Thank you for the summary. I understand how creators are incentivized by YouTube to produce longer content, but it is a bit ridiculous that this 30 minute video could have been 6 tweets.
Of all the YouTubers out there, I wouldn't call out Technology Connections for padding their content. Sure, you can get a short summary of the useful information, but the show is about more than "short collection or facts". It's like saying "it's ridiculous that an episode of Mythbusters is half an hour, you can fit the results in a tweet!"
To go off on a tangent, someone went and edited Mythbusters episodes to remove the fluff and called it Smyths. There's a torrent of it and it's a way better watch.
I've seen those, and while I understand it, I feel it loses a hell of a lot of the pathos of what mythbusters was. A huge amount of the goodness is the interplay and personality of Adam and Jamie, and it gets lost I think in those edits. Add that to Mythbusters not exactly being scientifically sound, and more like "these TV effects artists build a weird contraption that MAYBE answers a question that isn't well formed". Cutting out the recaps is useful though.
I give Mythbusters a pass because the padding is intentional entertainment (that I happen to enjoy, obviously).
I don't watch TC because the padding doesn't come across as entertaining to me; it feels like a lot more beating around the bush. There's a _lot_ of repetition.
I watch long videos at any time. Usually during coding. For instance this summary and review of utopia: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PFx2QM0Z8Qo 7 hours : 41 minutes, watched it one go.
> but it is a bit ridiculous that this 30 minute video could have been 6 tweets.
In the video, he researches relevant laws in the EU and US, and explains the details and implications of those laws. He compares to previous solutions from another manufacturer, GM, and also personally verifies that his car's automatic cruise control mode does properly use brake lights, and also shows how that is following the letter of the law.
There is no cruft in the video, just a lot of densely packed content. Yes you can summarize the video in a few sentences, but you miss out on a lot of the details.
I watched the video for like 4 minutes and it was 4 minutes of him saying “the brake light doesn’t come on until your foot is all the way off the pedal.”
> Thank you for the summary. I understand how creators are incentivized by YouTube to produce longer content, but it is a bit ridiculous that this 30 minute video could have been 6 tweets.
This isn't even the worst example, because the additional content is at least part of the entertainment (even if not the most efficient).
Padding is par for the course among Youtubers. If you play a lot of video games, you'll notice this, because gaming news and tutorials are often done on Youtube.
There are a couple of different thresholds for algorithmic promotion and monetization - I believe 10 minutes is the biggest one - so a lot of videos are padded with filler content just to make the threshold.
You'll also see it on videos for "how to pronounce ______", because they can't monetize below a certain threshold, so they'll pad it with useless filler in order to make the video over 30s long.