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A comment on Have Attention Spans Been Declining? – Yes, 65%. Parent comment

Re:Have Attention Spans Been Declining? – Yes, 65% by somenameforme on Tuesday July 25, 2023 @04:00AM (#36859338)
I just use all the various sites as tools, instead of having loyalty anywhere. Search for something you're interested in and see what shows up. YouTube is definitely no longer the central repository of everything that it once was. A good way to demonstrate the average difference between YouTube and TikTok is to show the same video from the same guy, but optimized for different platforms. This is a video on deadlift form (in weight training):

TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@jeremyethier/video/71989368081330209...

YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxWcirHIwVo

No idea what the deal is, but I'm guessing the YouTube algorithm is optimized for longer form videos so a lot of stuff ends up with just a lot of filler. The TikTok video is everything in the YouTube video, but with all the fluff removed. I've also used TikTok for foreign language lessons with excellent results, largely for the same reason. The videos tend to have a lot better information density than what YouTube optimizes for.

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Also, just watching that YouTube version again. Perhaps one of the best things is no more "If you like this video be sure to like, subscribe, and comment below. It really helps the channel out." An algorithm that relies on such a stupid, gameable, opt-in metric is always going to be inherently dysfunctional.

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Re:Have Attention Spans Been Declining? – Yes, 65% by andirk on Tuesday July 25, 2023 @05:14AM (#36859838)
Great links! Thank you for this comparison. I am a huge fan of spreading content across platforms as to avoid a monolith. I will be looking in to this Tiktok. And I truly cannot stand the "smash the like" whatever every. single. damn. video.
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Re:Have Attention Spans Been Declining? – Yes, 65% by fullspectrumdev on Tuesday July 25, 2023 @05:05PM (#36869542)
The “meta game” of optimal length on YouTube has been shifting towards longer videos for quite a while - one of the more important metrics towards monetising is “watch hours”. So you get a lot of filler.

YouTube also has shorts, which it measures somewhat differently (as views as opposed to watch hours).

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Re:Have Attention Spans Been Declining? – Yes, 65% by andirk on Wednesday July 26, 2023 @06:02AM (#36875218)
What are these shorts? It looks like common video that is very narrow vertically.
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