3 NEW Hidden YouTube Settings That Are HURTING Your Views - Turn it OFF!

If you've ever been posting YouTube videos and you're either not getting any traction or you did get some traction, then all of the sudden your views absolutely dropped, then there is a chance that you might have accidentally turned on some hidden YouTube settings that are killing your chances of success. And I know this because last year I actually started my own brother out on YouTube, and with my help his first ever video blew up. He immediately had a ton of success on YouTube, but then he turned on one setting, which I'll talk about later in the video, that absolutely killed his reach for a short period of time until we figured it out and then we were able to fix it. So, I'm going to be talking about that setting and also some other hidden settings that people accidentally turn on that can kill their reach. Now, some of these things YouTube actually admits to, and for others YouTube experts might say that it doesn't make any difference at all. But my anecdotal experience working with literally thousands of YouTube students now tells me otherwise. So, we're going to go through this video, make sure you aren't turning on these settings. I'm also going to mention some other ones that may not be killing your reach, but they might be hurting it a little bit. So, if you appreciate me doing this type of video, let me know by gently tapping that like button, and let's jump into it right now with number one, which I like to call the audience splitter. Okay, so YouTube has this relatively new feature called auto-dubbing. Sounds really awesome. It'll basically dub your video in many different languages: French, German, Hindi, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, and Spanish. Great, right? Instead of just having an English-speaking audience, you can have an audience all over the world. What could possibly go wrong? Sounds good, right? No, not quite, unfortunately. You see, this feature can actually destroy your channel. Now, let me explain what's actually happening. Now, don't get me wrong, for certain audiences this might work great. For instance, if you teach English to people who are not fluent in English, like they barely speak any or they don't speak any, this might work great for you. But for a lot of audiences, it's likely going to be killing your video reach. Now, by the way, maybe a year from now YouTube fixes this, but right now this is what I'm hearing from students, and this is what I'm hearing from the community in general. So, just as an example, if you check out different YouTube subreddits, you will see thread after thread after thread of people basically saying that auto-dubbing is killing their videos. Right? So, this creator said that YouTube turned on auto-dubbing in April. They said that every single video since April completely tanked. They couldn't figure out why for months, then they checked their analytics and it showed that US viewers watched an average of 4 minutes and 33 seconds, and Brazilian viewers watched for only 1 minute and 10 seconds. So, the Brazilian traffic had terrible retention, right? It dragged down the entire channel's performance. The algorithm thought their content was bad, but it wasn't. The audience was just wrong. And here's another problem with this. Advertisers pay different rates for different countries. US viewers pay way more than viewers from India, for instance. So, if your audience shifts from US to India, your revenue is going to drop. So, same views, same watch time, but less money. And another creator shared their story, too. Their video normally started with 10 to 15% click-through rate, and that's really good for YouTube. But suddenly their click-through rate dropped to less than 3%. They checked their analytics, almost every video was now in Hindi, Indonesian, Japanese, and French. But their videos were all in English. Wrong audience, wrong language, wrong everything. And of course, another side effect of this is it becomes a very difficult to see if your video's good or not. You can't really look at the analytics, they're kind of useless. So, this client turned off auto-dubbing immediately and their performance started recovering almost instantaneously, right? So, this feature might sound cool, it might even work for certain types of channels, but for most creators it's absolutely going to kill their channels. Now, by the way, I see creators all the time that are doing everything right, but they're just making a few of these mistakes, and that is why I'm doing a live training. All right, quick break. I'm hanging out with my brother Zach right now. He's not a tech guy at all, and he made $214 in a single day on YouTube. And I just wanted to let you know that this week on Sunday at 9:00 p.m. Eastern Time we're hosting a free one-time live workshop. So, one thing that people struggle with the most is finding their niche, and that is why we actually created an AI called the niche validator that's going to help you find your niche or help you dial in your niche if you already have one. And we're going to be giving away this niche validator this week at a live workshop. And it's called the YouTube content advantage for making money in 2026, and it's happening on April 12th, 2026. So, make sure you mark that down. If you're struggling to find your niche or you don't want to commit months or even years to a niche that ends up not being profitable, then this is for you. So, click the link in the description and the pin comment below. Once you register, hit add to calendar so it shows up on your Google, Apple, or Outlook calendar. And if for whatever reason you're watching this in the future, still check the link in the description and the pin comment below cuz we may be doing another live workshop in the future and it'll tell you when. Now, you'll also be able to ask me questions live, so I look forward to meeting you, and you'll also get an update on how this guy is doing on YouTube as well. So, see you this week and back to your regularly scheduled programming. Now, something that's very similar to dubbing is what I like to call the wrong language trap. And this is where YouTube automatically generates captions for your videos, and 99% of the time they do a phenomenal job. They choose the correct language and they generate captions, and they do a pretty good job. But once in a while, for some reason, YouTube will get the language of your video wrong. So, they might generate captions in Spanish or they might generate captions in Vietnamese or something random like that when your video is clearly in English. And of course, if that happens often times the algorithm is going to punish you. So, here are some real examples from creators. This creator, for instance, posted a video in English, but the auto-generated captions defaulted to Vietnamese. They had no idea why. The video was clearly in English, but they asked, "Will this affect where YouTube shows my videos?" And the answer is yes, absolutely yes. YouTube uses caption language as a signal. It helps the algorithm understand who should see your video. If the captions are wrong, then the recommendations are likely going to be at least somewhat wrong as well, and your videos will likely get pushed to people who don't want it and held back from people who do want it. And this also affects the viewer experience. So, if someone needs captions and they're in the wrong language, then they just leave and they're frustrated and they don't come back. And all of this is going to hurt your engagement metrics. So, make sure your videos have the right captions if auto caption is enabled, and make sure they're of course in the right language. Now, in order to fix this, go to YouTube Studio, click content, find the video you want to check, click the pencil icon to edit, go to subtitles in the left menu, check what language is set for automatic captions. If it says English automatic and you speak English, you're good. If it says anything else, change it immediately. You can also upload manual captions if you want. That's a lot of extra work, you don't have to, but you can. And that way you control exactly what YouTube sees. You can also check your upload defaults. Go to settings, then upload defaults, scroll to the video details, show click more, make sure your default language is set correctly. And this prevents future videos from having the same problem. And honestly, don't let YouTube guess your language. Tell it exactly what you're speaking. All right, number two is what I like to call the invisible video filter. And this is basically when your video is in what's known as restricted mode. Now, you might not even know that this is on, but if it is, YouTube is probably hiding your videos. Let me explain what restricted mode does. It filters out videos that might have mature content. Schools use it, libraries use it, parents use it. And when it's on, your videos might not show up. And even if your content is completely clean, the problem is sometimes YouTube flags videos by mistake. So, your video about cooking tips could be restricted. Your gaming video could be restricted. Your vlog could be restricted, and you have no idea that it's happening. Your views drop and you don't know why. So, here's a real story from a creator. They were struggling with views since the start of August. Nothing was working, they tried everything. Then they watched a video about restricted mode. They turned it on to test their own channel, and a huge amount of their videos just disappeared. And when restricted mode was on, those videos were hidden. That means thousands of potential viewers couldn't see their content. And all those schools, all those libraries, all those families, they were gone. They were not watching their content. They couldn't even see it. And once they fixed it, their views and stats started coming back. Now, this is very similar to the mistake that my brother made, and I call this the silent view killer. And this one is crazy, and most creators haven't even heard of this. Now, I am going to say that it is possible that this is just something that YouTube messed up on for a very short period of time, and maybe they fixed it now. But basically what happened is my brother immediately had success on YouTube. Literally, the first video that we posted on his channel blew up. It had over 800,000 views. He was making over $200 in a single day less than a month into creating his YouTube channel, right? So, he was just having unprecedented levels of success. He's still crushing it, by the way. In fact, the latest update he made over $500. There's a good chance he'll actually show up to the live training. Check that out in the description and the pin comment below. And at the very least, we'll make sure to give you the latest update on how he's doing. So, click the link in the description and the pin comment below to see that. But what happened is my brother was watching some random videos on YouTube after his channel started blowing up. He was doing great. Start watching these random videos, and one of the gurus said that he should turn player for education on. Now, the problem is my brother cusses a little bit, or at least he used to cuss a little bit in his videos. And when he turned player for education on, what it does is it basically makes it so that schools can embed videos without ads, and students can watch educational content without distractions. Now, that sounds great for schools, right? And maybe it is, but it's also terrible for creators. Because here's what happens when your video's in this mode. Your watch time doesn't fully count. Comments are disabled, likes are disabled, subscriptions can be disabled, and you lose all engagement data. And the algorithm thinks that your video is dead. Plus, let's be honest, if it's player for education enabled, there's a good chance that the algorithm thinks that your video is likely going to be shown to children, and that means they're going to scrutinize your video even harder than a normal video. And so, my brother, having a few cuss words in a few of his videos enabled player for education and immediately his views dropped and his revenue per 1,000 views also dropped. It literally just dropped off a cliff immediately after he enabled player for education. Now, you could say, "Oh, well, Shane, this is a coincidence. It had nothing to do with player for education." I've even had some goofballs on Twitter tell me that I'm just like making this all up. And if you ask the official sources, they'll tell you that that's incorrect. Well, of course they're going to tell you that's incorrect, right? They don't want to admit that they made a mistake. And hey, I love YouTube. I think they're a phenomenal company. I love what they do. And there is a very tiny percentage chance that I'm actually wrong and it was something else or it was some kind of anomaly. But chances are I'm not. And really, what do you gain from enabling player for education? Maybe if you are like a tutorial channel or something like that that teaches people how to do chemistry or something. Yeah, sure. In that case, maybe player for education would be good for you. But for most channels out there, unless you are explicitly designing your channel to be viewed in a classroom setting, you probably want to leave off player for education. Now, the problem is once it was enabled, we actually had to contact YouTube support to get it disabled, which is super annoying. So, don't enable it in the first place, but if you do enable it, you might actually have to contact YouTube support to get it disabled, which is super, super, super annoying. So, yeah, just would really recommend not enabling it in the first place. And like I said, guys, if you want to catch up on exactly what Zach's doing, exactly what we're doing to grow his channel, and just tell you exactly how we're doing it, what you should do, how to monetize things, and I'm going to answer any questions that you have, then the pin comment below. Check out my free training. You're going to have a good time. You're going to get a lot of value out of it. And I look forward to seeing you there. All right, next is what I like to call the engagement assassin. Now, a lot of creators check this box without understanding it. They think if their content is kid-friendly, they should check it. Wrong. This is one of the biggest mistakes I see and one of the most dangerous mistakes. Never, ever, ever mark your video as made for kids or made for children unless it is explicitly and only made for kids or made for children. We're talking like Cocomelon, right? We're talking Blippi. If it's not Cocomelon or Blippi, like explicitly made for children, then do not check the video as made for children, right? Cocomelon, Blippi, Miss Rachel, those channels are specifically geared towards kids. Almost any other channel might have some children viewers, but it's not specifically made for children, right? Transformers or The Avengers is a type of movie where children can enjoy it and also grown-ups can enjoy it, but it's not explicitly made for children. Whereas, the show Blue's Clues is very obviously explicitly made for children, okay? Just so you understand that. Hopefully, that's very clear now. And of course, you have tons and tons of comments on Reddit from people who accidentally enabled this and they had a really bad time on YouTube, okay? So, if this is enabled, go ahead and disable it. And it's pretty simple. Go to YouTube Studio, click settings, then click channel, go to advanced settings, look for audience, make sure it says no, my content isn't made for kids unless you literally make content for kids. But of course, if you do, you should check it yes. But if you're making content for like teens or adults, never check that box. Also, check your individual videos. Sometimes you can set it per video, so go through your recent uploads, make sure none of them are marked made for kids, and if they are, change it immediately. Now, something very similar to this one, it's not quite the same thing, but something very similar that I'm seeing, and this is something that I think could potentially change in the near future. If your video utilizes AI, let's just say like my video, obviously this is me, right? This is me. You know, this is me, right? Five fingers, two fingers, etc. But if your video is AI generated, where it might be like an avatar of you, but it's not actually you speaking, it's just like an avatar of you speaking, or even your voice, right? It's like an avatar of your voice speaking, then you need to mark your content as altered content. Now, basically what that means, altered content, is AI content. And if you don't do this, not only will YouTube throttle your channel, but much more, they will very likely demonetize you and even delete your channel. So, it is very important that if you use AI in your channel, like those two things that I talked about, like an AI avatar or AI voice, or if there's any chance that you could be deceiving your audience, then you need to mark it as altered content. And more than that, I highly recommend that you actually disclose towards the beginning of your video that it is AI generated. For instance, if you're using an AI avatar of yourself, you need to disclose towards the beginning of your video that you're using an AI avatar. That's not a real person because it's going to be a lot of people out there that might be fooled by that. And the last thing you want to do is deceive your audience. If you're up front and straightforward about it, your audience probably won't care that much. With that being said, I think that in the near future, if you mark it as altered and you're only using like a little bit of AI, like let's just say you used AI a couple times in the video with like some of the B-roll you used. Or let's just say you used AI to kind of touch yourself up, make yourself look a little bit better. Or let's just say there was a tiny little section in your video where you forgot to say something and you used AI for about 3 seconds in the video just to fix that tiny little section. In my opinion, I think that if you mark that content as made with AI, there is a chance that YouTube might throttle your channel a little bit. Because to YouTube, AI content, generally speaking, is considered to be a bit lower value and they might throttle it a little bit. That's just my opinion. I have no hard data on that, but that's just just my opinion and that's what I think will happen. And so, there are only very specific circumstances where I recommend to mark your content as made with AI. And I talked about those already. Now, there's more to it when it comes to what you can and cannot do with AI. That's something I'm definitely going to be touching on in this live workshop that we do. Click that link in the description and the pin comment below. Additionally, 99% of people who watch my channel are just going to enjoy my free content on this channel where I give a ton of value and they might even enjoy a live training or a live workshop. Click that link in the And that 99% of people are never going to work with me or my team. But for that 1% of you out there that is very serious about YouTube, you want to take it seriously, you want to grow as quickly as possible without a lot of headache, without a lot of pain, and without having to spend a lot of time figuring it out, go ahead and book a call with us down the description or in the about section of my channel. On this call, we'll figure out where you are right now, where you want to be, we'll make a plan to get there, and we'll see if we're a good fit to work together or not. Now, we only work with about 18% of people who applied last time we checked the numbers. So, if you're not a good fit, we're not going to work with you. So, there's literally nothing to lose. Go ahead and book a call. And additionally, if you want to see somebody that we worked with that was able to get some amazing success, you can click this video right here and you'll see one of our clients.