7 ms·

As a casual observer, I don't understand why YouTube Shorts isn't the obvious successor? The UI is better than TikTok ever was and a lot of the most popular cre

by donatj 2y ago

As a casual observer, I don't understand why YouTube Shorts isn't the obvious successor? The UI is better than TikTok ever was and a lot of the most popular creators are already mirroring their content there?

defluct 2y ago
I use both and YouTube Short produces mostly just garbage for me. AI voice videos that will get your attention, but has little content. TikTok's algorithm on the other hand is much better and provides quality, half-long-form content.
phobotics 2y ago
Shorts has a way worse algorithm, I don’t use TikTok because it’s too addictive but I get bored of YouTube shorts after like 5-10mins most times, which actually for me is a Feature but for YouTube itself is a drawback.
- cjrp 2y ago
  Same with Instagram Reels. Occasionally I'd be scrolling going "man my Tiktok feed is bad today", and then I realise it's IG.
  - vile_wretch 2y ago
    At least between Subway Surfer Reddit narrations and other garbage, TikTok shows me stuff I know I want to see. Instagram reels will start with something I'm interested in and very quickly pivot to people seemingly in the midst of psychosis, or literal porn. No matter how much I manually report as not interested.
    - 8note 2y ago
      it seems to me like tiktok has a you model, where youtube and instagram have an everyone model
- donatj 2y ago
  It doesn't need to be better than TikTok though, just better than xiaohongshu
  - johnisgood 2y ago
    Maybe people developed a fetish for Chinese.
    - pjc50 2y ago
      Would make a change from fetish for Japan.
      - johnisgood 2y ago
        Or South Korea. :D
      - IncreasePosts 2y ago
        You must be 40. Japanese fetish is only for weirdos, whereas 15% of young girls will say their favorite band is a South Korean one.
        rafram 2y ago
        I don't think that's true anymore. In NYC, at least, the people who are into Japanese culture tend to be black/Hispanic teenage girls, not the classic "basement-dwelling white guy" stereotype. Visit a big Japanese store like Kinokuniya or Bookoff sometime if you have one in your area - I think you'll be surprised!
    - delecti 2y ago
      "Fetish" is the wrong way to look at it, but it does seem connected. The explanation I've seen is basically a unified "fuck you, I won't do what you tell me, so instead I'm going to give my data to China even harder". It's a generation of kids who grew up (mostly correctly) assuming all of their data was already all controlled by corporations in league with the government. Worrying about data privacy is too quaint to even consider. There's of course a chance of algorithmic meddling, nudging people to a different Chinese app, but I think spite is a far simpler answer.
- polytely 2y ago
  there are so many low quality shorts, really makes it feel like a waste of time. never had that feeling on tiktok
  - danielbln 2y ago
    I feel a lot of people have compare TikTok that they have used for countless of hours and where the algorithm has zero'd in in their preferences to a more vanilla YT Shorts. I used shorts for a few months heavily, and pretty much every video was in some way relevant to my interests (which is also why I don't consume short form video anymore, it's waaaay to addictive).
- derbOac 2y ago
  Not disagreeing with you as TikTok obviously works for a lot of people, but its recommendation algorithm never came anywhere near working for me after several attempts at it over fairly long periods of time. I can't say I like YouTube shorts a lot, but there's often some I find interesting in a long enough window of time — the problem there is more the signal to noise ratio than the volume of the signal. TikTok just feels like my personal signal is just nonexistent. Sometimes I wish I knew what was going on under the hood. There's such a huge difference between how much people like TikTok and how I feel about the content, and I don't understand why TikTok would have such a hard time with me in particular. In general I'm kind of souring on algorithmic-driven social media, or at least short format (video or text). I don't have anything against it in principle, I just find I enjoy longer format posts and articles more in experience.
  - cochne 2y ago
    I'm in your boat. I tried out TikTok out a few times, including making a new account, but it never showed me good content. I had maybe one or two longer sessions, but never felt the need to go back, like I (unfortunately) do with Reddit or Youtube. I could never understand why it was so popular, but maybe I'm just a curmudgeon.
    - derbOac 2y ago
      I think that's part of why it's always been a little bit of a head scratcher for me — I didn't really go into it curmudgeonly, I was genuinely interested in it, people seemed to like it, and I was interested in something new. It just never worked out at all for me. I even had people telling me in all seriousness "I must secretly like the content", as in the algorithm knows better than I do what I like. Which is kind of a weird and maybe even disturbing idea to buy into if you think about it. I was told to keep at it, which I did. I'd put aside for a long time, go back to it, repeat the process over and over again. Eventually I just gave up. I always felt like it was targeting some specific demographic by default and never got out of that algorithmic optimization spot for me.
  - rolothrow 2y ago
    Tiktoks algorithm takes a while to get used to but it is pretty tameable. Quick way that works for me: - avoid attempts based on "unliking" things, I'm pretty sure it treats it as engagement. Instead swipe bad content away. - avoid "accidentally engaging", like replying to a comment you feel is wrong or watching something you don't like because you were trying to see where the speech was going. Disengage ASAP with unwanted. - positive feedback for whatever video starts getting close to what you want. - positive implies staying the whole clip, liking, viewing comments, commenting, liking comments and the strongest of all, sharing the video (you can send it to a telegram conversation with yourself or whatever, not sure if the link you shared ever being opened is accounted for but I think nope). Do this on purpose, like if a video is cool just open the comment section and like all comments without looking. -try to "navigate". If you want to see tech and it's currently showing you music, maybe engage with music production or Spotify tricks when they appear. It might not be the tech you're looking for, but it's closer to tech than a teenage girl dancing. You'll eventually be shown things more relevant to you, at which point you grab that current. Also do not try to rush the process. I think updating your interests is not instant, and session time might be a metric as well.
- spixy 2y ago
  5-10mins seems like a perfect algorithm to me. If you have more time, then you can watch normal youtube videos or TV shows...
- Andrex 2y ago
  It's strange to me everyone acting as like TikTok's algorithm is completely unassailable and will always be better than the competition for years and decades to come. Tech moves fast and Meta/YT aren't just standing around. If their only differentiating feature is the algorithm, Insta would eat them for lunch eventually the same they did for Snapchat after knocking off that app's big/only claim to fame (stories). The discussion seems to be TikTok's algorithm is so good no one could ever possibly compete. I really don't think that's the case and TikTok really has no moat whatsoever.
  - Clamchop 2y ago
    > It's strange to me everyone acting as like TikTok's algorithm is completely unassailable and will always be better than the competition for years and decades to come. I'm not seeing this sentiment. More that none of its competitors are so obviously ahead of the pack that we can easily predict TikTok's natural successor.
palata 2y ago
I don't use TikTok, but my understanding is that they are just a lot better than anyone else with the algorithm. Somehow where Meta built a social graph, TikTok built a graph of videos (no need to know who you are, they can just suggest videos based on other videos you watch). And it's apparently difficult to catch up (presumably because they have more users so more data to make better predictions). That would, IMO, explain why people use TikTok and not something else. As to where they go after TikTok is banned... I feel like there is also a factor of "Oh you want to ban chinese apps? Let me show you". Not sure whether it will last, though.
- donatj 2y ago
  I'm skeptical that the algorithm is actually "better" and it's not just that the end users have fed TikTok a ton more data points about their personal likes and dislikes. Of course an app you have used for thousands of hours is going to know you better than the one you tried for half an hour
  - dns_snek 2y ago
    Try it. I've been using Youtube for a decade and its recommendations are a total crapshoot these days. TikTok figured out my preferences within 15 minutes just based on which videos I liked and watched, and it can change course extremely quickly if you get bored of a certain topic. The total number of hours I spent Youtube must outnumber the total number of hours I spent on TikTok by at least 100:1.
    - vinckr 2y ago
      For me the normal video recommendations are awesome on Youtube, I regularly find very obscure super interesting stuff in my recommendations. For shorts it is abysmal, I only get horrible recommendations there - no idea why it is so different.
      - jacobgkau 2y ago
        That's interesting. YouTube's gotten me fairly pinned algorithm-wise over the past few years (I used to never use recommendations at all before that). But my Shorts recommendations seem to just be the regular recommendations, but Shorts versions of them. Sometimes as far as the same channels, or the same people in clips even if it's on a different channel.
pjc50 2y ago
A large part of it is obviously negative polarization: you tell people they can't use a Chinese app, they're going to use a different Chinese app. Hence the pictures of Luigi. It's worth asking why Reels/Shorts didn't take off and those companies had to ask for their competition to be banned instead. Everyone agrees that "the algorithm is better", but this is very hard to quantify. Perhaps something about surfacing smaller creators? Quantity/quality of invasive advertising? Extent to which people feel particular kinds of rage content is being forced on them?
- suraci 2y ago
  I've never saw Luigi or Aaron Bushnell suggested to me by YouTube, unless I search them I think that's why, just saying
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- eunos 2y ago
  Rednote and TikTok has 'novelty' content type that originally cultivated in mainland China. The memes, reactions pic, etc don't really exist on reels/shorts.
  - preciousoo 2y ago
    My god, in this thread you can tell who actually used TikTok and who only read about it
    - whimsicalism 2y ago
      it’s painfully obvious
- weinzierl 2y ago
  Main reason besides the algorithm is in my opinion that TikTok has wide but hard boundaries when it comes to content. This leads to diverse but relatively safe content. It is not 4chan where you think twice before clicking a link to avoid emotional damage. It is also not Reddit or Youtube where you do not bother to go because you permanently encounter stuff that is inconsequentially blocked and you are still not safe from trauma. I think most platforms other than TikTok try to be too strict, fail to enforce their unrealistic rules in any comprehensible form and therefore suck for most intellectually curious users.
raverbashing 2y ago
If I'm not mistaken the 'killer feature' of Tiktok is not the player, but the editor (Capcut?)
- pjc50 2y ago
  Yes, although Capcut is a separate piece of software. You can in theory make content with it for any app. In practice, Tiktok is so dominant that a lot of popular Reels content has Tiktok watermarks on it.
  - NoGravitas 2y ago
    Every time in the last year that anyone has shared me a link to a short video on Facebook or Instagram, it has a TikTok watermark on it. This leads me to assume that most of the content on FB or Insta that I would actually want to see originally comes from TikTok.
PittleyDunkin 2y ago
> The UI is better than TikTok ever was I cannot disagree more. I just scroll on tiktok and tiktok populates the scrolling with videos I want to see, and it takes about ten minutes to signal to tiktok what content you like and don't like. Youtube, meanwhile, is an exercise in a far too-busy UI with thumbnails and comments and text and buttons—it's inherently a desktop app shoved into a web browser. Nice if you want to search for a specific topic and watch a four-hour video on it, but terrible for entertainment or killing time. The only use I have for youtube are in solving these two problems: 1) where can I find a music video and 2) how do I do x ...but the focus on the interface obscures why youtube shorts won't ever take off: youtube is extremely bad at pushing content I want to watch. I've heard this over and over and over again and I know it's true for me, too.
infecto 2y ago
Shorts is absolute trash. It does not have critical mass and will repeat the same videos to you over and over. EDIT: I want to overemphasize just how bad it is. It feels like a project someone whipped up in coding bootcamp over a week. It feels like it has zero ability to pick the next video correctly and it genuinely repeats videos between sessions.
eddd-ddde 2y ago
As someone that uses both, YouTube shorts it's _not_ superior. Two very simple reasons: 1. the algorithm sucks 2. it will consistently fail to load content quickly enough when scrolling unwanted content
api 2y ago
It's not as addictive. TikTok mastered the hyper-addictive algorithm. IMHO good riddance. Anything bad for the mindless addictive chum industry is good for humanity. Now do Instagram, Facebook, Xhitter, etc.
xnx 2y ago
No 2x speed playback doesn't help
lazycouchpotato 2y ago
Shorts is garbage. There are so many UI elements on top of video that end up blocking what you're trying to see. There is no way to hide them. YouTube also destroyed its search.
shafyy 2y ago
Let's see if the ActivityPub Loops in time (made by the creator of Pixelfed): https://loops.video/ https://loops.video/
davidmurdoch 2y ago
I loathe YouTube Shorts entirely.
cess11 2y ago
Sometimes I visit forums where people share video snippets, I've never seen sexy stuff snagged from Shorts, but a lot from TikTok. I think both Alphabet and Meta suck at seductive material.
libertine 2y ago
TikTok has a great e-commerce integration, no one else is offering this at the moment.
tmaly 2y ago
the community on TikTok is friendlier and more uplifting compared to YouTube shorts
RiverCrochet 2y ago
Shorts is almost there. IMHO all it needed to do was be a separate app and not try to get you to sign up for YouTube Premium every 2 seconds. Reels needs to be more disconnected from Facebook for it do anything similar. Why do you say the Shorts UI is better? It seems exactly the same to me.
- mholm 2y ago
  If it feels the same, you're not familiar enough with either app to make that judgement.
  - johnisgood 2y ago
    Is it not scrolling in either case?
whimsicalism 2y ago
both shorts and reels give me so much more brain dead content than tiktok and it’s really hard to get out of that rut
raincole 2y ago
> I don't understand why YouTube Shorts isn't the obvious successor It might be eventually. (GenZ) People are migrating to RedNote now to lift a middle finger. It's more of a meme.
bastardoperator 2y ago
Because for 5-20 dollars you can drive hundreds of thousands of people if not millions of people to your video, product, meme, whatever... Youtube, not so much.
eitally 2y ago
I spend a lot of time on YT, and less time on Instagram... and 0 time on TikTok, where I never created an account. YT Shorts exist exclusively for YT creators who want to publish bite-sized pieces of content for their audience with a much lower expectation of polish than their normal longer form content. Perhaps the algorithm also presents "random" YouTubers', too, but the vast majority of what I see is put out by the publishers I'm already following (or other very similar publishers in the same ecosystem). I would suggest that TikTok's successor is Insta Reels. Reels are almost exclusively entertainment and because they tie into Instagram's broader user/connections network the UX is much better than TikTok. Nobody goes to Instagram to figure out how to replace their garbage disposal -- this is squarely YT domain. If YT Shorts can make inroads in the entertainment market [without feeling like a commercial break between pieces of actual content, which is the impression I have and the way I use it].
kyle_grove 2y ago
I think in part because of YouTube demonization, which is how TikTok could poach the creators in the first place. I suspect if they're mirroring content to YouTube, it's more to try to attract audience to TikTok than monetize through YouTube.
saghm 2y ago
Part of it is intentional spite from the users switching; a big part of the push for banning TikTok was based on the fact that it's based on China, so purposely seeking out a Chinese alternative is making a statement. Whether or not you think the ban is justified, I think it's hard not to see the obvious inconsistency in banning only a single app on those grounds that this migration points out. I've never personally used TikTok, so it's possible my perception is flawed, but to me it almost seems like a dare to the government to prove how serious their rationale is. If the government truly thinks that having data collected by Chinese apps is so dangerous, are they willing to flat out ban _all_ Chinese apps? If so, is that more extreme step still something the courts consider constitutional? If not, was TikTok just a convenient political target rather than something actually dangerous?
vitorgrs 2y ago
Because Youtube shorts is awful, at least me, as a user. Most of the content there, it's, well, "shorts", cuts from full videos of podcasts, etc. It lacks real users. It's basically the current youtube creators doing content for Youtube Shorts. Let alone how the algo it's worse, and you can't download videos :)

by donatj 2y ago

defluct 2y ago

I use both and YouTube Short produces mostly just garbage for me. AI voice videos that will get your attention, but has little content. TikTok's algorithm on the other hand is much better and provides quality, half-long-form content.

phobotics 2y ago

Shorts has a way worse algorithm, I don’t use TikTok because it’s too addictive but I get bored of YouTube shorts after like 5-10mins most times, which actually for me is a Feature but for YouTube itself is a drawback.

cjrp 2y ago
Same with Instagram Reels. Occasionally I'd be scrolling going "man my Tiktok feed is bad today", and then I realise it's IG.
- vile_wretch 2y ago
  At least between Subway Surfer Reddit narrations and other garbage, TikTok shows me stuff I know I want to see. Instagram reels will start with something I'm interested in and very quickly pivot to people seemingly in the midst of psychosis, or literal porn. No matter how much I manually report as not interested.
  - 8note 2y ago
    it seems to me like tiktok has a you model, where youtube and instagram have an everyone model
donatj 2y ago
It doesn't need to be better than TikTok though, just better than xiaohongshu
- johnisgood 2y ago
  Maybe people developed a fetish for Chinese.
  - pjc50 2y ago
    Would make a change from fetish for Japan.
    - johnisgood 2y ago
      Or South Korea. :D
    - IncreasePosts 2y ago
      You must be 40. Japanese fetish is only for weirdos, whereas 15% of young girls will say their favorite band is a South Korean one.
      - rafram 2y ago
        I don't think that's true anymore. In NYC, at least, the people who are into Japanese culture tend to be black/Hispanic teenage girls, not the classic "basement-dwelling white guy" stereotype. Visit a big Japanese store like Kinokuniya or Bookoff sometime if you have one in your area - I think you'll be surprised!
  - delecti 2y ago
    "Fetish" is the wrong way to look at it, but it does seem connected. The explanation I've seen is basically a unified "fuck you, I won't do what you tell me, so instead I'm going to give my data to China even harder". It's a generation of kids who grew up (mostly correctly) assuming all of their data was already all controlled by corporations in league with the government. Worrying about data privacy is too quaint to even consider. There's of course a chance of algorithmic meddling, nudging people to a different Chinese app, but I think spite is a far simpler answer.
polytely 2y ago
there are so many low quality shorts, really makes it feel like a waste of time. never had that feeling on tiktok
- danielbln 2y ago
  I feel a lot of people have compare TikTok that they have used for countless of hours and where the algorithm has zero'd in in their preferences to a more vanilla YT Shorts. I used shorts for a few months heavily, and pretty much every video was in some way relevant to my interests (which is also why I don't consume short form video anymore, it's waaaay to addictive).
derbOac 2y ago
Not disagreeing with you as TikTok obviously works for a lot of people, but its recommendation algorithm never came anywhere near working for me after several attempts at it over fairly long periods of time. I can't say I like YouTube shorts a lot, but there's often some I find interesting in a long enough window of time — the problem there is more the signal to noise ratio than the volume of the signal. TikTok just feels like my personal signal is just nonexistent. Sometimes I wish I knew what was going on under the hood. There's such a huge difference between how much people like TikTok and how I feel about the content, and I don't understand why TikTok would have such a hard time with me in particular. In general I'm kind of souring on algorithmic-driven social media, or at least short format (video or text). I don't have anything against it in principle, I just find I enjoy longer format posts and articles more in experience.
- cochne 2y ago
  I'm in your boat. I tried out TikTok out a few times, including making a new account, but it never showed me good content. I had maybe one or two longer sessions, but never felt the need to go back, like I (unfortunately) do with Reddit or Youtube. I could never understand why it was so popular, but maybe I'm just a curmudgeon.
  - derbOac 2y ago
    I think that's part of why it's always been a little bit of a head scratcher for me — I didn't really go into it curmudgeonly, I was genuinely interested in it, people seemed to like it, and I was interested in something new. It just never worked out at all for me. I even had people telling me in all seriousness "I must secretly like the content", as in the algorithm knows better than I do what I like. Which is kind of a weird and maybe even disturbing idea to buy into if you think about it. I was told to keep at it, which I did. I'd put aside for a long time, go back to it, repeat the process over and over again. Eventually I just gave up. I always felt like it was targeting some specific demographic by default and never got out of that algorithmic optimization spot for me.
- rolothrow 2y ago
  Tiktoks algorithm takes a while to get used to but it is pretty tameable. Quick way that works for me: - avoid attempts based on "unliking" things, I'm pretty sure it treats it as engagement. Instead swipe bad content away. - avoid "accidentally engaging", like replying to a comment you feel is wrong or watching something you don't like because you were trying to see where the speech was going. Disengage ASAP with unwanted. - positive feedback for whatever video starts getting close to what you want. - positive implies staying the whole clip, liking, viewing comments, commenting, liking comments and the strongest of all, sharing the video (you can send it to a telegram conversation with yourself or whatever, not sure if the link you shared ever being opened is accounted for but I think nope). Do this on purpose, like if a video is cool just open the comment section and like all comments without looking. -try to "navigate". If you want to see tech and it's currently showing you music, maybe engage with music production or Spotify tricks when they appear. It might not be the tech you're looking for, but it's closer to tech than a teenage girl dancing. You'll eventually be shown things more relevant to you, at which point you grab that current. Also do not try to rush the process. I think updating your interests is not instant, and session time might be a metric as well.
spixy 2y ago
5-10mins seems like a perfect algorithm to me. If you have more time, then you can watch normal youtube videos or TV shows...
Andrex 2y ago
It's strange to me everyone acting as like TikTok's algorithm is completely unassailable and will always be better than the competition for years and decades to come. Tech moves fast and Meta/YT aren't just standing around. If their only differentiating feature is the algorithm, Insta would eat them for lunch eventually the same they did for Snapchat after knocking off that app's big/only claim to fame (stories). The discussion seems to be TikTok's algorithm is so good no one could ever possibly compete. I really don't think that's the case and TikTok really has no moat whatsoever.
- Clamchop 2y ago
  > It's strange to me everyone acting as like TikTok's algorithm is completely unassailable and will always be better than the competition for years and decades to come. I'm not seeing this sentiment. More that none of its competitors are so obviously ahead of the pack that we can easily predict TikTok's natural successor.

palata 2y ago

I don't use TikTok, but my understanding is that they are just a lot better than anyone else with the algorithm. Somehow where Meta built a social graph, TikTok built a graph of videos (no need to know who you are, they can just suggest videos based on other videos you watch). And it's apparently difficult to catch up (presumably because they have more users so more data to make better predictions). That would, IMO, explain why people use TikTok and not something else. As to where they go after TikTok is banned... I feel like there is also a factor of "Oh you want to ban chinese apps? Let me show you". Not sure whether it will last, though.

donatj 2y ago
I'm skeptical that the algorithm is actually "better" and it's not just that the end users have fed TikTok a ton more data points about their personal likes and dislikes. Of course an app you have used for thousands of hours is going to know you better than the one you tried for half an hour
- dns_snek 2y ago
  Try it. I've been using Youtube for a decade and its recommendations are a total crapshoot these days. TikTok figured out my preferences within 15 minutes just based on which videos I liked and watched, and it can change course extremely quickly if you get bored of a certain topic. The total number of hours I spent Youtube must outnumber the total number of hours I spent on TikTok by at least 100:1.
  - vinckr 2y ago
    For me the normal video recommendations are awesome on Youtube, I regularly find very obscure super interesting stuff in my recommendations. For shorts it is abysmal, I only get horrible recommendations there - no idea why it is so different.
    - jacobgkau 2y ago
      That's interesting. YouTube's gotten me fairly pinned algorithm-wise over the past few years (I used to never use recommendations at all before that). But my Shorts recommendations seem to just be the regular recommendations, but Shorts versions of them. Sometimes as far as the same channels, or the same people in clips even if it's on a different channel.

pjc50 2y ago

A large part of it is obviously negative polarization: you tell people they can't use a Chinese app, they're going to use a different Chinese app. Hence the pictures of Luigi. It's worth asking why Reels/Shorts didn't take off and those companies had to ask for their competition to be banned instead. Everyone agrees that "the algorithm is better", but this is very hard to quantify. Perhaps something about surfacing smaller creators? Quantity/quality of invasive advertising? Extent to which people feel particular kinds of rage content is being forced on them?

suraci 2y ago
I've never saw Luigi or Aaron Bushnell suggested to me by YouTube, unless I search them I think that's why, just saying
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
eunos 2y ago
Rednote and TikTok has 'novelty' content type that originally cultivated in mainland China. The memes, reactions pic, etc don't really exist on reels/shorts.
- preciousoo 2y ago
  My god, in this thread you can tell who actually used TikTok and who only read about it
  - whimsicalism 2y ago
    it’s painfully obvious
weinzierl 2y ago
Main reason besides the algorithm is in my opinion that TikTok has wide but hard boundaries when it comes to content. This leads to diverse but relatively safe content. It is not 4chan where you think twice before clicking a link to avoid emotional damage. It is also not Reddit or Youtube where you do not bother to go because you permanently encounter stuff that is inconsequentially blocked and you are still not safe from trauma. I think most platforms other than TikTok try to be too strict, fail to enforce their unrealistic rules in any comprehensible form and therefore suck for most intellectually curious users.

raverbashing 2y ago

If I'm not mistaken the 'killer feature' of Tiktok is not the player, but the editor (Capcut?)

pjc50 2y ago
Yes, although Capcut is a separate piece of software. You can in theory make content with it for any app. In practice, Tiktok is so dominant that a lot of popular Reels content has Tiktok watermarks on it.
- NoGravitas 2y ago
  Every time in the last year that anyone has shared me a link to a short video on Facebook or Instagram, it has a TikTok watermark on it. This leads me to assume that most of the content on FB or Insta that I would actually want to see originally comes from TikTok.

PittleyDunkin 2y ago

> The UI is better than TikTok ever was I cannot disagree more. I just scroll on tiktok and tiktok populates the scrolling with videos I want to see, and it takes about ten minutes to signal to tiktok what content you like and don't like. Youtube, meanwhile, is an exercise in a far too-busy UI with thumbnails and comments and text and buttons—it's inherently a desktop app shoved into a web browser. Nice if you want to search for a specific topic and watch a four-hour video on it, but terrible for entertainment or killing time. The only use I have for youtube are in solving these two problems: 1) where can I find a music video and 2) how do I do x ...but the focus on the interface obscures why youtube shorts won't ever take off: youtube is extremely bad at pushing content I want to watch. I've heard this over and over and over again and I know it's true for me, too.

infecto 2y ago

Shorts is absolute trash. It does not have critical mass and will repeat the same videos to you over and over. EDIT: I want to overemphasize just how bad it is. It feels like a project someone whipped up in coding bootcamp over a week. It feels like it has zero ability to pick the next video correctly and it genuinely repeats videos between sessions.

eddd-ddde 2y ago

As someone that uses both, YouTube shorts it's _not_ superior. Two very simple reasons: 1. the algorithm sucks 2. it will consistently fail to load content quickly enough when scrolling unwanted content

api 2y ago

It's not as addictive. TikTok mastered the hyper-addictive algorithm. IMHO good riddance. Anything bad for the mindless addictive chum industry is good for humanity. Now do Instagram, Facebook, Xhitter, etc.

xnx 2y ago

No 2x speed playback doesn't help

lazycouchpotato 2y ago

Shorts is garbage. There are so many UI elements on top of video that end up blocking what you're trying to see. There is no way to hide them. YouTube also destroyed its search.

shafyy 2y ago

Let's see if the ActivityPub Loops in time (made by the creator of Pixelfed): https://loops.video/ https://loops.video/

davidmurdoch 2y ago

I loathe YouTube Shorts entirely.

cess11 2y ago

Sometimes I visit forums where people share video snippets, I've never seen sexy stuff snagged from Shorts, but a lot from TikTok. I think both Alphabet and Meta suck at seductive material.

libertine 2y ago

TikTok has a great e-commerce integration, no one else is offering this at the moment.

tmaly 2y ago

the community on TikTok is friendlier and more uplifting compared to YouTube shorts

RiverCrochet 2y ago

Shorts is almost there. IMHO all it needed to do was be a separate app and not try to get you to sign up for YouTube Premium every 2 seconds. Reels needs to be more disconnected from Facebook for it do anything similar. Why do you say the Shorts UI is better? It seems exactly the same to me.

mholm 2y ago
If it feels the same, you're not familiar enough with either app to make that judgement.
- johnisgood 2y ago
  Is it not scrolling in either case?

whimsicalism 2y ago

both shorts and reels give me so much more brain dead content than tiktok and it’s really hard to get out of that rut

raincole 2y ago

> I don't understand why YouTube Shorts isn't the obvious successor It might be eventually. (GenZ) People are migrating to RedNote now to lift a middle finger. It's more of a meme.

bastardoperator 2y ago

Because for 5-20 dollars you can drive hundreds of thousands of people if not millions of people to your video, product, meme, whatever... Youtube, not so much.

eitally 2y ago

I spend a lot of time on YT, and less time on Instagram... and 0 time on TikTok, where I never created an account. YT Shorts exist exclusively for YT creators who want to publish bite-sized pieces of content for their audience with a much lower expectation of polish than their normal longer form content. Perhaps the algorithm also presents "random" YouTubers', too, but the vast majority of what I see is put out by the publishers I'm already following (or other very similar publishers in the same ecosystem). I would suggest that TikTok's successor is Insta Reels. Reels are almost exclusively entertainment and because they tie into Instagram's broader user/connections network the UX is much better than TikTok. Nobody goes to Instagram to figure out how to replace their garbage disposal -- this is squarely YT domain. If YT Shorts can make inroads in the entertainment market [without feeling like a commercial break between pieces of actual content, which is the impression I have and the way I use it].

kyle_grove 2y ago

I think in part because of YouTube demonization, which is how TikTok could poach the creators in the first place. I suspect if they're mirroring content to YouTube, it's more to try to attract audience to TikTok than monetize through YouTube.

saghm 2y ago

Part of it is intentional spite from the users switching; a big part of the push for banning TikTok was based on the fact that it's based on China, so purposely seeking out a Chinese alternative is making a statement. Whether or not you think the ban is justified, I think it's hard not to see the obvious inconsistency in banning only a single app on those grounds that this migration points out. I've never personally used TikTok, so it's possible my perception is flawed, but to me it almost seems like a dare to the government to prove how serious their rationale is. If the government truly thinks that having data collected by Chinese apps is so dangerous, are they willing to flat out ban _all_ Chinese apps? If so, is that more extreme step still something the courts consider constitutional? If not, was TikTok just a convenient political target rather than something actually dangerous?

vitorgrs 2y ago

Because Youtube shorts is awful, at least me, as a user. Most of the content there, it's, well, "shorts", cuts from full videos of podcasts, etc. It lacks real users. It's basically the current youtube creators doing content for Youtube Shorts. Let alone how the algo it's worse, and you can't download videos :)