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Comment by jrockway | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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