How will this pay "creators" less? Isn't it going to generate more views?

It incentivises clickbait. The creators that we are talking about provide value in long form videos. If all you need to get paid is a five second view (lower bars to payment) the market will adapt and “automated solutions” will take a chunk of what now goes towards creators.

Exactly. We already have a lot of videos with the phrase “what until the end, you wouldn’t believe what happened” and similarly we’re now going to have a lot of mumbling in the first part of videos.