If you’re keen to accelerate your cognitive decline further, YouTube has announced that its users can now watch Shorts at double speed. According to the platform, this is so you can “absorb information more quickly or find your favorite part faster.”
Exactly why you’d need anything from an AI-narrated Short stuffed in your brain more quickly isn’t explained. Presumably, somebody, somewhere, has a reason to make these short clips zip by even faster than they already do. That somebody is probably Google.
Eat my Shorts
The move, presented as a good thing for YouTube users, would also have the effect of shunting people through more videos in a shorter space of time. The only people who really benefit from this are those working at YouTube and its (even more) corporate overlord. Still, it’s an option if you want it.
Which also means you’ll be able to train YouTube’s new algorithm a little quicker. The platform also announced that it is retiring the ‘dislike’ button on Shorts. It turns out that a plain dislike doesn’t tell the company enough to more effectively market to you make changes to its products that benefit you.
“Instead, we’ll rely on our more precise controls, “Not Interested”, and “Don’t recommend this channel,” to more accurately tune your feed and serve up content you’ll love. These options give you more control over what you see and allow us to better understand your genuine preferences, especially since you’ve shown us that “disliking” a video could mean anything from “poor audio quality” to simply “not my cup of tea.”
