YouTube shorts baffle me, in a way. "We've spent 20 years developing the perfect user interface for watching videos...now let's throw it all away and remove almost every feature so that it's more like TikTok."
This could be applied to most of technology nowadays and the continuous decline of software quality. A lot of UI/UX problems were effectively solved 20 years ago.
The problem is that since then technology shifted from a tool to help the user achieve a certain task to an ad delivery vehicle where success (and profit) directly correlate to the the amount of user time wasted, and it turns out bad UI/UX wastes more time and is preferable in such a scenario.
Try this: "we've spent 20 years developing the perfect user interface for watching videos, and our users are abandoning it for TikTok. What to do, Product Manager?"
I dont think Youtube is losing users to Tiktok. I thnk Tiktok is growing with new potential youtuber users and youtube cant accept that and must throw everything away to capture them.
This view is myopic and wrong. YouTube doesn't need a different format, it just needs a better algorithm and a better mobile client. Making a new format is ruining what is one of the most amazing sites on the internet.
It's successful in a really unhealthy kind of way though. I'm in my late 20s and in at least one group chat I'm in I've got 4+ friends who together we try to avoid shorts because they are such a time sink.
You don't enjoy your time on it but it's engaging and it's hard to get out of once you get sucked in. My friends literally keep track of how long they've been away from shorts and regularly "relapse" into sinking hours into shorts "against their wills" even when they uninstall the app but eventually end up on the mobile website stuck in shorts.
It's very much intentionally addicting and takes advantage of basically every dark pattern they can to maximize your time spent in the app.
Gambling is also extremely successful but you could argue it's a net loss for society to have it.
The argument that money == correctness is basically what we've been trained to believe by armies of MBAs, but it's not right. It's sad that the state of philosophical and moral discussions in our society has basically been usurped by a kind of thoughtless reductionism.
Some of it is artificial. If I’m watching a Short on my TV and I miss a word, I can’t go back to hear the word again. I have to finish watching it and watch the whole thing again. People making the shorts do this on purpose so people re-watch.
90% of the Shorts in my feed aren’t original content, it’s some random nobody stealing someone else’s content and clipping it up for easy money, usually overlaying some random other content so avoid a copyright strike. They are the drop shippers of the YouTube world. They add very little value, and just milk it for profit while they can.
Some slight improvements to the main video experience would make most shorts irrelevant. Let me share a clip from a longer video with a start and end time. Then have a way to seep popular clipped content. This would keep the views with the original creator, give the viewer an easy way to keep watching to get the full context, eliminate all these bottom feeder accounts, and unify the experience so YouTube doesn’t feel like two different sites mashed together. This seems like it would be better in every way.
They're addictive, they're "popular" in the way slot machines are popular and require controls around. It's just so easy to watch another, which miiiight be amazing!
I can absolutely argue about what measure of success to apply. If you're only focused on what makes you money, then you're successful according to this one metric, but you're a psychopath and you're hurting your users. And it's millions of users because you're maximizing for that.
If you instead make a great product that is liked by a select audience, and that doesn't cause them brainrot, then you have succeeded on a different metric.
Which metric is more conducive to a successful society?
Well, at least they made it incredibly annoying with the auto translated AI voice. At first I didn't even find the setting on youtube shorts to switch to the actual audio track.
They should keep going though. Maybe someday I will be so annoyed that I finally stop using this website
I think auto-translate applies to all types of video, though? I once clicked on a 20+ minute Luisito Comunica video and found him speaking in very weird, stilted English. Can't even remember how I disabled it but it was a surreal experience.
you just described almost ever product ever :) I used Jira when it was first released and it was ridiculously amazing. facebook was fire too… but quarterly earnings are you know, once per quarter… :)
Nextgrid|4 months ago
The problem is that since then technology shifted from a tool to help the user achieve a certain task to an ad delivery vehicle where success (and profit) directly correlate to the the amount of user time wasted, and it turns out bad UI/UX wastes more time and is preferable in such a scenario.
raincole|4 months ago
pier25|4 months ago
AuthAuth|4 months ago
CuriouslyC|4 months ago
wvenable|4 months ago
OneDeuxTriSeiGo|4 months ago
You don't enjoy your time on it but it's engaging and it's hard to get out of once you get sucked in. My friends literally keep track of how long they've been away from shorts and regularly "relapse" into sinking hours into shorts "against their wills" even when they uninstall the app but eventually end up on the mobile website stuck in shorts.
It's very much intentionally addicting and takes advantage of basically every dark pattern they can to maximize your time spent in the app.
gtowey|4 months ago
The argument that money == correctness is basically what we've been trained to believe by armies of MBAs, but it's not right. It's sad that the state of philosophical and moral discussions in our society has basically been usurped by a kind of thoughtless reductionism.
al_borland|4 months ago
90% of the Shorts in my feed aren’t original content, it’s some random nobody stealing someone else’s content and clipping it up for easy money, usually overlaying some random other content so avoid a copyright strike. They are the drop shippers of the YouTube world. They add very little value, and just milk it for profit while they can.
Some slight improvements to the main video experience would make most shorts irrelevant. Let me share a clip from a longer video with a start and end time. Then have a way to seep popular clipped content. This would keep the views with the original creator, give the viewer an easy way to keep watching to get the full context, eliminate all these bottom feeder accounts, and unify the experience so YouTube doesn’t feel like two different sites mashed together. This seems like it would be better in every way.
moritonal|4 months ago
wiseowise|4 months ago
eviks|4 months ago
JoshGG|4 months ago
array_key_first|4 months ago
Timwi|4 months ago
If you instead make a great product that is liked by a select audience, and that doesn't cause them brainrot, then you have succeeded on a different metric.
Which metric is more conducive to a successful society?
nicman23|4 months ago
334f905d22bc19|4 months ago
They should keep going though. Maybe someday I will be so annoyed that I finally stop using this website
cholantesh|4 months ago
bdangubic|4 months ago
eviks|4 months ago
pier25|4 months ago