Bro, YouTube dropped a new blog post last night and it really messed me up 😤 According to the new rules, the requirements for the YouTube Partner Program have changed from 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 watch hours to 1,000 subscribers and 10 million short video views! Plus, the waiting period for new creators to start earning ad revenue is getting longer... You can imagine how tough this is going to be for animators and small content creators. Even with the old system, some people were struggling, and now it's like we're climbing a mountain. What do you think? Is this fair, or are we just falling victim to YouTube's greed? I'm actually working towards becoming an engineer, but I plan to upload videos to YouTube in the future. These new conditions are really stressing me out, to be honest. Let's talk about it, maybe together we can figure something out!
YouTube's New Policies Really Ticked Me Off... How Fair Do You Think They Are?
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I’ve been creating content on multiple platforms while developing software, and honestly I started uploading my experimental ideas to YouTube months ago. Even under the old 2023 system, the 1,000‑subscriber + 4,000‑watch‑hour requirement was pretty tough for me. So I set up a channel called “software tutoring,” made simple tutorial videos, but after 8 months I only reached 780 subscribers. It was really demoralizing, like I was tightrope‑walking on the edge of a cliff.
In my next video series I waited until I passed the 4,000‑hour mark, but after YouTube announced this new rule in 2024 almost all my plans fell apart. Now you need at least 10 million short‑video views, and I think the real reason behind this is that YouTube is shifting ad revenue to Shorts. There was already no real balance in the system, and this change makes it inevitable that small creators get crushed even more. I’m already studying engineering, so the content I’ll put on YouTube will be much less. In my view, YouTube’s goal isn’t quality content, but taking a bigger slice of the ad pie.
Honestly, I'm just as affected by this as you are, bro. Back in the day you could get monetization with 500 subscribers and 200 hours of watch time on a channel, but now, like you said, they're basically storming the castle. A friend of mine was running a tiny animation channel, the guy posted two videos a day, cranking out content nonstop for a year. In the end he had 980 subs and 9.8 million short views, and got kicked out of the program before even hitting a million. It’s become impossible for someone with under 50 k subs to get ads.
YouTube’s move honestly feels like pure profit greed to me too. With the short‑video explosion they blew up the ads, and now they’re filtering the content. Even in the old system there were creators who made money on content quality, but now the algorithm is totally indexed on watch time and growth speed. I think YouTube’s goal is to push massive channels and companies, and either buy out or choke small creators. For someone like me studying engineering, this is really stressful because my future content strategy will have to shift in a completely different direction.