[HN Gopher] Shorts risks cannibalising core YouTube business, sa...
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Shorts risks cannibalising core YouTube business, say senior staff
Author : Tomte
Score : 53 points
Date : 2023-09-03 19:45 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.ft.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.ft.com)
| izacus wrote:
| And I bet some veteran staff thinks that shorts should be all
| there is.
|
| People have opinons, what's this nothing burger?
| eddieh wrote:
| I keep clicking the "not interested" X button that closes the
| shorts section oh the homepage, but no matter what it just keeps
| coming back. Unkillable zombie style.
| mitthrowaway2 wrote:
| [X] -- "Ok. We'll hide this for 30 days."
|
| _Is that your idea of consent, youtube?_
| d1str0 wrote:
| Consent was you typing in "youtube.com" to go to a privately
| owned website.
| mitthrowaway2 wrote:
| Perhaps, but that's the consent that they certainly don't
| want me to revoke. The part where my preferences are
| customizable is meant to be a _mutually_ beneficial
| arrangement, because it prevents me from leaving.
| Lammy wrote:
| https://www.mrfdev.com/enhancer-for-youtube can hide them for
| good
| sbarre wrote:
| Not if you're on a device or a tablet, sadly.
| unforeseen9991 wrote:
| Maybe not if you are stuck in Apple's ecosystem, but on
| Android firefox extensions work
| Lammy wrote:
| > Maybe not if you are stuck in Apple's ecosystem
|
| Even then: https://github.com/qnblackcat/uYouPlus has a
| "Hide Shorts Cells" options :)
| pseudo0 wrote:
| After it came back, I killed it permanently with uBlock origin.
| Yet another reason why Google wants to kill adblockers I guess.
| codedokode wrote:
| I watch Youtube on laptop and never watch Shorts. The videos I
| watch are usually in range of 5 to 30 minutes and cannot be
| shortened. Also, I don't like vertical format.
|
| I don't understand what's good in short videos. Would you prefer
| to read 1 page book, watch 1 minute movie or go to a 1 minute
| concert?
| lxgr wrote:
| > I don't understand what's good in short videos.
|
| No attention span required.
| satvikpendem wrote:
| They're fun when you're out and about. They are usually comedic
| in nature. Sometimes, as it's often said, brevity is the soul
| of wit.
| super256 wrote:
| vsauce only uploads shorts these days, it makes me sad.
| Vespasian wrote:
| Make sense.
|
| That explains why he vanished from my perception a while ago.
| Didn't even notice until now.
| jacquesm wrote:
| They keep pushing them too, even if you keep disabling them.
| seydor wrote:
| the youtube people who work on shorts should feel ashamed of
| themselves. They have a platform with a certain reputation and
| acclaim by users for providing - and supporting- all sorts of
| quality content, yet they push hard (very hard) an awfully
| trivial form of (not even) entertainment where you can't even
| seek the video back and forward. you should at least adjust your
| messaging to say how sorry you are for shoving shorts on our
| faces
| commonlisp94 wrote:
| It's also often sexual or suggestive content.
|
| inb4 it's just showing me what I like. In icognito mode go to
| YouTube and watch a single video that might suggest you are an
| 18-45 year old male, and then look at your suggested shorts.
| jacquesm wrote:
| More like 13 to 95...
| Nihilartikel wrote:
| Agreed, though somehow a few of my accounts have escaped that
| recommendation minima in YouTube.
|
| Not so much on tiktok or any fb property. They _really_ force
| the onlyfans market-funnel jiggle videos into your face..
| isanjay wrote:
| > it's just showing me what I like
|
| This is a silly and stupid argument. I was searching for some
| programming tutorials and it showed suggestive content in
| search results in maybe you might also like section or
| something like that. WTF is that.
| Findecanor wrote:
| > you can't even seek the video back and forward.
|
| You can copy the video ID into the URL of the normal player and
| play it like any other video. There's a Tampermonkey script
| that changes the player automatically:
| <https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/439993-youtube-shorts-
| redi...>
| pxoe wrote:
| let's not pretend like youtube has some heights of quality it's
| upholding. "all sorts of quality" is really more like all sorts
| ranging from good to bad to awful. and short-form comedy is in
| there too, and was there all along, right on the regular
| youtube.
| seydor wrote:
| the quality has gotten better over the years so they must
| have been doing something right
| pxoe wrote:
| they're mostly doing nothing. they're sleeping on every
| emerging video category. they got a video podcasts section
| only this year. their gaming catalog remains barebones.
| it's like they just don't want to make any "controversial"
| content curation decisions, even if it means that the
| platform is stagnating.
|
| let's not confuse creators and creator communities
| progressing and evolving, with state of platforms they
| happen to be on.
| Vespasian wrote:
| What has gone down is my ability to even tell what a video
| is even about since YouTubes algorithm/metrics/ad
| distribution Encourages creators to make absolute garbage
| titles and thumbnails in order to be discovered.
|
| This has absolutely negatively affected my YouTube view
| time since I am annoyed at having to guess the topic and
| whether it is worth suffering an ad for it.
|
| I put this in YouTubes court since they control what is
| shown to users and what isn't.
| layer8 wrote:
| > you can't even seek the video back and forward
|
| For me that works with shorts, maybe it's a recent change.
| seydor wrote:
| nope (desktop chrome)
|
| Also, if you are casting videos from your phone to a TV, and
| you accidentally (a well planned accident) click on shorts ,
| it ends the TV cast
| layer8 wrote:
| Safari mobile, and the iOS YouTube app.
| franczesko wrote:
| "Shorts, may eat away at its long-form content, which has for
| almost two decades been its primary bread and butter"
|
| Long form content which is artificially long, because of what
| platform rewards. Those videos cold easily be 2min long or less,
| but how would they justify placing a 30s ads before it? Also -
| majority of streaming takes place on mobile.
|
| Short format is straight to the point and what Internet needs. No
| one has time to go through 10min of clickbaity spam chopped by
| sh*y YouTube ads.
| moribvndvs wrote:
| This comment reduces several different concerns into a single
| opinion that long is clickbait and short is just right. At the
| end of the day, videos should be as long as they need to be to
| suit the type of content, the creator's style, and their target
| audience's taste, and it's offensive for content platforms to
| assume or countermand your preferences or tastes.
|
| The issue is that platforms are _also_ forcing these reductive,
| drain-circling usage patterns motivated by competition and
| profitability, but it especially sucks when you do it to a
| well-established user base. Especially since it's the easiest
| thing in the world to just let users decide if they want shorts
| or not.
|
| You are in your right to think that long form videos are
| bloated click bait. I'm in mine to think that shorts are
| predominantly attention deficit trivialities for memes,
| influencer trash, and also clickbait. What sucks is that I
| can't get away from shorts, and worse than that, shorts
| circumvent YouTube's neutered, paltry search and recommendation
| algos and are constantly pushing even lower quality and
| uninteresting if not completely irrelevant (and sometimes
| inappropriate) rubbish higher than things I'm actually looking
| for.
|
| You at least can go to TikTok. I will have to wait until a
| critical mass of my favorite content creators migrate to a less
| shitty platform.
| threeseed wrote:
| > Short format is straight to the point and what Internet needs
|
| I would strongly disagree.
|
| Short form encourages TikTok style click-bait/outrage-farming
| content.
|
| I much prefer the much more thoughtful longer content you do
| find on Youtube.
| codedokode wrote:
| If the video seems too long for you it probably is just not
| interesting. For example, videos on maths, or on music
| producing cannot be compressed to short format.
| lawn wrote:
| They're horrible.
|
| Luckily you can use ublock origin and letsblockit, or other
| browser plugins, to completely erase them from YouTube.
|
| https://letsblock.it
| traspler wrote:
| Sadly not from the apps without sideloading modified versions.
| Not only is the quality absolutely garbage but I also noticed
| that my brain is susceptible to them and I tend to doomscroll
| if I ever land there. I really try so hard to excise all the
| short form content stuff from my life but even with extensions
| and everything, the web version is not great enough to replace
| the app completely.
| arbitrarian wrote:
| All the times I've watched a short, it's been an accident.
| coding123 wrote:
| Age we live in
| fma wrote:
| "Senior YouTube staffers are reportedly worried that its TikTok
| competitor, Shorts, may eat away at its long-form content,"
|
| They are different forms of content, just on the same platform.
| Seems like a a non-sensical article for the click of driving
| engagement on The Verge - and I guess it worked.
|
| Also, the Verge is just poorly summarizing a Financial Times
| article...in other words, The Verge is providing 'short-form
| content' of ft.com, except, ft.com isn't getting the ad revenue
| (not the same publisher, afaik).
|
| And for FT...their article does not cite a single person from
| YouTube. Just "a staffer in a meeting said..."...according to
| "YouTube staff".
|
| I honestly expected better....from both.
| zimpenfish wrote:
| > They are different forms of content, just on the same
| platform.
|
| Sure but if someone uploads short trailing / covering something
| they also cover in a long-form video (and I have seen several
| creators I follow doing this), there's a non-zero percentage of
| people who aren't going to bother with the long-form version
| because they'll have got the gist from the short. That's eating
| away at the long-form, no?
| sam0x17 wrote:
| > They are different forms of content, just on the same
| platform
|
| No there really is something to what they are saying. My
| husband is a HUGE youtube user and now on most of his devices
| his feed is 50% shorts. It completely changes the experience of
| consuming youtube content.
| sbarre wrote:
| I am in a similar boat, I pay for Premium and I don't want to
| see Shorts anywhere in my feed, but I can't _not_ have them..
| I can snooze them for 30 days or something (I mostly use an
| iPad) but that 's not what I want.
|
| As a paying customer, it's infuriating.
| Ekaros wrote:
| I would not hate them if they also appeared as regular videos.
| But they do not. So sometimes you even have massive discoverably
| problems wit them.
| postmodest wrote:
| I can only assume that shorts increase ad revenue by decreasing
| the time between ad views and that's why they push them on users
| and creators.
|
| The government needs to step in and regulate ads, because ads
| destroy content and at some point , quality content is a societal
| good that needs to be protected.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| I've seen an argument that while that's true, people pay less
| attention to the ads, which are also shorter.
|
| YouTube Shorts is an obvious TikTok knockoff, a platform
| heavily optimized for mindless consumption. Problem is, it is
| so mindless that people forget the ads. There is so much stuff
| happening so fast that nothing sticks, neither content nor ads.
| And advertisers are starting to realize that their return on
| investment is not that great despite the high number of views.
| codedokode wrote:
| > an obvious TikTok knockoff,
|
| No way! How could greatest talents and best innovators of
| Silicon Valley make just a copycat of a Chinese app for kids?
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| YouTube wasn't a Google innovation. Buying them was their
| fallback after they gave up on their mediocre Google Videos
| site.
| collaborative wrote:
| Ads are a necessary outcome of users rejecting to pay for
| digital content 99.9% of the time
| codedokode wrote:
| Users pay for the Internet monthly though. Is that not
| enough?
| majewsky wrote:
| That's like saying that I should not be required to pay for
| Office 365 because I'm already paying the power company for
| the electric power to run Office.
| TheCraiggers wrote:
| Until Comcast starts sending content creators checks, or we
| find some other way of enabling art... no, it's not enough.
| mostlylurks wrote:
| Perhaps, but this must not be falsely equated with a
| situation where every user must either tolerate ads or pay
| for content. The non-obvious distinction lies in that it is
| actually quite feasible for a small subset of dedicated fans
| to support a creator through services like patreon, allowing
| at least the primary body of the creator's content to remain
| freely available without requiring it to be ad-ridden. It may
| even be beneficial in generating more fans than the creator
| would have generated if they'd simply paywalled their
| content.
| littlestymaar wrote:
| The web started without ads nor payments. And it was not
| worse when it was run mostly not for profit, quite the
| opposite.
| d1str0 wrote:
| I see this anecdote all the time as if it it really applies
| to the modern internet. I don't think it really holds any
| bearing at all.
|
| The early days of the internet didn't facilitate trillions
| in economic value like it is now.
|
| We can use that anecdote as inspiration but it really has
| no merit on the modern internet.
| CatWChainsaw wrote:
| Ah yes, 'economic value', the ONLY worthwhile measure of
| goodness in the world.
|
| Trillions of dollars of shit is still shit, but shit is
| at least useful for compost where ads are useless at
| best.
| add-sub-mul-div wrote:
| I've found it very relevant in the post Reddit and
| Twitter era. Instead of seeking out direct replacements
| for those sites I remember how much better the smaller,
| authentic internet was and break the habit of depending
| on the most popular sites just to go along with the
| crowd.
| littlestymaar wrote:
| > The early days of the internet didn't facilitate
| trillions in economic value like it is now.
|
| Neither does ads. The "trillions" in economic value are
| what's driven by the businesses using the internet for
| their business (say to order food, taxis, hotels, online
| games, etc.).
|
| The ads-based internet generate only a tiny fraction of
| that value. In fact, it only generates the low-quality
| value for which people aren't willing to pay anything.
| Youtube is probably the only exception here, and in fact
| if they decided to go fully paid, then many people would
| probably still pay for it, like they pay for Netflix.
| shric wrote:
| It might be neat if there was a top level domain that
| required no ads or paywalled content.
|
| i.e. anyone can register a domain, but if an ad or paywall
| is found on a site there's a warning -> suspension ->
| domain unregistered. Only donation links accepted but they
| cannot provide extra content.
|
| Hobbyist/amateur sites would thrive there as there would be
| attraction due to visitors being confident they won't be
| met with ads or paywalls.
|
| It would be awesome until the registrar inevitably caves
| and gradually bends the rules to increase revenue.
| bobsmooth wrote:
| >The web started without ads nor payments.
|
| That lasted all of 5 seconds before banner ads and auto-
| playing ads became the norm. Bandwidth isn't free.
| sbarre wrote:
| Yeah but scale matters. The number of people who are on the
| Internet now, and therefore the cost to serve them (at
| least for major or popular platforms) is much higher than
| it was back in the early days of the web.
|
| I too long for those days, trust me, but it's just not a
| fair comparison.
| jabradoodle wrote:
| More users is likely not more expensive per user;
| especially not given how much cheaper compute is now
| compared to 20 years ago.
|
| Clearly market forces often lead to a horrible product
| many of us don't like.
| shostack wrote:
| Don't forget the defensive strategic play against other similar
| products. If that's where the audience goes, and you are not
| there, your competitors now get ad revenue that could have gone
| to you.
| rabbits_2002 wrote:
| Every time I have tried to watch shorts it ends up being videos
| of people getting killed or dying. I just went ahead and blocked
| them with adblock
| PartiallyTyped wrote:
| Has anyone tried using youtube without recommendations? I do not
| recommend, and shorts are an even worse plague on top of that.
| crorella wrote:
| Shorts have just downsides in my mind:
|
| - not enough time to provide quality content
|
| - dilution of engagement, because the lack of meaningful content
| you can produce and consume in a few seconds/minutes
|
| - further promote short span focus which is bad for long term
| development
| [deleted]
| neonate wrote:
| https://archive.ph/UJwY1
| yosito wrote:
| I really don't understand why so many apps have to try to
| converge and become the same thing. Apps seem to be having an
| identity crisis.
| crazygringo wrote:
| Because otherwise new apps _replace_ older apps.
|
| The older ones go out of business and die.
|
| Obviously investors and employees don't like going out of
| business. So they try to hop on whatever's becoming popular so
| they don't get replaced.
|
| It may be confusing for consumers. But surely you can see the
| logic for app owners. And it also means competition is alive
| and well.
| sam0x17 wrote:
| Everything has been downhill since they let people upload custom
| thumbnails honestly. That shit should pick a random frame from
| the video and attempts to game that (like re-uploading 1000 times
| until it happens to select the portion of the video with the
| desired thumbnail) should be flaggable. The thumbnails, which
| used to be indicative of average content of the video, have just
| become visual clickbait. Oh how I miss the early days of youtube
| when these were just random frames from the video.
| jakeogh wrote:
| In Libretube, "settings > advanced > enable data saver"
| disables thumbnails. It's wonderful.
| callalex wrote:
| From my perspective, it already has. Some of my favorite long
| form creators have switched to shorts for the money. As a result
| I just no longer bother going to YouTube anymore and just stick
| with podcasts.
| dageshi wrote:
| I'm not sure shorts make much in the way of money vs regular
| videos.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/shorts/H6st2yl6jNE
|
| As they said, I think it might be good for discovery. My
| personal habits back that up, I'm aware of some channels I
| wouldn't otherwise be without shorts.
| sshine wrote:
| Shorts are more addictive.
|
| Shorts will capture your attention for longer and display ads
| in-between more frequently.
|
| I find musicians and naked ladies via shorts, but I rarely
| extend my science and programming channels via shorts.
| BuyMyBitcoins wrote:
| Personally, I can't stand Shorts because they don't let me
| scrub through the video. I actively avoid watching them
| because I feel like I'm being forced to watch the whole
| thing.
| cma wrote:
| It is crazy, even tiktok lets you scrub if it is longer
| than a really short loop. And youtube so closely copied
| the UI that they don't let you even adjust the volume of
| shorts on desktop browsers.
| viraptor wrote:
| It seems to be mostly driven by what you click on. Like, my
| shorts will always include Hank Green, Vsauce, some
| entertainment like VLDL or dropout.tv. Just click "not
| interested" on stuff you don't care about.
| darth_avocado wrote:
| I found the opposite true. Shorts lowers the barrier of
| entry and generates a large volume of garbage content.
| You'd have one original video, followed by thousands of
| other either lip syncing to the original or just nodding
| their head (aka reacting) to it. It is very easy to get
| annoyed by it and leave the platform.
| dottjt wrote:
| Why all the hate for Shorts?
|
| I think they serve a purpose i.e. when I don't have time to watch
| a full video, I can just watch a Short.
|
| Basically when I'm on my computer, I don't watch Shorts. When I'm
| on my phone, and I have a few minutes to kill, but still want to
| learn something I'm interested in, I'll watch a Short.
| karaterobot wrote:
| In that context, what's the difference between a Short and a
| regular video, only shorter?
| UberFly wrote:
| From my perspective they're mostly low effort noise.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| It is the UI/UX.
|
| Shorts are not just videos that are short. It also come with a
| player where you can't go forwards and backwards, that
| autoplays through an algorithmically generated feed, optimized
| for retention.
|
| The system isn't designed for you to watch _a_ short, in fact,
| it discourages it, it is designed so that you watch an endless
| stream of shorts.
| surgical_fire wrote:
| > optimized for retention.
|
| Failed hard on me. Perhaps I am weird.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| Didn't work for me either. My first reaction when I saw the
| new interface was "help, I want to get out!", and I have
| avoided even potentially interesting shorts for that
| reason. I ended up installing an extension that plays
| shorts like regular videos.
|
| There are certainly many "weirdos" like us, but YouTube
| (and TikTok) don't care. As long as it turns on more people
| than it turns off, it is a win for them. If there are
| enough weirdos, some smaller company may get interested and
| cater to that niche.
|
| In fact, I think it is how current tech giants may fail, by
| only focusing on the majority and dropping the niches, they
| may open themselves to a more nimble competitor that use
| these niches as a starting point to eat away their market
| share. Privacy is one such niche, but I think it is already
| an overcrowded market, plus, Apple is on it, so you can't
| rely on that alone. Maybe there is a niche for an anti-
| tiktok that can be exploited.
| aaron695 wrote:
| [dead]
| mkl95 wrote:
| A month or so ago I started watching a comedian I thought was
| pretty talented. Youtube then started spamming me her Shorts. I
| unsubscribed because my brain associates her content with that
| annoying pattern.
| TMWNN wrote:
| Was it Taylor Tomlinson? A couple of months ago I suddenly got
| videos of her (both shorts and the longer 5-10 minute clips)
| recommended, and I'm normally not into standup at all.
|
| (I did enjoy them, but not enough to actively seek out more.)
| alborzb wrote:
| Wow that's wild, I'm not OP but I've also got this exact
| situation.
|
| I watched a couple of old Dave Chapelle clips and then
| suddenly had a bunch of videos from the Taylor Tomlinson all
| recommended to me repeatedly, even though I had never heard
| of her before...
| Havoc wrote:
| It's not the short themselves but youtube's clumsy attempt to ram
| them down everyone's throat that's the issue.
|
| It's a bit like news is now often luck of the draw as to whether
| you're getting an article, an audio clip or a video. It's
| jarring.
|
| If there was a simple toggle button between videos/short/both all
| this wouldn't be an issue.
| esel2k wrote:
| The most awful thing that it defaults in shorts. I am so far that
| I am actually looking into feature phones as I am convinced my
| life would be better without social media and attention-seeking-
| lowcontent offer like shorts.
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