YouTube’s Endless Scroll: A Big Shift for Discovery and Creator Control

YouTube is testing an endless scroll feature for long-form videos, bringing a TikTok-like experience to the platform. Instead of the usual homepage or video feed, this feature lets users swipe continuously to discover new content. Launched as a test for a select group of Android users, it’s designed to blend Shorts with longer videos, making for a fluid and immersive browsing experience.

If implemented widely, this shift could radically change how users discover videos and how creators build their channels. Currently, creators rely on thumbnails, titles, and channel branding to attract and keep viewers. But this new feature hands much of the discovery power over to YouTube’s recommendation algorithm, reducing creators’ ability to influence the browsing experience. It prioritizes engagement through a non-stop feed, rather than the current mix of curated content, subscription-driven channels, and creator-led content presentation.

Is YouTube Moving Toward the TikTok Model?

YouTube’s exploration of infinite scroll points to a strategic move towards the TikTok model. TikTok’s algorithm-driven feed is renowned for its efficiency, quickly adapting to user preferences based on their viewing and scrolling habits. YouTube’s feed, in contrast, currently operates as a blend of subscription-based suggestions, recommended videos, and search-driven content. By reducing user decision-making—replacing it with an autoplay feature—YouTube’s new test could reduce creators’ control over how their content is presented.

This shift is indicative of a broader trend on social media: prioritizing algorithmic discovery over intentional selection. Users may be shown more personalized content as the system learns their interests, but for creators, it could mean an added reliance on the algorithm for visibility. This not only affects individual creators’ visibility but also shifts the community-building focus to short-term engagement metrics, mirroring the hyper-short content focus popularized by TikTok.

What It Means for Creators and Audiences

The “endless scroll” approach could help newer creators reach a wider audience, but it also brings challenges. The balance between “making videos viewers love” and “making videos that the algorithm prioritizes” is already a tension many creators experience. If endless scrolling were fully adopted, it could increase this pressure, incentivizing fast-paced, punchy, trend-aligned content to capture viewers’ attention within seconds.

On the viewer’s side, endless scroll might improve discovery, as users could find content they wouldn’t otherwise seek out. However, it might also push long-form YouTube content towards shorter, more concise formats to cater to scrolling users—losing the depth that YouTube has traditionally offered compared to other platforms.

A Glimpse into YouTube’s Future

This feature’s experimental rollout hints at YouTube’s evolving strategy to remain relevant in the age of endless, easily digestible content feeds. With AI-driven personalization at its core, the change could create a feed where each swipe delivers something perfectly tuned to the user’s preferences. This shift shows that YouTube is actively adapting to compete with TikTok, Reels, and other scroll-centric platforms, but at the potential cost of long-established creator-audience relationships. If it fully embraces this model, YouTube might move towards a blend of TV-like streaming with the interactive, bite-sized nature of TikTok, forever transforming how we discover, consume, and engage with videos on the platform.