I consistently hear people on YouTube complain that the subscribe button doesn’t do anything for viewers, now that channel notifications are controlled by the bell. But it does do something: it puts the videos from that channel in your subscription feed, which is readily accessible on all versions of YouTube. So why do people act like it doesn’t exist? I think it’s super convenient, especially if you’re subscribed to a ton of channels and don’t want your notifications feed flooded with new videos.
Man, the bell doesn’t even fuckin’ notify me of new shit. That was the point of subscribing in the first place: So I don’t have to come and check the channel for new content all the time. It would just fucking tell me. I should not be surprised to find a video from someone I am both subscribed to and enabled notifications for on my recommended feed from 3 days ago. I should have been informed of it 3 days ago when it was uploaded.
At the very least, brand new, unwatched videos from subscriptions should be the first thing shown in your Home feed. I don’t even feel a need to subscribe to things that post several videos or even 1 video a day. If I already know their schedule because it is so regular, I can just go to their channel every day for new content so I don’t even subscribe.
The only merit subscribing and notifications have is for channels with sporadic uploads, which already get fucked over by the algorithm because they aren’t generating as much engagement due to not having as many videos.
I’ve never used this notification feature. My YouTube bookmark goes right to my subscriptions and I check that like I check Lemmy and reddit before it
That’s my experience as well, the bell has never functioned as I thought it would. But it may be user error on my end, I’ve never been able to get a notification for Instagram Live either.