Hacker News Reader

Comment by undefined1 | Hacker News Reader

TikTok is like a highly compressed version of YouTube.

YouTube incentivizes creators to make artificially long videos, resulting in a huge amount of filler. So you get a lot of videos where you can skip the first 20%+ and not miss anything. The content is buried and spread out.

1 minute of content surrounded by 9 minutes of filler.

TikTok removed those 9 minutes, so it feels very refreshing in that respect. There's no incentive to create filler - just the opposite.

Of course the downside is that there's only so much you can fit into a 60 second package, so you're not going to get a deep dive into anything. But for the kind of content that can be compressed like that, TikTok wins big time.

View on HN

I watch a lot of YouTube and haven't really noticed any artificially long videos in my bubble of channels. I agree that intros are annoying (I have no idea why people do them), but other than that... it's just the usual video stuff. The nature of the format is that a one page blog post becomes a 10 minute video. People talk slower than they read, so it's somewhat unavoidable. There are also YouTubers that are really into the long form video essay format (hello, ContraPoints), but I don't think they're doing that to milk as much ad revenue as possible.

But again, that is just the random subset of YouTube that I watch. I doubt any of it is that popular, and I am always shocked when I get logged out and am on the default main page. So my experience could be totally off-base.

Yeah, I'm making a generalization about the platform and what it incentivizes. It's definitely not to say that all channels create filler.

Being logged in and curating really makes all the difference. ContraPoints, CGP Grey, Joe Rogan, Kurzgesagt - I think that kind of content shines on YouTube, isn't possible on TikTok, and don't see them as artificially long.

YT channels with frequent update formats are 10-20% filler with intro/endcard/credits/sponsors. Most talk slow enough that they can be comfortably watched at 2x speed. Channels like contrapoints - irregular long form content that's usually demonetized and funded via patreon doesn't waste your time as much. But they're still paced differently than TikToks which bias towards brevity. There's still some tedious videos... lots of old codger maker content that takes the full minute to show 10 second worth of content, but from my experience, that's still shorter than sitting through youtube filler.

> I am always shocked when I get logged out and am on the default main page

Yeah no kidding. The stuff that's popular on Youtube is like it's from another planet to me. I stick to my subscription page.

Really? I feel like I could easily most of the videos I watch and still understand what the video is about.

The first few minutes are the intro, a message that the video is sponsored and we will find out about them later, last 3/4 minutes is always the "Like, Subscribe" and a sponsorship message usually. This means that both the front-and the back can be cut out easily without any affect on the actual content.

I agree. I’m slowly starting to realize that a lot of videos are filler myself. Because there are so many videos out there and I find they are often too long, I just skip skip skip ahead until they get to the point. That or just drop out of the video to find another one that does get to the point.

I don't find much filler among the areas of interest that I specifically follow on YouTube (some of that of course being due to my own selection of who to subscribe to), but I do find that filler on YouTube when I'm searching for some other instructional information on Google.

My "favorite" set of bullshit videos is "How to pronounce" videos.

They're really long and typically use text to speech instead of a human.

I wish I had data on the average length of youtube videos over time. I swear 5 years ago an explainer video or a game review would be less than 5 minutes consistently, which is what I personally want from a platform like youtube, a digestible snack of information. Nowadays career youtubers are often pushing well over 10 minutes which just occupies too much of my time to be worth the distraction.

I used to watch YouTube now it is the place of last resort for any content or explanation because its too slow. I once had to spend 9 minutes watching a video about how to get a tricky gasket out of a spot on my truck. The short answer is that you take a 3/4 inch threaded pipe twist it into the gasket and pull down. The long answer was a 9 minute video. Almost always, when a link takes me you YouTube, I just assume I don't need to know that bad. Its like a recipe site that can't be scrolled or searched.

I really moss when people wrote what they did in little snpits on blogs.

The answer, of course, is ads. You get more roll time if you hit the 10 min mark, even if its just slightly over

Can someone explain to me why this comment was flagged dead? It's also my understanding that the inflation of video times to certain intervals was driven by how many ads were allowed at a given video length.

> YouTube incentivizes creators to make artificially long videos, resulting in a huge amount of filler.

Given how popular obnoxious jump cuts are on YouTube, I would assume this wasn't the case. What part of YouTube incentivizes this?

I always attributed the increased intros/outros/ad spot/filler lengths to the general trend of YouTube getting more "professional" than it did 10 years ago.

Historically YouTube would downregulate short videos in their algorithms. The cutoff was 10 minutes, if I remember correctly. So the biggest content creators got used to stretching out any video to at least 10 minutes. I think YouTube has relaxed that a bit recently.

Which is funny in the greater historical context, because in the early days of YouTube you couldn't upload videos longer than 10 minutes.

EDIT: As an aside, YouTube's algorithms also punish you if you aren't regularly uploading content. It was really a perfect storm of shitiness where content creators needed to pump out content constantly, while also ensuring those videos were all 10 minutes or longer. It drastically affected the YT landscape. Content creators like Noah Caldwell Gervais who only sporadically release content because they spend HUGE amounts of effort on what they do release were getting slammed by the algorithm. Again, the algorithm has gotten a little better in that regard over the years. Though it's gotten worse in other ways.

I believe the 10 minute thing is because YouTube at some point let you include mid-roll ads if your video was longer than 10 minutes.

Yes the 10 minutes unlock you significant monetization options

> What part of YouTube incentivizes this?

Advertising placements. If a video is longer than eight minutes (formerly ten minutes), it's eligible for "midroll" ads and will earn the creator more money.

Mid-roll ads on Youtube require a minimum length of 8 minutes. So if you're making videos shorter than that you're losing a monetization opportunity.

> TikTok removed those 9 minutes, so it feels very refreshing in that respect. There's no incentive to create filler - just the opposite.

It's to a point that I skip any TikTok video that starts like “I was in the forest and found this mushroom. Did you know that this kind of mushroom can be used to... ”. I skip it as soon as I hear “I was in the“ (that and the usual tone that comes with it).

I don't care. Show me directly what you are doing with the mushroom.

Most people are familiar the standard narrative arc structure (which makes for compelling storytelling):

normalcy -> conflict -> (rising action to) climax -> resolution.

In flash fiction (i.e. very short fiction), the same elements exist, but due to brevity constraints, it starts the story in the middle, i.e. the point of conflict or climax, and then resolves the other parts along the way.

I think creators who understand how to exploit this structure could potentially make some really compelling short videos.

Example:

"For sale: baby shoes, never worn."

Yeah I wish TikTok has variable speed / fast forward option. Another factor for ML to train and automatically speed up to the juicy bits. There's a lot of room to waste even in 1 minute formats. Though TikTok itself is mostly time wasting and this remark is more an indictment of my attention span.

Is it possible to scrub videos / skip around in tiktok? I've tried googling it but to no avail.

Pretty sure you can't.

Is reinforcing that behaviour not worrying to you?

Being able to get consistent, instant stimulation from doing effectively nothing seems dangerous to me.

We're training ourselves to not be able to focus on anything.

I don't really think so (at least regarding my tiktok usage)

Being thrown right into the mushroom thing, into the action, forces me to keep focus and attention. The pseudo-introduction is just dulling my mind while not bringing anything of consistence.

I had some tiktoks that started like "So I read something incredible the other day and I just had to try it. I am gonna show you what happened when I decided to eat an orange under the shower". Don't care. Starts with you eating the orange.

As another sibling commentator wrote it's a different narrative structure.

> Being able to get consistent, instant stimulation from doing effectively nothing seems dangerous to me.

The same could be said from books but I get what you mean. I still read books, so I guess I am okay (it could be worse !).

edit: to be fair, I have very low tolerance and patience for people who beats around the bush :/. On the other hand, when walking outside I can stop and look around me for 2 or 3 minutes every 100 meters because there's always some piece of architecture or natural landscape to look at.

> incentivizes creators to make artificially long videos

One of the reasons I use a FF addon to make the default speed of all youtube videos 1.5X. So few v-bloggers are succinct and fluid enough to have to listen at 1X.

Generally when I stumble upon a minute long video, it's either really, really good or clickbait that's completely uninteresting. It tends to be the latter. The sweet spot for videos in my opinion is 15 seconds or so. Short enough that I can't possibly get bored but long enough to have a meaningful tidbit of content.

Finding subsequent parts of a multi-part series generally isn't worth the effort.

I guess that's why there is short video suggestions now in the Youtube app.

I noticed this just this week! I've found it refreshing watching 30-60 second clips of very random things I wouldn't care about otherwise.

I'm not sure if this has anything to do with my general preference for sub 5-minute videos that just get to the point.

Like Twitter v Facebook

Reply on news.ycombinator.com