 Have you ever wondered why YouTube creators always ask you to click the bell icon after you subscribe? They show you the little bell, they make a little ringy-dingy noise, and why is that? I'm gonna tell you. See, the YouTube algorithm does not have a long memory. It's only interested in feeding you content that you actually want right now. And so, whatever you're interested in at this exact moment is what it's gonna give you. How long is that memory approximately? Let's take a look. With my personal account, I can show you exactly what I mean. Here we are on the left. So one in particular, one of my favorite channels, is a Pittsburgh Steelers channel. It is called Five Star Matchup. Let's see where we can find that. There's Five Star Matchup. I don't want you to see how far down the list it is. This is not an alphabetical list. Why isn't it an alphabetical list? Well, because it's listing things that I've been watching lately. Obviously, I watch the Score Channel. It's great. But like, these are the things that I watch most frequently. Or more recently, I watched a little LA Beast last night. He went up my list, you know? So the further down you are, that means the less frequently you're being watched. Now, I haven't watched Five Star Matchup in a long time. But that's not because I don't like Five Star Matchup anymore. It's because it wasn't football season. So let me show you what I mean here. So I just went there because the Steelers just recently crushed the Buffalo Bills in an amazing game. And then I watched the Monday Night Football and it was mind blowing. And so now I'm like, I want more football content because I got excited about the NFL. So I go here. What do I see? Two days ago, there were highlights of the amazing game that I saw two days ago. I could have watched this already. I've been missing out on content. I'm upset. So not only that, I see one, two, three, four, five, six videos before that one. Seven, I can't count. The last one I watched was this one that was eight months ago because he takes a long break during the off season. I love his stuff. And you would think that YouTube would know that because I've watched every single one of these videos completely to the end. Look at that. Just like every single one, right? I adore this channel. So you would think that the moment it comes back, YouTube would be like, hey, I got something for you. I got a little bit of a five-star matchup. It's back. Now maybe I did get this thumbnail and I just didn't see it. I was looking for something else or I wasn't quite ready for football and maybe I didn't notice it was five-star matchup. I don't know. Could be some different reasons. The point is, people, I never got that notification and you know why? Because this little bell was set to this setting. This is the default setting on YouTube, personalized. That means the algorithm is doing all of the decision-making for you. It only has two other settings, all or none. There's nothing in the middle. Either you let the algorithm decide what's being watched or you say, I like this stuff. I want to see it when it comes out. Maybe I don't even like everything that they make, but I like this YouTuber. I like this content sometimes even. If you like one out of every two videos, there's a chance that YouTube will stop showing you that channel. Maybe one of the videos it doesn't show you is one you would have liked. This is why people ask you to do this, to hit the all button. I'm not asking you to do it. I'm telling you how it works. What I'm saying here is do you want to judge for yourself what you watch or do you want to let a computer do it for you? When you change this bell, when you set this bell to all, you're saying I will decide what I watch. It's my feed. I want to see that. If I'm not interested in something that comes across, I can ignore it, but I won't be punished. They won't be punished for me ignoring it. Maybe I'll watch it later. When you hit this button, you become the judge. You become the person in charge. That's really what it's all about. You should be in charge of what you watch and you should be in charge of the people you support. I hate that feeling of being like, man, I want to support this guy and be there on day one. I want to watch this right when it comes out. I didn't get to do that, but I'm going to go watch it now. There I have clicked this button and hit all. I know that even after the next off season, my Boy 5 Star matchup is going to publish a video and I'm going to get that notification and I'm going to watch it and I'm going to be happy. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.