Dear YouTube!

The gist

1. Optimizing for watch time metrics is not the same as making better videos, and chasing retention can strip out the creative choices that make content worth watching.
2. The feature breaks a quiet community norm where everyone watches the same video, creating confusion around timestamped comments and which version people actually saw.
3. For 99.9% of creators, Brownlee says finishing and posting more videos beats spending time A/B testing cuts of a single one for small gains.
4. YouTube has a pattern of dropping features that made it unique, like the public dislike count, to chase TikTok and Instagram, which weakens what sets it apart.