WARNING! YouTube SHORTS Will Destroy Your Channel 😬 

Here’s my new Shorts channel: youtube.com/@CreatorFilmSchool?si=x54XX8QEkieUXJVz

I just wrapped up 4 straight months of posting a short daily to my channel. The reason I stopped was because I accomplished what I wanted: to get to 1,000 subs. Subscribers only mattered to me until reaching that milestone. Now that I’ve got that taken care of, I’m focused on getting back to my long form strategy since those kinds of videos will bring the kind of audience I want to reach. I think shorts are great for creators who are just getting started and are testing the waters. I’m about a year into this journey and shorts were good for getting feedback and data from RU-vid faster than I would’ve if I had only just focused on long form videos. Posting them daily was also good for building a creative habit, which is what you need to get off the sidelines of and into the game of RU-vid.

RU-vid shorts destroyed my channel for a period of time. I basically stopped doing them and I’m back to normal

Shorts still work really great for me on my second channel. I mean, I am just small content creator and I work really hard (I also use a little bit of fame ster, but that's a necessity nowadays). I just give all my videos small initial boost, and that caused them to spread literally everywhere, bringing more and more organic views day after day.

He ain’t lying. I’ve been a full time RU-vidr over a decade with over 300k subscribers. I’ve done case studies with Shorts, and BOTH times Shorts negatively impacted my channel instead of working together with my normal long-form content. Going Viral with Shorts is the worst thing that can happen to you. Think about it. If you have a massively successful video, RU-vid will serve out more content of similar nature. So if you are a long-form channel & you have a Short that hits, RU-vid algorithm will suddenly cause Shorts to be the priority and over-promote all your other Shorts thinking that’s what your viewers want. Meanwhile your core audience won’t get fed out your normal content (which gives you more money, longer duration, MORE ADS) so you’ve essentially cannibalized your channel. And worst part about it you’ll never be able to compete with a short video with long form! It’s shorter, typically puncher editing, and RU-vid is overly promoting RU-vid Shorts so there is NO WAY for your long-form content to catch up. It’s much harder to make a 10 minute original video do 20 million views with no major backing than a less than 1 minute video. This is the major problem with RU-vid trying to keep up with TikTok. They haven’t figured out how to work the algorithm to prioritize both and/or to appeal to viewers who enjoy long/short form content.

I saw this happening on my channel 8 months ago when I tried a few shorts and I IMMEDIATELY STOPPED. Yes, it destroys your channel literally. It will bring your revenue down. I have been working with a few video editing companies last few weeks as I am trying to get part of my life back after 5 years lol... whenever they offer shorts I always respond. "absolutely no. It destroys the channel"... I am sorry you are also seeing these numbers. If you want to make money, stay away from shorts on long-format channel...

Interesting insights, Jeven! Thanks! There is another issue with the long form, I think, there are more and more video creators and videos coming to RU-vid but now the audience is not growing so fast if at all. So if there were 100 videos on a given topic in the past now there are 1000, and no matter how good the creator is, the views will be split into more chunks. And, as you properly mentioned in your video, once more viewers get addicted to the short form both creators and RU-vid will suffer

My shorts videos have enjoyed immense popularity with millions of views, but they appear to be adversely affecting the performance of my long-format content. Consequently, after careful deliberation, I have made the decision to remove all of my shorts today. I am hopeful that this action will help rectify the issue and allow my long videos to gain more visibility and engagement.

This is exactly what I found on my main channel. The better the shorts did the worse my long form content did. I unlisted all of the shorts on the main channel a few months ago and I am now seeing long form views and revenue coming back up. Shorts also result in a real dumbing down of the comment section with the majority of commenters seeming to compete for who can leave the dumbest comment. I have a second channel for shorts and rarely post any more due to the lack of earnings, even though it gets more views typically

Damn! this video couldn't of come at a better time Jeven! we just started ramping up our short form content and after 9 days have noticed ad revenue drop, thinking we might follow suit in removing the shorts from our main channel to keep the long format viewer. Thank you for sharing this.

Thank you for your honesty and transparency. Exactly what I’ve experienced - it’s not worth the vanity metrics to get the subs, a drop in income and a bunch of viewers who don’t watch your long form . Great vid as always !

I appreciate the info Jeven! I have heard they are similar to having two separate channels almost which sort of makes sense to me. I am way more comfortable with long form content , and I had very limited experience with short form on my main youtube channel. Every time I try one it seams to not do well and I disable the short video. I decided it might be better to share my"shorts" on instagram since that platform at least to me makes more sense based on my content. It's a hard topic to navigate with opinions varying wildly... In addition to me, the removal of links really makes it not worth the time in addition to poor ad revenue w/ shorts... In the end I don't think it is worth it for me to mix on my current channel. Possible it might make sense on my other newer channel to help grain subscribers in the early life of the channel, but I need to experiment more....

Thanks Jeven!!! I have been seeing alot about this, the vanity metrics are so compelling!!! Thanks for sharing the Ad Revenue impact! We are definitely to growing a long form channel and will also be taking our shorts down!! We are not monatized yet, but working hard want to get there! Your videos have been a big help.😃

Exactly the same experience here... Everytime I upload a short, the long form videos, that I upload after that short, tank and they barely get views. Once I stop uploading shorts for a long period of time, let's say, a couple of months, the new long form videos I upload start getting good amount of views once again. Also, when I upload shorts, the overall views for the last 28 days remain the same, but the revenue drops significantly, which leads to my conclusion that RU-vid actually replaces your long form videos with your shorts, when it comes to search results, recommended content etc... meaning they recategorize your channel from long form channel to shorts channel, leading to your long form videos dropping in rankings and in exposure. So the whole theory of RU-vid that shorts are complementary to your long form channel are false. They cannot cooperate, the algorithm categorizes your channel either as a long form channel, or as a short form channel.

Thank you Jeven! I'm a new creator and you just confirmed what I thought might happen. It was fun making a few shorts, but it took time away from making what I really wanted to get out there. Thx for letting us know

I think there is also another potential problem here especially for a smaller channels: doing long-form and shorts (and podcasts and live and all that) could result in some kind of burnout if one doesn't have a whole team behind him. So, it's probably a good idea to decide from the beginning what kind of videos one wants to make and to concentrate on that type of videos without dispersing one's time and energy, at least at the beginning.

Yesss 100% shorts killed my channel! It's impossible to convert shorts viewers into long form content. I'm curious, did you test posting a longer video on your second/shorts channel to see the results? My bet is it completely flops. I'm lucky if mine gets 1k views. The new related video feature kinda helps a little but not really.

I'm glad you did this video, and I'm going to be bluntly honest. I've been a sub to your channel for nearly 3 years, now, and what drew me in was your great long-form educational content; I'm also one of your Creator Film School members. I grew tired of your short-form on this channel and never watch it...any if it. And it hasn't been for just the last 30 days, but over the last several months. With that said, in my opinion you're a brilliant creator and I've learned so much from you, and you have helped me with my own teensy creative endeavors. Without your instruction, I believe I wouldn't have come as far along as I have the past couple years. I'm happy to hear you're moving the short-form, but either way I'm a patient and loyal subscriber! Thank you! 👍🏻

Thank you for being transparent about your channels. This is good information to consider

My channel started a plateau in late September when I got back from VidSummit. They were all about doing shorts. So, I started doing shorts a couple of times a week at least. Going over my analytics it looks like that is the problem. My channel started the decline 30 days after I started shorts on the regular. My audience is too old for shorts and the new people shorts brought in weren't watching long form. I think I have to stick with long-form and live stream.

Has hurt my long form also. Viral shorts with 15 million views didn’t even earn ten dollars. Lol. I think the youtube algorithm is broken in many ways. A huge problem even with long form is that they push a video to subs first to gauge it’s Interaction. So if it’s not in a niche it can be dead in the water before it has a chance. I personally think it should be pushed infront of people into that subject and let the non subscribers decide if it’s an interesting video or not. This frees us up to make playlist about different subjects so we are not stuck doing one niche to be successful.

This was an extremely helpful video. Thank you so much for making it! Just as an addition to this, and you may know this already, RU-vid seems to consider each channel worthy of a certain amount of exposure, across RU-vid as a whole, and part of what I think we are seeing here, is the diversions of impressions away from the long form videos and given to the short form videos. Which you should be able to see in analytics. You would have seen this before, when you have a new video, that RU-vid loves, and while it is booming, some of your older videos are getting less views, once the new video dies down a bit, the old videos go back to their normal daily views.

I have a tiny channel and tried 30 days of shorts but as you say those people it attracted did not stick around when the next long form video came out and they earned a tiny amount of revenue. It did also attract younger people and more women oddly. Keep up the great videos Jeven.

This is a great analysis, you deserve a lot more views on this because Shorts can really be a double edge sword for creators and you nailed it. Everything I've seen and experienced points to exactly what you are saying, Shorts can be a really good idea and can also be detrimental. Thank you very much for this. Cheers!

Thank you for posting this, I've been wondering something like this for some of my other channels. I appreciate this vid.

I've been thinking about this myself. Some great points Jeven!

I started my channel a few year ago only, and some people said I should start making shorts as well, because people were craving those lately, and that was the new "fashion". I am glad I didn't do it though. Instead, I have some ideas for starting a separate channel just with shorts. Great video and info Jeven !

major help from this video since no one else is giving a comprehensive take with the new addition to link to your long form videos on RU-vid now. Would be great if we could link videos from our other main channel.

Thank yoiu so much for these insights Jeven - I had a feeling our shorts were hurting our channel growth and a lot of what you are bringing up really resonates with what we saw early on when we posted a lot of shorts ...I also have seen some RU-vid "gurus" channels with absolutely zero shorts on their channels ...so also got me intrigued ...I have subscribed and appreciate your shares in this video - thank you - Marnie🙌

I have not seen a short you made and i prefer look at longer content like this, great video and keep up the great work. :)

I posted shorts to my main channel in early 2022 and noticed many of the potential issues you mentioned here, so I quickly decided to stop posting shorts to my main channel and keep them on a separate channel. There is one stat that really jumps out when comparing the audience among the two channels: viewer age. On my main channel, most viewers are 25+ while on my shorts channel, the 18-24 group comprises almost half of my viewers. It's just not the same audience, and I'm glad I've kept them separate.

I appreciate this video. Shorts have ruined my CTR recently. This is mainly because I made some viral shorts that are off topic. So, YT seems to be showing my long form content to the same viewers that liked my shorts, but they are not interested. So, now I'll make shorts that are on topic, but less likely to go viral due to the small niche topics of my overall channel.

I'm so glad I watched this, I did a lot of shorts this year (I did close to 30 in one month in the spring) and made some long-form videos that should have popped and didn't that had me scratching my head at the time. I was ready to scrap the shorts then a couple of long-form videos popped and got massive views and that made me think maybe shorts aren't so bad after all I have been toying with the idea of a second channel for a while now and I think this video will push that ahead.

I love that video giving us more insight into shorts and if it is beneficial to implement. I think it comes down to what stage or phase you are in in your youtube career. For my channel, I am very much in the infancy period under 1000 subscribers. I've been trying to focus on long form understanding that the monetization is in the long form. My plan is to tackle the short form content to focus more on the growth and once I've hit X amount of audience member then focus on long form. I will still be trying to do both.

Thanks for the video. I had been adding in Shorts and while I do enjoy them, I wasn't sure if they were really helping me. I might put a pause on doing YT Shorts for now as we see how things sort themselves out.

Im experiencing the same thing here on my channel, well kind of. I have had a lot of success on short form content and like you said it builds the vanity metrics. When one of my shorts takes off I see a 30-50% drop in views on my long form content. I haven't made a short in about three months and two of my long form videos that were a year old took off. One of them has 110k views and the other is coming up on 400k views. I really don't know what the best course of action is right now. I might move all my shorts over to anther channel..

You are GREAT. The breakdown of this info is so on point. Thank you.

This confirms my thoughts on Shorts too. I would rather create a 1m15s video that is short but doesn’t present as a Shorts. It still delivers some valuable information quickly, but blends better with my longer form content.

Thanks Jeven for sharing these insights!

Shorts has been a disaster from the beginning... I had a similar experience when I posted shorts so I stopped as quickly as I started.

Thanks for sharing your experience Jeven. I did some testing on my other tiny monetised channel by removing Shorts (all but one) for a month and it was hard to tell the difference. If anything, revenue went slightly down. Now with Shorts back up, revenue and subscribers are climbing again.

As always Jevon, you put out great info for us, it is really appreciated. I do have a second channel and I am going to try shorts on that one and see how it goes, thanks again.

Wow, caught this video just in time as I was just about to post my first shorts video lol. As a small channel, I feel like I don't really know what is right or wrong to grow but this video definitely help me make my decision. Thank you!

Thanks for confirming my gut instinct. I'm definitely one who wants long-form only, and it pisses me off that RU-vid tries to cram shorts down my throat and won't give us an option to remove them from our subscription page and other feeds.

100% agree. I unsubscribe to channels with too many shorts. They are annoying

I am confused though. If Shorts are only useful for getting views and subs... and they don't necessarily watch the long form content (which supports business), WHY invest time and energy in creating a short form only channel at all? Can you provide a thought regarding this? I'd greatly appreciate it!

Suuuper helpful! Thanks Jeven!!🤙🏼

Its interesting this came up when it did. Im very active on Tiktok and I repurpose my short form vids here on youtube. But lately Tiktok has felt like wasted effort. This morning I was thinking of shifting my time and effort to long form youtube videos. Which I feel has more potential in the long run. Thank you for this video

Interesting analysis. Thanks for sharing. Cheers from LA.

I've also noticed a big shift in audience geography, my Indian viewership exploded based on some well performing shorts. I love my Indian audience but it's obviously not great for revenue.

My channel is still quite small, so I think shorts are helping me grow and get more people seeing my long form content. But, if I reach a point where shorts take over my channel, I'll create a second channel just for shorts, since my preference is long-form content. Good to hear about this before I get there so I can prepare. Thanks, Jevin!

Yup. Granted, I have had Shorts that went viral and brought people to the longer video (even from TikTok to RU-vid), but there's definitely an impact on how long form performs afterwards.

Thank you for a great information! We've tried shorts for 30days and thanks God that nothing really took off, so we gave up on them. Back to long term videos!😀

As a new tuber.....experimenting with shorts is a tricky 1. Thx for the info as usual. ✌️. I feel like I have to do both but keep the content seperate-to-form.

Thanks for sharing this research!

Thank you for this valuable insight on shorts.

Your are absolutely right!!! It does ! It’s give of thousands of views for any short and kills your regular videos.. Alas I figured out too late I am stopping to upload shorts anymore

Very interesting insight within this video. It should help those who are to be aware of the YT Shorts. However I am glad that you know that every content creator here goes through a different journey when it comes to building their channel (including myself), I mean hey I’ve seen channels that have done well with either or. Especially when I tip my hat when I see someone doing well with balancing both regular videos and shorts. Now then… here’s the part where I become the black sheep from everyone. I actually do like YT Shorts because they are handy for when you are out and about especially when you don’t have time to settle down for a long 20 minute video. And they are great for content creators who are just looking to have fun and entertain everyone or a quick fix for the sake of viewership. Oh! And I also like how you pretty much have a large selection of songs to choose from without getting copyright issues for your shorts (most of the time). Now I am aware that Shorts aren’t that profitable and can be a potential problem when the Shorts start to “take over” the important parts the business side of one’s channel. For me personally this isn’t going to stop me for what I upload to my channel(s), but I would at best be aware of it. Of course at the state I am at, I just wan to have fun with the content I make while getting better at my craft. Either that be Shorts or regular videos. But hey when that time comes around when my channel becomes more relevant, I’m sure that I’ll make a decision on what’s best for me. 👍 However I know that I don’t want my shorts to dominate everything.

Thanks a lot! I have the same experience. I have a 120,000 RU-vid channel but I have the same experience. Now I am thinking of another channel! Thanks a lot. You re my mentor.

Thanks for your time and information. I am really being educated. ❤

I have been cranking daily shorts (on days that aren't long form days) for about 6-8 months now and I'm burnt out on it. Plus I don't think I'm good at short form content, but I think my long form is valuable. I'm worried if I stop shorts now the algorithm will negatively impact my channel but I also don't want to put out subpar content. And similar to you, shorts don't assist my business strategy. Anyways, great breakdown, thanks for this video

100% - I've stopped making shorts on my larger channels and only continue on them with channels where the growth has stopped or smaller ones. I had exactly the same thing - a massive shift towards the shorts, which quickly became my top videos but at the expense of my longer form content, resulting in 50% less revenue (even though subs and views had 3x)

Thank you for the important info.

Hi Jeven. It's been about a month now. Has your channel recovered after removing the shorts? I think what you've done by removing shorts is a very interesting experiment. I stopped posting shorts to my channel about three weeks ago as a result of your video and really it hasn't made any noticeable difference to views or revenue from long form videos. The only impact, which was expected, are subscribers and views from shorts have dropped off dramatically. My channel is tiny in comparison so trends can be harder to spot.

I had exactly this happen. Went from 10k subs to 47k subs but my longform views and revenue tanked. Finally deleted shorts with a combined total of 20m views and now my channel is recovering slowly even though I am making very little content currently. I have stopped shorts entirely. I retested it recently and made 4 old shorts public again and very quickly had the same results so I made them private again and views on longform are climbing back up. So all longform from here on for me.

Fantastic clarification!

really insightful. thank you! :D

Thank you for sharing I will be changing my shorts too into another channel. This probably saved me my RU-vid future

I have the same issue for my channel. Since i have started posting shorts, my channel has reached a platou and new long form videos do not get any traction my previous videos did. I have made them all unvisible. That changed the situation a bit. Should i delete them all? You said a friend of yours did this and gained his power back, right?

Good run down on the scenario here :) A quick thought: could it be that it's not necessarily the shorts themselves, but the content *in* them, that might cause the drop in long form views? If the short gives "too much info away", as in "presents the content from a long form video in 1 minute or less" it would maybe make it less interesting for many viewers to watch the longer version of that video. A short that leaves the viewer hanging on the other hand ... just like a good hook of long form video, could increase the views coming from shorts, instead of the shorts being their own "complete" little story - so it could be it's not about *if* using shorts or not is right thing for a channel, but *how* they are used to hook new, and existing, viewers? Personally, I think it would be great if RU-vid gave both creators and viewers a bit more options for what goes on in the feed, but of course "they know best" - but if a creator could set f.ex shorts to only show up for non-subscribers of the channel it would be easier to use shorts for "marketing" of the channel to new viewers while not "bothering" the hardcore crowd. Same for users - If a creator is constantly pushing out shorts that are repurposed from their long form content, and I usually watch all their long form content, for me having the ability to filter out shorts on a per creator basis would be great - the way things are now my feed is filling up with shorts from videos I've seen already in long form and it's keeping me from seeing new shorts I haven't seen, from creators I might not know about yet.

This is a very valuable video. Now with the link from shorts to long term might it change? I have also heard that somewhat sand Shorts is fast paced - like a highway. Some people like driving fast, so they won't like to go to a slower road (long form), so maybe your content got more pushed towards the highway and they don't want to drive on the slow road and the people on the slow roads did not want to drive on the highway. If it make sense? So the question will be to get the best middle ground...

Thank you for sharing this! I'm struggling regretting posting shorts before I started posting long form consistently. I still get views from my shorts but I'm realizing my audience is mainly from the shorts and my long form audience is much smaller. So I'm getting ignored by a big portion of my audience who only cared for the shorts. I have nearly 16k subscribers that happened after a short went viral, but my long form videos barely get anything. Now I'm trying to figure out how to fix this issue so I don't get shown so much to the wrong audience!! Ugh.. Do I delete the shorts and just wait for the algorithm to pick up on it or what? ahhh so frustrating.I revived a dead channel but changed niches too. I'm debating starting a new channel to get rid of all this bad data on my channel but I worked so hard for the last 8 months to grow and over halfway to my 4k watch hours within the year.. ugh

Could it make sense to create a second channel where from the long videos from the main channel, recycle unique shorts are published? This way you would keep the channels separate, where each channel has its own algorithm and the statistics don't mix. But still has the same style and theme.

It's been inconclusive on my channel. I did for 64 days and it made almost no difference to the revenue. Everyone will have to try themselves and see if and how it affects their own channel.

I'm a shorts guy and it works for me. My sub count went way up. This is my short goal. Yes, I want to earn money too but my goal right now is to grow subscribers.

Good video Jeven, I'm a 2 yr old monetized long form small channel & i've been on a +45% growth track each year. I only pop 6 or 7 shorts monthly because I feel i have to. But my analytics are just wacky & my audience stats are all over the place. Overall views are still good but revenue is down. So now i'll concentrate on improving quality of long form while also reducing length of video.

Thanks for the NFO❤

I've really seen this. Its demolished, my long form videos which are 45-60 minutes. And my traffic is now 80% shorts that don't watch long form. It also changed dramatically how new videos perform when released.

Yeah. I didn't think of that. Thank you! 🌞👍

It felt like a deceptive push to get us to produce shorts and that it would help us grow. I noticed exactly what you saw. I traded my long form viewers for shorts feed viewers. I’ll likely divide my content if I decide to continue making shorts..

Great information. I had no clue about shorts.

shorts nearly ruined my main channel. It is a hockey channel BUT has always included my dogs in the content. Last summer I started posting shorts of me and the dogs at the river because hockey season was over. This was when RU-vid really started pushing them and I had a few blow up very quickly and my subscriber count grew by almost 30%!! Within days however, views on my my long form went down by 40-50%. My analytics went all whacky and after about a month I stopped posting shorts except maybe 1-2 per month. Over the last year, slowly but surely I have lost most of the people who subscribed just for the dogs and views have gone back to normal, but for 3-4 months it was REAL bad.

Most of what I see is shorts being posted as a briefer clip from their long form content. Every once in a while I find the odd channel posting original content to the shorts and long form content. That is useful for me.

Interesting... As a viewer, if I have time to watch videos, chances are I'm either taking that time to watch a couple long form videos or shorts. I rarely do both during that block of time. As a content creator, I think RU-vid needs to find creative ways to drive shorts viewers to be converted into long form viewers. Still, seems like an interesting challenge to get viewers to spend time viewing the content that is most intended by the creator based on the channel objectives/goals. Great video Jeven!!!

Some really good points. 👍 Now that they cut or blocked linking for websites and affiliate programs links these shorts are cannibalizing long-form channels!👍🤔💰🎥🎬🤯😭😱 What I'm seeing is affiliate marketers are putting short memorable websites as text in the shorts. Thank you for pointing out creators should be looking at the business side. 👍

Thanks, finally someone that tells it like it is. You won't hear the truth from RU-vid itself! They're really failing creators here if you ask me.

I'm a new to youtube creator and in the beginning, my long-form videos were averaging about 4 to 10K views, when I committed to posting shorts consistently as well - it killed my views on my new long form videos, they're now having a tough time breaking 1K views. Anyway - great data. Thank for the help!

Interesting ... I know a lot of RU-vidrs in the same place with the same questions... did your long form impressions stay the same as shorts vanity metrics increased and long form views dropped or did the impressions drop also?

Mine is quiet the opposite tho. Before now I hardly get people watch my videos but most shorts I’ve created has added to my subscribers and made people watch my long form content. I just started my channel 2months ago

Correct, they do.. I usually unsubscribe from channels that post shorts on long form channel’s all the time..

Very nice sharing.. learned a lot from you! Now I might change something to focus on my main channel and not the shorts mixed up so much ! Thank you…

I have also heard mixed results bout doing shorts/longs on the same channel. Have yet to put out a single short but might try uploading 2-3 soon to see how they do.

Great insightful video! Especially for a creator with < 1k subs thinking that making shorts will somehow get you to the monetization threshold. I’m a disabled vet so I have full time to dedicate to my channel, but I still need to not waste my time and effort into building an audience that won’t watch my long form content. Like a business, you gotta attract the right client to form a relationship with. In our case, that would be creator/viewer. ***just curious 🤔 have you noticed a negative impact on your CTR?

Personally I wish there was a way on YT to filter out shorts. Don’t watch them but my feed is swamped with them.

A lot of views are down for longform in general for me. Im hoping it picks up

My long form content gets seen by basically no one, no matter if shorts are a thing or not (I may as well be posting dead letters to myself for all the work I put into them) while I can see this might becoming a problem down the track, for now shorts are an absolute godsend.

Interesting! What if you’re just starting a channel and you have a ton of short form content from IG? I was planning on using all that to jump start my channel but I’m much more interested in long-form viewers. I wonder if a separate shorts channel could be a good feeder to the long-form channel? 🤔

I think RU-vid is probably manipulating shorts. I don't get notifications from a few creators I pretty religiously watch anymore, but suddenly YT is pushing their shorts that then link to those videos. I barely watch shorts at all, so there's no justification for that happening, except for RU-vid throttling full length notifications to favour shorts, even to audiences who should quite obviously not be seeing this kind of algorithm change. If less than 1% of a viewer's behaviour is watching shorts, that should tell YT something... We've seen them do this with previous newer features too, to make those new features look artificially successful. We also know that eventually that drops off a cliff (polls anyone) once that artificial boosting goes away, but shorts is far worse because of the cannibalism. The other thing is that Shorts encourage a very very short attention span, which has the potential to not only damage the platform as a whole, but also reshape viewer behaviour in a really negative way, which will likely feed TikTok more than anything. It's a real shame that RU-vid didn't just start their own separate shorts app to compete directly with TikTok, that's connected to the actual YT app for interlinking. Genuinely baffling why they didn't do this.

I'm also unsure about Shorts. I tried it now on 2 channels. I think it really depends on the niche. Some long form niches will just die and you have to adapt or your channel will die.

I mean, I click off the checkbox that sends them to my subs. That seems to help. My channel is doing better than it has in a long time since I started doing twice weekly shorts between longform videos