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TikTok has turned culture into a feedback loop of impulse and machine learning

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292 points natalie3p | 7 comments | 10 Sep 25 16:08 UTC | HN request time: 0.497s | source | bottom
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keiferski ◴[10 Sep 25 16:33 UTC] No.45200147[source]▶
Too simple of a narrative. At the same time, YouTube videos are getting longer, and people are watching more YouTube videos on TVs than on mobile devices:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/bradadgate/2025/02/12/launched-...

So I think we're seeing more of a bifurcation: in-depth longform videos are becoming 30, 40, 60, even 90 minutes long, whereas anything shorter than 10 minutes is being compressed to 30-60 seconds. The most popular video creators are doing both; even MrBeast routinely has videos over 30 minutes long.

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1. kulahan ◴[10 Sep 25 18:05 UTC] No.45201506[source]▶
Worth mentioning that literally any video under 60 seconds is forced to be a short, which is that stupid type of YouTube video where they remove a bunch of controls and make the overall experience miserable.

So maybe that’s pushing longer-form content as well. Some people making 30 second videos moves to 90 second ones to avoid the bad format, this crowds the format and pushes others up as well?

Totally talking out of my ass here.

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2. ◴[10 Sep 25 18:36 UTC] No.45201877[source]▶
3. CM30 ◴[10 Sep 25 21:16 UTC] No.45203868[source]▶
Fortunately, a video does need to have a vertical screen resolution to be counted as a short. So landscape/widescreen videos don't seem to be affected there.

But this can definitely trip people up, especially now the maximum length of a YouTube short is 3 minutes instead of 1. If you recorded a 3 minute video on a phone (or other random vertical screen device like a Game Boy/DS/3DS), YouTube will classify it as a short and there's basically nothing you can do about it.

4. 0x00cl ◴[10 Sep 25 21:28 UTC] No.45204056[source]▶
YouTube has been pushing for longer videos for a while now. I believe it has to do with getting more money for ads. I remember YouTube updated their guidelines suggesting creators to create longer videos (10+ minutes for better monetization)

I couldn't find a source (other than my memory) though, the earliest I could find is a reddit post from 2016 https://www.reddit.com/r/PartneredYoutube/comments/4v6bmy/wh...

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5. xpressvideoz ◴[11 Sep 25 00:21 UTC] No.45206039[source]▶
One thing I don't understand regarding YouTube shorts is that they can't be casted to TV. Whenever I click a short while casting other videos on my phone, it says the casting will be stopped if I continue. Why on earth does such an arbitrary limitation exist?
6. rcxdude ◴[11 Sep 25 08:36 UTC] No.45209255[source]▶
More or less there was a shift in how Youtube allocated ad revenue, where instead of paying per view on any video over 10 minutes, they pay based on watch time alone (which makes sense with how they added mid-roll ads instead of just pre-roll ads). This incentivized longer videos, or at least didn't penalize them, but then more recently there was another shift in their recommendation algorithm to push these videos harder (I suspect because they found it increased watch time and thus ad impressions overall), and that really pushed the long-form videos into the mainstream.
7. 1718627440 ◴[11 Sep 25 12:12 UTC] No.45210632[source]▶
> where they remove a bunch of controls

For your information, you can view every video through the normal interface by changing the URL to the usual /watch?.