Honestly, it’s the terrible content moderation policies that are going to kill YouTube, not a certain type of video.
Bingo. I don't find shorts all that appealing (especially since I can't cast them to a TV! Wtf, seems like core function there) but I agree, the REAL problem with YouTube is how much creators have to top toe around demonization.
"Demonetization" is just what YouTube's promises to advertisers look like when they affect video creators.
Money on YouTube flows from advertisers. The revenue from charging advertisers to show ads is split between YouTube/Google and the video creator. If your video is not shown with ads, then there is no revenue to split.
YouTube gives advertisers a very small control over what videos their ads are shown on. They have a few different classifications of videos, and advertisers can choose which ones they want to be seen with. Advertisers are paying for the service of YouTube putting their ads on videos — but only the videos that YouTube thinks the advertiser does want to be seen with.
If your video is fully "demonetized", that means YouTube has decided that no advertisers want to be seen with it; or that they are not willing to take revenue from showing ads on that video. But they're still hosting it, making it available to viewers.
Video creators' revenue is a share of the ad income from YouTube showing the video (and accompanying ads). A "demonetized" video is one that doesn't show any ads — so there is no revenue to split. It's not that YouTube is taking all the revenue and leaving none to the video creator. They're not making any, because they don't think the advertisers would be okay with being charged to be seen alongside that video.
However, the creator of a "demonetized" video is still receiving value from YouTube. It is not free to host that video — especially if it is popular. Network bandwidth, data storage, and transcoding of video for viewers' browsers are not free; YouTube covers the cost of these. YouTube is willing to host a lot of videos that they make zero money from, at their expense, rather than censoring those videos by taking them down.
Case in point, when youtube buried one of Caitlin Doughty's documentaries from Ask a Mortician.
The video in question: The Forgotten Disaster of the SS Eastland. It's 43 minutes long, both well done, and respectfully done. Her team did a good job on it then some youtube automated system buried it for "violating community guidelines".
I'm not even sure it is bad policies. I am pretty sure that they just don't have moderators.
I doubt anyone reads 99.9% of reports.
So you get bigotry and hate, you get insane and deadly DIYs, you get 12yo girls being creeped while posting random 5s clips from their lives.
Not to mention just the vast amount of extraordinarily low-quality content YouTube serves up. It's amazing how bad a lot of the videos it thinks you will like are. The algorithm makes no sense.
But hey, here's 16 different Joe Rogan clips with sigma male music in the background.
Might? It already has.
If shorts were simply a separate section of YouTube with all of its functionality, then that's understandable. But as they stand, shorts are just YouTube with both reduced functionality (forced vertical aspect ratio, no seek bar, time limit) AND all of the existing flaws (bad recommendation algorithm, reposted content, etc. )
Unless you are some kind of tech contrarian hipster, I don't think there is one thing that YouTube shorts does better than TikTok, or heck, Instagram Reels.
no seek bar
I really don't understand who thought that removing the seek bar from a video player was a good idea...
I'm mostly fine with shorts, except for two things:
You can't move around in them, it's either play or pause and repeat, which sucks (as shorts don't have to be short..)
On the homepage it doesn't show who the short is from (which channel) without opening them
You also can't adjust the volume in browser. You have to go to a normal video, change it, and then go back.
You can't move around in them, it's either play or pause and repeat, which sucks (as shorts don't have to be short..)
Oddly enough, this seems to be a desktop limitation. I can scrub backwards and forwards just fine on my phone.
What if we fucked over all of the people that like our website to try and cater to people that don't like it?
Seems to be the current trend in social media this year...
Mind you those are (at least some of) the guys that killed animation and comedy sketches on youtube because they made it necessary for videos to be 10+ minutes long to be relevant.
Which I get a laugh out of, because in the early days youtube would not let you post any video longer than 10 minutes, unless you were a "special" approved account. Now, only 10+ minute videos matter. A complete about face.
Using revanced. Disabled shorts. Watching these YT shorts & recommendations decays my brain cells
I don't mind grabbing my pitchfork and joining the "YouTube is already ruined party", but two thoughts first:
That headline is so deliberately vague. It could literally be one employee who said "eh, I don't think YouTube shorts is a good idea".
The article itself doesn't really give you any information that isn't in the headline. It feels like an attempt to stoke anti-YouTube sentiment without providing any useful information.
...okay, with that out of the way...
Yeah, the current YouTube situation is pretty crap.
You should be able to remove Shorts from your feed. I never watch them and yet they fill my feed up making it jore difficult to find real content. I'm specifically talking about the smart TV app which throws them all in together.
I'm using some custom ublock origin filters that I found somewhere to block shorts across all of youtube:
!Youtube Shorts
www.youtube.com###guide-content #endpoint[title="Shorts"]:upward(ytd-guide-entry-renderer)
www.youtube.com###items #endpoint[title="Shorts"]:upward(ytd-mini-guide-entry-renderer)
www.youtube.com##ytd-browse #dismissible ytd-rich-grid-slim-media[is-short]:upward(ytd-rich-section-renderer)
www.youtube.com##ytd-browse ytd-grid-video-renderer:has(span.ytd-thumbnail-overlay-time-status-renderer[aria-label="Shorts"])
www.youtube.com##ytd-browse ytd-rich-item-renderer:has(span.ytd-thumbnail-overlay-time-status-renderer[aria-label="Shorts"])
www.youtube.com##ytd-search ytd-video-renderer:has(span.ytd-thumbnail-overlay-time-status-renderer[aria-label="Shorts"])
www.youtube.com##ytd-watch-next-secondary-results-renderer ytd-compact-video-renderer:has(span.ytd-thumbnail-overlay-time-status-renderer[aria-label="Shorts"])
www.youtube.com##ytd-browse[page-subtype="subscriptions"] ytd-video-renderer span.ytd-thumbnail-overlay-time-status-renderer[aria-label="Shorts"]:upward(ytd-item-section-renderer)
m.youtube.com##ytm-reel-shelf-renderer
m.youtube.com##ytm-pivot-bar-renderer div.pivot-shorts:upward(ytm-pivot-bar-item-renderer)
m.youtube.com##ytm-browse ytm-item-section-renderer ytm-video-with-context-renderer:has(ytm-thumbnail-overlay-time-status-renderer[data-style="SHORTS"])
m.youtube.com##ytm-browse ytm-item-section-renderer ytm-compact-video-renderer:has(ytm-thumbnail-overlay-time-status-renderer[data-style="SHORTS"])
m.youtube.com##ytm-search ytm-compact-video-renderer:has(ytm-thumbnail-overlay-time-status-renderer[data-style="SHORTS"])
Also separately, for blocking videos that don't exist yet, which I also dislike:
!Youtube upcoming videos
www.youtube.com##ytd-browse ytd-grid-video-renderer:has(ytd-thumbnail-overlay-time-status-renderer[overlay-style="UPCOMING"])
www.youtube.com##ytd-browse ytd-rich-item-renderer:has(ytd-thumbnail-overlay-time-status-renderer[overlay-style="UPCOMING"])
www.youtube.com##ytd-browse[page-subtype="subscriptions"] ytd-video-renderer ytd-thumbnail-overlay-time-status-renderer[overlay-style="UPCOMING"]:upward(ytd-item-section-renderer)
Advertising ruined YouTube years ago.
YouTube ruined YouTube
I swear to god these dumb social media sites are going to hell faster every day.
I used to like YouTube because I could watch all sorts of interesting things ... funny things ... informative things ... things actually liked
Now my main YouTube recommended feed is filled with clickbait thumbnails of idiots making surprised or shocked faces to try to get your attention to get you to look at their dumb video of nonsense that has zero information and is not entertaining at all.
God I hate shorts. Luckily you can disable them. But youtube is so riddled with ads in general, it makes watching without adblock impossible. If they'd go back to one 3 second ad at the very beginning, I might even tolerate it. But the current shitshow? Not on my system.
Doesn't help that they have a whooping 113 trackers running simultaneously.
As a viewer I agree with their assessment.
Shorts is (for me) a worse viewing experience and it's just more useless junk tha clutter up my youtube main page.
YouTube shorts was the dumbest fucking idea. They have a niche: long-form (as in >1min) video content. They are dominant in that niche. Then they saw TikTok was popular and dominating the short-form video scene, and their response was... "we should switch to making more short form". WTF?! And on top of that, they've diverted resources away from their main product (longer videos) as the article says. It just seems like such a catastrophic unforced error.
YouTube have such a stranglehold on the >1m market, that's why they can afford to stagnate in that area and look into other markets. They don't have to fear a competitor threatening their core market any time soon.
not only is the shorts UI shitty but the shorts themselves are often shitty imo, or at least the "scroll through shorts one at a time" linear format means you see a lot more videos you wouldn't click on intentionally.
"No YouTube I do not want to watch Jordon Fucking Peterson. I will NEVER want that. Fuck all the way off."
I stopped watching shorts because of the unwanted boosts of fascist content.
might? Shorts are the main reason I found alternatives like Freetube, Newpipe and Invidious; and continue to look for actual alternative platforms.
if there was just a checkbox to turn them off forever I'd probably still be on the mainpage.
Might ruin YouTube? Brother. It's already ruined.
having no proper competitor is the only thing that's still keeping youtube on the boat.
Shorts also cannot be cast from a mobile device. If I'm going through my curated channels while casting, the app give an error and requires me to stop casting before I can watch the short. I just skip it and don't bother anymore.
I wish I could watch shorts from only my subscribed channels.
This isn't a bad format inherently, it's just being abused. I like seeing short Blender clips, or short guitar tutorial on a riff, or stand up bits that sit well within the time frame.
I like and hate their shorts page. I like the fast pace consumption of good content but half of it is rage bait, onlyfans bait, low effort content theft, and people acting obnoxious for attention. I wish I had more control over what shows in shorts because the don't recommend button doesn't seem to do anything.
Shorts are far from being the biggest problem, the ads are much much worse.
The terrible content moderation policies and adblock bans will ruin it long before shorts.
I don't really understand the point of shorts (aside from trying to compete with TikTok). It's an arbitrary limitation of video runtime and locked to a phone screen resolution. So dumb.
Shorts: just a normal YouTube video but it's too short to be useful, and most useful functionality had been removed.you can't skip ahead or go back if you didn't hear something, you just have to watch it again and again.
Shorts is something a manager came up with. It doesn't make it better, it makes it worse, but it also attracts more views, so profit!
Every time I see the little "new content" blip next to someone I've subscribed to and it ends up being a short, I feel cheated.
Shorts suck mainly because you can't cast them.
What good is a Chromecast where I watch long form, see short form I want to watch while browsing, can't cast it without disconnecting from the chrome cast.
Bit fuckin late now isn't it, I can't even open the mobile app without being forced to watch a wish version of tiktok.
I really wish they would make it it's own thing and separate it from youtube.
I really wish they'd just kill it. We already have one tiktok, which is already one too many
I wouldn't know, I have an extensive set of modification over youtube that, among other thing, completely remove them from existence. Now if only I could do the same with the bad automatic translations…
It seems every new feature of youtube is something we have to fight against.
shorts dont have 30 second ads at the beginning of them, unlike the less than 10 second videos i attempt to watch
I hate them, but this is kinda late...
If we could only decide WHICH channels we want - let the people who want shorts have it, shitty as it is. Just let me turn it off (and games, film and music while we’re at it).
I never used them. I never will use them. They are just in the way and keep me praying for a YT alternative.
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
