And the "web-first long form" medium positively drips with filler. Half the time it doesn't even mention the subject at hand for 500 words until a tortured anecdote or analogy has run out of steam, leaving you guessing what the article is even about in the first place. Then it carries on for another few thousand words, at least 70% of which are useless flourishes or word count padding.

There's so much scope for improvement in pedagogy with better mediums. It'd be so good if college courses were presented in the format of an OurWorldInData page, perhaps with pop-out embedded video segments, instead of obscure disjointed lecture slides or a 2 hour long meandering video.

Yes, SEO advise for the past 7+ years is that 'Google likes those who are experts, so you have to have long essays to look like an expert & have longer time-on-page.'.

It’s also a consequence of programs like “Kindle Unlimited” where your pay as an author is directly tied to how many pages are read.

Yeah, there are several factors in this, for example a lot of people look at page counts (or book thickness) when deciding what to buy; thinking that thicker book = more information.