My tinfoil hat theory is that these sites are betting on a government ban of TikTok causing those users to look for an alternative.

This is the best summary I could come up with:

Senior YouTube staffers are reportedly worried that its TikTok competitor, Shorts, may eat away at its long-form content, which has for almost two decades been its primary bread and butter, according to The Financial Times.

As FT points out, YouTube’s ad revenue, though recently improved, had been on a downward year-over-year slide for three straight quarters.

YouTube is still figuring out how to reap more ad money from Shorts.

Its long-form content lets it show more ads per video, but as short-form content gradually takes over, content creators themselves are uploading fewer long videos, FT writes, citing YouTube staff fretting about internal figures.

Keeping up with that means adding features like AI summaries and NFL highlights, and even making compromises elsewhere in Google’s business to keep other industries happy and supportive of the service.

It also means investing in Shorts’ creators and incentivizing them to make exclusive content for YouTube’s service.

The original article contains 169 words, the summary contains 151 words. Saved 11%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!