"Open the YouTube app today, and a Short starts playing before you've even tapped anything. Your subscriptions and recommendations are pushed a layer deeper. This is the hostile takeover of your user experience. For most of its life, YouTube was a place you visited with a purpose. You searched for tutorials, watched creators you followed, or looked up something specific."
"To understand what's being lost, we have to remember what made YouTube special in the first place. Before it became a feed, YouTube was a classroom. There are still millions who use it as an open library of tutorials, explainers, and deep dives made by people who know their craft. It was the internet's storytelling engine. It was the place you went to learn how to tie a bow tie, repair a leaky faucet, and understand the fall of the Roman Empire."
"Its value was built on depth. The long-form format - anything from 10 minutes to 3 hours - allowed for nuance, research, and personality. This depth is where the community formed. You didn't snack on a creator's content. You invested time. You grew with them. This was the start of the creator business model. For many, it worked because it was sustainable."
YouTube now opens with Shorts autoplay and buries subscriptions and recommendations, prioritizing passive scrolling over intentional viewing. The platform competes with TikTok by optimizing for attention and rewiring users toward impatience. Historically, YouTube served as a deep learning resource with long-form tutorials, explainers, and documentaries that fostered community and long-term discoverability. Long-form libraries provided creators with durable financial assets and ongoing search-driven revenue. Shorts and feed-first design disrupt discovery, reduce attention spans, and threaten creators' sustainable business models by favoring short ephemeral content over back-catalog value.
Read at Android Police
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