Technology

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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? 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.

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.

The terrible content moderation policies and adblock bans will ruin it long before shorts.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.