Hacker News Reader

Comment by nomius10 | Hacker News Reader

I remember a time when crossing the 10 minute mark was really stretching it on YouTube. Nowadays most videos hit the 1 hour mark... I'm not sure if this is what the market demands, or this is just Google nudging creators in this direction.

Fortunately people still make short videos, like this (relevant) one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0WWbpBxLCI

View on HN

> Nowadays most videos hit the 1 hour mark... I'm not sure if this is what the market demands

For many genres, this is simply what pays the most for the creators.

Some people just flip on a video and let it play — maybe just in the background, maybe as they fall asleep. The ads that get played when they aren’t paying attention still generate revenue for the creator.

This is one reason why any working streamer should pretty much always have some sort of a long-form channel. It makes bank for relatively little additional effort.

Fortunately people still make short videos

Interesting. I don't see anything fortunate about that myself. I guess it's a "different strokes for different folks" thing. Personally, I rarely watch any video that's less than 20 minutes long. I think of short videos as being too small to contain enough useful info to be worth my time (although that's obviously not literally true for all short videos). And generally speaking, I prefer videos that are 30 minutes to an hour long, that really dive into the nitty gritty of some topic.

I don't know how representative of "the market" I am (probably not very) but I can at least attest that there are those of us out there with this particular preference.

The problem with everyone making long videos is that it leads to a situation where, intentional or not, it seems like everyone is trying to waste your time.

Some things just aren’t worth talking about for that long.

Pretty much this. A short video is a fairly strong indication that the author did his work and respects your time, while a long one is a fair indication of the opposite. I've come to recognize some red flags in longer videos, such as including unnecessary bloopers, reading very slowly, reading long and frequent definitions, going on tangents, and generally not synthesizing the information enough such that all the bits presented tie into the main topic.

I would lie if I said that I don't consume long form documentaries on Youtube. I do and there are some channels that I deeply enjoy. But for a while, especially since they removed the dislike button, I've become wary of discovering new channels. It's often hit or miss, and the overall time investment doesn't look justifiable in retrospect. For this exact reason, I've removed all my subscriptions, and disabled all recommendations. I mostly poll for channels that I remember had good content that was meaningful to me.

There’s a third option that I’ve run into since I’ve started learning how to create video content.

I have a bit of a background in print journalism so telling stories that convey information isn’t new to me. By the end, I was pretty good at conveying enough information in a limited number of inches.

Video is a totally different beast and short videos are very hard. I have a couple of 10 minute videos that may as well be presented in a foreign language that I don’t speak…and I made them.

Reading this, I think I’m just going to quit. It’s really not worth the time investment.

The SponsorBlock extension has a useful feature where users can contribute a highlight point, which then adds a "skip to highlight" button. Many long form videos will pad the beginning with excessive background information to pad the length, skipping to highlight has saved me many hours. Because the data is crowdsourced the highlight qualities vary, but I've found them to be generally useful.

In my experience long videos on YouTube are extremely inefficient at conveying information, often repeating themselves in order to pad out the length. This is even the case for the better creators

I've noticed this too, it's becoming somewhat infamous that modern YouTube videos are all these 1+ hour long 'video essays' on topics which could easily be replaced with 2-3 page articles to be read in half the time.

While back in the day a long video essay was usually borne out of necessity and thus information-dense and high-quality—not unlike a documentary, actually—it feels like length itself is an objective for a lot of newer videos.

I suspect many subconsciously think "if my video is 2+ hours long, then clearly it's high-quality and well-researched", regardless of the actual density of information.

And don't even get me started on content creators that use AI-generated sludge because they don't have enough relevant visuals for the runtime of the video. Like dude, just make the video shorter.

The people who have nothing interesting to say in a long form format were never worth following anyway.

An independent creator can easily get paid by making a long YouTube video. It is almost impossible to get paid by making long or short web articles.

Inb4 "They shouldn't want to make money and just publish their articles for free"

Inb4 "People should only be creative online as a side hobby when they are comfortably employed"

You can still make money writing blog or article if you have a sponsor. Just because you are on some platform it doesn't mean you will get free visitors. Its very competitive. You need to be among the top creators to be featured on YouTube et.al. Almost all creators have sponsors because you make so little money on the ads because the platform takes a crazy huge cut. The platforms are just middlemen rent seekers profitting on mindless zombies who are cunsuming content and just watch the next video in the recommendation flow.

You can. But it's much easier to be a YouTuber – and it's not only the top creators who get paid.

Which is easier of these choices:

Talking or writing?

Uploading to YouTube or publishing to a blog?

Building an audience of millions or already having them on the platform?

Considering that online creativity should be for everybody and not just hacker and academic types.

> The platforms are just middlemen rent seekers profitting on mindless zombies who are cunsuming content and just watch the next video in the recommendation flow.

Oh never mind, you are stuck in illusions. YouTube as of 2025 has the highest quality and biggest quantity visual media library in history. If you actually press the like and subscribe button on good videos a bunch of times, YouTube will start recommending videos of the highest quality possible. Going in-depth into any subject imaginable. Made by some of the world's most professional film crews. You're really missing out if you're deciding to be an angry hacker about this.

It's not just uploading a video... you are right about there's a loot of high quality videos, those take more work then writing a blog post though, several hours of video is cut down to minutes of content. But the platform takes most of the ad money, almost all professional Youtubers have sponsors. I still argue that you would be better off publishing content on your own website, but one problem is people now a day don't actually search for content, we are mindless zombies fed by algoritms, where most videos are just "clickbait".

For the YouTuber who is merely talking into the camera, it is mostly just a matter of uploading a video. How would he be better off making a website and publishing the content there? It would be difficult to find an audience and almost impossible to get paid. I agree that it would make more sense for this content to be a textual article, but until better monetization opportunities and easier publishing becomes available for people, they are going to keep recording themselves talking into the camera.

> but one problem is people now a day don't actually search for content, we are mindless zombies fed by algoritms

People choose to be like that. Think of it like a supermarket: Up in front is the worst kind of garbage "food", literal sewage that will destroy your health while living and kill you prematurely. In the back you have the highest quality produce and ingredients in abundance. You can go to the back of the supermarket and enjoy the benefits of having this broad access. Or do like most people and go to the front shelves and fill up your cart with poison. It's a choice.

If you go back in time around year 2000-2005 there where a lot of people making good money writing text articles on the web. You could earn much more then you do now on Youtube. You could earn $10 if just one person clicked an ad on your website. Now it still costs $10 to get a click from an advertiser, but little of that money goes to content creators, the platforms take most of it. You could almost make a living with only a few thousand followers. I think Google gave up on Google ads because of the click farmers faking clicks on ads. Google ads was a middleman between advertisers and content creator/publishers. Now you can still make money on your blog but you need to be big enough so that you can talk with companies directly asking if they want to sponsor your site/channel.

Just because you can make money a certain way doesn’t make it right to do so

Of course it's right of them to make money from YouTube videos. It doesn't hurt anyone.

I wouldn't say it's good for anyone for these videos to exist

One way to tell that a video isn't worth my time is if after the intro they say "To tell this story, we need to go back to 1724" or whatever. If they're going way back in time to explain a modern concept, they're often just doing it to pad the runtime. Obviously doesn't work for all topics; like I expect a history video about the american revolution to go back to at least the mid 1700s.

I don't find this to be the case. Bad creators make bad videos, regardless of their length. Truly good creators, though... well, let me put it this way - I've watched 7+ hour long videos which contained not one sentence of repetition or padding. They just had that much to say.

A lot of long videos have very little informational content but they become long because their creator rambles, repeats himself, tells shitty repetitive jokes and wastes time with sarcasm and then clarifying those sarcastic remarks because otherwise some people won't get it, etc.

Drachinifel is a prime example of this. The channel "WWII US Bombers" is an example of the opposite, somebody creating information dense short videos because he has laser tight focus and no time for joking around. (Examples chosen for the conceptual proximity of their content, historic military ships and historic military aircraft.)

I guess I've just been mostly lucky to avoid those videos. And to be fair, most of the longer videos I watch aren't "purpose made" for Youtube - they're recordings of lectures, conference presentations, etc., where the length of the video just happens to be a factor of the length of the original session.

Pretty sure the answer is ads. "Long-form" content has more opportunities to insert ads or sponsored content. There's not a lot of money to be made being quick and to the point.

People's viewing habits have also changed in response, rather than having the algorithm bounce them around they'd rather half-pay-attention to a 3 hour video. But I think the trend of ever-growing video lengths was spawned by a desire for more revenue.

The market bifurcated. Short form content became Snapchat and tiktoks and YouTube shorts. There were never any significant competitors to YouTube for long form content because of how expensive streaming it is, so all of that content remained on the one platform with an audience and decent payouts.

I only go to youtube when I want to learn something that is hard to explain with pictures. Usually that is diy stuff for me, but I can see it being something like a dance move or a boss fight in a game, those things take longer than a minute to explain but never take more than 15 unless it is padded.

Also you can split out shorts.

I quite like to grab the transcript from youtube and ask chatgpt to give me the key points.

What is your workflow for this?

I recently described a manual workflow that includes extracting comments and combining them with the transcript using a system prompt.

I’m curious how others are approaching this.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42901077

YouTube generates a transcript that’s on the sidebar (above the recommended videos). It is kind of broken text though, so I copy and paste the block into Gemini (it’s free and has a huge context) and ask it to read it and generate the points for me

Youtube used to add mid-roll ads to videos that were at least 10 minutes, so your video would basically make twice as much if you stretched it that long. I think the threshold is 8 minutes nowadays.

Short form is hard to monetize (if you are Google 8 years ago) since you need to split ad revenue and attribution among the several videos you watch between ads. This goes against a ton of prior trends in the ad industry where last touch attribution is still king and ad fraud is hard to combat. If course tiktok did it late with creator rewards.

> Youtube used to add mid-roll ads to videos that were at least 10 minutes

YouTube used to not let you go over 10 minutes at all, but that's a very long time ago now. You'd get guides split up into "... Part 3 of 7"

You should try watching the video instead of complaining about it's length. It turns out that it actually takes a bit of time to cover the history of Russia and Germany sufficiently well to explain the situation. Yes, those turn out to be relevant to answering the question.

I gave it a go, not to the video in the OP, but another one that caught my eye - the one about gatcha and korean gender wars. I got through the end and found out that it was actually a part 1, the second part being almost 2 hours. I'm low-key upset about this situation.

I remember a time when YouTube was limited to 10 minute videos, and we watched Hollywood movies on there, 10 minutes per segment.

That was back before Google purchased YouTube and they had their own video service called Google Video. Google Video was great because they didn't have that limit.

I'm guessing you're either missing or deliberately excluding the HUGE push by Youtube for "Youtube Shorts". Personally, I vastly prefer long (20+ minute) videos. However short videos are good for quick DIY / tutorials when I'm unable to find a written equivalent.

I don’t think the rise of shorts is mutually exclusive with longer videos being pushed on the platform, as well.

Many people leave YouTube on in the background, but it doesn’t make sense to do that with TikTok style clips

the huge push for youtube shorts is to compete with tiktok and instagram for that segment of the market. the longer form videos are a different segment of the market, they aren't entirely related

They used to pay by the view, now they pay by the minute. I think it's that simple.

People also use YouTube in different ways than they used to. Leaving it on in the background while they do something else.

I’m sure YouTube’s algorithm is good at detecting which videos perform well even when you’re only listening to it.

People are largely watching YouTube on their TV now instead of on a laptop/desktop. And mobile users are on tiktok.

Personally I find it annoying to watch 15 minute videos on the tv since you’re always having to go back to the remote and find something new.

It's exactly backwards, YouTube favours short videos and frequent uploads. People doing long videos do it purely out of passion.

The claim that most videos nowadays are hitting the one hour mark is trivially false.

I simply can't believe there isn't some incentive for longer videos. It may be that YouTube only cares about total watch time and doesn't care if a creator pushes lots of short ones or a few long ones, as long as viewers keep viewing. I see so many videos like this:

Tie Shoes Like a Pro "If you're watching this video you probably want to know the secrets to good shoe tying. We'll show you how in this video. It's surprisingly easy, so don't go anywhere. But first, have you ever wondered why we tie our shoes? The first shoes weren't actually tied but were just soles that people nailed to their feet. <Cue hammer sound effect and scream> Haha, actually this didn't hurt at all because... <10 minutes pass> ...and then in 1890 Eritrea was founded, but you don't care about that! Haha! You're here to learn how to tie shoes! Don't worry, we'll get to that too! Anyway, also in 1890 all the leather factories in France burned down and so they couldn't spare leather for shoe buckles, so they began using bits of string..."

The "youtube meta" has changed overtime and not all creators have stayed current with it, so you can find old videos which were once optimized for youtube but no longer are, or new videos being created in an outdated style. With some channels though, I think they've decided to make suboptimal videos from the youtube algorithm perspective because they're getting most of their revenue from a loyal fanbase donating to them on patron/etc, so they cater to the preferences of that specific crowd.

There could be multiple valid strategies too. I’ve seen some creators will put out a video once every few months, but that video will be shown on everyone’s feed and will get millions of views. While mass content posters like gaming channels probably get less exposure or their videos spend less time on the top.

True. And different kinds of content may have different metas. Some content needs to be timely and can only get views for a short period of time before effectively expiring. Other content is evergreen and can play the long game, counting on getting reliable view numbers for years.

Not really true anymore. Creators have talked about how youtube's incentive structure is pushing towards longer videos now. Not necessarily higher-quality ones, and posting more volume is still generally going to help, but because youtube's now optimising for watch time instead of views, long videos are pretty heavily rewarded. (In fact, as always, the high-effort but short content like animations are the least 'efficient' genre on youtube).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com