I mean the sudden explosion of really short videos (anywhere from 10 seconds to 2 minutes) popping up on everyone's recommended.

Generally
1) they seem to be low quality videos from old channels that don't upload anymore
2) the videos are usually years old themselves. I'm takings years to decades old.
3) they don't seem to be related to eachother in any way other than they're old and meant to be funny.

The thing I really don't understand is that from a creator standpoint, watchtime is everything. So if only have short videos, your watchtime is going to be very low and won't make much ad revenue from it. And some videos are too short to put ads on anyways so YouTube can't make any money either.

TL;DR : very short videos are everywhere and it doesn't make sense

My only suspicion is that Tiktok is related to this somehow

are you talking about YouTube Shorts, the YouTube knockoff of TikTok?

Yeah YouTube shorts algorithm is really weird and never updates for me

They might be related but idk old videos weren't made when shorts were a thing and they play like any regular video. Even on pc

90% of youtube shorts are literally just tiktoks

Idk about the short videos but I'm having the worst s*** on the website recommended to me as ads. I always say I'm not interested yet they keep trying to put me on to the SAME terrible channels.

they giving me nature shet like aminals

Animal videos sound dope

meh pointless imo

in a word: trash.

classic meme

@Sleazy

u remember this one?

Idk what are u watching lmao

My only issue with YouTube is it recommends the same channel I watched instead of putting me onto new s***. Like finding new music is tougher now also because it weights popularity too heavily I wanna hear some undiscovered stuff

This one is a classic

Tik Tok effect

Subscribe to StrictlyHits

That's an amazing channel for new music

Love it bro, true classic

Damn this looks pretty cool thxs man

For sure bro

It's awesome to discover music on it

All music no videos no bullshit

Idk about shorter videos but I know they promote 10+ minute videos more than shorter videos

They're trying to push YouTube Shorts as a thing but it's gonna wind up being a dud just like the YouTube stories

i get cool animal videos on mine

ya i think they're just trying to emulate the addictiveness of tiktok's short and "interesting" videos so that u stay on the site longer in case you're just looking to waste time. if u wanna waste time ur not gonna invest in a 10 min video that has sm sense of focus (or if u do watch it you won't rly focus on it), but u will waste time watching silly s*** like 10x over and then whoa! 5-10 minutes spent on youtube woohoo

plus yt will always get money, ads are def a primary source of revenue but yt is google n googles business is pretty much looking at the s*** you click on/browse and selling that to companies that wanna know bout demographics