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The visual equivalent of reading a paragraph of text would be watching a short clip, so I don't see what's wrong with the site. While you prefer text to video, I think there is a sizeable chunk of the population that would prefer watching a small clip to reading text.

It's just personal preference, I think.

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I think the issue is that (for some, at least) reading is much faster than watching the video, especially combined with the additional loading times.

Exactly. Right now I'm stuck on ~10 kilobytes per second (yes, in 2011). With the loading times, the time it takes me to decide whether or not something is pertinent to me and my goals is far greater with videos than with text.

Then again, I suppose I am an edge case. I mean, most people on HN wouldn't have such substandard connections.

Even with an arbitrarily fast internet connection, I can read a lot faster than anybody talks.

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