Highlights

id652577737

the total number of videos is probably more than 13 billion.

🔗 View Highlight

id652577742

Our current best estimate is that 32% of videos where we can detect the language are in English, with 10.5% in Hindi, 8% in Spanish, slightly fewer in Portuguese, and just over 6% in Arabic.

✏️ About two-thirds of youtube is not English 🔗 View Highlight

id652577788

Odds are good that most of the videos you watch have more than 1,000 views, but those videos account for just 13% of our sample. A significant number (4.9%) don’t have any views at all.

✏️ If I’m reading it right, something like 80% of videos exist in the range of 0-1000 views. The median lies around 10-100 views 🔗 View Highlight

id652577804

most videos have no comments (72.6%) and no likes (88.7%) at all.

✏️ The pointlessness of engagement metrics 🔗 View Highlight

id652581039

There are short, effortless videos with nothing more than manipulated still photos, homework assignments and class lectures, barely audible three-second clips of ceremonies with no context, and even recorded Zoom meetings that could have no hope for an audience beyond someone who couldn’t attend live. It’s there in the miscellany that you find YouTube the social network, YouTube the random video storage, and the many other YouTubes that aren’t pursuing a broad audience.

✏️ What we’re being fed is not what is actually there. The algorithm and the “creator” economy” is a sliver of the true social network hiding away in the backend. 🔗 View Highlight