Blogs are dead but YouTube is thriving. I can find endless high quality content on basically any topic. Even compared to 10 years ago it’s so much better today.
I don’t think there has ever been a better time to learn on the internet than today.
I don’t think there has ever been a better time to learn on the internet than today.
This thing about video length is mostly a myth. "The algorithm" juggles many variables but I've seen no evidence content length is one of them.
There was a very common pattern of rambling to meet the 10m mark because this was a threshold to add a midroll ad to your video and thus make more money.
So your point still applies, it's just purely out of creator greed and not chasing youtube's heuristics.
Regardless, you're correct that watch time may be a motivating factor in making them stretch content longer than it needs to be though. I don't think they get paid for watch time (it's all about ad impressions or CPMs) but it would positively impact their channel statistics.
It's also not realistically possible to auto generate spam video content like you can for blog posts.
It definitely is. If you look for videos just a bit longer then 10 minutes (something to do with YouTube recommendation algorithm) you will notice how much unnatural en spammy conversation and “information” is being told (backed by meme or stock images or just a talking head) before getting to the point of the video (which often is barely 1min of content). Sure it takes more time to actually speak the text and edit the video. But it really feels like generated garbage to fill time which can be easily churned out. Now with the dawn of AI I can only image this getting worse and worse.
I think naturally practitioners/experts have better insider insight about the industry than full time content creators but they can't dedicate as much time to create content. Lots of youtube channels just try to cater to beginners, abuse clickbait titles, recycle content from other sources, fill the videos with low effort memes.
As an example, try to look up on YouTube how to replace your car fob’s battery (doesn’t matter what brand) and you will absolutely encounter an 8-10 minute video offered up for what’s probably a 15 second value and something the manufacturer could have provided in a decent 3 panel illustration hosted on a static .html page, but won’t.
Right, because you're not supposed to do that yourself. You're supposed to go to your dealership and pay them $50 to change the $0.20 battery in 15 seconds. Do you really think you're qualified to do such a difficult operation by yourself?
I actually got into an argument on Nextdoor once because someone was promoting a battery store that charged "only" $20 for this "service", and felt it was a "good value" and got mad that I was pointing out that you can just buy the battery by itself for less than a dollar and do it yourself.