In a 2025 deposition of John Harding, the Vice President of Engineering for YouTube Music and YouTube Premium, lawyers representing more than 10,000 plaintiffs confronted Harding about the apparent admission.
"Goal is not viewership, it’s viewer addiction,” an unnamed YouTube employee noted in the email to others. The note appeared to be part of a collection of thoughts from something called “iOS Creator App review.”
Do they generate more money when we watch YouTube shorts?
My instinct would be to say, yeah, almost certainly. Not necessarily from any ads in the shorts themselves, but I’m guessing you can extract a lot more from a user who constantly engages in frenzied bursts of dopamine chasing, than one who consumes slower, longer, less frequent content. Even if the longer content technically has more ads.