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A comment on Someone at YouTube Needs Glasses: The Prophecy Has Been Fulfilled. Parent comment

Re:Someone at YouTube Needs Glasses: The Prophecy Has Been F... by gwd on Wednesday November 26, 2025 @04:23AM (#46055700)
Auto-repeat is the thing that most mystifies me about shorts. I understand the idea behind auto-play, although I disable it; but who on earth wants to watch the exact thing they just watched by default?

Given the success of TikTok, the answer is apparently, "billions of people", but I just don't get it.

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Re:Someone at YouTube Needs Glasses: The Prophecy Has Been F... by wrxd on Wednesday November 26, 2025 @04:58AM (#46055896)
My theory is that it is a way of forcefully grabbing people’s attention.

Without autoplay there is no engagement once the video is over. With autoplay there is the risk someone leaves the player on the background and ignores it. With looping videos people get annoyed and (if they’re like me) close the tab or skip to the next video just to get something different

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Re:Someone at YouTube Needs Glasses: The Prophecy Has Been F... by justsomehnguy on Wednesday November 26, 2025 @02:17PM (#46061291)
> but who on earth wants to watch the exact thing they just watched by default

Wrong question.

The right question is: "Do we blindly copy Instagram?"

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