Data from ~100K independent YouTube channels (10K–1M+ subs). Each dot is a real channel with a known start date; inactive ones have a confirmed last-upload date. A channel is counted as inactive only if its last upload was more than 180 days ago, so anything still posting within the last 6 months is excluded from the death count.
What the data shows:
- The typical channel goes dark at age 8–9: that's the single most common death age across the whole dataset
- Survival curves are remarkably consistent across creation cohorts: most classes (2012–2021) still have >50% of channels posting today
- Genre predicts longevity: People & Blogs burns out at a median 7.5 years; Nonprofits & Activism lasts 11.5 years. 4-year spread just from content category
- The cohort heatmap shows both diagonal and vertical bands: channels age out naturally around year 8, but 2023–2025 lit up across all creation cohorts simultaneously, pointing to a platform-level shift, not just demographics
- The annual mortality rate went from 3 per 1,000 alive channels in 2016 → 162 per 1,000 in 2025, a 52× increase in per-channel risk over 9 years
- Monthly mortality rate tells the same story: the acceleration isn't slowing down
"Isn't this just channels hitting their 8-year lifespan all at once?"
Fair question. A lot of channels were created in 2015–2017, so you'd expect a natural pile-up of deaths around now. But the mortality rate controls for that: it measures deaths per 1,000 channels that were actually alive that year. That rate has nearly tripled since 2022 alone (57 → 162 per 1,000). Channels created in 2012 and channels created in 2019 are both dying at higher rates in 2024–2025 than in any prior year. That's not end-of-life aging. That's something changing on the platform.
by EmptySetAi
15 Comments
They are pushing for AI made content vs real human one. This would drastically reduce costs and what rights do AI content creators have..
Why do AI tools frequently end messages with “That’s not X. That’s Y.”?
As a person with a small(5k) channel(wormtalk94, I make educational videos about parasites) This isn’t surprising at all.
The “for you” section has made it so that big channels are really the only ones that get shown to people.
Like even with 5k subs, I can easily have a video that only gets shown to a few hundred people. Meaning that even my subscribers arent getting shown the video I just published.
It actually makes it unless you have super intense subscribers, having subs can hurt your channel if it’s smaller( if ppl don’t click right away it can make the Ctr go down, making it shown less to others)
Edit: Also want to add the increase competition with slop content is really difficult. For example one of my 10 minute videos takes about 30 to 40 hours to make. meanwhile somes streamer puts out 20 videos a day and gets 10 times the view just because quantity over quality which also kind of sucks, that plus all the ai slop is really discouraging
This feels like another metric gauging the dying internet theory.
Because scripting, shooting, and editing a video is hard work. I’m adjacent to the production business and know how much work goes into those things. I can’t imagine the grind of doing them weekly and keep up a decent standard of quality. And, truthfully, some of the channels are really, really good.
many are switching to premium streaming platforms where they don’t have to compete with slop spam
Good. Hopefully they’ll all die soon
how may are created, thoug?
I blame shorts and other enshittifications such as not being able to search by language, removing the ability to sort by date, etc.
About a month or two ago, it started showing the “experiencing interruptions?” every time I start a video. Doesn’t matter what connection, OS, or browser I’m using.
AI post like this is annoying. I can’t seem to avoid AI made videos either and I wish YouTube and Reddit would provide some tools for me to avoid such things.
But in a positive note, I’m now highly sensitive to AI created scripts and voice and can usually spot videos by their colour grading now.
I sure would like to know what constitutes non profits and activism.
AI powered false positive strikes taking down channels too small to care to fight
Ironic how this post itself is AI slop
I read this as people dying and had a minor panic attack.
I hope it’s due to people not using Youtube, the ads are absolutely horrible and the predatory way in which they slowly have been notching it up is disgusting.