Academia Play asks for help at a critical time for educational channels on YouTube

As you know, one of the main focuses of Counting Stars is history. More than 600 articles attest to this interest.

Debunking falsehoods and myths about the destruction of the Library of Alexandria
A fabulous 3D recreation of the Parthenon in Athens made by a Spanish archaeologist

Many of my articles are based on interesting videos I find on YouTube, a multimedia platform I've followed for many years. Some of the videos I share here have already received many views, while others have very few and are waiting for someone to promote them. In any case, I always try to find quality videos, and among those videos have often been those from the channel Academia Play, which is based in Spain and celebrates its tenth anniversary this December.

Yesterday, Javier Rubio Donzé, director of Academia Play, published a video asking for help due to the crisis caused since last year by a YouTube algorithm that now prioritizes "Shorts" on the platform —short videos specifically designed for mobile viewing. You can watch the video here (the video is in Spanish; you can activate automatic English subtitles in the bottom bar of the player):

I recommend watching this video to the end, commenting on it on YouTube, and clicking the "like" button if you identify with the work Academia Play has been doing for the past decade. We're no longer talking about getting exposure for a good video: we're talking about the survival of quality content on the most important multimedia platform. I'm not exaggerating, and to understand this, you need to understand how YouTube works.

This new YouTube policy is creating a critical moment for its educational channels, compounded by the massive influx of AI-generated content. The result: a lot of short, low-quality content and a drop in viewership and revenue for channels that have been doing excellent educational work for years.

Of course, we users have ways to change this. To do so, we must adopt certain healthy habits, starting with being selective about what we watch on YouTube. I made it a point a while ago to never watch another video from any channel that publishes low-quality content automatically generated by artificial intelligence (it's not hard to identify them; Javier Rubio explains what they look like in his video). And above all, reward those who publish good content by commenting on their videos, clicking the "like" button, sharing them, subscribing to their channels, and even becoming a patron. These habits can make all the difference and prevent good educational channels from succumbing to a lamentable algorithm.

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Image: Academia Play.