like broadcast TV producers.

You have to say she nailed it, for sure some individuals can feel justifiably pissed off and have lost out. Firstly she has been invisible, I don't know who she is despite being CEO of my favourite media outlet. If your not making mistakes in management you aren't being agile enough to survive.

Rocky road ahead. The governmental squeeze is coming. More YT ads. Pushing affiliate links lower, putting theirs higher. Less revenue for creators. She left because of what's coming.

Susan W. is second only to Jack Dorsey as the most inept, failing upwards CEO in Silicon Valley. The only reason she's been successful is because PLclip is effectively a monopoly in what it does. Under her leadership, the platform has become consistently more hostile and less communicative towards creators, applying ridiculous policy changes with no transparency, justification or explanation, driving ad rates further and further down, requiring creators to fill their videos with more in-built ads (AHEM!), and forcing people to clickbait and focus on negativity and drama if they hope to have a prayer of getting any discoverability. All while the platform *still* has yet to find a profit and misinformation and extremism still run rampant.
The only bad thing about her stepping down is that her replacement is just an acolyte of hers who will likely bring nothing new to the table.

Hopefully, the new CEO brings back the dislike ratio. Good fuckin riddance.

I watch a lot of PLclip. Since the PLclip shorts have started. I only watch TikTok when my hubby shows me something. I would say she has helped to create an enjoyable platform, purely from a viewer's point of view.

Every guntuber shit their pants over the mag loading and suppressor rule, and the 30 round standard capacity ban rule. As an avid guntuber consumer I was appalled. So glad they reversed that decision. Huge shout out to Matt Carriker from Demolition Ranch for leading the way to get that reversed.

6:12 you know what I'd like to see? Community posts on the iPad app. I don't know why we still don't have them. Just saying.

The problems behind firearms is most people either A. Base their opinions off of firearms knowledge they gained from movies and TV witch is highly exaggerated or B. Use absolutely false arguments and statistics to make an point. The B. part goes for both sides of the debate as well. Both sides misrepresent firearms in the debate and refuse the facts.

On the 30+ mag bit, my .22 pistol holds 32 rounds per mag...

Imo the reason they removed dislikes is for shorts algorithm.
The ONLY way to change the flow of it is dislike a video, just scrolling away doesn't help. So by removing the count you don't feel bad if for some reason a random short from a random channel with 0 subs or whatever happens to come, you simply don't feel bad by disliking it.

Linus figuring out all the stupidity when it comes to speaking about firearms is funny. Theres never a debate about merit to anything only having to dispel outright lies

Lol she's getting out before she gets locked up

"PLcliprs are people who make videos for PLclip, not people who work for PLclip" - you'd think someone who worked for PLclip for over a decade would know he works for PLclip and just doesn't get the benefits of employment while doing it.

Tiktok having more watch time than PLclip is bs, tiktok isn't available in some of the largest countries such as India, India has a massive population so on watch time metrics they would donate but tiktok is banned in most south Asian countries it's safe to assume their numbers are bs.

Thank goodness this person is gone! As a person who uses youtube as a tool and not as entertainment, the removal of the dislike button for political and social reasons was very harmful to the quality of DIY and Instructional content consumers.

PLclip needs to start respecting its content creators unless they think they an actively suppress alternative sites. The only thing holding sites like Bitchute back is the lack of an app.

I really hate the new like button. To the point that I don't want to use it any more.

See you in 1 year when AI either makes PLclip better or finally kills it.

0:02 Then what is the point of using „My CEO left“ in the latest Wan Show title?

I don't think youtube's success was due to her, but the nature of the platform itself. There have been horrible implementations.

So, in other words, PLclip will continue slowly degrading itself but under new management...
We really need a competitor to PLclip that doesn't bow down to advertisers but rather focuses on the content creators.

susan wojak did a good job finnancially but killed the spirit of youtube, 2014 was the golden age peek, everything now feels like consumption for advertisers not enjoyment.

Here here.. As This forum is as binding arbitration for the platform it represents let us bestow one who is worthy to lead us all hense forward upon this company. I hereby humbly nominate Mr. Linus Sebastian of LTT as CEO of PLclip. Can I get a 2nd?

Don't you work for youtube in a way, if you are making videos for youtube?

I think you guys are arbitrarily commending Susan for anything good that happened, and just absolve her from anything bad.
Sounds kinda BS, not gonna lie. You either acknowledge she has power over these decisions, or you don't, but saying she did the good but not the bad is just lame.
Another thing is that PLclip is still without a relevant competitor in many areas: PLclip does not have to be exceptional to do what it did so far. There's no reason to assume Susan had much to do with the position and growth of PLclip, all we can say for sure is that she didn't completely ruin it. However the public trust towards PLclip is in a strong downward trend, and a big part of that is communication, over which Susan DEFINITELY had control.

Interesting fact: Supressors are not only legal but unregulated (i.e. you purchase them like loaf of bread) almost through whole europe. Logic here is that firearm is a loud, regulated, dangerous stick and only purpose of supressors is to make less noise which is GOOD THING especially for people living close to shooting ranges, or hunting grounds.

what if my bitcoin wallet was on my debit card so my debit card becomes the bank lol xD

What I want from Google and PLclip going forward, is to stop their reliance on bots being tied to policies, same goes with trashing the content ID system and replacing them with reliable staff, and have Google and PLclip separated due to the corruption in Google.

if youtube could fix DMCA takedowns too. too many false take down claims

I don't like you calling it a "success". Like when a new group of people comes in and changes an institution ruleset or whatever, and the changes of course won't have effect until 5 or 10 years beyond that. So they claim "it worked!" but only because they are based off the previous structure which they wanted to change in the first place. (this example is hypothetical and vague on purpose, apply it to anything you can think of).
PLclip's real competitor in the past 10-15 years maybe, name them. I'll wait.
Sure, someone could've come along and done something and YT made so many bad moves they lost the spot. But that's my point, the only thing they had to do, was see how to be profitable and keep expanding. Basically not burn it to the ground. That INCLUDES making stupid ass moves like the dislike button. Like generally speaking, PLclip is not really, truly a "safe place for everyone" and "equal to everyone". Also they (mostly Google in general) aren't really CUT CLEAR on the rules and how they take action on things, etc, etc. It started as "creator's galore! Fuck TV!" and at some point, 5+ years ago everything we had in the algorithm was Jimmy Fallon and other night shows. The the whole adpocalypse, etc, etc.
So, is PLclip SUCCESSFUL? sure, it's probably profitable and is literally massive, besides being "the only site" basically. But without that metric and that #1 solid spot (sort of monopoly on video consumption across the world), if we see by "how many changes youtube's made in FAVOR OF CREATORS/COMMUNITY"... gee, I wouldn't call this a W.
That is not diminishing all Susan has accomplished. She's one of the true OGs at Google and PLclip. If there is anyone I would "hope" to do things in favor of the platform would be her. And that's probably what she did. Things in favor of the platform, not the people. I get that it's a business. I love businesses making money! I have zero issues with that. But I do have a problem with the HOW. Like, you can make money still by making good products or offering good services. Could you be INSANELY MASSIVE doing that? Maybe not. So that's why I don't really give much credit to these mega corpos. Like imagine PLclip's changes, but you're a mid-size platform... I doubt many of its userbase would be happy with it. Facebook still has millions of users and it's garbage. Spotify did the same, started as a cool thing and then like the plague infected every living digital device. Deezer, Tidal, etc. are trying to compete for a piece of the pie, but between them, they share the rest of the pie while Spotify takes the chart. And they're not losing anytime soon despite not paying enough to musicians (known) and over the years REMOVING features that people used and loved. The PC software is also quite garbage and the UI is just made in paint by a 5 year old. But they're already established, so a lot of people won't really change.

5:56 No, removing the dislike counter was NOT "actually what they said, actually that dumb", it's much more insidious than that. It was just the last step in a multi-step plan of scumbaggery. The first step was to actively force autoplay on all videos on the site and constantly break any attempts to allow the user to disable autoplay. The second step was to change the TOS to allow them to run ads on ALL videos including ones that aren't monetize or even channels not in the YPP. The last step was the remove the counter so that you can't tell if a video is garbage or not so that you don't avoid watching bad videos and get tricked into clicking the video, the ad runs, they make money, you waste your time. It was part of a way to increase "views" and run ads even if it means literally abetting scammers. 😒
I keep thinking about the Persian expression about how there's never been a bad thing that wasn't replaced by something worse. If you want to know what's in store for YT, just look at other similar examples, look at how Nadella made Microsoft become actively hostile to user, how Puchai discontinued the "don't be evil" motto to make Google evil, you Canadians can also look at what Nadir Mohammed did to Rogers and made it evil, even by ISP standards. And so on. It doesn't look good. 😒

Yet LTT employees can't work on personal projects

Props for calling it a *suppressor* and not a fucking silencer like games seem to be doing and misinforming everyone that's had no education on firearms

8% cash back on tcg player lol.

her best decision was to REMOVE THE DISLIKE COUNTER! best move ever! way to go Susan :)

The issue with firearms channels, is that a large majority of mainstream advertisers, would never, ever want their ads on them.
What those channels should really be doing, is explaining to their viewers, how subbing to PLclip premium, is a great way to support channels like theirs, by hopefully lessening PLclip’s huge reliance on super sensitive advertisers.
Instead they fill their videos up with ad reads, so even their premium subs have to see, and fast forward thru ads, despite getting premium to avoid ads!!!!!

What now? More of the same. Censorship on censorship on censorship.
With her as ceo yt became essentially an publisher. They moderate content. Why they're not treated as publisher completely baffles me.

The guntubers talk about rules and then flagrantly break those rules anyway so that's why they keep changing.

It's kinda sad that a 2 Canadian tech PLclip know more about guns then some American politicians.

THANK GOD

people sub contract content for PLclip kinda right. the advertisers pay them and PLclip intern pays you

I keep forgetting the dislike button was removed since I have the addon installed to bring it back

They removed dislike cuz of unliked guy in White House

🔥🔥🔥

Bring back the Dislike button! Revoke the insane censorship rules! Make YT punitive actions transparent is specific.

Linus Arms Tips??

I think they should take the counter off of the "Like" button, too.

I would give youtube more view time if they stopped serving me 15 second unskippable ads as the first ad of two at any point in the video. I just close PLclip now regardless of how invested I am. I’m not watching this AND whatever else they want to serve.

It's not complicated don't like PLclip and it's rules then leave. They have nothing to prove to you or anyone else end of story.

PLclip censor any voice not going in the direction of state policies during COVID... That was very lame