30 YouTubers That Fell Off So Badly Even Their Year Long Fans Left Them

The day is February 14th, 2005. It’s the day a new social media and online video sharing platform, YouTube, is founded by former employees of PayPal – Chad Hurley, Jawed Karim, and Steve Chen. Little did they know that their platform would change the world as we know it. 

Sound dramatic? Well, let’s admit it – YouTube did really cause a cultural shift, didn’t it? Now, 20 years later, it’s still the second most visited website in the world (with only Google beating it). 

As of 2024, the site had over 2.7 billion monthly active users, who were collectively watching more than a billion hours of videos daily.

Still, no matter how much content is being watched, just as much, if not more, is uploaded constantly – in May 2019, videos were being uploaded at a rate of over 500 hours of content per minute. In mid-2024, it was estimated that the site hosted around 14.8 billion videos in total. Impressive numbers, aren’t they? 

YouTube isn’t only a simple site to watch videos, but for some, it’s a full-time job. And we’re not talking about people who are responsible for the site’s functionality or the business itself; we’re talking about those whose job is creating those videos – YouTubers. 

When a person starts off in this profession, usually it’s not profitable – it takes time to build a following that interacts with your content. Interactions, like views, likes, and subscriptions, are what bring in the money, most of the time. There’s this thing called the YouTube Partner Program, where people can monetize their content when they fit the criteria, and depending on how successful it is, make money off it. 

Granted, this program isn’t the only way to make a profit while YouTubing – a content creator can also take on sponsorships of various companies, which pay them pretty large sums of money. Only the creators must be cautious of what sponsorships they sign up for, as there have been a handful of stories where some sponsors turned out to be scams, terrible companies, and things like that. 

A few examples of such cases would include Honey, the coupon-finding system that was a pretty prevalent sponsor back in the day. Later, it was found out that the way this system worked was pretty scammy – codes not working, stealing commissions, and stuff like that. This caused many YouTubers to turn away from the company and apologize to their viewers. 

Another questionable sponsor is BetterHelp – a site for mental health services. Many creators used to recommend it, and some still do. Yet, the legitimacy of this service has been questioned, as there have been scandals related to privacy concerns, misleading users, and transparency. 

Sometimes, YouTubers getting involved with controversy makes their viewers turn away from them, as they don’t want to support someone who is getting paid off by questionable firms. 

Yet, sponsorships are far from the only reasons why even the most loyal fans turn away from their beloved content creators. Sometimes it’s scandals, which there have been quite many of throughout the years. Other times, it’s simply content losing quality or just getting boring/stale. 

That’s what today’s list is all about – YouTubers who lost loyal fans due to the decrease in quality. Check it out, and if you have any more examples, make sure to leave them in the comments!