Look I always wind up being the conspiracy theorist over these things. But I seriously think they're trying to remove small channels. Not like, delete us by force, but make us all wanna quit. And I don't know why your views have slowed down other than mine have too. But to me it's just like, ok so we have a company smart enough to maintain a billion dollar business with a community of a billion people. They claim to be about the audience. Now let's think about their actions as a company.
They put the "highlights" thing in order. So our feeds were what they wanted us to see, labeled "highlights" we all bitched and complained and told them we hated them for it, now any billion dollar company who cared about it's customers would go "whoa they don't like this, what should we do?" But instead, after so many of us ranted and raved about it, they go "we've got a great new change, now our recommendations are in your FEED!"
Think about this, these guys have so much money, that if they didn't want to they wouldn't have to overlook things. But now factor in how they keep doing the OPPOSITE of what the community asks... I just... I think the people who run youtube itself are the ultimate trolls. I may be wrong but just, people's views keep dropping, my friends are not getting my vids in their feed, and all of this just seems.. intentional to me.