The downside of the big numbers is dealing with nonsense from fools with nothing better to do. I've set strict moderation rules and have been working on a list of words to block with the help of VIDIQ. The AI coach just told me: "If a comments is personal or abusive, hide the user from the channel. It's not censorship, it's gardening. You are weeding the garden so the healthy plants (your community) can thrive. That perked me up a bit. Back to weeding the garden 😀

Open AI’s Chat GPT are going to start running ads in free Chat GPT because they’re losing millions. Their business plan from a couple years ago relied on them being the dominant player with more people using their paid subscription model. They thought that they would have such a first mover advantage that they would forever be Coke and everyone else would be fighting it out to be Pepsi🤪 But Google’s Gemini and Anthropic’s Claude have now caught up and I think are even better in some ways. One of the best comments I saw on X responding to Sam Altman (CEO of OpenAI): “Anthropic: makes funny ad about ad-driven Al. Sam: writes 400-word defensive essay calling them authoritarian, deceptive, and elitist The ad hit a nerve. Wonder why.” Do you pay for ChatGPT or any other AI?

Hi Everyone Hope you have been enjoying the peace and quiet in my absence! It's been a crazy ten days... Two hemispheres, three countries and three vastly different time zones. Delayed flights, failed flights, emergency landings, rescheduled flights, an apartment that turned out to be like a bondage den!!! It also had dodgy electrics that only half worked and kept banging and flashing! But I walked in deep snow, saw beautiful city night skies, Vancouver Fog, the stunning winter scenery of Squamish and Whistler, ate loads of delicious vegan food and walked the very worst poverty stricken and drug ridden streets of the city at night, by accident, which was kind of scary but made me feel how blessed I am. Now I am in Kent, in the UK, with my sister who I haven't seen for almost 7 years. Storm Chandra has been buzzing around but it's nit been too bad here. Planning a trip to Kendall, Glasgow, Skye, Inverness, Edinburgh, Lindisfarne and then Rochdale, but if the forecast and predictions of blizzards and blankets of snow are accurate I am not sure of that will happen! TBH I am citied out, though I would like to see Skye again, and the Highlands. My Mum and ancestors hail from Wester Ross. I was holding out against Manchester but then my sister finally had to divulge that she had booked us a tour on the Coronation Street Experience!! Corrie is something I got addicted to last year, having never watched it before, and it is my comfort food! YouTube seems far away, I have made a couple videos but not even looked at them, I feel so ungrounded and like nothing is real. I came here to catch up and try and sort of land myself. So big love to you all and looking forward to reading the posts I have missed! The photo shows one of our planes dumping 40,000 gallons of fuel into the atmosphere :(

Today I've committed to starting a two week trial to see how effective video clips are by releasing 1 at 11 am and one at 8 pm (9 hours between each clip). The clips I'm starting with are from videos that have higher views or considered evergreen videos. This was done by comparing lifetime and 28 day stats. My objective is to see if the clips will drive traffic to full length videos with an end screen and pinned comment (I found out that you cannot put an end screen if the clip is less than 25 secs long). The clips are more appealing to me versus a short because I get watch time from the clips, as I am not monetized. What are your observations and thoughts using clips?

Am most of the way through listening to this but if you're a vlogger here is encouragement from Sean Cannell about vlogging! This is what this video covers: 0:00 Why vlogging is back on YouTube 1:20 The state of vlogging in 2026 2:32 How YouTube is taking over the living room 7:47 Why 30 minutes is the ideal video length 11:00 Short videos fried our brains & now we want depth 15:17 The algorithm doesn’t care who you are... only what you talk about 23:33 Vlogs aren’t dead. The old way of vlogging is. 32:10 Why real beats perfect now. (The winning vlogging formula) 39:23 Window of Opportunity & why most people quit too early