Honestly, it’s the terrible content moderation policies that are going to kill YouTube, not a certain type of video.
Bingo. I don’t find shorts all that appealing (especially since I can’t cast them to a TV! Wtf, seems like core function there) but I agree, the REAL problem with YouTube is how much creators have to top toe around demonization.
“Demonetization” is just what YouTube’s promises to advertisers look like when they affect video creators.
Money on YouTube flows from advertisers. The revenue from charging advertisers to show ads is split between YouTube/Google and the video creator. If your video is not shown with ads, then there is no revenue to split.
YouTube gives advertisers a very small control over what videos their ads are shown on. They have a few different classifications of videos, and advertisers can choose which ones they want to be seen with. Advertisers are paying for the service of YouTube putting their ads on videos — but only the videos that YouTube thinks the advertiser does want to be seen with.
If your video is fully “demonetized”, that means YouTube has decided that no advertisers want to be seen with it; or that they are not willing to take revenue from showing ads on that video. But they’re still hosting it, making it available to viewers.
Video creators’ revenue is a share of the ad income from YouTube showing the video (and accompanying ads). A “demonetized” video is one that doesn’t show any ads — so there is no revenue to split. It’s not that YouTube is taking all the revenue and leaving none to the video creator. They’re not making any, because they don’t think the advertisers would be okay with being charged to be seen alongside that video.
However, the creator of a “demonetized” video is still receiving value from YouTube. It is not free to host that video — especially if it is popular. Network bandwidth, data storage, and transcoding of video for viewers’ browsers are not free; YouTube covers the cost of these. YouTube is willing to host a lot of videos that they make zero money from, at their expense, rather than censoring those videos by taking them down.
YouTube is willing to host a lot of videos that they make zero money from, at their expense
That’s just not true…they’re hosting it because they data-farm the living shit out of both the creator and anyone that gets tangentially close to their site. More content = more people visit = more data on these people = more money…They make a lot of money on this data, even if no ads are shown on a video, and are by no means doing it out of the goodness of their heart.
Yeah, but they aren’t making nearly the amount of money on the video as they would with the ads, and no where near enough to compensate the creators beyond free hosting.
You can still publish demonetized content, just don’t expect to make money from it on YouTube.
They use that data to sell ads at you across the entire internet. Google is making plenty of cash off those “demonitized” videos.
I didn’t say it’s charity. I said the video creator (who wants people to see their video) is receiving a service from the video host for no charge, which otherwise the creator would have to pay for. Hosting your own video on your own storage and network bill is not free. If you don’t believe me, go try doing it yourself.
If the creator didn’t think they were receiving any benefit, they would just take that video down. They sometimes do, but usually they don’t.
Publishing a book costs money. Someone has to buy the paper from the paper makers, and the ink from the ink makers. Someone has to line up the print on the page. Those people have to get paid, so they can go buy a sandwich and pay their rent. So, publishers exercise some judgment in not printing books that they don’t expect to sell, because they’ve gotta pay their bills, including parts and labor.
Same goes for video. Hosting a video costs money. Servers cost money. Power costs money. Network connectivity costs money. The people who run those services need to get paid so they can buy a sandwich and pay their rent. If YouTube is hosting your video, even if they’re not paying you a share of any ad revenue (because they’re not getting any), they’re paying bills that otherwise you would have to pay.
I’m not saying you’ve gotta be grateful or something. I’m saying if you want to understand what’s going on in the world, you can’t do that without understanding the actual bills that people are actually paying.
To put it simply: The hosting costs of demonetized videos are paid for by the hosting of monetized videos.
Don’t believe me? Take your video and store it on a server that you pay for, with network connectivity you pay for. That’s a thing you can do. You can even do it with Fediverse technology. However, it will in fact cost you some amount of money.
they’re all paying the bills by hawking raid shadow legends anyways, may as well not rely on youtube monetization anyways and host elsewhere
Case in point, when youtube buried one of Caitlin Doughty’s documentaries from Ask a Mortician.
The video in question: The Forgotten Disaster of the SS Eastland. It’s 43 minutes long, both well done, and respectfully done. Her team did a good job on it then some youtube automated system buried it for “violating community guidelines”.
I’m not even sure it is bad policies. I am pretty sure that they just don’t have moderators.
I doubt anyone reads 99.9% of reports.
So you get bigotry and hate, you get insane and deadly DIYs, you get 12yo girls being creeped while posting random 5s clips from their lives.
Not to mention just the vast amount of extraordinarily low-quality content YouTube serves up. It’s amazing how bad a lot of the videos it thinks you will like are. The algorithm makes no sense.
But hey, here’s 16 different Joe Rogan clips with sigma male music in the background.
The algorithm seems like it is optimized for profit, not for actually being a good platform.
That should mean engagement. It serves up such bad videos that I disengage.
Once in a while I’ll realize I just spent 20, 30 minutes looking at a streak of pretty decent stuff. Rare enough to be remarkable. Usually after just 3 or 4 consecutive crap clips I’ll close it down and get back to work.
I doubt anything disengages a user faster than low-quality content. I bet it does it even faster than the authoritarian politics and bigotry YouTube seems to inexorable serve you.
If that were true, it wouldn’t be the way it is.
Just because it causes your disengagement, doesn’t mean it causes disengagement with the vast majority of their userbase.
They’re also more concerned with ad views and clicks, so if you’re not the kind of person who gives a crap about ads… they don’t really care that much about you.
This is predicated on the belief that Google/YouTube is run in a 100% hyper-competent way. I don’t buy that.
Google does things the easiest way possible to make tons of money. They make unforced errors all the damn time.
They don’t have to be 100% competent, but they are very competent at what they want to do… which is monetize the technologies and services they provide. They’re not trying to make something that people can use well and enjoy… they’re making things to make a shit-ton of money. The two goals are not generally mutually inclusive.
Yours, on the other hand, is predicated on the belief that they’re all super-incompetent and have no capability of doing anything right ever… which is confusing considering they’re a multi-billion dollar company and not just some guy in a shack banging rocks together to see how they sound.
Yours, on the other hand, is predicated on the belief that they’re all super-incompetent and have no capability of doing anything right ever
Nope. It’s only this specific thing that I necessarily think they’re doing a bad job of. And I’m right; they are. Their algorithm is a struggling baby compared to TikTok and YouTube at large is not a major profit center (and indeed may not be profitable at all – but they maintain it because abandoning it would be too costly for them).
TikTok is so good at doing this thing that it is a profitable business for them. YouTube is struggling, and we can clearly see why.
The terrible content moderation policies are what keep it alive. No one subscribes to youtube so it’s primary customers are the ad agencies. And they want content moderation
This Shorts issue seems to have measurable, constant and immediate effect in ad revenue and therefore platform profitability. Bad content moderation may or may not decrease engagement but in the end Google is a commercial enterprise that’s looking at the numbers at hand.
Might? It already has.
If shorts were simply a separate section of YouTube with all of its functionality, then that’s understandable. But as they stand, shorts are just YouTube with both reduced functionality (forced vertical aspect ratio, no seek bar, time limit) AND all of the existing flaws (bad recommendation algorithm, reposted content, etc. )
Unless you are some kind of tech contrarian hipster, I don’t think there is one thing that YouTube shorts does better than TikTok, or heck, Instagram Reels.
What if we fucked over all of the people that like our website to try and cater to people that don’t like it?
Seems to be the current trend in social media this year…
This is to perfectly put.
Using revanced. Disabled shorts. Watching these YT shorts & recommendations decays my brain cells
I blocked shorts with ublock origin.
Mind you those are (at least some of) the guys that killed animation and comedy sketches on youtube because they made it necessary for videos to be 10+ minutes long to be relevant.
Which I get a laugh out of, because in the early days youtube would not let you post any video longer than 10 minutes, unless you were a “special” approved account. Now, only 10+ minute videos matter. A complete about face.
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Advertising ruined YouTube years ago.
YouTube ruined YouTube
I swear to god these dumb social media sites are going to hell faster every day.
I used to like YouTube because I could watch all sorts of interesting things … funny things … informative things … things actually liked
Now my main YouTube recommended feed is filled with clickbait thumbnails of idiots making surprised or shocked faces to try to get your attention to get you to look at their dumb video of nonsense that has zero information and is not entertaining at all.
My take’s always been Monetization ruined YouTube.
Because if theres money to be made then theres a few million idiots that are happy to exploit the fuck out of the system and do essentially fuck all to earn cash.
But without money, the platform would have sunk.
It’s a harsh reality that all brilliant internet things have to face.
And i hate it.
You should be able to remove Shorts from your feed. I never watch them and yet they fill my feed up making it jore difficult to find real content. I’m specifically talking about the smart TV app which throws them all in together.
I’m using some custom ublock origin filters that I found somewhere to block shorts across all of youtube:
!Youtube Shorts www.youtube.com###guide-content #endpoint[title="Shorts"]:upward(ytd-guide-entry-renderer) www.youtube.com###items #endpoint[title="Shorts"]:upward(ytd-mini-guide-entry-renderer) www.youtube.com##ytd-browse #dismissible ytd-rich-grid-slim-media[is-short]:upward(ytd-rich-section-renderer) www.youtube.com##ytd-browse ytd-grid-video-renderer:has(span.ytd-thumbnail-overlay-time-status-renderer[aria-label="Shorts"]) www.youtube.com##ytd-browse ytd-rich-item-renderer:has(span.ytd-thumbnail-overlay-time-status-renderer[aria-label="Shorts"]) www.youtube.com##ytd-search ytd-video-renderer:has(span.ytd-thumbnail-overlay-time-status-renderer[aria-label="Shorts"]) www.youtube.com##ytd-watch-next-secondary-results-renderer ytd-compact-video-renderer:has(span.ytd-thumbnail-overlay-time-status-renderer[aria-label="Shorts"]) www.youtube.com##ytd-browse[page-subtype="subscriptions"] ytd-video-renderer span.ytd-thumbnail-overlay-time-status-renderer[aria-label="Shorts"]:upward(ytd-item-section-renderer) m.youtube.com##ytm-reel-shelf-renderer m.youtube.com##ytm-pivot-bar-renderer div.pivot-shorts:upward(ytm-pivot-bar-item-renderer) m.youtube.com##ytm-browse ytm-item-section-renderer ytm-video-with-context-renderer:has(ytm-thumbnail-overlay-time-status-renderer[data-style="SHORTS"]) m.youtube.com##ytm-browse ytm-item-section-renderer ytm-compact-video-renderer:has(ytm-thumbnail-overlay-time-status-renderer[data-style="SHORTS"]) m.youtube.com##ytm-search ytm-compact-video-renderer:has(ytm-thumbnail-overlay-time-status-renderer[data-style="SHORTS"])Also separately, for blocking videos that don’t exist yet, which I also dislike:
!Youtube upcoming videos www.youtube.com##ytd-browse ytd-grid-video-renderer:has(ytd-thumbnail-overlay-time-status-renderer[overlay-style="UPCOMING"]) www.youtube.com##ytd-browse ytd-rich-item-renderer:has(ytd-thumbnail-overlay-time-status-renderer[overlay-style="UPCOMING"]) www.youtube.com##ytd-browse[page-subtype="subscriptions"] ytd-video-renderer ytd-thumbnail-overlay-time-status-renderer[overlay-style="UPCOMING"]:upward(ytd-item-section-renderer)I don’t know what I would do with this. And I mentioned to someone else that I mostly watch YT on a Shield. Is this even relevant to me?
SmartTubeNext is what you want on TV platforms. You can turn shorts off. It blocks ads. And it has sponsorblock so it is configurable to additionally skip sponsor segments, self-promotion, intros, outros.
And as others have pointed out, you can also block them in browser with Ublock Origins and with Revanced which covers the desktop and mobile platforms.
I might have to look into that. I do wonder how it could know when a segment is sponsored.
I don’t care that much about the ads since we already have Premium so we don’t see the ads anyways.
It’s crowdsourced and works quite well, been using it for the last year.
Thanks for the heads up
Premium doesn’t skip the ads in the videos
That’s what 2X speed is for.
Well this is a passive function.
What I want is a YouTube viewer that cuts out ads that I can use on my Mac or my iPhone to use on my TV with a Chromecast.
Chromecast is how I view all my TV content.
You’ll have to take that up with Apple. They’re the ones dictating that you can’t use any of the wonderful apps we have on Android.
As for Chromecast, SmartTube Next is what you want
Check out https://ghcr.io/nichobi/sponsorblockcast - run it on your LAN, and it’ll use SponsorBlock to clean up any YouTube-Chromecast stream you want.
Thanks!
And of course the thing I mentioned has now been superseded by https://github.com/gabe565/CastSponsorSkip
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As a viewer I agree with their assessment.
Shorts is (for me) a worse viewing experience and it’s just more useless junk tha clutter up my youtube main page.
That’s why I have a Firefox extension that automatically redirects from shorts. Although, if Google’s new Web Environment Integrity goes through I guess I could kiss stuff like that goodbye.
Yeah I usually watch YouTube on my shield and it clutters up every channel with junk I have no desire to watch.
I don’t mind grabbing my pitchfork and joining the “YouTube is already ruined party”, but two thoughts first:
That headline is so deliberately vague. It could literally be one employee who said “eh, I don’t think YouTube shorts is a good idea”.
The article itself doesn’t really give you any information that isn’t in the headline. It feels like an attempt to stoke anti-YouTube sentiment without providing any useful information.
…okay, with that out of the way…
Yeah, the current YouTube situation is pretty crap.
It does cite internal metrics on ad revenues going down for three consecutive quarters due to lower potential to show ads in short videos compared to longer ones. It’s anonymous and doesn’t give solid figures but that’s what this article is about.
Yeah honestly these are some great points, and really it’s one of these reasons as to why I just dislike modern journalism today with the headlines as such.
not only is the shorts UI shitty but the shorts themselves are often shitty imo, or at least the “scroll through shorts one at a time” linear format means you see a lot more videos you wouldn’t click on intentionally.
“No YouTube I do not want to watch Jordon Fucking Peterson. I will NEVER want that. Fuck all the way off.”
I stopped watching shorts because of the unwanted boosts of fascist content.
Silver lining: It gave me the opportunity to “dislike” Jordan Peterson, which was not an opportunity I previously had.
I mean, I guess I always HAD the option, but there’s something to be said about having somebody serve it up on a platter like that.
Hey, boosts engagement, he’s happy all the same.
I watch shorts but I never swipe up. I pick which ones I want to watch.
Might ruin YouTube? Brother. It’s already ruined.
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might? Shorts are the main reason I found alternatives like Freetube, Newpipe and Invidious; and continue to look for actual alternative platforms.
if there was just a checkbox to turn them off forever I’d probably still be on the mainpage.
Shorts are far from being the biggest problem, the ads are much much worse.
YouTube ads are so mild compared to other free content platforms though, even some paid services tbh.
Where have you seen ads worse than YouTube?
Cable TV has crazy long adverts about mesothelioma, the radio has big long ad breaks with police car sirens and nonsence in, have you been on a news site recently? It’s hard up find the story there are so many auto playing adverts and banners.
I think even twitch is worse, they randomly throw thirty seconds adverts up over the top of content so one moment you’re watching the key moment of a vital battle and the next you’re pulling your hair out while watching chat say ‘oh wow that was the funniest thing ever!’
What acceptable quality free content provider has less obnoxious ads? You can even skip most the YouTube ones after five seconds.
If we are starting to compare YouTube with TV and Radio ads, it’s a sign of how much worse it’s getting. A lot of people started got into the habit of watching YouTube because they were sick of TV ads.
The problem here is, just as it happened with TV itself, as the executives want ever growing profits over a saturated market, they add more and more ads. It used to be even Cable TV was sold with the promise of no ads, and so were streaming services. I remember when YouTube had 5 seconds of ads every hour. Now it’s pushing for two 7 second ads every 10 minutes, that is, when they don’t put longer unskippable ads there too. Wasn’t it enough to pay for the service before? Ads keep getting longer all the time, while our lives only get shorter.
Tubi is remarkable good about ads. Long watch times between ads.
I like and hate their shorts page. I like the fast pace consumption of good content but half of it is rage bait, onlyfans bait, low effort content theft, and people acting obnoxious for attention. I wish I had more control over what shows in shorts because the don’t recommend button doesn’t seem to do anything.
Shorts suggestions are based on what you watch. If you spend less time watching rage/OF bait shorts or just scroll past them, they will show you less of these. 95% of my shorts scrollpage is from creators and topics that I’m interested in.
Soo looks like you just like to watch this type of content if this is what the app is serving you.
I know how it works and I’m saying it doesn’t work good enough. It shows things I like and subscribed to but it also shows me things I don’t want to see more often than I expect.
I don’t like blaming the user, but I can confirm I only get shorts from creators I follow but then I also don’t tiktok scroll once I open a short, I will see a short on my home screen open it and then back out and watch the other one in the side scrolling list if it interests me
Shorts also cannot be cast from a mobile device. If I’m going through my curated channels while casting, the app give an error and requires me to stop casting before I can watch the short. I just skip it and don’t bother anymore.
