At least once a year, sometimes twice a year, YouTube likes to adjust their algorithms here and there, which can often play havoc on content creators trying to get the most eyes on their content. That's why you'll often see, especially after the first of the year, several channels put out videos about the proverbial sky falling, or my favorite, “This will be my last video ever”, only for them to post a new video a couple days later. Nothing like some good old fashion drama infused click bait to get a bunch of views to offset the hit you took from a new algorithm.
Unfortunately this years algorithm changes are a bit more serious, I don't think we're at “the sky is falling” level yet, but definitely something to be aware of. So as of 2026, YouTube has slowly started introducing many changes, even outside of algorithms, they claim will make the experience on their platform as a viewer and a content creator much better, heavy emphasis on the word “claim”. For this post I'm going to just focus on two algorithmic changes that I think will affect content creators and their followers the most, and it won't affect channels the same, it might even benefit a few of them.
The first change is how and what YouTube tracks to get your channels analytics. For instance, they used to be big on “watch time”, how long a viewer stayed engaged on your content all together, and how long they stayed engaged compared to the length of the video. They're also putting much less importance on overall subscriber count and “likes” for an individual video, and more focus on things like “replay-ability”, meaning do they re-watch the content more than once, do they come back to view it once a week, once a month, etc. I think overall views will still be a metric they're always interested in, but the other changes will definitely affect how some channels approach putting out content.
The second change is the one, in my opinion, that's really bad, and will definitely negatively affect many channels. YouTube, with all their wisdom, has decided that they know what you prefer to watch, more than you, by monitoring how many videos you watch of specific channels, and then adjusting your notifications accordingly. For example, if a channel you follow puts out music content, and you really enjoy their content, but only the videos that cover the types of music, or a certain artist, that you really like. So you have your bell icon set to “ALL” so it notifies you every time this channel uploads, then you decide if its music content you want to check out, then watch it or skip it. Now, if YouTube sees that you've not watched x amount of this channel's videos, it simply changes your notification status to “none”, the bell symbol with a line through it.
This will also, for some odd reason, NOT allow you to change the bell notification back to “ALL” or the bell symbol with no line through it. The only work around that I have found for this is, if you notice this on a channel you follow, simply unsubscribe from the channel, then immediately subscribe again, and it should reset your notification status back to normal, for how long that lasts, I can't say at this time.
So in summary, a lot of this boils down to another clueless CEO brainwashed by profit margins and the entire tech market's infatuation with AI everything, and being convinced it will make all their customer's lives better, you know, capitalist greed 101, nothing new really. I will leave two links, the first one, if you want to throw up a little in your mouth, is a video/interview with Neal Mohan, YouTube's current CEO, explaining his vision, these new changes, and how it will make our lives better.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXJVOffU4iA&t=3s
The second one here is a great blog post by Gillian Perkins, that breaks down the 7 main algorithmic changes YouTube made this year in much more detail, if you're interested.
https://www.gillianperkins.com/blog/whats-actually-working-on-youtube-in-2026-algorithm-shifts
