We have one clear rule at home for the kids: YouTube long format is ok.
But: no shorts, no reels, no TikTok.
Any short video platform is strictly forbidden. No exceptions.
But: no shorts, no reels, no TikTok.
Any short video platform is strictly forbidden. No exceptions.
You'd think I'd be making a point here about "otherwise you'd be missing a lot of good educational content that happens to be packaged short-form"; but no!
The point I actually want to make is much weirder: unlike the other short-form-video services, YouTube's "shorts" don't seem to have any actual time constraints built into the format. And so many creators — especially the ones that normally make long-form content — actually put out rather long "shorts". Like, multiple minutes long.
Which means that a large percentage of YT "shorts" these days are essentially just... regular YouTube videos. Just, er, vertical.
For a while, I was filtering out YT "shorts"... until I realized that some of my favorite long-form creators I had been following had gone mysteriously missing from my feed. And it turned out I was missing all their new videos, because they decided to format+post them as "shorts." These were the same videos they had been producing for years now. Just as long as before. Just in portrait now.
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Tangent: Why are creators even bothering to make these videos and mark them as "shorts", if they're not actually short-form videos?
Well, creators are incentivized to do this, because YT is really pushing shorts; and so, if you make your video into a "short" — whether or not it's a short-form video — your video will get promoted in many shorts-only UI carousels and recommended areas of the site and apps, that it otherwise wouldn't. (This easy route to promotion is especially tantalizing for newer creators trying to "break through" to a self-sustaining audience.)
And YT itself is incentivized, now that they have all this frontage to push "shorts", to have a constant stream of new "shorts" to push — whether or not those "shorts" are really in the spirit of short-form content.
YT and the creators are effectively aligned in an implicit agreement to violate the spirit of "short-form video" in the name of bringing more attention to what's basically their same old content format.
I sometimes watch shorts when I go directly to a creator's page, but still notice myself sucked into the loop of the next short automatically playing and not being particularly interesting.
Of course this may have little impact since so many people have no self-control and the gains from shorts may outweigh loosing your views, but it's still something. Enjoy the warmth of angry spite and move on.
Vote with your wallet, your clicks, and be the change you wish to see.
Especially the creators who've "previously made long form but have switched to shorts" — they're not making short-form videos. They're just making long/medium-form videos in portrait now.
IMHO, if something markets itself as a problematic thing, but doesn't actually deliver on the problematic part, then it isn't problematic. (E.g. convincing kids that frozen peas are "pea candy" isn't problematic. You're not making them like "candy." You're making them like peas!)
Kudos to your training of the algorithm if scrolling shorts gives you nothing but interesting informational bits, but you're still supporting the short-form format, which leads to more short-form videos. Like you said, YT is pushing and creators are incentivized, so our clicks make the graphs go up and accelerate our march into ADHD doom scrolling dystopia.
If they want to create a short video, they can create a short video. No need to mark it as a short.
I think this explains why a couple of my long-time favourite creators have gone quiet. (looking at you, NileBlue/Red)