I’m paying for YouTube so I should be able to turn off shorts because it probably has a similar effect on my brain as sniffing a bag of freshly mixed epoxy glue. No doubt remixes will make the standards even worse. Please just let the good longer format videos see the lime light.
I've made my revanced so that it doesn't have the shorts tab at all. Combined with the fact that I have the history turned off, so even if I open one video, I can't keep scrolling because YouTube won't give you recommendations anymore without the history. That's a win for me.
We’ve come full circle, remember when YouTube used to have replies where you could post a video as a reply to another users video? And then YouTube removed that feature
I have very strong memories circa ~2008 of this shirtless guy with crazy eyes and unkempt long hair in a dark room who would make at best tangentially related insane rambling video replies to basically every popular video, and he’d get a pretty high number of view’s just because it was so weird. I remember he had a white Blue Snowball mic and would use it almost as a prop…
His name is on the tip of my tongue but I just can’t get it. Cyber Jethro? That’s not it… but something in that vein
Obviously a near direct clone of TikTok with some minor variation. Cloning features is better than doing nothing, and Instagram has been pretty successful at growing usage by stealing ideas from innovators like Snapchat and TikTok. No one missed the short-form video wave worse than Vine, but YouTube is a close second.
> Instagram has been pretty successful at growing usage by stealing ideas from innovators like Snapchat and TikTok
It's really impressive how successful this is. When Insta released stories, it basically plateau'ed Snapchats growth, and I wouldn't be surprised to see it happening to TikTok, at least somewhat. Meta always does this: develop the new format, expand availability and user saturation while being under-monetized (which impacts margins), then slowly ratchet up monetization until its as well monetized as existing formats, but with a slightly increased app-wide usage. You can see exactly when they announce the margin impacts of new formats on their stock price, and then you can see when they announce the full-monetization through a rebound.
As an occasional TikTok user, I'm baffled when someone says "no need to get the TT app, it'll be cross-posted on insta reels a few days later". But it's what Meta is counting on. I've started to see the same thing with YouTube Shorts. I personally wouldn't bet against Silicon Valley giants to stamp out TikTok or at least relegate them to Snap's precarious position, if through nothing else except through deferred monetization. TT has been aggressively monetizing, and its driving people away.
The problem with Google is every 5 or so years they pick a random software product and try to copy it, often cannibalizing one of their existing products for the brand recognition. YouTube went from (1) A platform where you upload your home videos to (2) a passive media platform like satellite TV or Netflix to (3) all about Shorts! Which is just TikTok tucked into a corner of YouTube (competing with T-Series and MrBeast for views). (Of course we all know what YouTube will be eventually: https://killedbygoogle.com/ )
I think Search, YouTube and Gmail are the three Google products that will be left until they're turning the lights off, since even "normal" people would notice their shutdown
That's a good narrative to fit in with the "Graveyard" plat, but I think the reality is more nuanced.
1, 2, and now 3 all still exist. They cannibalize only in that attention is finite, but they were losing that attention to others anyways. But 1 was nice, but it was losing attention to 2, so they added 2. Then TikTok made 3, so now they need to add 3 to capture that attention.
The reality is that users want short form video. And YouTube is happy to provide to prevent you from seeing TikTok ads instead. You can still upload your family videos, and you can still watch your TV shows on it.
You're missing when YouTube was all about music, and people used it for music videos. And that YouTube is pushing into Podcasting. And YouTube educational videos, and YouTube Kids. Everyone has the YouTube app, and they need to ensure you don't have a reason to download a new one. Its not random decisions from a bad business, its a ruthless use of a popular platform to capture new formats before users go elsewhere.
The feature is neat enough, though I'm still annoyed how much focus is put on shorts with this stuff now. Like, does every platform need to be a clone of TikTok now? The short form vertical video format is simply not the best one for many types of content, and it's infuriating how much these platforms seem to be laser focused on pushing it.
I have been brushing off people talking about this being the era of the 'enshittification' of the internet.. but it does seem the tech leaders have chosen this as their direction.
Why do you believe is Youtube cloning TikTok if everything is hanky-dory? Things our parents thought were cool - turn us away. We want to invent something new, to call cool and our own. Gen Z? History repeats. Just wait and see. Facebook is a desert used daily by people aged 50+. Good luck finding gen Z on Facebook. Youtube will have the same fate. Not the first platform, nor the last.
They really want to be TikTok so bad. But hey, at least TikTok doesn't run like garbage on non-Chromium browsers, so maybe they should work on fixing that next!
Most of the ads I experience are pre-roll. In FF videos don't autoplay, so I just press F5 a few times until the garbage is gone. If an ad pops in the middle of something, I typically close the tab and find something else to listen to.
