Collabs bleed audience the wrong direction

Collabs bleed audience the wrong direction
Heard this from creators who've done big collabs: the channel that uploads the collab keeps the watch-time credit, while the guest channel gets a description link almost nobody clicks. Word is appearing on someone else's upload does little for your own audience model — you're training their algorithm, not yours.
What this means for you:
— a collab only grows your channel if the content also lives natively on your channel
— negotiate a cross-upload or your own cut, not just a tag and a link
— 'exposure' on a bigger channel without a native upload is mostly their gain
Confidence: medium-high. The attribution asymmetry is well understood by people who've measured it.