YouTube is the last major social media to let go of community-led content recommendation (Trending page) and joining TikTok’s short video format party. Like others, its contents now go fully personalized for the users —us.
Clicking the Shorts tab, we don’t get a list of videos to watch. Instead, we get a video fulfilling the entire screen, automatically played. We no longer get to choose what to consume. We are now being fed —by the algorithm.
It’s a form of losing our agency over what to feed into our mind, surrendering it to a mindless computer to decide what we think & what information we consume.
Open the tweet to read the full thread.YouTube had placed a new button on its app. This new Shorts button replaced the Trending button that’s been there for years.
— Al (@alhrkn) July 10, 2021
But it’s not just a simple UI tweak. It’s a problem of echo chamber, filter bubble, and shortened attention span, where YT had surrendered.
A thread: pic.twitter.com/q3RwxQ0aaP
