[nrvn]

What I find weird is searching IMG_XXXX directly on youtube returns you a number of videos with such title and half of the results are 10+ year old youtube SHORTS. There was no such thing back then. Just bloody videos! Does Youtube auto-convert short old videos to vertical shorts on users’ behalf?

[CM30]

Unfortunately the answer is yes. If a video has a vertical resolution and is under 3 minutes (previously 1 minute), YouTube will automatically treat it as a short now. This basically means every video related to a DS or 3DS game, or recorded on a phone in general, is now treated like a short by their system.

This has likely screwed up all manner of videos, since a vertical resolution doesn't equate to it being designed for a TikTok or Instagram style feed...

[drvladb]

I believe Youtube just serves the video with a Shorts UI, nothing special besides the formatting of the page.

[SoftTalker]

Early YouTube limited videos to a few minutes. Also early phones didn't have a lot of memory to make long videos.