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Ask HN: Is it me or is YouTube Shorts broken?
1 point by PaulHoule on Jan 27, 2023 | hide | past | favorite | 2 comments
I just followed a link to an ordinary YouTube video and timed six seconds between the page loading, me clicking on the play button, and the video starting to play. I could have clicked quicker. I could change the channel on an analog TV faster than that, but it takes much longer to take a DVD or Blu Ray out of the box and have it playing so YouTube wins.

I would say it is like this (fast) with a range of devices from Android phone to iPad to Laptop or Desktop computer over a good mobile connection, ADSL, cable, etc.

If I follow a link to YouTube Shorts, however, I see a template screen without any content, presumably the video is going to load in the big black square, but after 30 to 45 seconds I start to get antsy, think maybe it is stuck, try to interact with the UI. It scrolls down in a jerky way like a film strip in a projector to another video which starts to sorta-kinda play but really janky, then I scroll it back up and it takes a few more seconds to collect itself and finally the video plays.

I've had the same experience with the iPad, moderately powerful and very powerful Windows computers over better and worse internet connections.

If other people are experiencing the same thing it is no wonder that Youtube Shorts is not getting traction over TikTok?

Maybe if I had more faith and waited 90 seconds the video might have played but maybe the video isn't even 90 seconds long. I am not seeing a loading indicator or anything that makes it clear the application didn't crash silently or otherwise get stuck.

Does YouTube Shorts work for you?

For extra credit: what does this tell us about the state of the web in 2023? ... the state of Google? How did this get past QA? Where is the deadpool for Google Shorts? Does this have something to do with Progressive Web Applications?




I'm not really sure, it loads in less than a second for me (and I'm on Starlink).

I certainly don't like the form-factor of a YouTube short, but the functionality seems to be there for me. Maybe your bottleneck is your network?


I've tried it from a place with pretty fast internet and it is the same. My ADSL gives excellent performance with YouTube, Netflix and the like.

I am wondering if maybe it caches a lot of stuff so if you wait for it subsequent loads are quicker.




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