Devin

Where to find me: Youtube: youtube.com/devinnash Community: discord.gg/devin Watch: twitch.tv/devinnash Support: patreon.com/devinnash Consult: bit.ly/consultwithdev… If my work has positively impacted you, you can find 150 more videos on my Patreon for $5.

I may have failed to explain the problem adequately. it doesn't really matter if the content is "good" subjectively or not. The problem is a technical one. Youtube discovery and monetization works because there is far more demand than supply of videos. Categorization and recommendation serving systems can only serve a certain number of videos to a user. If you multiply that by 1000x, 10000x, the whole system breaks down. This is the unsolvable problem. We don't need 1000 Joe Rogans to achieve this (when I said 1000 Joe Rogans, I literally meant that, as in, 1000 videos impersonating Joe Rogan indistinguishable from him) - we just need 1000x more of Joe Rogan type content.

I think a lot of this concern can be eased. The reality is that most people are not especially creative, and AI does not change that. These tools do not automatically produce great work. There is no realistic scenario where we suddenly get thousands of Joe Rogans or equivalent creators overnight. New creators will absolutely emerge, but the number of people who can actually use these tools well will remain relatively small. Most people are either not interested in doing this kind of work or not willing to put in the sustained effort it requires. In many ways, we likely already reached the practical ceiling of people who want to seriously create long-form or high-effort content years ago. The concern is understandable, but it is not as urgent as it often sounds. The more time you spend actually using these tools, the more obvious it becomes that doing anything even half-decent still takes real skill, taste, and persistence. The number of creators capable of solo-producing high-quality, long-form content remains extremely limited, because the skill gradient to reach that level is much steeper than people realize. Simply using the tools will show this for yourself. @DevinNash youtu.be/pvYiZQ7G4ww

First of all thank you for putting such intelligent thoughts out there and taking the time to respond to the issue. You clearly know what you're talking about, and I'm glad people like you are thinking about this. A couple thoughts about your thoughts: - My concern with GAN is that while traditional American models (GPT, Gemini, etc) may build for it, as video generation LLMs become more ubiquitous and compute becomes cheaper the third-party models will not build for it and may even build against it. The best example of this was Deepseek R1, which provided similar performance to GPT but drastically lowered inference. A ton of businesses buying tokens from GPT moved overnight to it, one I worked with lowered costs to $14/month from over $12,000. So what ends up happening is we have a lot of Chinese/third party LLMs that don't honor GAN and eventually it becomes an arms race for Gemini to detect what is AI and what isn't at scale. But AI is an infinite supply market, and eventually every consumer will have access to countless niche LLMs. There will certainly be LLMs specifically with the intent to circumvent GAN and other measures, by virtue that there's money to be made in video monetization. - To your final point, the death of traditional content creators kinda is the death of Youtube as we know it. One of the points I really wanted to echo in the video (unsure if I did successfully or not) was that we are in a RARE moment in time where individuals a) have a voice and b) can get paid for having that voice - a world where the sheer scale of AI (or where the quality just outcompetes) will centralize wealth into agencies and content farms that produce tens of thousands of optimal videos, and the individuals will lose that ability. I guess that's why I said it's an "existential" threat, because the careers as we know it of traditional creators come to an end. and this is such a cool period of human history I think that is a shame. anyway thanks again for your insight on this!

Just saw @DevinNash latest video regarding YouTube impending apocalypse and as someone who works in the industry I hope to shed SOME hope on the doom and gloom.

@mrq02 nah I should make way more about ads. could be a million diff reasons, you're not a/b testing, your copy is bad, not sure. but you should be getting 2.6 to 3.5 easy (industry standard) - might be worth taking a course from a legit ad buyer, it's an imperative skill in this age

@DevinNash Devin do you have a video on your patreon (or will you make one) on ways to increase/debug a low conversion rate? Because I definitely am not getting $2.60 back for every 1 I spend on Adsense. My ads get clicks, but they do not get sales. (Ive tried the basic fixes I can find) 😅

“When you work with creators, you’re getting multi-hour engagement at around $1–$3 per viewed hour, and that’s where the real value lies,” Olivia Murphy, NewGen. Sponsorship Takeaway: $1/CCV/Hour is considered a significant VALUE for brands.

@KennyRoy @zachbussey tell any twitch agency you want to pay on attributable conversions only and see what they say (and sure send me a demo or something)

@DevinNash @zachbussey The best way to price is to pay on verified outcomes. The most effective targeting is contextual, at the exact moment of intent. The most engaging format is opt-in. I built a system that combines all three, and I’d value your take.

@KalystC @zachbussey completely dependent on campaign, brand, company size, a zillion different things - for f500 it'll be about 6-12%, most larger companies spend about 15-20% of total marketing budget on digital PPC these days, going up

@DevinNash @zachbussey I guess this depends on the vertical, but out of curiosity, what's the typical percentage of budgets being spent on Adsense out of a total allocated marketing budget?

@AjaayRS @Awk20000 I never said anything of the sort. my contention is that sometimes agencies bot streamers (for $$ in sponsorships), and sometimes people bot themselves. FWIW n3on almost certainly bots himself. who knows for sure, but in that case a person's character is often a self-report.

@Awk20000 but @DevinNash tried to say it was kick botting n3on and not himself 🤣🤣

Soda goes over some of the names discussed on a viewbot tracker Twitter account - Olivia Monroe - CodeMiko - Cyr - Plaqueboymax - DDG - Emiru - N3on -Lydia Violet

@onepeg @ARCRaidersGame dude I'd been looking for that the whole day GG! interactions like running into each other how we did make this game truly world class

Ran into @DevinNash in @ARCRaidersGame today. Gave him a motor and he gave me a cooling fan. I fucking love this game.

yeah but you'd still be operating under Amazon. operating under a public company is a really different dynamic. I like moving fast and when I sold my first company I couldn't really tolerate the new buyers and the culture of a 7000+ person company. the majority of a successful CEO's job at Twitch would be intra-company political, that is white papering Amazon and getting their L7s/L8s to agree on direction. most of Twitch's problems are actually engineering problems and CDN problems, and that's why Twitch was run by an engineer (Emmett) and hired another engineer (Dan) to run it. neither of them understand culture but they do understand IVS which is much more important and profitable from Amazon's perspective than the content side of Twitch is. entrepreneurs come from levels 0 -> 100. where 0 is a brand new idea and 100 is a MAG7 top company. you rarely get 0-100 guys - people who can take the company from nothing to worldwide. when you do they're legends like Jensen Huang or Bezos. I'm like a 0 -> 30-35 guy, I can grow companies and am really good at growth and I can take them to sale but I'd break down quickly in larger company environments. it's important to know what you can do but also what you shouldn't do. Twitch needs like a 50-70 guy with the proper skillset, engineering focus but also understands culture. VERY rare. rare enough it will probably never happen.

@DevinNash But as a thought experiment, with the streaming pipeline being somewhat of a solved problem, moderation simplified via AI, and a revenue-focused approach, a total restart wouldn’t require more than a few hundred employees, would it not?

I think most people intuitively understand extreme content is bringing down Twitch but can't place why. Twitch will NEVER be a sustainable or respected platform with the content it currently shows. the real reason why is an engineering problem. it's an issue of ad segmentation. on Youtube/Tiktok, content classification for ad eligibility is done automatically via algorithm. it determines content can be monetized or "on" - green - "limited" - yellow - or "ineligible" - red. green is Google's entire adsense network, limited is for advertisers who opt into higher risk types of content, and red is content deemed not acceptable to any advertising audience. the guidelines are clearly outlined, just Google "Youtube Content Classification Guidelines" and click the first link. because of proper ad segmentation (and segmented discovery queues, but that's another conversation), you can have extreme content exist in a containment field where advertisers and their users will effectively never engage with it. as an advertiser selecting for brand safe content, I can and have run hundreds of thousands of dollars on Adsense and never had my advertisements associated with brand unsafe content. Twitch has no ad segmentation system, so if you buy inventory on Twitch it is displayed site wide. This is problematic because it means your advertisement will be shown against the lowest common denominator content. But even worse it means your CPMs will reflect that content instead of their proper category. So for example where finance CPMs should be closer to $25-35 as they are on YT, you'd get whatever the CPM of the most offensive content on Twitch is (very low) for ALL creators. Twitch artificially inflates CPMs in the past because of the "shiny new car smell" of a livestreaming platform, but competitors have moved in and normalized that market and they can't get away with that now. There's no reason to advertise on Twitch since it's so high risk and I'll get stronger ROAS on any other platform. Twitch claims to have ad targeting, but this only means they can turn off individual streamers and categories manually. An ad bought on Twitch displays in a single ad fill pool. This is why the "Twitch Adpocalypse" I wrote about earlier this year happened - major ad buyers realized via dozens of emails informing them that their ads were being shown against extreme content on Twitch and pulled their budgets. This is why ad rates are so poor on Twitch today and haven't recovered since earlier this year. Twitch will probably never build this classification system, for all the reasons I've written about recently. But also because it cost Youtube billions of dollars and years of drama and trial and error. Twitch doesn't have the stomach for it. So if you understand this issue, the only solution is to blanket ban all extreme/political/controversial/low CPM content, as that will A) normalize CPMs and B) bring advertisers back. Twitch literally can't exist as a sustainable platform without ad segmentation, ever. And as we discussed before, Twitch will never build that system, ever. Advertisers are allergic to the kind of extreme content the platform features. Even worse these people are constantly featured and front paged, since there is no true algorithmic discovery, so even if there was ad segmentation it would be difficult not to associate with it as a brand - since the platform itself is literally featuring these people. So the only real solution is a deeply knowledgeable CEO in the advertising world who can white paper this out and show the path to profitability by banning 60-70% of the total content viewership on Twitch - with the understanding that in 2-3 years it will normalize advertising and CPM rates and create a sustainable platform. there's only like a few dozen people on Earth that understand the issue well enough to do this and they'd probably rather work on more interesting problems. that is why I said I wouldn't hold your breath for meaningful change.

no I'm way underqualified and not the right guy. the largest company I've run was 120 people and Twitch is 4000+ employees. turning Twitch around would need a much broader skillset. I really understand my focus area (marketing, media platforms, ads) but I wouldn't have the large organizational knowledge or the engineering background to turn Twitch around.

@DevinNash Would you be up for it , were you given the chance to be in charge?

@edandersen Amazon has no interest in the content side of Twitch and appreciates it as part of it's ad network and as a sales engine for IVS. My original thread discusses this in more detail. So the effect is as you say but it's not a malevolent or conscious decision by Amazon.

@DevinNash At this point the extreme political content on Twitch is just being funded / subsidized by Amazon then? Maybe they endorse it and want an audience for it? it’s just a money bonfire otherwise

@lildazeez i appreciate that man but I'd rather drag my balls through volcanic glass than accept that position - in a bizarro world where I was ever offered it.

@DevinNash I nominate Devin Nash for Twitch CEO.

@JeffHoogland My conclusion in the original post was that they won't do either of those things - and so I wrote the most likely outcome was for us to see more of the same from Twitch. A rudderless ship with occasional incomprehensibly dumb executive decision making.

@DevinNash Your premise seems very reasonable. However, I think it is deeply strange to conclude that Twitch will never segment out content properly, but they would for some reason instead cull 60%+ of the content on their platform.

Twitch is making the rounds again for incompetent decision making and If you've ever wondered "why isn't Twitch fixing this!?" this thread is for you. Let's clear up some misconceptions and have an honest conversation about where the company is at. The biggest reason you see Twitch in this state is simply that the company is a ghost of its former self. Twitch is run as a demo product for IVS - the Twitch architecture they sell to companies like Kick that want to build their own streaming service. In 2022 when most of you knew Twitch at its height, it had roughly 2500 employees. When it became apparent that the site was not sustainable, they had a 400 person layoff (March 2023) then another 400 in late 2023, then ANOTHER 500 in January 2024. Today Twitch is a shadow of what it was and is generously valued at about $46 billion. But Amazon is a 2.27 TRILLION dollar company. That means that best case, and $46b really is best case, Twitch is about 2% of Amazon's total portfolio. This was from a Needham analyst and I think the real number is much less, but let's assume that's true. Twitch is only mentioned a handful of times in earnings calls and financial disclosures, and never on its own. In 10 years Twitch has come up in Amazon public reports 4 times. 3 were in the Q1 earnings call in 2021, and the Q1 earnings call in 2024. They both were one sentence, and referred to Twitch as part of Amazon's advertising package. The 4th mention was a Q1 2025 Earnings Call, and was an Amazon executive mentioning Twitch as part of a "non-profitable sector." It has never had its own financial specifics listed publicly in a 10-K, meaning it's not material enough for Amazon to give it separate reporting. In late 2024 Dan Clancy (current CEO of Twitch) said Twitch is "not profitable at this point" and that revenue was at a five-year low. This is 9 years into the companies lifecycle. When I got into brand advertising I started with Twitch and thought I was running hot because I was doing $20,000-$50,000 influencer activations for gaming sponsorships for streamers on the platform. Then I expanded my agencies client base, 10x'd those deal values, and realized absolutely no one cares about Twitch. It's simply too weird, too parasocial, too extreme because of dominant political streamers and drama farmers for most advertisers to look at. If you are a non-gaming brand it is a joke to advertise on Twitch, and it's because of Twitch's direct choices to platform the types of streamers it does that this is so. And these days warring streamer communities will literally crawl email addresses of VPs of Marketing and warn them about advertising there. This happened to more than one of my clients when we focused budget there. It's unhinged and all just too much trouble to bother. Even in the world of livestreaming Twitch has lost out to Youtube and Tiktok Live. So it's not even a primary choice for advertisers who want that inventory. Youtube Live is 50% of the market, with 13.26 billion watched hours. Tiktok Live comes next at 9.23 billion, or 14.9% of the market. Twitch is half of that at 4.35 billion, representing only 6.3% of the market. For perspective, 8 years ago Twitch was over 75% of the market. That's how far it's fallen. So if you wonder why Twitch appears so incompetent and the laughing stock of Twitter, it's just not a relevant platform. Most of the truly great minds that worked there have left and the few that remain are marginalized and mired in corporate nonsense where any idea gets sunk into endless bureaucracy and never implemented. Most of the people left are enjoying the free meals at Twitch HQ and 6 figure salaries in San Francisco, and hoping AI doesn't clean them out of a job. Amazon doesn't need or care to fix it. It gives them advertising exposure to gaming and 16-36 year old male demos and is a great sales pitch for IVS web services. They do not care about the content or the creators. Amazon is a consumer-goods brand, not an ad network like Google is. That is why you see Youtube as such a priority for Google - because it's ad network is integral to its success. That is also why Youtube generates tons of profit, because of all of Google's business model can feed into it. But Amazon has a much weaker ad network, and it's directed towards selling its products on Amazon. It was never, and will never be, a content brand. They just don't care about that. If this post feels like I'm dooming on Twitch, I'm not. I actually think Twitch is pretty AI-resistant and a great platform to create on if you have a solid top-level discovery funnel that doesn't depend on it. You should never ever expect new viewers from Twitch. I also think it is not so great a loss leader for Amazon that it won't die and instead just remain a rudderless ship, with features gradually being stripped so it doesn't bleed Amazon's pockets too much. That could change in a long-term recession, but it's unlikely. I still love the platform and watch it everyday - mostly the OG gaming creators like Lirik and CohhCarnage who I think are the lifeblood of it. I just wish it was honest with itself and did what it does best, be a community-driven gaming platform. It's sad to see it lose its way. I don't see that improving without an extreme visionary CEO taking it on and convincing Amazon it needs serious change. I miss what Twitch was, and I'm still adamant that banning all political content is the first step to getting it back there. I'm grateful though that there's still a lot of authentic creators and I hope they still make careers on the platform, albeit they are wise enough to diversify. But if you've ever wondered why nothing seems to change and they make mistake after mistake, this is why. It's sometimes funny to witness how hilariously bad they mess stuff up but it's unfortunate in that it negatively impacts a lot of lives, both creators and users. I hope it changes, but I wouldn't hold your breath.

IRL will never work on Twitch as the site is built today. The long watch times and kingmaker systems (highest viewer streams are featured first and the only ones discoverable) push creators to make the lowest grade content, viewbot, and favor extreme views. Twitch pushed into IRL because it believed it could be the Youtube of livestreaming. When Amazon bought Twitch the goal for the website became to convert users up to Amazon Prime subscribers, which forced them to overreach into broad appeal categories. By the time they figured out Twitch is a poor conversion tool to Amazon subs, the platform had already lost most of what made it great. IRL and Politics streamers will always create for the highest drama, broad appeal, reality TV type content. It's a plenty successful kind of content, but it attracts a creators and users that poison the well for authentic, community-driven content around gameplay. Twitch never built the discovery engine that makes these streams capable of co-existing (like Tiktok Live has) and so these opposed audiences just constantly interact and create trouble. The platform is kind of at a point with advertisers that a complete return to gaming would be the only way most brands would ever look at the site again. It's ironically the only way I could think of to make the site truly profitable and sustainable. To your point, it would also just make the site better. In so many ways, for so many reasons. It would take a crazy CEO with a lot of support from Amazon to do it and I just don't think the will is there. Twitch suffered the fate a lot of companies do, corporate overreach and hubris because of first-to-market advantage. FWIW your post is one of the best I've read in a while and so many people respect you for running a great community throughout every era of Twitch. I would vote you for CEO, but I certainly wouldn't wish that job on someone as great as you either. You're right where you belong running a community of people who truly appreciate what you do.

Nah. Firstly, not qualified in any way (but thanks for thinking about me) mainly but there is one important reason I could never lead (or help lead) Twitch... What I would do is not popular. What I would do, people wouldn't like. What I would do would lose money. What I would do is change the system fundamentally. What I do to Twitch would most likely not work. What does that mean? It means if it were up to me, Twitch would become about video games again. No IRL, No politics, nothing that isn't directly related to gaming culture in some way. What Twitch was before it started to woo Amazon (with the introduction of IRL, relaxing the broadcast rules, especially around sexual content, etc). So what I'm saying it, what I would do is not only unfeasible, it's unrealistic to do what I'd want. It's not something I would do. IRL was a Pandoras Box... you can't turn it off. You can't disable it. Hell, at this point I'd argue a huge portion of the platform doesn't even play or care about video games. And that's a one way process. That isn't something you "fix". It's not something me (or anyone) could go in and bring back. And also, to put it bluntly, at this point there are so many IRL/Non-game viewers that it wouldn't be right to turn it off. Twitch isn't about video games anymore. Sure, it has them, but they are no longer the star of the show. They're just another cast member. Now what's all this mean? It means I (or anyone) shouldn't want to change that. IRL is here to stay on Twitch and it's not going anywhere. So when people say things like this, my response? "I'd much rather someone with resources steps up to make the Twitch of old. A streaming site FOR gamers, BY gamers. Bring in a team of experienced industry leaders that made streaming what it is (@djWHEAT, @Fwiz, etc) and make a board of leaders that understands that the focus is casters, games and viewers. THAT'S IT. Keep overhead as low as possible in the company to keep all the splits as high as possible. Rebuild paradise in a new format." That's the future I'd like to see. IRL and all non-game content having a consistent home that doesn't go anywhere (the current Twitch) and the core gamers of Twitch having a chance to return to that magical place we used to live in. A place where everyone we see and chat with shares our passion. A place for GAMERS. Would this be financial feasible? I think so. A streamlined company would allow for higher sub splits, encouraging casters. I feel many game casters would also flock to the site as it could be built with all the same features of Twitch but more gaming-angled widgets. On top of that, the lack of IRl/Non-gaming means a beefy enforcement team would make the platform FAAAAR more attractive to advertisers (assuming the numbers would be anywhere close lol) in terms of content and, especially in gamedev cases, making sure the audience that sees your advertisement actually wants your products). Basically, yeah, it would need some love but I absolutely think a new platform would be viable. Over time. Hell, Bezos could fund this himself and just make it a sister site to Twitch. 🤣 But yeah, nothing in this tweet is new. I feel like a lot of us have felt this way over the years. We kinda feel like we lost our home. And we want to go home.

@emiru So sorry, Emiru. This is unacceptable from Twitch and you should speak to your agency/mgmt regarding legal action. Not only for your own situation but as a lever to force Twitch to keep people safer. Sadly it's the only force function a company this incompetent responds to.

hello everyone, I am okay and thank you for all of the kind messages, sorry I cannot respond to them all 🩷 Yesterday, the man who assaulted me was allowed to cross multiple barriers at twitchcon and even in front of another creators meet and greet to grab me and my face and try to kiss me. Fortunately he wasn't able to, but a lot of people have pointed out it could have been a lot worse! I'm obviously shaken up by what happened and it's not the first time I've dealt with something like this, but to tell you honestly, I am a lot more hurt and upset by how Twitch handled it during and after the fact. Like I said, I don't understand how he was allowed to make it to me in the first place. The security in the clip who reacts is my own security (it's true my favorite and usual security guard was banned for holding a stalkers arm to bring him to police, at a past Twitchcon) However, there were at least 3 or 4 other Twitchcon security staff in the area who did not react and let the guy walk away, as you can see in the clip since they don't even appear in the frame LOL The woman who is walking me away is my own personal manager, and behind the booth, the only two people who were checking on me and comforting me were her and my friend. None of the Twitchcon staff came to ask what happened or if I was okay. My friend who was present told me Twitch security were also behind the booth afterwards joking about how they didn't even see what happened and immediately laughing and moving on to talking about something else. So if no one was checking if I was okay or if I needed anything and they let the guy run away initially, I have no idea what anyone hired to keep the event safe was doing LOL In Twitch's statement they said that the guy was immediately caught and detained, I'm sorry but that is a blatant lie. He was allowed to walk away from my meet and greet and I didn't hear he was caught until hours after he attacked me, and it felt like this only happened because of my manager pressing for it, not because Twitchcon staff present thought it was a big deal. I have a lot more I want to say but I will say it on stream later today instead of writing a book on here. Thank you guys again, sorry you all had to see that. This is definitely my last Twitchcon, and it saddens me to say as a 10 year off and on attendee of Twitchcon, I think other creators should seriously consider not attending in the future. I did not feel cared for or protected, even bringing my own security and staff. I can't imagine how creators without those options would feel. Stay safe y'all, everything is going to be okay

@paisleyexe trait narcissism and high viewership are absolutely correlated

content creators are the worst friends LOL they really dont even think about you unless they need something

@Fugiman explain it to me in DMs and I'll do it. or we can do a call and make it a video. either/or. I'm pretty sure I have the gist of it but if you have foundational knowledge I'll put the video up and it would probably go a long way to helping creators understand the situation.

Mildly tempted to make a video explaining how Twitch calculates viewership (at a high level) but it'd be 20+ minutes to explain everything and idk how to make it not dry and technical