Enlarge (credit: YouTube, PewDiePie)

News rocking the YouTube world this week comes from the most subscribed creator on the platform. PewDiePie, whose real name is Felix Kjellberg, released a video lamenting some of the issues he has had with YouTube recently, saying he would delete his YouTube channel once he reaches 50 million subscribers. Kjellberg passed that milestone this week and tweeted out yesterday that he will delete his channel today at 5pm GMT, or 12pm EST.

Kjellberg’s main problem with YouTube, which other top creators including Jacksepticeye and Philip DeFranco have complained about as well, is the apparent change in users’ recommended and suggested videos (or how YouTube prioritizes what videos get promoted). He explains in an update video that most YouTubers get half of their views from these two sections. As a viewer, your recommended and suggested videos typically populate with videos from creators you watch regularly, showing you their videos that you may not have watched yet, as well as videos from similar creators. In his video, Kjellberg opens his YouTube analytics to reveal that in October 2016, some of his videos received 60 percent of views by being on suggested lists. However, one month later in November, some of his videos only received 0.07 percent of their views from the same list.

Kjellberg speculates that this is because YouTube is now favoring videos with high click-through rates or videos that grab a viewer’s attention and make them click immediately. He also claims this would negatively affect those with strict daily or nearly daily upload schedules, which describes many of the top creators on YouTube, and favor videos with bombastic titles or shocking thumbnails.