Some veteran YouTube staff think Shorts might ruin YouTube

Honestly, it’s the terrible content moderation policies that are going to kill YouTube, not a certain type of video.

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.

I'm mostly fine with shorts, except for two things:

1. 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..)

2. On the homepage it doesn't show who the short is from (which channel) without opening them

What if we fucked over all of the people that like our website to try and cater to people that don't like it?

Using revanced. Disabled shorts. Watching these YT shorts & recommendations decays my brain cells

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.

Advertising ruined YouTube years ago.

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.

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.

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.

Might ruin YouTube? Brother. It's already ruined.

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.

Shorts are far from being the biggest problem, the ads are much much worse.

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.

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 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.

shorts dont have 30 second ads at the beginning of them, unlike the less than 10 second videos i attempt to watch

I really wish they would make it it's own thing and separate it from youtube.

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.

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.

I hate them, but this is kinda late...

Youtube just stopped being useful. Now it's all republished TV and no personal expression. Totally boring.

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.

There's just something off about watching shorts and tiktok, if I use it for too long it feels like my head is going to explode. There's some great content there for things I'm interested in, like quick tips for software that I use, but if I watch 5 of those in a row I'm not going to remember anything. All in all I think the format, and regular youtube, would work a lot better if they didn't push so hard to get me to just sit there for hours on end.

Perhaps it's a little too late for YouTube to ride this trend. TikTok is even pivoting to long videos, as they know where the money is.

If they forced livestreams in your face like they do shorts maybe people would actually watch their content

They're pushing it way too hard, just like the google+ shit back in the day but even more in your face. Stinks strongly of "we have tiktok at home"

I'm not a fan of how little control there is over Shorts feeds and how they are set to repeat infinitely, but people are way too overly dramatic about Shorts. It seems like it's culture shock more than anything.

They are right that Shorts are harming YouTube, in the same way that Windows 8 harmed Windows.

YouTube and TikTok are different things. People go to TikTok for a specific thing, people go to YouTube for something else. And YouTube sees a bunch of people on TikTok, and says 'if that's what people want we should be the ones to give it to them'. But in doing so, they are ignoring the people who WANT YouTube and NOT TikTok, by making YouTube more like TikTok.

This is just like Windows 8. Microsoft saw a bunch of people ditching desktop PCs in favor of iPads, so they said 'let's make Windows more like an iPad'. Thus, Windows 8- only one app open at once, touch-focused interface that was frustrating with a mouse. It ignored the people who WANT Windows and NOT iPad, by making Windows more like iPad.

The simple fact is, Shorts are frustrating. The lack of a scrub bar and volume control are a big part of why I DON'T like TikTok, especially on PC. And seeing that same crappy format on the desktop YouTube web interface is a big turn off.

If there was an option to just 'never show me Shorts' I'd click it in a heartbeat.

There are much bigger problems with YouTube than Shorts though. One of the biggest is their content moderation. I get it, there's 50 hours of video uploaded every minute and you can't watch it all so you let automated system handle it. Problem is, people RELY on YouTube to make a living in many cases. And when some asshole can destroy their livelihood by filing a couple hundred obviously false bot reports, that makes creators think twice. Same thing when the policies you DO have seesaw between allowing some really offensive stuff, and persecuting types of content that people in California dislike.

What YT needs to do is rethink the whole way demonetizing works. Rather than being a single flag that instantly makes a video ineligible for monetization, they should have categories of advertisements. So that way if someone wants to post a video that has controversial themes like (for example) firearms or marijuana use, rather than being entirely demonetized, the video can show ads from gun companies or smoking supply companies. Advertisers could specify what sort of controversial content they are willing to be promoted alongside, so everybody could win.

Another huge problem is their awful 'engagement algorithm'. It seems expressly designed to make low quality content bubble to the top, while the really good stuff is harder and harder to find.

I really think shorts should have a separate recommendation algorithm. Cause the type of videos I watch are way different than the shorts I watch but now my feed is changing

YouTube ruined itself with censorship.

Since they added it I've moved over to revanced which allows you to remove it.

This is the best summary I could come up with:

Senior YouTube staffers are reportedly worried that its TikTok competitor, Shorts, may eat away at its long-form content, which has for almost two decades been its primary bread and butter, according to The Financial Times.

As FT points out, YouTube’s ad revenue, though recently improved, had been on a downward year-over-year slide for three straight quarters.

YouTube is still figuring out how to reap more ad money from Shorts.

Its long-form content lets it show more ads per video, but as short-form content gradually takes over, content creators themselves are uploading fewer long videos, FT writes, citing YouTube staff fretting about internal figures.

Keeping up with that means adding features like AI summaries and NFL highlights, and even making compromises elsewhere in Google’s business to keep other industries happy and supportive of the service.

It also means investing in Shorts’ creators and incentivizing them to make exclusive content for YouTube’s service.

The original article contains 169 words, the summary contains 151 words. Saved 11%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

Then in 10 years when some disrupting service releases “ephemeral” video clips that last <1 ms and get deleted; and YT implements it. The YT veteran staff of the future will think that is ruining YT shorts

No way!

We can only hope

YouTubers already become a steaming pile of shit, the shorts being pushed in your face constantly is just a symptom. Their algo, content and ads are just horrific. I used to surf YouTube a ton, now I only go when I'm looking for specific instructional type videos, maybe a review. Watch that and leave.

They're well on their way. I've gotten an extension to block them on desktop. I bet revanced can do it on mobile, too

I ducking hate how they removed functionality from them. They don't show when they were posted, you can't speed them up or slow them down, they repeat forever which is annoying if your going through the comments, the buttons being on top of the video obscures it, I can't cast them to the TV from my phone (which is weird because it will play them if I select them directly from the TV app), it's just a terrible UX overall. I never swipe up and I'm starting to get annoyed with how cumbersome it is to exit out to watch regular videos once I've watched the short I clicked on. I really don't understand why YouTube wants to sacrifice everything that makes it great to be more like tiktok. If I wanted that format, I would go to tiktok.

I don't think it's going anywhere. People get lost in shorts really quickly, especially on your phone. It's the algorithm being able to decide who you are and how to get engagement out of you at a much faster rate then regular videos.

Nobody asked for this, nobody wants it on youtube. But it keeps people on the platform longer and it feeds the algorithm fast. So it's not going anywhere

I enjoy YouTube Shorts a great deal. It could definitely be easier to curate your feed than it is, but I have a great deal of intractable pain at all times, and I like the fluffy format. It's easy to digest and understand and move on to the next one when my attention span is completely destroyed by the constant intense pain. Sometimes it's the only thing that gets me through the day.

Sounds like old guys complaining about the new move their employer is making.

There are only about 100 shorts in total on youtube, it seems. I would get 1-100 and even though I’ve disliked all of them, or clicked “don’t show me this channel again”, It will start back at #1 after I reach 100. It’s really, really bad, and most of the shorts videos are advice on how to start a powerwashing business.

I think they are a great addition for the short 1 minute ideas some youtubers have that may as well be posted on their 2nd channel.
Imo it could be improved with a landscape option and longer than 1min vids.

As right as they are, I still can't help but think "To be fair Youtube was ruined when you let Viacom write the playbook for it."

Some creators have made mostly dusts and stopped making normal videos. I don’t watch sorts as they are too addicting.

Shorts are fine. Only minor complaint is that they lack descriptions and play like shit on desktop. Some of us like to browse YouTube on a computer on occasion...